Much has been said about the importance of customer experience. We, here at Altaqnya, have written about its meaning and its position as one of the pillars of success as a modern business, but you may be wondering why having set standards specific to Customer Experience is important or what those standards should even be.

Having set standards is an essential part of our lives. They define a wireframe within which to build our customer experience systems. These standards can be used to ease the confusion associated with change. They speed up adoption and collaboration making the entire process smoother.

Are standards constricting?

The limitations of freedom

Before we get into the details of the potential standards and rules that you can set for your staff, it’s important to say a thing or two about the importance of freedom. Standards are essential but they cannot supplant your employees’ free will and you shouldn’t want them to. Standards should act like guidelines that help your staff rather than hinder them. They should help direct their energy rather than stifle their creativity.

But on the other hand, excessive freedom can also be an issue. By abandoning your staff to make their own decisions based on the sometimes vague goal of “Customer Experience”, you are asking for trouble. 

For example, your staff shouldn’t be told what to say exactly. Instead, they should be directed to push the customer in a certain direction in their own way, to get points across in their own words, this allows them to balance creativity and precision within the confines of the standards.

Discovering your standards

How to go about building your own system

Standards differ from industry to industry and so, no predefined checklist can cover your specific case. Because of that, it’s in your best interest to study your organization and draw up your own list of standards based on its requirements. Here are some steps you can take immediately:

• What are your organization’s goals? Your goals should be understood well by you and your employees. The Hilton, for example, wants to provide the best hospitality experience that money can buy.

• What are your clients’ goals? A gas station’s clients aren’t as interested in the aesthetics of the station as they are in the speed at which the service that can be provided.

• How do you expect the service to be provided? At this stage it’s best to focus on generalized goals rather than specific employee actions towards these goals. If the employees understand the first two points, they should autonomously arrive at the best solution most of the time.

Something to get you started

These goals are good to keep in mind regardless of industry

While there may not be such a thing as a “catch all” set of standards, there are a few goals that the Altaqnya team recommends you to focus energy towards achieving. These goals will help start you down the path of generating and customizing your own set of standards for the perfect customer experience.

• Be available and responsive: This seemingly simple point is an important double-sided coin. Not only must you be available to the customer as often as possible, but your availability must also be tangible, responding to customer needs and requests as quickly as possible.

• Be courteous and obliging: This not only means treating the customer with deference and respect, but also designing the whole experience so that it leaves the customer feeling amazing. It extends from person-to-person interactions all the way to the environments that the customer is expected to be.

• Be consistent and accurate: there is nothing customers appreciate more than predictability when interacting with a business. They want to be able to fit their interaction with you into their schedules neatly.  

The last point seems to conflict with our push to provide staff with autonomy, but it’s all about striking a balance between giving the staff the freedom to handle issues in unique ways, while also giving the customer the fantastic experience that they expect, when they expect it.

We, here at Altaqnia, want you to reach the pinnacle of customer experience greatness. Contact us today to find out how our systems and standards can help you achieve these goals. Together, we can discover the perfect set of standards for you and implement them in a way that’s sure to succeed!

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.

By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human

– Gartner

The modern consumer lives in an algorithm dominated world where their entertainment is served to them by algorithms on Youtube and Netflix, their music by algorithms on Spotify and Anghami, their products by algorithms on Amazon and even the ads they see are served by specialized algorithms developed by the advertising service provider. 

It shouldn’t be surprising that machine learning and algorithms are finding their way into the world of customer experience as well!

The basis behind the assumption that AI will find a good home in the world of CX is the reality that CX is extremely data-heavy. Data is gathered about users, representatives, projects, and issues. Data is the driving force behind AI and using it. Algorithms are trained to interact with new inputs – including human behaviour and emotions – in accurate and meaningful ways.

AI is the future of CX

How to apply AI to transform your business

When it comes to implementing AI in your business to improve your customers’ experience. There are certain goals that we, here at Altaqnia, recommend you have. Your business’s AI solution should: 

1. Utilize chatbots and virtual assistants

Chatbots are AI-powered conversational programs. Their goal is to simulate a human and reply to customers in realistic and accurate ways. They are now extremely common in the field of customer service and have helped solve one of the greatest issues in the path of great CX: delays when replying to customer queries. Now the Chatbot is there 24/7 to instantly analyze the message and reply appropriately based on its training.

This approach is not quite perfect yet and is not capable of handling every situation thrown at it. However, it pairs extremely well with a dedicated team of customer service representatives. The bot screens incoming messages and takes care of many of the simpler issues, lowering the amount of pressure on the human, and increasing the reply time from variable based on the time and availability of representatives, to instant.

2. Use analytics to clear the haze

All organizations collect data, some of it from customers, some of it from internal operations, but this data can become too large to handle very quickly. That’s where AI can be extremely useful. It can be used to process and analyze this data to provide high impact insights into the inner workings of your organization, as well as give you a game=changing look into the minds of your customers.

While data analysis can be performed without AI, it is a slow and tedious process. The application of specialized algorithms can increase the speed and precision of the operation by orders of magnitude!

This data can be used in many different ways. You can use it to track underperforming services and modify them to be better, you can see the areas where customers are having the most issues and clear them up, and you can even preemptively handle potential issues that the data points to as being likely to happen such as scalability problems.

3.Use AI to predict your customer’s actions

AI can generate detailed insights into how your customers interact with your organization. This data can then be used to provide specialized services to your customers using  “predictive personalization”. Here, the AI analyses the actions and history of each user and recommends specific services that it thinks are suitable for them.

This predictive model can also be used to customize your services in new and exciting ways that fit each customer’s use case and helps them feel like the services are tailor-made just for them.

What now?

You have your goals, now comes the implementation

Now that you have your goals, you need to start work on transforming your business into an AI powered machine. The Altaqnia team recommend that you follow these steps to get the best possible outcome:

1. Analyze your current CX systems: The goal here is to find locations where a transition to AI can have the biggest impact.
2. Research AI solutions that fit your requirements: The market has many parties claiming to have the perfect solution for you. Use the results of step 1 to see if they are a match or not.
3. Purchase an AI solution or build your own: Now that you know what you need and who can provide it, either purchase a solution off the market or build your own using in-house expertise.
4. Keep track of the new system’s metrics: Now that you have a system implemented and operational, you need to keep track of its performance to make sure it’s performing according to the specifications you set out to have.

Now it’s time for action

Now you have all the tools you need to make change happen!

AI is clearly here to stay. In many ways its position in the industry has been cemented. Businesses that have implemented AI/CX solutions are delivering high-impact customer experience because of it. Now it’s your turn to get on board! 

However, while the value added by these systems is undeniable, they’re far from easy to drop into an existing organization’s CX apparatus. It takes a lot of research, analysis and work to find the most impactful way to implement AI in your system and do it. 

We, here at Altaqnia, provide robust AI/CX solutions that can guide you through these steps and help you achieve the ideal results for your organization rapidly and at the lowest possible cost. Contact us today to find out how AI can boost your CX performance and push your business to the next level.

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.