How to improve digital customer experience?

How to improve digital customer experience through operational excellence?

So you've implemented your digital strategy, spent a lot of money, devoted countless labor hours and transformed your contact center into a digital-first omnichannel customer service machine. But you aren't quite realizing the operational benefits you baked into your business case and, even worse, the reaction from your customers isn't as enthusiastic as you hoped it would be. What to do? How do you improve digital customer experience while also realizing the operational efficiencies you're counting on?

Like every operation, refining digital customer service is an ongoing effort. You're never done. There's always some operational improvement or a new technology you can implement. That's great news when you want to improve digital customer experience.

NICE has worked with numerous companies in several different industries and we have found that sometimes the best way to improve digital customer experience is to focus on operational excellence.

Here are some real-life examples of what works:

Ask your customers what they want

This isn't a new concept, but it bears repeating. Sometimes what your customers say just might surprise you. This was the case with Educational Computer Systems Inc. (ECSI), which supports colleges with some of their administrative functions. Many of their customer service contacts are from students, and these students stated loud and clear that they didn't want to speak to agents on the phone; they much preferred chat. The problem was, ECSI's existing chat solution wasn't quite working for them, so they upgraded to NICE CXone Advanced Chat, which has co-browse capabilities that ECSI calls "a game changer." With their new scalable solution, cost per transaction is down and so are wait times and handle times. Best of all, customer satisfaction has increased. ECSI was able to improve digital customer service by listening to their customers and upgrading their technology.

Incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence might be just the thing to help you improve customer experience AND your operations. DSW, a leader in the footwear and accessories industry, was wrestling with how to grow sales without growing contact center headcount, all while improving the customer experience. To achieve these goals, they chose an automation solution that complemented, not replaced, what their agents were doing. By implementing AI-enabled automation, DSW was able to automate front-end authentication as well as contact types like order status and password resets. Since moving to this solution, customer satisfaction has increased by 30%. Winner!

Streamline the digital workflow

Sometimes the best way to improve digital customer experience is to refine your workflows. We teamed with our client, T-Mobile, to streamline how they conducted social customer service. At the time, manual processes were making support very inefficient. T-Mobile implemented a solution which included consolidating seven different social media accounts onto a single platform and automating contact routing, and they are well on their way to using their customer experience as a differentiator.