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Conversational CX is helping businesses unlock the door to growth 

The last few years have made it obvious that digitalization is the key to unlocking business growth. The need for convenience and ease is driving companies to pay more attention to customer relationships and conversations are the key. CX is the competitive differentiator in a world driven by data. Companies are turning customer service into an engine for growth. In an interview with Vasudeva Rao Munnaruli, RVP India and SAARC, Zendesk, he sheds light on how changes in industries puts growth on top of mind and scaling through customer experience can be the catalyst that businesses need.

 

Conversational CX is fast becoming the preferred way of communication for both customers and businesses. And we see the proliferation of chatbot services that businesses are adopting but many aren’t intuitive enough. How does Zendesk help resolve this pressing concern?

Chatbots are often the first touchpoint for customers and are a characteristic of modern customer support experiences. Few brands use sophisticated, undetectable bots that pass the Turing test. It’s true that automations like chatbots go a long way in aiding customer support agents but it is also important for businesses to understand what their customers want and customize such technology to their needs. Businesses need to take a look at the most common queries, pain points and also possible questions that could crop up during a conversation while deploying a chatbot.

Zendesk’s approach to conversational CX connects the front and back offices to provide a full range of intelligent, real-time data and services that supports effective customer engagement. This is important as customers do not want to tailor their messages based on a chatbot’s capabilities. It’s up to businesses to ensure that the bots they deploy can interpret customer requests and detect slangs, abbreviations and typos while also understanding the context of the conversation. We do this by leveraging two main types of AI: natural language processing and machine learning. This deep learning model enables bots to learn from every customer interaction and train itself to deliver customized content with each ticket that is resolved. AI chatbots are almost always successful when they can learn from thousands of service interactions.

 

How can businesses benefit from conversational data orchestration?

Conversational data orchestration lets businesses integrate their CX solutions with other systems and applications. In a digital-first world, organizations have vast amounts of data — be it in legacy systems, cloud-based tools, data warehouses etc. Conversational data orchestration enables businesses to swiftly access the data, understand what kind of data exists, where it comes from, and the relationship between data objects. It unifies the data on one platform in real-time and makes the data available for the tools that need it.

Conversational data orchestration lets businesses create a conducive environment for scaling customer conversations by connecting processes, event data and custom logic. For example, it acts as a link between the support teams and the CX solution user, enabling support teams to build better relationships with customers.

 

How do conversational channels and analytics help condense their marketing and sales tech stacks?

Customers want businesses to know who they are, where they’ve been and what they need from the brand. Knowledge about customer behavior makes the conversation feel more natural, as if they are speaking to family or friends. When conversational channels like social messaging platforms are integrated with customer data, businesses can give customers the convenience they expect. Conversational channels and analytics help businesses turn conversations into revenue with data-driven insights. If your CX solution has custom reporting capabilities in addition to analytics, it allows marketing and sales teams to manage high volumes and analyze historical trends on a unified platform. A unified platform also allows teams to reach out to customers on the channels they prefer and capture every interaction automatically on one platform, where it can be managed, tracked and reported on. This reduces the need for multiple tech stacks, creating an agile workflow and minimizing tech fatigue.

 

There are myriad tech stacks that remote and hybrid workers use to navigate a perimeter-less workplace. What should CIOs keep in mind while choosing the right technology that unifies HR, Finance, Operations, IT and other support teams?

Employees are constantly being asked to do more year over year as remote and hybrid work models have become the new norm. They are using multiple tech stacks for workflow and this could lead to tech fatigue. While choosing the right technology, CIOs need to pick tools that create efficient processes and increase employee satisfaction, with measurable data and results that can be shared with senior leaders. Technology must be easy to use and include capabilities such as keeping employee requests organized and prioritized, freeing internal teams to focus on big picture tasks.

A single source of truth for HR, Finance, Operations, IT and other support teams allows employees to seamlessly resolve their issues on one platform. While looking for a unified solution, CIOs need to ensure that the technology can address employee issues seamlessly without having to struggle through an endless chain of back-and-forth of emails. Combined with analytics, the technology can give team members insights into the types of employee cases that reoccur. This paves the way to find solutions preemptively and create standardized processes to fix commonly occurring problems, eliminating repetitive tasks.

Employees obviously access dozens of apps and programs throughout the day to do their jobs, including in-house software. This creates plenty of opportunity for technical issues. When employees have issues, it pays to use an organized system to solve them. A unified platform allows IT teams to track and solve issues from various channels in one workspace.It also simplifies workflows and extends the team’s bandwidth as employees can focus on more strategic tasks.

 

How does a unified platform help improve employee experience?

While businesses are considering simplifying CX, they need to close the communication gaps with employees to provide an agile, personalized, data-driven experience. According to Zendesk research, tickets filed by corporate employees jumped by 31 percent in 2021 — nearly double the rates seen by customer-facing support teams at B2B and B2C companies. There is an argument to be made about a direct link between employee service and business growth because happy employees result in happy customers. This is why CIOs need to choose technology for internal support wisely. A solution that integrates self-service and use-case management, gives employee support teams a single source of truth for HR, Finance, Operations, IT, and other support teams. Tech solutions must remove repetition, friction, and unnecessary administrative processes, making it easier for employees to access critical information, resources, and services. Besides, if a single solution also integrates insights to understand trends and emerging issues, it can continuously improve employee experience.

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