客服系统
Survey: 3 tips to deliver world-class customer service
No matter what industry you’re in, your customers’ expectations have permanently shifted. Customers expect consumer-grade experiences that are frictionless, delightfully designed, and valuable for their needs.“Consumer-grade experiences” are associated with the best consumer companies, such as Apple, Netflix, and Amazon. These companies famously put the customer at the center of everything. The result is seamlessly integrated technology, personalized content, and goods that show up the same day.This is the new standard, even for industries that aren't historically known for customer experience, such as enterprise software, healthcare, and telecom.Of course, customer experience and customer service go hand in hand. You can’t deliver consumer-grade experiences without great customer service. But not all customer service experiences are created equal. How many of us have had a billing issue resolved within minutes by a virtual agent on the same day another company kept us on hold for hours?How do you deliver great customer service in our increasingly omnichannel world? To find out, LIKE.TG and Qualtrics conducted joint research to uncover the nuances of customer service across industries and identify best practices for organizations looking to deliver great service experiences. Here’s what we learned:
1. Connect the entire organizationSolving the most complex customer problems often requires communication and collaboration across multiple teams. However, many companies haven’t connected their customer-facing systems with the middle- and back-office functions that are critical to resolving customer inquiries. This leads to silos the customer feels.The numbers tell us companies have a long way to go in this area. According to the joint research from LIKE.TG and Qualtrics, approximately two-thirds of customers said they’ve needed to switch between two to three service channels (live chat, phone, in-person) to resolve an issue. This happened either because the agent couldn’t resolve the issue at hand or because the agent didn’t have the right information to complete a request.This problem spans virtually all industries—most often for customers interacting with government services (76%), technology and IT businesses (74%), retailers (70%), and telecom companies (67%), with healthcare (66%), travel (66%), and financial services (65%) not far behind. Many customers said they’ve had to repeat the same information multiple times before a request was resolved.To create a truly frictionless, end-to-end customer service experience, you need to empower and connect the entire organization to work together to serve the customer. This involves making work flow seamlessly, automating tasks, and providing transparency to every person involved in solving a customer’s request.2. Deliver speed and efficiencyThe best customer experiences are frictionless. In addition to friendly and knowledgeable service, customers demand speed and convenience. Organizations need to be able to solve problems quickly—ideally at the moment a customer reaches out.The joint research bears this out. Long wait times continue to be the most frustrating customer service issue (56%), followed by an agent taking too long to resolve an issue (28%) and the inability to reach an actual human (23%). What’s more, over half of the survey respondents (51%) said they wouldn’t wait more than 10 minutes on hold before closing an interaction or hanging up.Self-service can play a critical role in delivering fast and efficient service—if companies automate the fulfillment process. When companies give customers the tools to find answers to common questions or easily route requests to the right teams, customers can get help at the exact moment they need it.
3. Provide empathy and personalizationDelightful customer experiences are a powerful way to retain customers and attract new ones, but the inverse is also true. Eighty percent of customers have switched brands because of poor customer experiences.According to the joint research, customers interacting with retailers (62%) and financial services (59%) are most likely to switch brands due to poor customer experiences. Healthcare (41%) and telecommunications (43%) have the lowest percentage of customers who switched due to a negative interaction.Great customer experiences require empathy. Your customers often reach out during difficult or stressful times and want you to care about their problem as much as they do. When customer service makes a real, human connection, it can make a lasting impression and a customer for life.Our joint research shows treating customers empathetically remains an opportunity area for most. People reaching out to government institutions are the least likely to say they were treated with empathy during their interaction (57%), followed by retail (60%). However, seven out of 10 customers who interacted with a financial services company said they were treated with empathy.Personalization is one powerful way to connect with customers. According to the new research, companies fared slightly better in personalization, but there’s still ample room for improvement. Telecommunications (66%) and government (67%) scored the lowest in providing personalized service, while financial services (77%) and technology and IT (76%) performed the best.Meeting customers where they areDelivering great experiences comes down to knowing your customers and showing up for them in the moments that matter. That takes insights and action. I’m grateful for our partnership with Qualtrics, whose unparalleled technology gives the Now Platform® the insights we need to take the right action at the right time for our joint customers.LIKE.TG and Qualtrics most recently launched Qualtrics Embedded Insights. Available today, it brings Qualtrics XM insights into LIKE.TG workspaces to help customer service teams make better, more holistic decisions on how to improve what matters to customers.Find out more about the LIKE.TG-Qualtrics partnership.MethodologyThe study of consumer customer service preferences across industries was fielded by Qualtrics, in partnership with LIKE.TG, between May 16-20, 2022. Respondents were selected from a randomized panel and considered eligible if they live in the United States, are at least 18 years of age, and had a customer service experience with a financial services, retail, government, telecommunications, hospitality, technology IT, or healthcare business in the last six months. The total number of respondents was 3,089. Respondents who did not pass quality standards were removed.
