Is your CX going to ‘Ashes’?

Cricket is a game which has given us some of the most iconic images in sporting history, but it’s also very relatable to how businesses compete trying to woo crowds of customers to support **their** team.

After Australia’s cricket test victory against England at The Oval in 1882, an obituary in ‘The Sporting Times’, a British newspaper, stated that English cricket had died, and “the body will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia”. Who knew that the English media’s portrayal of these mythical ashes and the quest to regain the Ashes, would become one of the biggest test cricket events in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres?

A Gentleman’s game

Albeit a ‘gentleman’s game’, so much more goes into winning at cricket. Victory is hard work. Top teams know that it’s not just about talent. Cutting-edge sport science, injury management, military-grade physical training and technology that calculates match workloads and detailed anthropometric reporting to monitor a player’s physical capacity all contribute to the winning strategy.

The same can be said for brands that foster a disciplined approach when creating a customer-centric strategy. Focusing on the end game, they understand that consistently engaging customers over multiple, fit-for-purpose channels, creates a lasting competitive advantage.

LBW

To the unversed, the leg before wicket dismissal is to cricket what the offside law is to football, however this rule is not as complicated as some people may think. Governed by a specific set of principles, once mastered, it is quite simple to understand.

So how does the LBW law relate to CX?

The broad use of the term “Customer Experience” has led it to become so muddled that many brands are getting stuck. While customer experience is extremely important and the way a customer thinks and feels about a brand’s products or services, customer service transformation, is about delivering the very best levels of service experience whenever a customer wants to contact a company or self-serve answers.
Delivering great customer service is a key principle of creating exceptional CX, especially when the service that customers receive was ranked one of the top 3 drivers for brand loyalty in a recent study by Microsoft.

To deliver exceptional customer experience, exceptional customer service should be delivered every single time a customer needs assistance, in a channel of their choice, consistently and in a timely fashion. And this is where many brands still get bowled out and are stumped when their customers go elsewhere.
Out for a duck

The hard-hitting common customer service mistakes are still made through badly designed website support, think archaic static FAQs, long on-hold call centre queues, and inconsistent information across channels, which not only causes confusion for customers, but frustration to contact centre agents.

And while there is a plethora of technology available that can contribute to enhanced customer service like AI, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants, it is extremely important to not just invest in technology for the sake of it.

It has become increasingly apparent that many channels are being bolted on with little or no consideration for how they are integrated with the rest of the organisation. For the customer, the existence of siloed channels can be apparent in a variety of ways, such as inconsistency in actions from channel-to-channel; different tone of voice; duplication of messaging; or having to start the conversation anew every time it shifts to a fresh channel.

To put it simply: Customers view their experiences with a company, not with discrete channels. They want an omni-present world where they can transition seamlessly from channel to channel, picking up where they left off in their purchasing or enquiry process, with consistent support throughout their journey.

And this is where we can help brands to create simple, quick and effortless service experiences. Since 2001, Synthetix have developed the ultimate tech stack to assist businesses in improving CSAT and agent efficiency. Driven by integrated conversational AI, our suite of self-service and agent-assisted tools add a new layer of intelligence and agility to contact centres.

Our Self-Service Cloud web portal provides answers to your customers’ questions 24/7, using an AI-powered, super-accurate knowledge-base to reduce inbound emails and calls, optimising agent productivity and providing a cost-effective way to automate customer service, sales and support.

And Synthetix Contact Cloud, our complete agent desktop for multi-channel, agent-assisted customer service and support, empowers agents to deliver excellent customer experiences. Powerful built-in AI proactively suggests customer responses, resulting in reduced training times, increased customer satisfaction and measurable agent efficiency gains.

Ashes to victory

A tiny wooden urn, reputed to contain the ashes of a wooden bail, humorously described as “the ashes of English cricket” is supposed to be kept by the team having won the most recent Test series, however today, irrespective of which side holds the tournament, it remains in the MCC Museum at Lord’s.
Cricket is a game of uncertainties when it comes to the Ashes, however, CX and customer support doesn’t have to be.

To explore how AI-driven technology can introduce new value and break fresh ground, download/read these digital assets:

• The small step towards AI that can deliver quick-win business results

• Sentience AI- Blending Human with Artificial Intelligence

• The explicit link between Digital Customer Service and BUSINESS GROWTH