Orchestrating exceptional CX

To keep pace in an experience economy now ruled by the digital majority, companies face ever-growing pressure to deliver exceptional customer experiences. 

People today want to be remembered, heard, and understood across every interaction with a brand. And they want to feel like it’s effortless to find answers, perform common tasks, and get help. However, most organisations continue to fail at delivering seamless, exceptional experiences, time and time again. 

As I talk with companies large and small about the hurdles they face in transforming their customer experience, the same themes echo throughout these conversations. Companies struggle with outdated, reactive customer experience strategies that don't take into account the full customer journey. Siloed ownership of tools, data, and teams internally bleeds into the customer experience itself, leaving customers frustrated as they fall through the cracks. Too few organisations are taking advantage of the convenience of self-service, often because they lack the know-how to transform in the cloud using modern approaches to break out of legacy constraints. The result? Impersonal interactions which leave both customers and employees feeling frustrated. 

Companies struggle with outdated, reactive customer experience strategies that don't take into account the full customer journey.

Recent research my organisation conducted uncovered how interactions often result in customers feeling angry, where a quarter of consumers have lost their temper with an employee providing them support on an issue in the last 12 months. Sadly, these bad experiences have also driven more than one in ten customers to tears, which is also sure to create stress for employees on the receiving end. Such toxic levels of frustration are leading to increased risks of not only customer abandonment, but employee abandonment too. 

So why is this still happening in 2023? And most importantly, how can companies flip flawed technology thinking on its head to ensure different departments explore and implement solutions in ways that create loyalty-building experiences for their customers? 

Reimagining needs from every perspective

Transforming experiences today starts with putting the needs of customers and employees first. Crucial steps that organisations must take include tying together the end-to-end customer journey by coordinating technologies, connecting data, and shifting to more proactive approaches to experience delivery. 

In retail, this could be the delivery of target offers and notifications at the ‘right time’ to help customers more easily find, learn about, and buy products. In finance, it might be personalised banking sessions driven by information consolidated from across a customer's portfolio, history and communications preferences. In the travel sector, this could be sending alerts on delays and disruptions to customers, which in turn, help make trips as smooth as possible. 

Brands must get better at pulling together relevant information from different systems to carry context that can be integrated across all interactions.

Brands must get better at pulling together relevant information from different systems to carry context that can be integrated across all interactions. The price of failure to act? Our research concluded a third of consumers abandoned a brand for a competitor in the past 12 months alone as the result of a bad customer experience.

Organisations simply cannot afford to get customer experience wrong any longer. Instead, businesses must switch to more relevant, more personalised, and more proactive strategies, which is where experience orchestration enters the picture.

The power of experience orchestration

A fundamental principle that every organisation must realise is that experiences are happening whether they plan for them or not. Instead of reacting to people’s needs, companies must anticipate them, and design experiences centred around them from the start. 

The best way to do this now is to unite experiences around a single platform with the power to easily integrate and coordinate technologies, data, and channels across the entire journey. Our research found that customer experience leaders are already on board with this way of thinking, with 71% prioritising the implementation of platforms that integrate all systems.

Once this foundation is in place, companies should consider how to design experiences that are personalised and empathetic, while making it intuitive and simple for customers to accomplish their goals. Digital and artificial intelligence (AI) offer powerful ways to deliver here. However, many brands go wrong by deploying isolated AI-based point solutions aimed at only solving a ‘specific’ problem. This often results in customer frustration, as unhelpful bots or employees are limited with insufficient information, training or siloes. In these cases, all are hamstrung by stagnant data versus real-time knowledge enabled by algorithms that allow for continuous learning and optimisation. 

So rather than solving individual pain points, AI should be deployed with the purpose of connecting the holistic experience in a way that benefits customers, employees, and the organisation's bottom line. A few examples of how experience orchestration powered by AI can improve experiences include: 

• Knowing what customers need before they tell you: Customers’ historic data, partnered with behaviour patterns can trigger proactive intervention. Take for example when an airline customer initiates a chat. The employee can instantly see they have searched the company’s FAQs for information on flight change fees, and then offer assistance with rebooking or navigating change fees without the customer needing to ask. 
   
• Putting an end to broken records: Customers shouldn’t have to tell a bot their name, phone number, home address, account number, and their issue, to turn around and have to tell an employee, only to then have to repeat themselves again to the next employee they’re transferred to. When experiences are connected, this information follows the customer wherever they go for a fluid, echo free experience. 
   
• Matching customers with the employees best suited to help: Understanding which employees are best suited to provide the help a customer needs when they need it means customers are more likely to receive the first contact resolutions they want, and employees are able to focus on the areas they do best. A win-win result for all. 

A brighter outlook for the future 

Consumers’ expectations are constantly evolving, and they now tie their experiences to brand perception instantly. Companies can no longer play a game of wait and see. It’s time to move on the opportunity to orchestrate technologies in a people-centric way too, driving moments of trust which ladder up to a lifetime of loyalty. 

This can only be achieved by truly understanding people and anticipating the evolution of their expectations. Interactions can’t be managed in silos. ‘One-off’ engagements must become a thing of the past. Communications need to have a more holistic approach which encompasses multiple channels. 

‘One-off’ engagements must become a thing of the past. Communications need to have a more holistic approach which encompasses multiple channels.

Experience orchestration is about the correct coordination of technology across the end-to-end customer journey to build long lasting relationships at scale. It must be built on synergies which exist across every step of every experience with a single platform. By cutting through the noise and applying digital and AI with purpose, organisations can establish a strong blueprint for listening to and understanding customers and employees, predicting actions, shaping journeys, and driving meaningful outcomes. This enables them to forge increased loyalty through transformed relationships.

So, what are you waiting for? The key to creating exponential value has arrived. And it’s now vital to survival.