Driving long-term customer loyalty
Updated March 9, 2023Being your customer shouldn’t take work. Customers want a positive, consistent, and seamless experience at every touch point on their journey with you. They want to engage with a company that understands their needs, resolves problems swiftly, and helps manage issues proactively—regardless of the communication channel or time zone.Consistently delivering these fundamentals can create a cumulative connection to your brand, products, and services that builds trust. Trust over a long period leads to customer loyalty.Putting customer loyalty front and center of your customer experience strategy can be hugely cost-effective. The cost of selling to an existing customer can be significantly lower than that of acquiring a new one. In addition, loyal customers are more likely to act as de factor ambassadors of your brand.Toward a seamless customer experienceIn many organizations, functional silos and the inability to share insights and data across departments prevent continuity and consistency, creating a disjointed, frustrating experience.Many companies are realizing a single, integrated system of action—powered by one platform, one architecture, and one data model—can revitalize the customer experience. This approach connects processes and systems across the front, middle, and back offices.With a single version of the truth based on consolidated, real-time information, companies can automate and orchestrate work like never before. This can provide operational efficiencies while reducing time to resolution and significantly decreasing costs.The single system of action is the engine that drives all areas of the business to think and act as one in the best interest of customers. It unites teams, processes, and systems across products, services, and subscriptions for each customer. The result is a seamless, unified, and consistent experience that augments customer loyalty.3 ways to nurture customer loyaltyFor a growing number of organizations, LIKE.TG is the integrated platform of choice for a new era of customer engagement. It enables disparate, isolated teams to collaborate more effectively on the same goals and share critical data about what customers need and want. LIKE.TG can help organizations cultivate customer loyalty in three key ways:
Make customers’ experiences seamless by removing system disconnects and enabling workers to manage requests and resolve issues quickly, communicate effectively, and predict and preempt problems.
Harness the power of the entire organization by eliminating barriers to cross-functional collaboration and giving the entire team the tools and information to do their jobs with efficiency and ease.
Reduce the cost to serve your customers by automating highly manual and repetitive processes for employees and empowering customers with self-service options that resolve issues fast and reduce the backlog of requests.
Find out how companies are making customer journeys richer, more compelling, and more consistent in our Customer Experience Guide.
Your guide to upgrading field service management
Field service management is a vital part of business operations. It equips employees with the resources needed to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Streamlining communication, making decisions, and predicting issues before they arise are just a few of the challenges facing field service management.At LIKE.TG, we understand how crucial it is for businesses to keep work flowing across various business assets and stakeholders. Here are three ways to help do that:Define the root causeWhen trying to run multiple tasks simultaneously, it can be difficult to identify the reasons for operational hiccups. The most valuable resources to understand and solve these issues are the people working on the front lines: customer service agents and field service technicians.Closing the loop with your field and customer service teams is vital. Watch our Improving customer experience and product quality through root cause analysis webinar to discover the compounding benefits of getting to the root of a problem to improve your product and service quality.Stay ahead of the curveToday’s pace of work and technological advancement has led to incredible innovation and powerful tools that increase ease and efficiency in getting work done. With many tools to choose from, how do you know what’s right for your organization?Gain insights from 100 decision-makers in our Field service technology strategies webinar. You’ll learn how other organizations are using emerging technologies and what business leaders think about them.Plan for the futureAs one generation retires and another enters the workforce, companies are investing in training and skilling young field service technicians and engineers. But how do you ensure nothing gets lost in translation?Find out how Xerox is empowering the next generation of field workers. Three Xerox leaders discuss the skills gap, knowledge transfer, augmented reality, live remote assistance, and more.
Helping airlines create satisfying customer journeys
Airlines have suffered from a major issue for as long as I can remember in my more than 20 years of supporting their IT transformation initiatives: disparate technology.As a frequent flyer, I’ve experienced the disruption this can cause. When IT is disconnected from other departments, it can make routing passenger issues to the right teams a logistical nightmare and increase wait times by many hours. Only with a modern digital service backbone can airlines create satisfying customer journeys and push ahead of the competition.The need for a customer-centric approachWith a consolidated passenger platform, airlines can implement intelligent self-service capabilities, such as chatbots and automatic notifications, to enhance the existing mobile app experience. This lets passengers quickly find the information they need and reduces the workload on call center staff.More customer-facing channels can be introduced, and onboarding journeys can be streamlined for better, faster services.Automatic flight notifications can direct passengers to virtual agents or relevant information pages, vastly reducing wait times and freeing employees to focus on other tasks. Passengers can use a mobile app to reserve seats, preorder meals, and find flight documents.After a flight, passengers can automatically receive postflight travel options and the fastest way to baggage claim.An airline can share personalized rewards and benefits via a loyalty program integrated with its mobile app. It can also drive future interest by sending passengers travel recommendations based on their travel history.
An updated scenarioLet's take a look at the difference digital transformation can make for both passengers and employees.Teresa, an airline passenger, wants to take a suitcase and her bike to her destination. Because of the airline’s digital transformation, she can use its mobile app to access a luggage service and connect to the call center. She provides information about her luggage, arrival date, hotel address, and luggage pickup date.Jody, a recently hired customer agent at Lufthansa, has completed her basic training via the onboarding app. After receiving Teresa’s request, Jody confidently navigates her agent workspace to view Teresa’s customer record and the available options. Guided Decisions help front-line and middle-office agents resolve complex issues fast.Overseeing this via the Now Platform, Customer Agent Manager Jesse can see the interaction between Teresa and Jody and use the data to inform managerial decisions, such as employee service reviews. Jesse can even add Teresa’s query to the airline’s frequently asked questions page and update the chatbot so it can give more helpful responses in the future.Finally, Teresa receives a notification via WhatsApp that her request has been processed. Once she deboards her flight, the app notifies her that her luggage will arrive within the hour. Happy with her experience, she uses the app to leave positive feedback.Digital transformation brings:
Smooth experiences on both sides and across all touch points
Improved agent productivity to meet customer demands
Accelerated time to innovate
An integrated platform that speeds onboarding and automates operations
Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps organizations modernize their IT landscape for effortless customer experiences.
