What is CX?

 You’ve probably heard of the acronym CX – and you may be aware it stands for ‘customer experience.’ But what exactly does CX encompass? And why is it an important consideration for a contact centre?

Firstly, what do we mean by ‘CX’?

CX (or customer experience) refers to a customer’s experience with a business over their buying journey and beyond.

CX can incorporate many touchpoints – from phone and email to web chat and SMS – and involve many different stages, including sales, marketing, customer service, and any other form of communication or brand interaction.

Essentially, CX is the total of every positive and negative interaction that a customer ever has with your brand.

Why is customer experience important?

Delivering a positive, satisfying and memorable customer experience can make a significant difference in driving loyalty and customer retention and can also help to encourage brand advocacy.

Suppose a customer has a smooth and enjoyable experience with a business. In that case, they’ll naturally be more likely to return, make a repeat purchase, and even recommend the company to others (either directly through word of mouth or online reviews).

Here are a few statistics that demonstrate the impact of providing a high-quality CX – and why it’s important to focus on this area for your contact centre:

• 88% of businesses now prioritise customer experience in all of their contact centres.
• 73% of customers agree that customer experience helps to drive their buying decision.
• There is an 80% increase in revenue for businesses focusing on improving customer experience.
• A positive customer experience encounter can increase customer spending by up to 140%.

How can you improve CX in your contact centre?

Traditionally, call centres have often focused on customer satisfaction as a critical metric for performance. However, for today’s multi-channel contact centres, the role of CX has taken on a new level of importance, with customer interactions spanning a wide range of platforms, media and communication types.

With CX now a top priority for businesses, modern contact centres need to ensure they are delivering an exceptional experience across every channel – both to keep customers happy and to maintain a solid competitive edge.

Here are a few ways you can improve the CX, using a customer experience management platform: 

• Better understand your customers: The more your contact centre agents know about the customers they’re interacting with, the better equipped they will be to deliver a personalised experience at every touchpoint. This is crucial, as each interaction ultimately shapes the brand perception.
• Remove obstacles for accessing information: The best CX is often the one with the least hurdles. Make it easy for customers to access the information they need with the right customer experience management software. For example, advanced routing can ensure customers are routed to the most appropriate department and agent to answer their queries.
• Use feedback to identify areas for improvement: Collecting feedback on the customer experience can help you to identify areas for improvement. This allows you to modify operational processes and schedule training for your agents to provide the best service to your customers. A contact centre solution with call recording functionality and a QA module will allow you to efficiently score your agents and identify potential improvements. A speech analytics solution can also help to identify how agents are feeling during their calls. Emotions such as vulnerability, stress and anger can be detected in call recordings so managers can intervene and reduce attrition.
• Consider incorporating a personal touch: CX is about more than just a series of actions. You can strengthen loyalty by empowering your contact centre agents to create emotional connections with customers. Ensure the solution offers integration capabilities to your customer relationship management software (CRM) to access relevant account details and information from historical conversations to personalise interactions. Organisations could also look for solutions with API and Webservices capabilities to create even more tailored interactions through integration.

Keen to understand how ipSCAPE can help transform CX in your contact centre? Learn more about our innovative customer experience management solution or get in touch to find out how ipSCAPE’s award-winning software can help you improve your customer experience.

ipSCAPE is a feature-rich, scalable cloud communication technology solution with advanced integration capabilities with leading CRMs such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Zendesk. We help businesses connect with their customers through multi-channel communications including Voice, Web Chat, Email, SMS and other channels.