Software developer and SaaS customer experience management platform Sprinklr is no stranger to the industry. Sprinklr knows how businesses can best deliver truly great experiences for customers, as well as the flipside of that coin; i.e. how troubling gaps in the proactive personalization of customers’ journeys lead to wholesale underutilization of useful insights, impressions of weakened brand personality, and dissatisfaction. It's obvious that through none of these do memorable connections make. (Especially the deterioration of customer-product and customer-brand interactions.)
Luckily, Sprinklr knows how businesses can purpose-build and foster experiences that retain loyal customers. Led by its founder and CEO, Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr has reported new research in partnership with customer service performance and metrics online platform, Customer Contact Week Digital (CCW).
Sprinklr’s and CCW Digital’s Outsmarting Adversities | Customer Services Trends & Opportunities report reveals alarming statistics for teams and brands involved in customer service, in addition to what to action – and what to avoid – in the industry.
The report’s findings highlighted a number of challenges, including:
- 62% of brands acknowledge inconsistencies and deficiencies in communicating digitally with customers. (i.e. a lack of information uniformity and a wavering brand voice)
- 60% and 54%, respectively, struggle with ineffective AI solution capitalization and insufficient digital resourcing.
- 22% of customer service leaders say their organizations have completely unified customer data. Data pertaining to enterprise systems, objectives and metrics, contact channels and interdepartmental efforts range between 30%-34% in terms of data unification. These numbers should be rising as connections are forged, not falling.
- Though a bit smaller percentile-wise, a no-less-trivial 11% of Sprinklr-CCW Digital respondents admitted that they made little to no efforts whatsoever regarding personalized interactions. This means customers feel neither unique nor heard. Strides towards personalization are becoming more and more necessary when an additional-yet-lacking 12% predict customers’ needs and proactively tailor interactions based on dynamic intentions and customer sentiment.
“Fifty-one percent of brands struggle to capture meaningful customer data,” Thomas shared. “Sixty-seven percent aren’t analyzing the data they do capture well enough. Sixty-four percent don’t unify that data in a profound way, and 55%-58% have trouble empowering their frontline agents and sharing insights outside of contact centers. These are big issues. Providing digital, personalized services is what’s essential for customers to continually meet consumer expectations.”
“So, the research we and CCW Digital have conducted,” Thomas continued, “will help brands identify crucial gaps they must address in order to deliver on the promise of a truly unified, omnichannel customer service. Because in the meantime, interactivity that lacks personalization is neither cost-efficient, nor does it make things easier for agents. This breeds efforts in insufficient intelligence, which hurts entire businesses. Unified insights – about what customers are saying and how they’re behaving – can dramatically improve every customer-facing function, from sales and marketing to key product developments. We’d like to help brands deliver the kinds of experiences we all deserve.”
As Thomas noted, challenges do persist but they are resolvable. Prioritizing investing in the right technologies to unify customer service operations is a great place to start. Fifty-three percent of leading companies, according to Sprinkler and CCW Digital, are pouring resources into AI-powered chatbots that inspire customers to do more than minimize or close out the window while browsing online. Sixty-nine percent are planning to invest in the reduction of agent effort in areas that AI can automate, so agents can focus on larger issues.
The long story short? There’s a lot of work to be done in optimizing customer service, but the work is very doable. We simply can’t leave personalized interaction potential on the table.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