Boosting supply chain resilience and supplier relations
Supply chain business leaders around the world have been taking a close look at their resilience, agility, and supplier relationships. They’re saddled with a multitude of legacy systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supply chain applications, and point solutions.This combination results in a fragmented view of the supply chain and supplier relationships and ultimately leads to delays and elevated operating expenses that are passed on to customers. Smart organizations realize supply chain resilience and agility are related to how well their systems are connected and orchestrate work across the business.Assessing the supply chain landscapeTo control costs, organizations are finding temporary solutions, such as hiring extra staff and adding manual processes to their source-to-pay cycle—spreadsheets, emails, instant messaging, paper, and phone calls. These workarounds don’t offer the robustness, consistency, and scalability needed for a smooth-running supply chain.Despite heavy investments in ERP and related business-critical applications, companies aren’t meeting the demands of modern, omnichannel, got-to-have-it-now digital customers.Centralizing and streamlining processesTo address that, organizations have started to modernize their procurement operations so they can onboard, manage, and collaborate with suppliers using procurement workflows and Amazon-like digital experiences.By centralizing supply chain processes on a single platform of action and engagement that operates on top of all their business-critical systems of record, organizations can create workflows that connect various parts of the business.This also helps orchestrate work electronically with real-time oversight across departments and systems. Organizations can repurpose teams to higher-value work by:
Capturing and automating repeatable, unstructured work
Shortening supplier onboarding and qualification cycle times with guided collaboration and configurable step-by-step playbooks
Improving compliance and contract utilization with centralized catalogs and end-to-end order automation
Simplifying supplier interactionsSelf-service and omnichannel access through supplier-focused portals can simplify supplier interactions. Take supplier onboarding, for example. Getting suppliers through the legal, regulatory, financial, and procedural processes required to onboard them into the source-to-pay process is incredibly complex. It involves cross-functional teams in both the onboarding company and supplier companies.Using automation, an integrated case management system and prebuilt playbooks accelerate these complex tasks, enabling teams to work together, in sequence, in an automated and flexible workflow.The legal team can interact on the nondisclosure agreement and contractual needs. Finance can review and provide oversight. The governance, risk, and compliance team can facilitate risk and compliance reviews. Procurement can process contracts. Representatives from any other group can work together to rapidly and effectively onboard and manage suppliers.Imagine an intuitive supplier collaboration portal that automatically walks suppliers through self-registering, logging in, and collaborating with their buyers. This means suppliers no longer must chase payments.With processes formalized and automated, organizations can, for the first time, view the state, progression, and effectiveness of their supplier engagement process.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations simplify supplier management and boost supply chain resilience.
5 ways to propel customer digital transformation
One of the great promises of digital transformation is its ability to vastly enhance the customer experience. By empowering your workers with the tools and information to deliver extraordinary customer service, you create increased value for your customers and your business.However, driving customer digital transformation requires a shift in mindset and approach. In working with LIKE.TG customers throughout the Asia-Pacific region, I’ve been privileged to be part of successful transformations. I’ve also seen what doesn’t work. Here are five insights I’ve gained:1. Create a partnership between the business and ITA customer service transformation initiative isn’t an IT project. Although technology powers transformation, the emphasis is squarely on customer outcomes. That means the business and IT must work together.When IT is the sole sponsor, transformation typically focuses on IT drivers such as cost reduction and, ultimately, devolves into a technology upgrade project rather than something that enhances the customer experience.On the other hand, business owners are keenly focused on customer outcomes, but they typically don’t understand technology. The absence of an active partnership between the business and IT can lead to impractical strategies from a technical perspective.2. Rely on your front linesAs humans, we’re adept at creating hypotheses based on limited facts. That doesn’t mean these hypotheses are correct. I’ve seen organizations design transformation strategies based on a perceived customer problem and then go off track because they don’t really understand the problem.To avoid this, talk to your front-line staff. They can tell you in a heartbeat what frustrates customers. Then validate that feedback by shadowing workers as they engage with customers. Having an impartial observer see what’s happening can help you avoid biased perceptions and get a fact-based view.
3. Avoid starting with the existing processWe’re used to process automation and optimization projects that start with existing processes. It’s in our DNA—and it’s a perfectly valid approach to streamlining processes. It helps us identify bottlenecks, failure points, and steps that machines can easily perform.However, that isn’t the goal here. Customer-centric transformation isn’t about rebuilding existing processes. The starting point is the customer experience you want to deliver. You’re unlikely to achieve the customer outcomes you want if you’re constrained by what you have today.4. Adopt agile methodologiesCustomer digital transformation needs to be an iterative process. There’s absolutely no point in gathering requirements and showing up six months or a year later with a solution that may or may not generate positive outcomes for customers.Instead, break down your transformation program into manageable chunks. Implement them step by step and assess the value each delivers as you introduce it. This will allow you to make course corrections, uncover new opportunities to enhance the customer experience, and realize fast time to value.5. Measure customer and business valueIt’s important to focus on traditional operational key performance indicators (KPIs) related to functionality, security, and stability. But you also need to measure the customer experience and benefits you’re providing to your business. If you don’t, you miss the point.Keep in mind you need to look at this value through different lenses. Consider a customer following up on a package that hasn’t arrived. From the perspective of the logistics company, the most important thing may be the productivity of its field service agents—how many calls they can get through.The customer, however, doesn’t want to have to make a call. They’d prefer to simply click an option that says, “Where’s my package?” and get a response with tracking details and estimated time of arrival. That’s how transformation happens, by thinking differently and focusing on the outcome.Deliver superior outcomes, achieve what you want faster, and stay on course for continued customer success by following this five-step approach to customer-centric digital transformation.
