Johannesburg, 27 Aug 2024
The business landscape is rapidly evolving, with significant investments in digital modernisation aimed at delivering a seamless customer experience (CX).
Many companies have adopted various combinations of contact centres (CC or CCaaS), customer service management (CSM) and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to cater to consumer preferences for omnichannel engagement. Delivering frictionless, intuitive interactions is no longer optional; it's essential for companies that aspire to remain competitive.
In a world where switching service providers has become effortless, customers no longer complain – they simply move on. Despite the adoption of advanced digital solutions designed to facilitate frictionless CX, many businesses still struggle to achieve this critical objective through their digitally enabled omnichannel contact centres.
Historically, business transformation projects have remarkably high failure rates. Research from the Boston Consulting Group reveals that 26% of companies experience outright project failure, 44% achieve only suboptimal results and just 30% consider their initiatives successful.
Given that most major vendors offer solutions packed with the features necessary for engagement and frictionless CX, the focus must shift beyond technology to identify potential pitfalls. The most significant challenge lies in the adoption and usage of new technologies. Humans naturally resist change due to a subconscious psychological response to the fear of the unknown and the uncertainties new solutions and platforms bring. Achieving the user adoption and engagement required for delivering a frictionless CX means not only deploying advanced technology, but also addressing these innate human tendencies.
To ensure the level of user adoption and usage that leads to a frictionless customer experience (CX), companies must focus on a robust change management strategy alongside their technology implementations. This dual focus is pivotal to maximising business value and impact. The process begins with clear communication about the need for digital transformation projects and actively involves employees during the CX design and improvement phases, securing buy-in from all stakeholders, particularly the end-users. Once user buy-in is achieved, a comprehensive and multifaceted change management plan is necessary. This plan must address more than just standard staff training and upskilling on the new technology's interface and features.
Companies need to update human resource (HR) policies to align with new internal processes required by the new technology. This helps create a customer-centric culture that leverages the capabilities of the new solution. Updating job roles and descriptions ensures that staff understand the new expectations, enabling them to fully leverage the functionalities of the new technology.
With these elements in place, companies can start making incremental changes in how staff incorporate the new solution into their daily roles. This gradual integration is key to embedding the new technology's functionalities into everyday workflows. Every aspect of this change management process is vital for fostering adoption and usage within the organisation, ensuring a full return on investment (ROI). Due to the critical nature of this change management process, businesses need experts who can formally design, manage and execute a comprehensive strategy that addresses the full spectrum of requirements, from people and processes to the technology itself, rather than any element in isolation.
At Connect, we transform the way companies engage with customers. Our unique Connect360 approach employs a full range of specialist advisory, technical, support and service skills, which we couple with data-driven insights to analyse and understand a company's customer engagement needs.
Applying our vendor-independent approach and unparalleled expertise and experience allows us to seamlessly integrate people, processes and technology to extract the full value from your existing technology investment and create optimised solutions that deliver true frictionless CX.
Share