How to improve digital customer experience through operational excellence?

So you've implemented your digital strategy, spent a lot of money, devoted countless labor hours and transformed your contact center into a digital-first omnichannel customer service machine. But you aren't quite realizing the operational benefits you baked into your business case and, even worse, the reaction from your customers isn't as enthusiastic as you hoped it would be. What to do? How do you improve digital customer experience while also realizing the operational efficiencies you're counting on? 

Like every operation, refining digital customer service is an ongoing effort. You're never done. There's always some operational improvement or a new technology you can implement. That's great news when you want to improve digital customer experience.

NICE has worked with numerous companies in several different industries and we have found that sometimes the best way to improve digital customer experience is to focus on operational excellence.

Here are some real-life examples of what works:

Ask your customers what they want

This isn't a new concept, but it bears repeating. Sometimes what your customers say just might surprise you. This was the case with Educational Computer Systems Inc. (ECSI), which supports colleges with some of their administrative functions. Many of their customer service contacts are from students, and these students stated loud and clear that they didn't want to speak to agents on the phone; they much preferred chat. The problem was, ECSI's existing chat solution wasn't quite working for them, so they upgraded to NICE CXone Advanced Chat, which has co-browse capabilities that ECSI calls "a game changer." With their new scalable solution, cost per transaction is down and so are wait times and handle times. Best of all, customer satisfaction has increased. ECSI was able to improve digital customer service by listening to their customers and upgrading their technology.

Incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence might be just the thing to help you improve customer experience AND your operations. DSW, a leader in the footwear and accessories industry, was wrestling with how to grow sales without growing contact center headcount, all while improving the customer experience. To achieve these goals, they chose an automation solution that complemented, not replaced, what their agents were doing. By implementing AI-enabled automation, DSW was able to automate front-end authentication as well as contact types like order status and password resets. Since moving to this solution, customer satisfaction has increased by 30%. Winner!

Streamline the digital workflow

Sometimes the best way to improve digital customer experience is to refine your workflows. We teamed with our client, T-Mobile, to streamline how they conducted social customer service. At the time, manual processes were making support very inefficient. T-Mobile implemented a solution which included consolidating seven different social media accounts onto a single platform and automating contact routing, and they are well on their way to using their customer experience as a differentiator.

More digital customer service ideas.
This quick video will act as your guide for how to improve CX. It offers a checklist of 10 innovations resulting in quick and effortless digital customer experience. Digital Customer Service innovations aren’t for the future. Roll out these 10 digital and self-service innovations today with NICE CXone.
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NICE has the tools to improve digital customer experience.

NICE CXone is leading a new era of Smart Digital Conversations by eliminating traditional barriers to exceptional omnichannel customer experiences with new innovations across your contact center operations. Best in-class contact center software and partnerships with leading AI vendors make NICE a holistic solution for all your digital customer experience improvement efforts. Find out more here.

Any digital channel

Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.

  • Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
  • Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
  • Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
CXone digital channel
Empowered agents

CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.

  • Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
  • Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
  • Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management

With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.

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