Total experience: Today’s top business multiplier
The pressures that converged upon businesses during the pandemic forced the rapid evolution of both the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). In that make-it-or-go-under environment, many of those that survived came out ahead in terms of CX and EX.Now we face the next hurdle: strong macroeconomic headwinds. Inflation and the threat of a recession are forcing businesses to prove their resilience once again. If we’ve learned anything from recent years, it’s that we need to lean into challenges. Total experience (TX) can be a differentiator.Take experience to the next levelToday’s leaders can take the foundations they’ve laid for strong CX and EX and build upon them with TX, a business approach that considers the interconnectedness and synergies between CX and EX.TX delivers big benefits when done well. According to research by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab, 60% of organizations have increased revenue as a result of tightly aligning CX and EX. About half of surveyed organizations recognized improvements across health and safety (53%), products and services (50%), data security and privacy (48%), and reputation (48%).In today’s macroeconomic environment, investing in TX should be a top priority. It’s been shown to generate lasting, meaningful returns for businesses.
Doing TX wellDelivering a great TX isn’t a simple exercise. In the Workflow total experience special report, LIKE.TG Chief Transformation Officer Vishy Gopalakrishnan says it takes a real shift in mindset.“Business leaders have to wear the hat of someone who’s going to consume what we provide as a service,” he explains. “What does that person want to get done, and how can I make it easy for them?”For many companies, personalization and customization are key to elevating experiences and making it easier for people to get what they need. Businesses must fully understand the customer and employee journeys and map service delivery to each moment along the way.Sound challenging? It is, but there’s no skirting customer and employee expectations. “Experience has definitely become more relevant today than it ever has been,” says LIKE.TG Chief Transformation Officer Kelly Kent.“Employees are realizing that it really doesn’t need to be this difficult to get work done, because in our consumer lives, we’re being given tools every day that are making things easier,” she adds.Strategic approach requiredPart of getting TX right is taking a strategic approach to transforming technology and operations. Digitization and automation are essential tools to accelerate outcomes and simplify processes on the back end. And improved EX directly and positively affects CX.Prioritizing TX is indeed a team sport, according to LIKE.TG Chief Transformation Officer Tom Parisi. “It’s about changing how the company works,” he says. “You’re starting to break down silos, build cross-functional processes, and pull together multiple revenue streams.”From this vantage, committing to TX is not a business unit decision but rather a train moving full speed ahead that needs the entire enterprise to get aboard. The good news is the ride and the destination are well worth the investment.Get more insights in the Workflow TX special report. It includes expert tips, research, and video snippets from a few of our chief transformation officers.
3 benefits of digitizing the customer experience
Digitizing the customer experience remains a key initiative for many organizations—even during a tough economic climate when cutbacks are running rampant.Investing in technologies to connect people, processes, and systems can yield a unified approach to customer service that drives efficiencies, empowers employees, increases customer loyalty, and decreases the cost to serve.Digitization can add significant value whether your goal is to ensure front, middle, and back-office teams work from a single system of record or to reduce downtime and prevent bottlenecks in the customer experience.Here are three enduring benefits of future-proofing your customer experience strategy.1. Increased interdepartmental efficienciesInterdepartmental inefficiency may sound like an internal problem for your organization, but it has far-reaching consequences for your customers. Disparate systems, siloed teams, and a lack of interconnectivity in the organization results in slow time to resolution and can force customers to bounce from agent to agent.When a customer needs to contact their internet provider because of slow download speeds, for example, they might start with social media. When that doesn’t elicit a response, they follow up with a call to the service center. The agent who answers has no knowledge of the previous contact attempt, so the customer explains their service need again.The agent transfers the customer to the appropriate department to handle their query, where they have to repeat their case history yet again. A field technician is sent to the customer's residence, only to realize the job order was mislabeled and they don’t have the necessary tools to complete the task. At this point, the customer is ready to switch to a new service provider.Unifying teams with a single system of record can reduce problems like that. Giving all customer-facing teams access to the same case history can prevent customers from having to repeat their issues. It can also increase the chance of a first-visit resolution from a field technician.Implementing a centralized knowledge repository can also help simplify issue resolution. Agents receive a proven course of action filled with lessons learned from previous engagements. And customers can access a library of articles to help address minor issues.According to a 2022 Forrester Total Economic Impact study commissioned by LIKE.TG, the introduction of a knowledge base can create a collaborative atmosphere among staff, helping them feel empowered to share knowledge with each other. This can result in new approaches to customer satisfaction.As a next step, companies can use the knowledge base to provide self-service articles that customers can access to address minor service issues.
