Looking back, 2020 was filled with compromises, adjustments and alternative plans for everything — from hiring new team members to celebrating birthdays. But these new challenges gave us the opportunity to truly rethink customer engagement and how we can meet customers where they are in their journeys.

This past year has given my team a new appreciation for each other and new insights into the challenges our customers face. Like many companies, our business has changed. Our customer base has changed. And our plans have changed. But throughout these changes, we’ve found the following four major opportunities to focus on customer engagement.

1. Update the Tooling

Solving problems for our customers is more important than ever. We learned that we could modify our existing tools and use them to anticipate our customers’ needs. And we’ve identified emerging trends more efficiently to improve their use of our platform. This also allowed us to provide some tailored training sessions for a few customers — and that leads to the next opportunity.

2. Change the Model

When the universe ignores the plans you’ve made for your team or your business, you have a rare opportunity to change the model at a rapid pace. We had an increasing number of new customers who started using our platform. And they needed to use it effectively — fast. For us, this meant being ready to fill many roles: trainer, product support, implementation guide, business strategist. We also needed to provide new opportunities for process improvements, streamlining internal communications and removing friction for more of our customer interactions.

3. Streamline Processes

There’s nothing like an extended emergency to show you where you can improve your processes. Take a good look at the areas where your onboarding process stalls or you’re not granted access quickly. Identify the areas on your team where members are passing work between groups and ask yourself if you can automate these areas. Can the first group perform the action? How can your team take accountability for customer pain points and resolve them? Then use existing data or do a quick time-in-motion study to learn what delays progress. With this, you can improve your customer experience and protect the bottom line.

4. Trust the Team

Connection to your team is critical during times of change. The ideas that your team offers to improve their own experiences also provides insights for your customers. Using these insights to anticipate what a customer will need could mean the difference between meeting an expectation and becoming part of your customer’s story.

Every interaction is a chance to leave your customers feeling comfortable and confident about the next steps, knowing that you’re ready for whatever surprises might come their way. Trust your team to create those interactions on your behalf and give them the tools and training they need to do this successfully.

Guiding the Customer Journey

As companies evolve and experiment with ways to create these memorable interactions with their customers, they’ll often want to do this using as much automation and technology as possible.

The Genesys Cloud™ platform empowers those choices and guides you customers on that journey, starting with our commitment to the experiences they have every day. Customer experience is the truest differentiator and the most reliable path to build customer relationships that last for life. For more information, check out the Contact Babel research The Customer Experience Decision-Makers’ Guide.