With digital-first experience defining the modern world Freshworks released their report where they outline key trends around business behaviour as well as the consumer. The report focuses on the future of CX in the Middle East and Africa with the goal for businesses to deepen their customer loyalty.
Customer satisfaction means quicker responses
The report surveyed 4 500 + businesses while also have analysed 107 million interactions. The report concludes that 80% of customers demand faster responses to their questions. Furthermore, there is an expected 160% increase regarding the frequency of digital purchases. Therefore, it would be wise for businesses to embrace a digital-first mindset while working on faster response times.
When it comes to the platform that customers want to interact with, 39% will opt for self-service. But 61% would like companies to use an intelligent mix of self-service and humans. The latter is due to the speed and empathy of the responses. Seamless omnichannel also plays a significant role in the customer journey.
A company that has achieved a CSAT score of 95% is Multichoice, Africa’s media powerhouse. They did this by embracing omnichannel services by consolidating each of the multiple touchpoints while also giving their customers fully integrated helpdesks for service teams.
What is more, 38% of customers expect agents to know who they are and what they want immediately. Another 80% will purchase from brands that give them a personalized experience.
Agents of delight for a digital-first experience
Being an agent is not an easy task due to the increase in query volumes and the increase in customer anxiety and employee burnout. Also, adapting to a remote work environment has increased the hardship in an agent’s job. Therefore, leaders are starting to reprioritise the well-being of their agents to lead to customers being satisfied.
Doing this will require business leaders to rely on technology to empower their agents in the hopes of turning them from regular employees to agents of delight. So much so that one in three employers view creating new generation digital platforms can help customer-facing teams work better, which is a top priority in digital investment.
Using such features as AI-based ticket classification and automatic routing so that the customers’ queries go to the right agents. This can free up employees’ workload, giving them 1.2 hours daily to focus on delighting the customers. These features take out the repetitive tasks that help agents work with customers who need their aid.
Due to the increase in contact volumes, an agent can feel overwhelmed, affecting their work performance. It is stated in the report that every 100 extra monthly tickets can lead to a decrease of 1% in CSAT scores. The solution to this is to enable self-service resources as well as AI-bots to ease the heavy burden.
Furthermore, remote work also must be accounted for and looked after. This comes in the form of engagement software such as Slack and Team to help remote agents stay on top of the workload. Plus, it also saves agents 120 clicks a day.
AI to predict instead of just automate
AI has been in CX for a while now. However, leaders are starting to figure out how to use the technology to improve employee and customers experiences. Instead of merely using the tools to automatic repetitive tasks, the AI can be used to predict the needs of the customers. Also, while delivering personalized experiences. This is a crucial consideration for one in three decision-makers.
To read the full Freshworks’ report, which goes into more detail, you can download it here.