2. Consistent service and rapid engagementJoint research by LIKE.TG and Qualtrics found 51% of people will hang up if left on hold for more than 10 minutes. To avoid that scenario, the organization needs to run smoothly and collectively—and engage customers on the platform of their choice.A proactive approach to customer service can resolve issues before customers are aware of them. This involves using analytics to identify potential bottlenecks and network downtime and using automation to keep customers informed.Taking these steps helps organizations deliver fast service, which is a requirement for customer retention. Integrating your front, middle, and back offices is key. It’s unlikely customers will ever know your organization has achieved seamless integration. They’ll just appreciate good customer experience.3. Elevated employee and customer satisfactionOne of the main drawbacks of different teams relying on disparate systems and processes is the manual burden of maintaining them. Using a connected platform built on a single data model can make it easier to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks.This frees staff to focus on more critical tasks. It can also give staff more empowerment and meaning in their roles, leading to greater employee retention and, in turn, customer satisfaction.An IT company in the Forrester study reported a 33% increase in employee satisfaction among agents using LIKE.TG Customer Service Management.Providing better engagement touchpoints through the company website and connecting customers seamlessly to the contact center are also best practices. According to the Forrester study, automation and integration can reduce phone contacts by 40% and email contacts by 80%, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction while reducing costs.A digital customer service solution makes sense as a long-term investment and a cost-saving measure. Aggregated data in the Forrester study revealed that an organization can reap up to a 170% return on investment in Customer Service Management over a three-year period.Find out more in the complete Forrester study: The Total Economic Impact™ of LIKE.TG Customer Service Management.
When great customer service meets AI (in Australia!)
AI is everywhere, thanks to the rise of ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot launched last year that can answer questions with natural language responses. It represents a significant shift in customers’ expectations of AI and promises to transform how chatbots are used in customer service.AI is already embedded in many daily processes, from recommending movies or shows that might interest you to mapping the fastest route to your destination. Even the autocorrect on your phone uses basic AI. Dr. Catriona Wallace, an Australian AI expert, says we interact with AI around 100 times a day—even when we sleep. So why not use it to create great customer service?Already, AI is used extensively in the business world. Customer service chatbots are a good example. Many existing chatbots, however, are restricted to simple responses, based on predetermined answers. Trained on limited data, they lack the conversational capabilities that generative AI excels in.Meeting customers where they areA 2022 LIKE.TG customer experience survey found 2.5 million more Australians used digital channels to solve queries in 2022 than in 2021. As chatbots become more effective, more customers will embrace the technology. How can you incorporate AI into your customer service strategy?In 2021, nearly half (46%) of Australians said they preferred to speak to someone by phone to resolve a customer service issue. Today, only 33% of customers want to speak to a customer service rep.
For many, the choice comes down to speed, the No. 1 factor in good service (69%, up from 51% in 2021), according to the 2022 survey. LIKE.TG research found solving an issue via a brand application (0.9 hour) or online chat (1.3 hours) was approximately twice as fast as by phone (2.2 hours).Another factor that determines people’s willingness to use chatbots is the type of problem they face. When dealing with a complex issue, only 19% of Australians prefer to speak to a human, about the same as in 2021 (20%). As generative AI develops, chatbots will be able to understand and diagnose complex issues more effectively, which will drive increased adoption.The stakes are highWith people valuing speed of service more than ever before, organizations must respond or risk losing customers. This requires streamlining complaint resolution processes for a frictionless, fast, and simple approach. AI excels in identifying and categorizing requests, which can help improve response times.The LIKE.TG survey found the average time for an issue to be resolved is 7.3 days. Three-quarters of respondents said they’d consider taking their business elsewhere if their complaint wasn’t resolved in seven days. This points to a worrying gap, with many businesses testing their customers’ patience and loyalty.According to a recent global survey by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab, executives from Australia and New Zealand understand the importance of prioritizing customer experience. Nearly half (48%) said maintaining customer loyalty is the biggest challenge they face in the current economic environment.
Australian leaders are betting on digital tools to improve customer experience, with 70% prioritizing this area in the next two years. Identifying the right systems, tools, and processes to drive maximum impact will determine their success.Meet your machine matesAs consumers get more comfortable using digital tools to resolve issues, businesses should embrace chatbots and self-service to deal with high-volume, routine complaints. This can benefit both employees and customers, freeing time for more complex work.Investing in automation to streamline processes and remove bottlenecks can help:
Reduce or eliminate hold times
Divert calls to email or instant chat
Filter issues to direct customers to the right people and teams to resolve their problem
By embracing “machine mates,” organizations can increase speed while taking pressure off customer service teams so they can focus on the most important tasks.Officeworks is one example of a company using AI to improve customer service. The office supplier introduced LIKE.TG Virtual Agent to help in-store employees answer questions fast. Enabling employees to self-serve and fix issues themselves reduced the number of support calls by 67,000 in one year.Business leaders looking to supercharge their customer service need to take steps to automate as much of the customer experience as possible. Using the right AI tools will bring new levels of customer service to an organization.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations elevate customer service.
3 benefits of AI in the contact center
The quality of customer experience (CX) is declining, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in 17 years: 73.2 out of 100.Many factors are at play here, but there’s clearly an opportunity to improve the experience your customers receive. Adopting new strategies and technologies, such as AI in the contact center, can significantly improve efficiency and competitive advantage in three key ways.1. Frees agents to focus on complex tasksAI deployed in the contact center can automate routine tasks across the case lifecycle. This streamlines processes and enables agents to focus on complex case resolution, increasing customer satisfaction. AI can:
Boost agent productivity by automating manual processes and inputs
Reduce costs by mitigating labor-intensive assessment and issue resolution
Decrease redundancy by addressing similar incidents and cases at the same time
Give customers answers fast by reducing time to resolution
2. Improves understanding with sentiment analysisDeploying AI in the contact center enables sentiment analysis, which helps agents gauge customer emotion quickly to provide next-best-action advice in real time. Agents gain a better understanding of the tone behind each customer’s request so they can focus their resolution efforts accordingly. Sentiment analysis also benefits organizations in prioritizing product and service improvements based on trends across a customer base.
