Once upon a time, there was a company whose bad customer service was legendary. The customer expectation was this: When customers contacted the company, they’d get the run around, bad attitude and a lot of time wasted without resolving any issues. But this company was the only game in town, so all a frustrated customer could do was join online conversations about the awful experience.

But like silk purses and sow’s ears, happy endings don’t come from unhappy customers. And this company couldn’t survive today as it did back then. Customers have more control and choice than ever before — they’ve come to expect a good customer experience from every company they do business with.

Personalization and the Customer Expectations

Markets have become so competitive that when customers are unhappy with the experience they receive, they switch to another vendor. In fact, various research studies have found that anywhere from one-third to more than half of the customers they talked to will leave a company after just one bad experience.

A key factor in business success these days is your ability to meet customer expectations. And, yes, sometimes this can seem as hard as spinning straw into gold.

Some of your customers want to be able to get help from you through their Twitter account, using their mobile phone at 3 AM your time. Other customers don’t want to talk to anyone; they just want to get a quick answer from the web or self-service and then they’ll go on their way. And others still prefer to call in and talk to your live agents, especially if something has upset them.

Everyone wants to be recognized with a personalized experience. No one wants to repeat information. And each customer wants to be able to pick up their conversation with you right where it left off — even if it was on a different channel than they’re using now. Every customer wants to be treated in the moment they interact with you as if they were your only customer.

Here’s the moral of this part of the story: No matter how long the list of customer expectations becomes, it all adds up to their desire for every interaction with your company to be easy for them.

And if we get right down to it, the easiest way for you to keep experiences easy for your customers is with artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud. The one truth of customer expectations is that they’re always changing. Your customers might already be moving on to the next social media platform they want you to support.

Granting Customers’ Wishes
Your customers have been leaving a trail of data breadcrumbs with you for years. AI lets you unlock all that data, analyze it in dimensions that haven’t been possible before, and use it to understand your customers and provide the experience they want.  For some customers, this means AI-powered self-service through voicebots and chatbots that can anticipate what they want and — like virtual fairy godmothers — send them quickly and happily on their way with an answer.

For other customers, it might mean proactively connecting with them on the website, at the right moment, to stop them from abandoning. Or, it could mean transferring them from self-service to the best customer agent. AI ensures that the agent has all the customer information and, based on the self-service conversation, can feed the agent knowledge and tips for a successful resolution.

AI also lets you unlock the information you have about your employees. It can factor in details that go beyond traditional metrics to determine which agent is best to help a particular customer.

When you bring AI, all your channels and your entire contact center together in the cloud, you get the power to give your customers easy interactions — even when what they think is easy continues to change. With everything together in one place, you can see your customer’s entire journey and quickly identify and resolve any place where it doesn’t flow smoothly.

And, there’s no simpler, more cost-effective way to add new technology and channels to keep your customer experience up with customer expectations.

But, let’s say you already have an on-premises contact center solution that’s working well for you. Yet, you’d like an easier way to stay up-to-date or even ahead of your customers. Here’s the silver lining: There’s no need to abandon your current platform and start from scratch — unless you want to. Whether you’re ready to move fully to the cloud now or want to take it a step at a time, Genesys has your migration plan. We help you plan your move and make it with confidence.

And, what happens to your customer experience after you move to the cloud is pretty close to a fairy tale ending.

To learn more about how customer experience is changing with the experience economy, check out our webinar “Get personalization right for your customers,” with Genesys CEO Tony Bates and customer experience industry pioneer, Jeanne Bliss. And keep up with all CX Day activities online.