Before the digital age, human contact and conversations were how customers interacted with a company—typically in a retail or office setting as they were shopping or conducting various business tasks. Today, to reduce operational costs and to save time, we interact with devices, but we’ve sacrificed much of the personal touch that helped keep customers loyal by making them feel important and connected to the business. As a result of poor digitized customer service systems, companies have seen an increase in lost revenue as well as customer frustration. So why is it that we haven’t automated, or “digitized,” the best customer interaction? Excuses abound—poor systems integration, failed promises from CRM systems, lack of vision, unclear processes, and the fact that something that appears easy on the surface actually hides quite a bit of inherent complexity.
Automating the Customer Experience
In fact, when we talk about automating the customer conversation or interaction, what we’re actually doing is giving a system the power to act on our behalf—meaning that it has to recognize behaviors and act upon them—in real time and in context. This takes the customer experience to a whole new level.
Take this example of a retail bank: If I use the bank’s app to apply for a mortgage, but don’t complete it and then walk into the branch a few days later, they should already know who I am and be able to help me finish filling out the application. Better yet, wouldn’t it be nice if one of the bank’s representatives called me during my preferred times and asked me a few questions to help me finish up my application? Or how about if I click around on the bank’s web site looking for a new savings account, but give up before applying for one? Therein lies an opportunity for the bank to give me a call and ask if I would be interested in opening up a savings account with them, potentially capturing revenue that would have otherwise been lost to a competitor.
Intelligent Systems to Handle Customer Requests in Context
These seemingly simple use cases require underlying infrastructure technology to be in place: a current and up-to-date customer and household view, real-time, omni-channel integration between systems, dynamic business processes, workflows, and an intelligent system that can act on customer requests in context.
With this real-time infrastructure provided by TIBCO, existing systems work better and smarter; and customer and brand loyalty increase. Wouldn’t you like to have an intelligent digital conversation with your customers? Don’t be left in the dark with you customer service systems—explore our Integration Maturity Model Assessment.