As an example, Mikayla faces a tight deadline to finish a monthly revenue report, and her laptop randomly shuts down. Rather than having to type an email describing the problem and sending it to the support inbox, she quickly submits her issue through a simple email or portal.At the service desk, Julian receives her request. AI capabilities have automatically extracted the relevant information, eliminating the previous back-and-forth process to ensure he has everything needed to properly categorize and route the case. AI has assessed and pre-populated those fields. The chance that Mikayla’s case might be miscategorized is very low, which accelerates issue resolution.Additionally, AI generates sentiment analysis insights for Julian that reveal Mikayla’s anxiety about the impact of her laptop malfunction on her workflow. He’s given recommended steps to help resolve her case and strengthen her contact center experience.3. Saves time and improves employee satisfactionThroughout the entire process, Julian saves significant time. AI handles all of the repetitive tasks, ensures accuracy, and helps route the issue to the appropriate team for resolution. Julian is able to focus on high-priority and interesting assignments, which improves his job satisfaction.“For customers, AI-driven tools like predictive analytics can deliver a personalized and proactive experience that resolves issues before customers are even aware they exist—enhancing CX at every point along the customer journey,” McKinsey reports. “Tech can also assist in developing a high-performing workforce by identifying optimal work processes and practices using analytics.”In short: AI offers unique capabilities for contact centers to help speed up response, increase agent productivity, and better understand customer issues in real time.Find out more about how AI can boost agent productivity and improve CX.
Harnessing the whole organization to create a better customer experience
Creating an effortless customer experience is one of the key imperatives facing customer service leaders today. Providing experiences without friction is a crucial step in enabling organizations to be more responsive and agile while improving employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention.“The best and most effective way to improve the customer experience is to reduce customer effort,” asserts John Ball, senior VP of customer and industry workflows at LIKE.TG, in his Knowledge customer experience keynote address.“There's some really good research to back this up,” he adds, “ranging from entire books, like the Effortless experience ebook, to various studies that show the level of customer effort is more predictive of loyalty than even net promoter score.”Effort level isn’t limited to how difficult it is to get a service agent on the phone. It also involves the effort required for customers to solve their issues across all channels, including self-service.“One study showed that high-effort service interactions result in customers being 10 times more likely to be disloyal than in low-effort interactions,” Ball notes. “That's a pretty stark contrast. As customer expectations continue to rise with trends like direct to consumer, personalized self-service, and digital service from anywhere at any time, it's more important than ever to get this right.”The path to creating effortless experiences, he says, involves:
Bringing together front, middle, and back-office teams
Having every customer service team member work from the same data source
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to prevent issues before they happen
Providing robust self-service channels
Total experience, beyond engagementReducing hold time and average handle time for customers was once the traditional battle facing customer service teams. In 2022, organizations are reassessing their approach to customer engagement and are monitoring customer satisfaction throughout the entire resolution process.“The industry historically focused only on the first part of the customer experience, which is how the customer engages—how they make the request,” Ball points out. “It's only half of the story. The other half of the story is how you actually get the work done to fulfill the customer's request.”As you might imagine, how you get the work done ties the customer service employee experience to that of the customer. Equipping employees with adequate resources and information to carry out their roles is an organization’s best way to achieve customer service excellence.
A lot of customer service tasks on the employee side are handled manually via swivel chairs, emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls. Ad hoc processes are glued together by front-line agents and middle-office workers. Issue data is siloed across numerous, disparate systems. All this leads to inconsistent service, frustrated employees and, ultimately, a lack of transparency for the customer.Breaking down silos and enabling work from one system of record can take customer service teams out of the chaos and into a streamlined and efficient environment. Implementing this strategy and driving these efficiencies are achievements within reach. But collaboration and integration are crucial for success.“It's all about harnessing the power of the whole company to better serve the customer. This means connecting the front, middle, and back office to work together to resolve customer issues faster,” Ball says.“We do that by providing great, modern, omnichannel engagement that’s seamlessly integrated into one system of action that drives customer operations. That system of action is where we break down customer requests into the discrete tasks required to fulfill them. Then we automate and orchestrate those tasks,” he explains.Proactive customer serviceImagine solving a customer’s problem before it happens. In 2022, this is a reality, thanks to proactive strategies for customer service.To be proactive, all customer-serving employees—network operations, field service technicians, and customer service agents—must be in a position to discover an issue affecting customers. These employees need to be empowered to trigger a case the moment they detect a potential issue and have full visibility into its resolution.“This allows you to deliver proactive service because when a service outage or degradation does occur, you know which specific customers are impacted,” Ball notes. “You can reach out to those customers and let them know there's an issue, what the status is, and when you expect to resolve it. You don't get flooded with calls, texts, and emails from customers trying to get a status update.”This area of customer service management can benefit from automation. Automated workflows can connect the right teams and resources and help quickly resolve issues before customers experience them. There’s no need to wait for customers to report issues.
