Without automation, there is much less efficiency, clarity, and speed of service. According to the CXA Impact report, 95% of growing businesses say that automation helped them achieve what they couldn’t on their own.
Customer experience automation (CXA) is especially important in the B2B context. Here, high level of service depends on how well segmented the audience is and how efficiently the message can come though. Businesses trust more partners who have time to engage with audience.
This is possible only if processes are automated. However, according to a recent report by Genesys, ‘only 13% of CX Leaders say their organisations have connected the data and technology needed to create the omnichannel experiences that deliver seamless, personalised experiences’.
To stay competitive, companies have to start with their automation strategy today. This guide will walk you through the basic definition of customer experience automation, how to do it, and how to benefit from it.
What is customer experience automation (CXA)?
All of us in the CX industry experience some aspect of service or process automation in our day-to-day work. Grasping this concept is not that challenging. Implementing it, however, is.
According to Qualtrics XM, ‘customer experience automation (CXA) is the act of finding parts of the customer journey and its various touchpoints that can be handled by automatic processes, responses, and tools, rather than by human agents.’
Some real-life practical examples of CXA include the following:
- live chat and chatbots
- satisfaction feedback surveys
- self-service scheduling (booking processes etc)
- automated emails
Replacing human agents by automating a part of the customer journey has to be well thought-through and balanced out. This is so that the automated solution doesn’t cause frustration. A clear example of this is seen with chatbots. This year, they reportedly caused more frustrations among customers, than they were seen as helpful. However, with the AI revolution, and the recent boom of generative AI, customer experience automation is yet to evolve to an unseen scale.
But automation has to start somewhere. Let’s explore what components are crucial to have in place before you are ready to implement CXA.
How to do customer experience automation?
Understanding of data
The basic first step in automation is understanding the value of customer data you already have in your base. What does this data tell you? What are the correlations? How well can we interpret them to understand customers’ wants, needs, and preferences? What processes and data analysis do we conduct manually and how much time does it take us for the value we produce?
There are some of the questions that can help you access the understanding of data in your base. Understanding the data will give you the starting point of understanding your customers and where to go next with them. Without this data, you won’t know what to do.
Customer segmentation
Segmentation of customers should be a business imperative for any company that wants to stay competitive. This can be done in subgroups according to customer job titles, company size, interests, values they shared, previous preferences, etc. Sending campaigns to the entire customer list, for instance, risks losing existing satisfied customers due to lack of personalisation.
In other words, personalisation is impossible without segmentation. To do a segmentation, companies first have to select a CEM (customer experience management) software that will further support the process automation and data analysis. Such popular CEM platforms include MailChimp, Zoho, Qualtrics, Zendesk, etc.
Automation
Despite the benefits, not every process needs to be automated. Assessing what processes will save time and create efficiency in delivering results should be the foremost consideration. This should be followed by analysing campaigns and engaging intentionally with customer segments to create value. If you lose a client or a subscriber due to lack of automation, this is the red flag, but also an insightful feedback on where to invest.
What are the benefits of CXA?
Customer experience automation is a varied topic, with lots to discuss. So let’s keep it to the basics. Here are the top 3 benefits of implementing this automation:
Fast service and problem resolution
These are two of the things that customers value the most. They want their interaction and service to be swift and efficient, so they can continue on with their day. Automation is perfect for ticking this box off, as it leaves no room for human error to slow down the process. The automated technology is already pre-set with what it needs to do, so there’s no waiting about.
Similarly, customer experience automation programmes and platforms are fine-tuned for quick issue resolution, as it is built into their systems. In this, the automation works in a way to pick up buzzwords and phrases, with pre-programmed resolutions for them.
Improved customer satisfaction as an overall result
This can be achieved when automation is implemented successfully and in the most effective ways. Companies that embrace automation see customer satisfaction rates rise to nearly 90% on their automated channels. Automated systems implement anything the business needs them to, including the most important aspects we know are the best for customers – personalisation, ease of use, general customer support improvement etc.
Additionally, and a huge plus for customers, is the ability to receive 24/7 support from automated services. This is appealing for customers who may not be able to get in contact with customer support teams during the generic 9-5 timescale. If support is always available, then customers will always feel cared for.
Productivity and employee experience
A positive employee experience is strongly embedded with their job satisfaction and enjoyment. No one enjoys doing mundane tasks at work as they can become tedious, tiring, and lead to overall lack of contentment. But someone has to do them, they have to get done. And this is where automation is most useful from an internal perspective.
The customer experience automation tools can be used to complete the mundane tasks, while your human employees can focus their attention and efforts elsewhere. Not only will job satisfaction increase, but so will productivity.
Moving forward by implementing CXA
As you can see, the benefits of improving workflows with customer experience automation are endless, and can further strengthen your customer relationships. The best next step for you now is to find the best platform that would work for you, and when you might get started. It’s a business decision you won’t regret.