A strong, sustainable customer relationships start with understanding the customer experience, and more importantly – keeping the human connection at the heart of all customer engagement.
A recent IPOS survey in the APAC region found that almost a third, or 32%, of CX professionals are conceding that the experiences their own companies are delivering to customers have been worse than promised with only 7% seeing an improvement in their CX performance. What are the causes of this shortfall between what they want to achieve and the actual experience on the ground?
Delving deeper into the challenges companies face, why traditional customer approaches could be failing and what organisations can do to better execute on their CX goals and fulfil their brand promise, Martech Asis speaks with Philip Zammit, Head of Customer Experience, Asia Pacific & Japan, Zoom.
Why are APAC organisations continuing to struggle to provide the experience that customers want?
Over the last few years, we saw many organisations taking to digital solutions rapidly in order to engage with customers online. Undeniably, this has helped them to maintain customer engagement during a time where physical interactions just weren’t possible. However, the speed at which digitalisation had to occur made it difficult for business leaders to evaluate the solutions adopted and ensure they are agile enough to meet future needs. Fast forward to today: being digital has become the baseline for companies looking to effectively reach their customers.
Take customer events, for example. While companies are indeed resuming in-person trade shows and conferences, virtual and hybrid events continue to remain a popular option for networking as people want the flexibility of being able to attend in whichever format they prefer. The challenge now is for companies to provide a high-quality, consistent experience for attendees, no matter where they are participating from. Yet, today’s economic climate has left businesses struggling to manage costs while they attempt to meet customers’ heightened demands for CX. This can be detrimental to a company’s bottom line.
A recent survey Zoom commissioned with Morning Consult in the U.S. found that more than half (59%) of consumers said that they would switch to a competitor after only one or two negative support experiences. What businesses need to thrive is a scalable solution that can support the ever-changing needs of customers, which hasty investments might not be equipped to achieve.
Another challenge we see faced by APAC organisations is that many still view CX as a siloed business objective, concentrating mainly on external touchpoints with customers. What leaders fail to consider is the role of employee experience in enhancing CX outcomes.
To deliver the experience customers now want, businesses must aim to deliver a “Total Experience,” which involves transforming the experience for both internal and external stakeholders. We believe that happy employees make for happy customers. By automating mundane tasks and freeing up employees to focus on high-value activities, such as nurturing customer relationships and focusing on more complex use-cases, organisations are able to maximise the personalisation and effectiveness human agents can bring while simultaneously boosting employee satisfaction. This ultimately feeds into improving the total customer experience.
Why are traditional customer outreach methods not working now?
Traditional outreach methods are no longer as effective today for a simple reason: customers today expect a differentiated CX that is hyper-personalised and adaptable to their individual needs. They seek interactions that are tailored specifically to them, considering their preferences, history and context. Moreover, they expect faster, more accurate and more efficient help that is consistent across all channels.
Consumers here in Asia Pacific tell the same story. In Singapore, for example, an annual report on customer satisfaction by Singapore Management University’s Institute of Service Excellence (ISE) revealed that customers in Singapore interacted with three unique bank touch points on average, including automated teller machines, physical bank branches and mobile applications. This points to the simple fact that customers now demand an omnichannel journey.
Above all, today’s customers want to feel valued by the brands they trust and less like a transaction. On the one hand, they want options to connect with businesses on the modality they prefer; and on the other hand, it is just as crucial to experience this connection over a trusted channel that is personalised and, therefore, feels more human. Businesses need to evolve their outreach strategies to keep human connection at the heart of all customer engagement.
How is the current uncertain economy impacting how brands go to market and what they should do?
The current economic climate is creating pressure on organisations to manage costs effectively within a disruptive business landscape, all while addressing skills shortages and fulfilling demand for a hybrid, collaborative, and inclusive work environment.
In response to this, businesses are looking to consolidate and streamline operations to stay resilient. A differentiated customer experience will be key to help businesses acquire and retain customers in the short term and build brand loyalty in the long term. Businesses should not only look at expanding new markets geographically, but also at unlocking new customer segments that are currently underserved or unserved. In ASEAN, this includes customers in rural areas and Tier-2 or -3 cities who might not have access to services readily available in the bigger cities.