A proactive customer service strategy centered on connected teams and a single data model is a great benefit to field service agents. It provides workers with incident oversight, prescriptive checklists, and case-specific guidance needed to work faster and safer.“A service-aware install base also powers a better after-sales support experience because we can tie together products the customer has purchased with the services they're entitled to, such as warranty and service contracts,” Ball points out.“This is especially important in field service scenarios. We're sending the right technician with the right skills and the right replacement parts. This is critical,” he adds.The continued importance of self-serviceSelf-service has become vital in today's world of direct-to-consumer and subscription business models. AI-powered virtual agents and a next-level self-service resource catalog can have a positive impact on customer engagement in this area.These systems can provide a visual service catalog of common requests and services from which customers can choose—allowing work to be directly routed to the best-qualified teams for support and fast issue resolution.“Customers simply don't always want to call or chat or search a portal for an answer,” Ball explains. “Our service catalog takes self-service to the next level. Think of it as a menu of the most common customer inquiries from which customers can initiate a request,” he adds.“We can then guide them through the process, collecting all the information required, and then kick off a workflow taking their case all the way through to resolution,” he sums.Watch the full customer experience keynote address. Registration is free.
3 ways to redefine customer experience strategy with generative AI
Generative AI (GenAI) has gained the world’s attention and is revolutionizing customer experience (CX). According to LIKE.TG’s Customer Experience Trends report, 37% of CX leaders are already infusing the technology throughout support and service delivery.Customer Contact Week (CCW) Digital found that 73% of CX leaders plan to increase their investment in GenAI-enabled tools, applications, and systems within the next two years—even though roughly one-third (31%) of them intend to cut customer operations costs.1New and pioneering customer service use cases for GenAI abound. Yet the constant evolution of the technology, accelerated by its widespread availability, confounds many CX leaders with this twofold question: Where do we begin, and where do we go next?The answers may be more straightforward than they appear. Customer-facing teams can harness GenAI to refresh customer experience strategy, revitalize employee experiences, and retain customers through a thoughtful approach. As the technology’s expansion into customer support accelerates, CX leaders should focus on applying GenAI in the following three ways.1. Reimagine customer service engagement practicesCustomer contact volumes are increasing across channels, including chat, messaging, and social media, according to CCW Digital. Organizations must learn quickly from, and adapt meaningfully to, these evolving communication preferences.Enter GenAI. As CX leaders invest in delivering a seamless omnichannel experience to meet these expectations, GenAI can help fine-tune their approach.Virtual agents, powered by GenAI, can respond to customer requests in natural human language, providing detailed guidance that reduces mean time to resolution. In assessing the technology’s performance, CX leaders can improve support across channels—web, chat, and mobile—while providing the right resources quickly.Doing so with an emphasis on elevating self-service options will be critical to empowering customer service teams to handle the ever-increasing volume of contacts. Our research found that 69% of customers still prefer to speak to a live agent. GenAI can enable organizations to use tools such as Service Catalog, Virtual Agent, and Knowledge Management as the foundation of their omnichannel experience instead of as just another building block among many.
2. Enhance agent performance“Hire the smile, train the skill” is a mantra used with regularity in customer service. When employees aren’t smiling, neither are their customers. As agents continue to be overburdened, their dissatisfaction detracts from CX: Only 4% of customers registered improvements in their brand experiences between 2022 and 2023, according to CCW Digital.GenAI can produce succinct case summaries, distilling customer-specific context and insights with one click, regardless of issue complexity. This, combined with GenAI-enhanced search capabilities that provide actionable overviews derived from relevant knowledge articles, can reduce agent time spent searching and sifting for the right answer.Instead, agents can focus on what matters most: delivering great CX with agility and accuracy. Agents want to be the empathetic problem-solvers that customers and CX leaders expect them to be. GenAI can help them reach that goal while minimizing mundane, redundant tasks.3. Orchestrate personalized customer interactions at scaleThe era of big data was supposed to usher in groundbreaking ways to tailor experiences along the customer journey. Yet only 13% of consumers feel their interactions are “highly personalized,” according to CCW Digital. This should be a serious concern for brands big and small, especially as personalization becomes more critical to retain business.GenAI can engage in multiturn question-and-answer dialogue with customers, understanding intent, sentiment, and context. In doing so, it captures and summarizes conversational insights to facilitate faster virtual-to-live agent handoffs in the delivery of bespoke experiences at scale.For example, when a customer reaches out to a contact center, GenAI can use the information provided to create content that:
Recommends individualized products or services
Delivers customized, step-by-step troubleshooting guidance on a variety of customer issues
Summarizes previous interactions
The age of GenAI is here. Organizations that fail to weave the technology into the fabric of their CX may not exist long enough to experience regret. As more use cases for the technology come into focus across industries, CX leaders can explore GenAI to enhance customer engagement, cultivate top talent, and nurture customer relationships.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps organizations deliver world-class customer experience with GenAI.1 Customer Contact Week Digital, Future of the Contact Center, November 2023
5 findings about the customer experience landscape in the GenAI era
Amid rising customer expectations and pressure to reduce costs, consistently delivering exceptional experiences across every touch point while improving the bottom line can be challenging. To gain an advantage over the competition, providing stellar customer service is more important than avoiding poor experience delivery.In fact, 69% of respondents to a global LIKE.TG survey on the customer experience landscape said they’d switch brands based on poor customer service, whereas 84% said they’d recommend a brand based on great customer service.What makes a great experience?According to the survey, great CX comes down to three things: speed, efficiency, and empathy. One respondent summed it up as “a live agent who was able to quickly understand the problem, see my history on his screen, and immediately resolve the issue for me...I didn’t have to switch to multiple people or answer a lot of questions repeatedly.Achieving fast, efficient responses through live agents can be fraught with frustrations and challenges. This presents an opportunity for savvy CX leaders to tap into fresh approaches and innovations in their journey to deliver great CX while reducing costs. In our exploration of CX trends, five findings became evident.
