Transforming Digital Engagement: From Ordinary to ExtraordinaryTransforming Digital Engagement: From Ordinary to Extraordinary
Organizations need to develop digital engagement strategies and deploy best practices to meet customer expectations, maximize their digital investments, and achieve their business goals.
October 4, 2024
It’s a digital-first world. Whether for sales assistance, customer service, or general information, customers increasingly prefer engaging with businesses through websites, web chats, or messaging apps like WhatsApp. Digital engagement is now a requirement, and organizations that fail to “meet customers where they are” risk losing valuable connections, customer loyalty, and sales opportunities.
Consumers are increasingly opting for channels like text/SMS, webchat, social messaging, and email over traditional voice interactions. While these digital experiences offer great potential, they often fall short of customer expectations. Simply deploying a variety of digital channels isn’t enough. There are too many examples of digital channels done poorly – siloed channels and workflows, customers having to repeat themselves when going from one channel to another, businesses steering customers towards digital channels they don’t properly support, poorly designed chatbots, the customer’s inability to reach a live agent when needed, separate interfaces for each channel adding complexity for agents – the list goes on and on.
Organizations need to develop digital engagement strategies and deploy best practices in order to meet customer expectations, maximize their digital investments, and achieve their business goals.
maximize their digital investments, and achieve their business goals.
The Benefits of Digital Channels
Digital engagement is a win-win for both customers and businesses. Businesses can increase sales, offer 24/7 service, gain significant cost savings, enhance agent efficiency, increased automation, and strengthen customer relationships. As opposed to voice interactions, synchronous digital channels such as email, social media, and messaging let agents handle multiple digital interactions simultaneously, increasing agent productivity while reducing costs.
For customers, digital channels offer flexibility and choice, while making it easier to access information and complete transactions. Customers can choose the right channel based on the specific situation. For example, a quick inquiry about a product delivery might fit well with a web-based chat on the company website, while complex issues like insurance claims are better suited for email or video. Email, webchat, and messaging channels allow for richer media communication capabilities where customers and agents can share photos, videos, or screenshots for faster and better problem resolution.
Digital channels support customers’ increasing demand for self-service, enabling them to receive 24/7 support through intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and chatbots. For businesses, this not only helps deflect calls but also leads to cost savings, improved agent efficiency, and stronger customer relationships.
Making Self Service Smarter – the Role of AI
Leveraging conversational AI, generative AI, and other technologies, AI tools like chatbots and IVAs let customers interact in a more natural way, improving the overall experience. AI can significantly enhance self-service capabilities, allowing for smart interactions that streamline the customer journey, delivering more personalized experiences, regardless of channel. Chatbots and IVAs can efficiently handle routine inquiries and interactions, freeing human agents to address more complex issues.
Most everyone agrees that AI technology is valuable and organizations run the risk of being left behind if they don’t deploy a CX AI. However, AI isn’t a panacea, and organizations need to be strategic and thoughtful when rolling out AI capabilities in the contact center. There are concerns regarding the cost and ROI of AI, security and privacy, as well as customers’ willingness to interact with bots rather than humans. Businesses deploying AI in the contact center without a well-thought-out strategy risk losing customers and revenue.
Best Practices for Optimal Digital Engagement
Digital engagement provides numerous advantages when deployed and executed correctly. There are various best practices to consider when deploying digital channels to get the most out of your investment. Here are the ones that apply to any technologist who’s assessing technologies and figuring out how to deploy them for the greatest impact.
Start with a digital-first strategy that integrates people, technology, and processes, and included change management.
Select the right channels based on customer preferences. Preferences will vary by demographic, age group, geography, as well as situational circumstances (is the customer in a noisy airport, is there a need for documents to be shared, etc.).
Don’t forget about voice. It’s important to be digital-first, but not digital-only. Recognize the important role that voice continues to play and provide the option for customers to reach a live agent when necessary.
Deploy a unified approach to CX that maintains context and continuity across platforms and eliminates silos between interaction channels, and between self service and assisted service.
Encourage usage and adoption of digital channels. Too often businesses make it hard for customers to reach them on their channel of choice. It’s important to promote the various digital channels and make it easy for customers to access them from your website, mobile app, “Contact Us” page, etc.
Properly prepare agents when rolling out new channels and provide the right training for effectively handling interactions on various channels. For example, web chat responses can be more informal than email responses, while messaging channels like WhatsApp may be best handled with a casual and fun tone.
Use AI wisely. Identify the most effective uses of AI within your digital strategy and deploy AI strategically, focusing on the most beneficial use cases. Move cautiously when it comes to Generative AI for customer conversations, as it’s easy for the AI to get off track, requiring some type of guardrails to keep the conversation and interaction from going off-topic. As noted in a previous No Jitter article, at this point in time it may be best to use generative AI in conjunction with other AI tools such as conversational AI. For example, generative AI can be used for identifying customer intent during a digital interaction, while conversational AI is used to create the actual responses and dialog.
Support proactive engagement by leveraging AI and analytics to anticipate customer needs and proactively offer solutions.
Continually measure, monitor, and refine the digital channels and AI tools. A successful digital engagement strategy isn’t static; it requires ongoing evolution. Use analytics tools to identify and reveal opportunities.
By effectively leveraging digital channels, companies can deliver the customer experience that today’s consumers demand, while operating more efficiently. By focusing on these best practices, organizations can enhance their digital engagement efforts and elevate the customer experience.
This post is written on behalf of BCStrategies, an industry resource for enterprises, vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing business communications arena. A supplier of objective information on business communications, BCStrategies is supported by an alliance of leading communication industry advisors, analysts, and consultants who have worked in the various segments of the dynamic business communications market.