For example, we recently worked with CareSpan Asia, a leading digital healthcare platform and technology-enabled healthcare services provider in the Philippines. We helped to integrate Zoom’s Video SDK into CareSpan’s Electronic Medical Records (EMR), which provides patients and doctors with access to customised features and quality video consultations in both high- and low-speed internet environments. This has enabled CareSpan to reach patients in more rural areas with low connectivity.
To build an effective go-to-market strategy amid these market dynamics, organisations should look to adopt a platform-first approach that is able to streamline and optimise business communications across not only internal employees, but also external customers and partners.
With one platform, customers are able to enjoy a seamless, end-to-end customer journey across channels, resulting in increased convenience and greater ease of use. To give an example, banking customers can easily complete straightforward procedures with the help of an AI-powered self-service chatbot, hop on a phone call with their financial advisors, and even switch to a video meeting to e-sign documents securely — all within one interaction.
For employees, a platform approach cuts down on the toggle tax and helps employees better focus on work that matters. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study found that employees spend almost four hours a week reorienting themselves after toggling between applications. The same platform can then be used to connect with customers and partners. The time and energy saved from toggling between applications allows employees to focus on building relationships and collaborate and innovate with their teams. These productivity gains also can go a long way in enhancing CX outcomes.
Customer retention in 2023 has become pivotal as spending budgets are cut globally. How is Zoom helping customers and how a digital led or omnichannel customer strategy can address challenges they face? How can omnichannel and AI help them make more informed decisions about marketing and customer service?
Zoom has always been a customer-first company, and amid a challenging business landscape, our first priority is to support our customers to reimagine their CX strategies in sectors across the likes of healthcare, education, and financial services. Each of our customers have nuanced digital transformation needs, and we seek to offer tailored yet scalable solutions that could help them meet these diverse needs.
Because Zoom solutions are designed to be fit-for-purpose, customers are able to build their own CX solution on top of the Zoom platform while keeping costs low. For example, many of our customers choose to incorporate contact centre functionality via Zoom Contact Center to offer their end customers an omnichannel customer journey.
The tangible benefits speak for themselves: according to a recent report from Metrigy, organisations that have integrated unified communications with such omnichannel contact centres experienced a remarkable 36% improvement in customer satisfaction ratings and a notable 29% reduction in operational costs.
Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) is also a critical driver in helping businesses deliver an omnichannel customer strategy, particularly in everyday customer-facing functions. For instance, AI chatbot technology makes it possible for customer support teams to offer a 24/7 self-service channel. More advanced chatbots, like Zoom Virtual Agent — our intelligent conversational chatbot powered by natural language processing — even have the ability to interpret questions from customers, no matter how they are phrased, with greater accuracy. This can allow organisations to meet higher volumes of support requests at a lower human cost. Having such technology in place also alleviates the risk of slower response times or inaccurate resolutions, especially during spike periods, which could seriously impact CX and customer retention.
On the employee front, the use of AI can also help marketing and other customer-facing orgs train their teams for better customer engagement. Our Zoom IQ for Sales solution, for example, provides managers with data-driven feedback on their team members’ pace and delivery during sales calls, as well as measurements on customer engagement. Such insights are helpful in identifying areas of improvement and providing a personalised touch to each employee’s development journey.
Can you share examples of organisations in APAC who are using Zoom’s AI and omnichannel solutions and what are some of the successful results or outcomes?
One organisation leveraging Zoom’s AI and omnichannel solutions is Caring For You, an award-winning nursing agency in Australia. As they expanded operations and established interstate offices in Australia thanks to rapid growth during the pandemic, Caring For You found it difficult to educate customers about contacting their respective local support teams instead of the central office. Manually updating contact details for existing customers, such as the new local number for each state’s office, would have been a time-consuming task as it involved contacting each customer individually and requesting that they update their address books.
To address this challenge and ensure a smooth transition for both new and existing customers, Caring For You sought an omnichannel solution that could support their customer growth while maintaining a personalised experience. They found the answer in Zoom Contact Center (ZCC), which allowed them to intelligently reroute customer calls to the appropriate office in their respective states. This also allowed Caring For You to deliver tailored support by connecting customers with operators who possessed local knowledge, whether they were new customers being onboarded or existing ones seeking assistance during the transition period.
My Plan Manager (MPM), Australia’s leading services provider for the National Disability Insurance Programme, also leveraged ZCC to help deliver better customer and employee experience for their clients and disability service providers.
