Technology companies work hard to create great out-of-the-box solutions that often include the ability for customisation. But the 80/20 rule still applies here; some organisations want to be able to jump in and create and design more functionality. Composable customer experience (CX) technologies give those organisations the additional collaboration, fluidity and innovation they seek.

In the Xperience 2022 session, “The future of CX platforms is composable,” Richard Tucker, Software Engineering Manager at OVO Energy; Jack Nichols, Vice President of Product Management for the Genesys Cloud™ platform; and I discussed how composability helps companies meet customer and employee expectations in the contact centre.

“Organisations, especially those going through digital transformation, are really changing the way they approach things,” said Nichols. Companies want to improve collaboration and co-creation between their business and technology teams, he explained. And they’re improving their ability to deliver relevant, connected experiences across channels. This makes it easier to keep up with changing technologies while continuing to innovate.

“It’s really about: How do businesses become more agile?” added Nichols.

OVO Energy uses this co-creation mindset to become a more composable business. “At OVO, we joke that we’re a technology company that happens to sell energy,” said Richard Tucker.

The energy company is working to embed Agile principles used in technology and product development into its customer service operations. This allows contact centre teams to react quickly as the market and customer expectations change.

OVO was a disruptive challenger that bought one of the larger, more established companies in its industry. It then needed to consolidate onto a single CX platform. As a disruptor, it was clear the company had to do something different in the contact centre. That meant implementing a feature-rich cloud CX platform, noted Tucker.

“It’s quite easy for our in-house product teams to understand the art of the possible from the technology side. So, that allows us to then collaborate closely with our stakeholders in the business,” he added.

OVO tech and business teams look at problems and opportunities, metrics, and goals together. The tech team discusses what they can do with the technology, particularly around use of data in the CX platform. Then business leaders focus on the most appropriate actions to take from what’s possible. That feedback loop and collaboration require rapid iteration — but they offer a big advantage. OVO can A/B test instead of waiting weeks to see if something works.

Evolving to Agility with a Composable Cloud Platform

CX platforms have had to evolve to become more composable to support the agile co-creation process. Some first-generation cloud providers still roll out software every quarter, explained Nichols. Customers don’t have the luxury of waiting for quarterly releases. So, composable cloud platforms must enable real-time innovation.

Composability is about providing those “Lego bricks” of capabilities customers can combine in ways that work best. Then they assemble them in real time for different business use cases, he said.

Genesys customers leverage four building blocks for composability: ecosystem, development, marketplace and product. With all-in-one capabilities that integrate to any ecosystem, they don’t have to build foundational pieces of a CX platform. And they have access to a marketplace of applications.

This allows companies to tailor their customer experience mix – at any moment – to their business. “We’re not the centre of the world; the customer’s the centre of the world and we’re just part of that,” said Nichols.

OVO uses API integrations for intelligent routing in the contact centre. Its engineers built a microservice that enables the Genesys platform to “call” to access customer data. It then uses that data in an IVR decision tree. The system can identify a customer by phone number or email address — or have them enter an account number, if needed. Then it automates the routing based on specific attributes. OVO also uses speech and text analytics, as well as data on activities like transfers, queue lengths and wait times.

Composability and Experience Orchestration

Orchestrating experiences is becoming a strategic currency. Companies are replacing basic customer and employee experiences with relevant ones. And they do all this while providing value to the business. Composable CX technologies enable this shift by supporting real-time co-creation and innovation.

Learn more about composable CX in the Tech Talks in 20 podcast episode “Why composable is the CX future.”