Seventy percent of consumers say a company is only as good as its service. That data point pertains to companies of every size — no matter how few or how many resources they have that can be allocated to customer service. For those with limited time and resources, the goal is to find better ways to maximize the quality of the customer experience (CX) and make it easier for your employees — while keeping costs in check.

In the Xperience 2022 session, “How to offer enterprise-level experiences without enterprise resources,” Taylor Wilkerson, Manager, Solutions Consulting at Genesys and I discussed five ways to use cloud-based CX tools to maximize resources and deliver differentiated experiences.

  1. Provide effective customer self-service

Nearly 90% of consumers expect companies to have an online self-service portal. And that self-service experience should be as seamless and effortless as possible — serving customers the right information at the right time with the right resource.

There are a few ways to be sure customers get the answers they need through self-service:

  • Design chatbot experiences to use artificial intelligence (AI) to understand customer intent and simplify interactions
  • Build out and connect your knowledge base so your chatbot can be more effective in its response
  • Integrate customer data to provide a more personalized, relevant self-service experience
  1. Understand customer intent

When a company understands customer intent, it can proactively and predictively reach optimal outcomes in service interactions. An area to focus on, said Wilkerson, is speech and text analytics.

By using speech and text analytics, you can find patterns in the conversation agents have with customers. Then you can use that information to train your AI to better understand and respond to customers.

Once you have that intent information, use it to drive a specific outcome using if/then scenarios, he added. For example, if a customer abandons a transaction, the AI uses intent data to automatically determine whether to serve related content or trigger another action to drive a conversion as the next action using tools like predictive engagement.

  1. Improve service levels with routing

When you can’t contain an interaction within your web self-service, you can ensure that agent productivity and customer satisfaction don’t conflict. You can do this is through predictive routing, skills-based routing or task-based routing.

Wilkerson advised using machine learning to rank each agent in a specific pool on how well they’re predicted to handle a certain type of inquiry. Then it identifies the agent/customer match that’s most likely to reach an optimal KPI.

To test a new routing method, conduct a benefit assessment. Then do comparison test using standard routing versus the new routing type to see what works best for your organization. The goal is to optimize routing to reach set customer experience KPIs.

  1. Minimize and simplify administration

Strategies and needs will shift, so you’ll want a solution that provides the agility and flexibility to quickly address changes. That’s where cloud-based contact center solutions come in. These solutions can minimize administration time and effort.

Genesys Architect, for example, allows you to easily build and adjust elements like call flows and bots. Carglass, which specializes in vehicle glass repair and replacement, shared that it can create new queues and IVR messages within two to three hours, compared to two to three weeks with its old solution.

Tools to improve customer experience processes should be integrated in your contact center platform. Look for drag-and-drop intuitive interfaces that allow contact center managers to make process and operational updates, so your IT team can focus on higher impact projects.

And look for solutions that let you build logic once and use it repeatedly for various flow types. It’s about scale: Build something once and reapply it, as needed, to address changes like new queues and employees.

  1. Look to WEM tools to balance employee engagement and efficiency

Customer satisfaction hinges on your employees’ tooling, training and overall happiness. In the hybrid and remote work environments, it takes more effort to engage and retain employees. And it’s essential to keep them working at peak levels when you can’t just walk over to their desks.

Implementing an integrated workforce engagement management (WEM) tool will improve the overall employee experience. Employees want to be happy and engaged — that starts with giving them access to the information they need, said Wilkerson.

AI-based WEM tools can both improve and simplify forecasting and scheduling for managers by providing predictive and prescriptive insights. And they give agents visibility into their schedules, allow them to see their performance compared to their peers, track any coaching sessions they need to review, and schedule required training sessions. WEM empowers agents to own their success, he said.

No matter the size of the organization, customer experience leaders who use cloud contact center solutions to make these five changes will start to see improvements in customer satisfaction across self-service, routing and agent utilization. And your employees will be happier and more engaged, too.