One thing that I’ve learned from the COVID-19 crisis is that companies across industry sectors that want to emerge stronger afterward must think about business continuity from the lens of empathy. They need to conduct business that’s human-centered — from the delivery of customer service experiences to the care for employees and customers. Our vision for Experience as a ServiceSM is rooted in empathy and it’s redefining how we look at customer service experiences and consumer loyalty.

Gather Data to Understand Your Customer

We’ve seen contact center agents, just like essential workers, sent to the frontlines. During COVID-19, the number of interactions between customers and customer service agents has more than doubled. That’s billions of interactions between your customers and employees. That’s also billions of pieces of data about each customer — habits, behaviors and, most importantly during a crisis, needs.

Large enterprise organizations understand that this data is a goldmine. But it’s wasted when architecture limitations create data silos and teams across an organization can’t access or use that data. Our recent partnership with Adobe demonstrates how integrating data across company platforms in real time, across every touchpoint within that company, will provide a single, holistic customer view. Bringing real-time context to data across an organization is foundational to creating personalized, empathetic experiences for customers.

The challenge beyond accessibility is security: How do I keep precious customer information protected? We’re building cloud solutions that securely unify data systems, whether it’s from your on-premises data center or a public or private cloud. Our multicloud solution lets organizations bridge those data gaps so teams across your company can spend their time actually helping customers.

Invest in AI for Intelligent Engagement

The pandemic has brought uncertainty, leaving millions of people anxious or worried and seeking reassurance and support. Many have flooded call lines as they look to institutions, like government agencies, as sources of pandemic information and for government financial aid. Call volumes increased two- and three-fold for many of these agencies.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools are at a level of maturity in which they can help organizations manage that increased call volume. For example, the Thai-state owned telecom service TOT Public Company Limited uses virtual agent across more than 1,000 voice contact centers so it can not only reduce the minutes per call, which helped increase first-call resolution, but offloaded smaller tasks from human agents, enabling them to deliver the right experiences for worried citizens. By leveraging data with AI, agents have the right context to connect with — and bring better peace of mind to — worried customers.

Be Human-Centered in Conducting Business

In times of crisis, people reevaluate what’s most important to them. For me, it’s ensuring the health, security and safety of my family. It’s also about making sure that the more than 5,500 Genesys employees are safe, too.

Throughout this time, we’ve focused on putting people first. Social distancing and stay-at-home orders have limited the type of interactions we can have during times of stress — from a friendly smile or a warm handshake. It’s more important now that businesses provide the right human interactions and engagement to not just maintain but strengthen the connection with their customers.

I’ve had the opportunity to hear from many of our customers who are doing life-changing work amidst the pandemic. While they’re diverse in the industries they represent, the common thread among them has been their ability to be human-focused. I’ve heard exceptional stories of how these companies have leveraged technology to enable their employees to deliver services and provide experiences rooted in empathy.

More than ever, we’ll remember these experiences and these types of connections. It makes it easier for us to want to continue to do business with brands that not only know us but make us feel uniquely understood and safe. That’s what Experience as a Service is about.