Keeping the Human Element in Digital Customer Experience Core values should not have to change because the way we work has changed.
By Eran Westman Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The longstanding foundations of many consumer-facing businesses (such as banking, for example) are built on personal, face-to-face relationships. Today, though, customer engagement is becoming increasingly self-serviced and transactional. People need to get things done while on the go, and companies need to get more done with fewer resources.
With that said, in the age of Twitter and chatbots, can modern businesses realistically ensure the contuinity of this core value of personal relationships into the digital, mobile era? Do people still desire interactions, when tapping and swiping just feels so good?
Absolutely! According to a recent survey from InContact, 67 percent of consumers prefer agent-assisted customer service. Only 39 percent of respondents were satisfied with their experience when working through self-service channels.
Related: 6 Ways to Exceed Your Customer's Expectations Just With Good Manners
If that is the case, then are companies being forced to deploy transactional, self-service tools in the name of efficiency, even though their customer experience may feel faceless and/or anonymous as a result?
Not necessarily. For example, according to research from Dimension Data, nearly one-third of contact centers expect to deploy video chat for customer engagement. The research says that giving customers the additional option to remotely connect face-to-face, at moments that are important to them (and on their terms), can make their customer experience even more powerful. For example, bank customers or credit union members today may not feel the need to be face-to-face with an employee in the event of a fraudulent transaction appearing on their card. However, in the event of a major financial milestone (like planning for college, launching a small business or buying a home), people want to be one-on-one with another human being.
Related: If You Want Real Relationships With Your Customers, Start Being a Better Partner
Core values should not have to change because the way we work has changed.
Furthermore, all kinds of companies today are going above and beyond to create a highly differentiated customer experience (CX) to elevate their brand and encourage customer loyalty. A stronger emphasis is being placed on pushing the boundaries of CX than ever before. For internet giants like Amazon, this can manifest itself as introducing a physical element to their brand with brick-and-mortar storefronts. For large banks with millions of customers (and mazes of frustrating, impersonal digital options and voice response systems), it can be something as simple as making it really painless to get a little bit of facetime with another human being when there's an urgent matter at hand.
Time is the new currency for your customers who are looking for painless and informed solutions to their issues. We are also starting, growing and running companies in an "attention economy," which is defined by the view that human attention is a scarce commodity. By 2018, according to research from Gartner, more than 100 out of the 500 largest global businesses will have implemented video chat. Digital transformation does not mean that Twitter avatars and chatbots (although they are driven by increasingly intelligent knowledge bases) must fully take the place of actual humans speaking to other humans, even for companies that may have millions of users.
Related: 6 Strategies Smart Brands Use to Satisfy and Retain Their Customers
You may be wondering what has changed, from a business and technology perspective, that can now let us have the best of both worlds. I can say from personal experience that the recent proliferation of API platforms is making it much more possible today for companies of all sizes to keep the human element in digital CX, if they make the choice to do so.
Whether she is a baby boomer, Gen Xer or millennial, no customer likes to feel anonymous, or that the brand she is supporting is unnecessarily faceless in a time when we have so much incredible technology that gives us a ton of access to anything (and anyone). Again, leading brands today are increasingly seeing that a special, attentive customer experience can be a key differentiator, in a time when it may be more difficult for people to see what makes one bank or credit union any different than another. Keeping the human element in digital CX can give your customers a sense of inclusion and transparency that they can genuinely appreciate.
