Top CX Challenges & How To Overcome Them
With 80% of customers pointing to CX as a key differentiator, nailing the customer experience is key to retaining existing customers and winning new ones. Implementing a successful CX strategy can often pose a number of challenges for brands which prevents them from becoming leaders in their industry. In this blog, we will examine four of the main challenges facing companies today and how you can overcome them.
Challenge #1 – Data Silos
Data silos are rigidly compartmentalised areas of data that do not join up with any other part of your information systems. The biggest challenge that data silos pose is that they create barriers to information sharing and collaboration across departments. Almost a third of companies are unsure how to remove these silos, resulting in incomplete customer profiles and disconnected customer experiences.
Solution: Integrating all your systems – such as your contact centre platform, CRM system and ticketing system – allows for collaboration and knowledge sharing between departments. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and has access to the information that they need in order to serve customers in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Providing an omnichannel customer experience allows customers to move seamlessly from one channel to the next without having to repeat themselves to multiple agents.
Challenge #2 – Identifying customer pain points
Knowing when your customers are unhappy is important but being able to identify exactly why they are unhappy is key to providing a superior customer experience.
Solution: Sentiment analysis enables brands to identify customer pain points and, thus, prevent them from making the same mistakes going forward. Identifying when an agent’s actions negatively affect the customer experience and feeding this knowledge back to the agent, will improve the agent’s future interactions with customers.
Challenge #3 – Delivering a personalised experience
One of the biggest pain points for 75% of customers is having to repeat themselves to multiple agents. Being able to tailor how you communicate with your customers based on previous interactions, personal information and so on is challenging but incredibly rewarding. 80% of customers have stated that they are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences.
Solution: Integrating all systems such as your contact centre platform, CRM systems and any ticketing systems, creates a single view of your customers and their journeys. Having all of this information in one place provides agents with context such as previous interactions, allowing them to tailor future interactions with customers.
Another solution to this challenge is to simply ask your customers for feedback or information – 86% of customers stated that they are willing to share their data to personalise their experience. Furthermore, 86% of people who acknowledge the importance of personalisation are willing to provide feedback on their experience at least once a year.
Challenge #4 – Not getting enough feedback or insight from customers
Vast amounts of data are required in order to improve the customer experience. This becomes a challenge for brands when they are surveying their customers, but receiving a poor response rate, making them unable to gather sufficient, meaningful insights.
Solution: Being able to offer up a survey via the channel your customer has contacted you on – email, IVR, SMS, Webchat, and Social – immediately following an interaction will yield the highest response rate. The survey should be linked closely to the interaction so it is at the top of their minds.
Performing text analytics and sentiment analysis on the verbatim comments left by customers will also allow brands to get the most out of their survey responses and identify both their greatest strengths and biggest weaknesses.
Despite presenting numerous challenges, investing in CX is key to standing out from the competition and taking your business to the next level. Being able to acknowledge and overcome these challenges will prove to be incredibly valuable and can be the difference between keeping customers and losing them!