Here’s the good news: Your customers still want personalization. Here’s the not-so-good news: They want it to be truly personal and they want it now.

Everyone who attended yesterday’s Virtual Xperience event heard from Tony Bates that, more than ever, “Your customers want to feel a personal connection with your company.” Your customers need that sense of safety, that sense of empathy. They want to know that you’re in it together — with them.

For a while, the experts have advised that you should simplify things for your customers with “effortless,” “seamless” or even “frictionless” customer experiences. With everything going on in the world today, your customers don’t have the time or the patience to deal with a difficult interaction with you. It’s important that every interaction they have with you is easy.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. You want information; you want that information quickly and easily. And you want the people you interact with to know how you prefer to consume that information, get an answer or solve an issue. If you want to use email, text or even social media, they should know that. And they should know if you’d rather talk to a bot or a human.

Give Your Customers Exactly What They Want with Experience as a Service

That’s where the Genesys vision of Experience as a Service® comes in. Your ability to truly understand your customer – and make them feel remembered, heard and understood — is the foundation of an empathetic customer experience.

At first blush, the word empathy might conjure up the image of the customer service rep who’s kind and takes the time to sympathize with your problem as they solve it. But what if I’m standing beside my broken-down car on the side of the freeway? I want you to recognize me quickly, take down necessary details, send a tow truck as quickly as possible and get me off that road. I don’t want sympathy; I want results. True empathy is when you understand what your customer wants — and what they need — and then you give them exactly that experience.

Interactions rooted in empathy make it easier to build trust and earn your customers’ loyalty for stronger relationships and better results. In fact, the Harvard Business Review noted, “Loyalty leaders grow revenues 2.5 times as fast as industry peers.”

And as Tony said yesterday, “When you drive personalized experiences that are more empathetic, it creates trust. And when you create trust, you build loyalty. And that drives lifetime value.”

Start With Your Customers

Experience as a Service puts your customer at the center. Genesys gives you the technology and tools to gain an understanding of each customer’s needs, intent and preferences so you can provide every customer with the highly personalized experience they want.

After one of these experiences, your customer feels better than when they started it. Your ability to create this comes down to three key components.

  1. You need information about your customers and employees. Your contact center is a gold mine for this data. By bringing together historical, third-party and behavioral data, Genesys technology puts your data to good use.
  2. Artificial intelligence (AI) turns that data into insights and actions. AI makes sense of massive amounts of conversation data to predict and recommend the next-right option. It automates decisions about who, when and how to engage.
  3. Engagement tools set you up to match and deliver on those customer needs and wants. Create empathetic experiences across marketing, sales and service. The best engagement tools help your team know the road that customers traveled and anticipate what they need most.

Here’s some good news: If you’re like most businesses, personalization was already on your radar. After all, Forrester has found that 89% of digital businesses are investing in personalization. Chances are, you’ve already begun your journey to personalization. You might even offer a level of personalization that seemed sufficient for the old normal.

Now the bad news: You’re out of time. Your customers want empathetic, highly personalized experiences now. And, some experiences that might have seemed good enough as recently as February no longer make the cut.

Here’s the best news: Genesys will work with you to get your customer experience up to the high standards of the new normal — now.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at how an AI-powered contact center can bring Experience as a Service to life for you.