1. A better service experience is within reachDespite investments in self-service, omnichannel service, and chatbots, customers still prefer to pick up the phone and connect with a human to swiftly resolve their issues. Nearly half (44%) of survey respondents said their biggest obstacle is the inability to reach a live customer service agent quickly and efficiently. One-third (35%) find chatbots frustrating due to their inability to understand customer problems.Organizations are faced with a dilemma: improve self-service and automation or empower agents with the tools to manage higher case volumes and provide the empathetic and informed human connection customers seek. With the right processes and technology, the answer can be both.2. Automation and AI can helpAgents universally expressed angst over high customer expectations, increased case workloads, and challenges with internal communications. Collectively, these challenges strain agents and negatively affect service quality. Nearly half (44%) of agents said their biggest struggle is difficulty communicating with other departments.Assigning more resources to these issues is not a long-term solution given staffing challenges and cost. Instead, organizations should take steps to optimize proactive and self-service capabilities to reduce case volumes. This includes considering automation options to streamline internal workflows and communication.AI-assisted tools can supercharge agents to deliver more relevant solutions and simplify case management and resolution. And workforce optimization solutions can improve work distribution, scheduling, and productivity.3. Workforce optimization is a priorityCX leaders grapple with the demands to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and adapt to rapidly evolving technologies while meeting customer expectations for fast resolution. “Customer satisfaction is essential to the sustainability of our business,” shared a CX leader from France. “The need for immediate response has become the rule.”While customer needs seem infinite, the resources to meet them are not. A lack of resources/capacity is the biggest challenge for 23% of leaders in their struggle to address increased case volume, according to the survey.Workforce optimization may enhance scheduling and capacity planning to better meet customer needs. CX leaders may want to lean into the transformative power of AI and generative AI (GenAI) to unlock untapped productivity within their workforce to improve customer and agent experiences.
4. A strategic approach to AI is neededAI-powered chatbots, predictive analytics, and GenAI are making a significant impact on customer service. Collectively, these solutions can enhance customer interactions and streamline processes for both customers and agents. In fact, 27% of leaders say AI provides the greatest reduction in customer effort.While one-third (33%) of leaders feel they’re ahead of the competition regarding AI adoption, nearly half (47%) say their organization is implementing AI tools ad hoc. This presents a clear opportunity for those who take a strategic approach to extend the distance from their competition.5. Rising demands require innovative technologiesTwo things stood out about the future of CX based on the survey results. First is a universal belief that customer expectations for great experiences will continue to rise. Customers will demand faster resolutions, increased service quality across channels, and first-contact resolution.Second, workforce optimization will be the top priority for CX development over the next three years. CX leaders will also prioritize integration with systems of record, process automation, and AI. One leader predicted “the future of assistance lies in automating the service by using AI.”AI and GenAI will play a significant role in unleashing new capabilities and value to improve customer engagement, empower agents, and increase efficiency on the journey toward delivering great CX.Gain more insights in our Customer experience trends report.
AI in field service: Using technology in the service of people
When customers need field service, the stakes are high, whether they’re getting started with a new product or service or something crucial to their business needs repair.These make-or-break moments influence customers’ long-term perception of your brand. Yet they're often complicated by internal system disconnects that require significant manual intervention. These labor-intensive processes slow down work, diminish customer satisfaction, and increase costs, leaving employees and customers frustrated.AI in field service can make the process easier and more efficient, reducing manual effort and improving experiences for both field teams and customers. The transformative power of AI is unprecedented—offering a potential $15 trillion lift to the global economy by 2030, according to PwC.Let’s explore how AI can reinvent field service processes.People at the centerAt its core, field service is a people-centered function. It depends on people with the right skills serving humans, assets, and infrastructure in need of support. Using AI to improve field service isn’t about removing people from the equation—it’s about empowering them:
Work duration estimates: Predict the time required for technicians to complete jobs.
Knowledge sharing: Connect employees to the resources and insights they need to complete tasks.
Part recommendations: Automate lists of parts needed to fulfill work orders based on past jobs.
Work order clustering: Utilize grouped work orders to streamline tasks and optimize resources.
Proactive and preventive maintenance: Clarify equipment longevity trends to prioritize maintenance based on repair costs and downtime data.
AI is reinventing critical field service use cases, making work flow seamlessly and letting employees achieve greater mastery of key skills. New possibilities are emerging as field service professionals explore AI’s potential.As AI takes root, C-suite leaders can gain faster access to data that provides insights to scale the business. Service owners can get ahead of incidents before they affect customers. Technicians can be more effective—and customers can get what they need more quickly.The human as the hero with AIConsider this: 64% of people say they derive at least moderate value from AI in their work, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG).For field service workers, AI will create value in three key areas:
Field service technicians: New technicians will onboard more quickly and effectively with the support of AI, which will speed time to productivity and streamline training processes. Many parts of the technician job, both in person and remote, will be accelerated, including inventory management, access to historical account context and documentation, remote assistance while troubleshooting a job, and predictive maintenance, allowing technicians to receive system notifications to address early warning signs from AI analysis of historical data.
Dispatchers: AI will be able to assist dispatchers with some of the heavy lifting of scheduling, analyzing, and making recommendations around historical data, technician skills, technician availability, and service requests. In addition, AI will provide real-time weather and traffic information to minimize delays, calculate accurate estimates for arrival and travel times, automate intelligent communication to customers, and help dispatchers prioritize customer requests, considering service-level agreements, contract terms, and account history.
Field service managers: AI will simplify personnel decisions with in-depth performance analytics, driving better performance and resource allocation. Similarly, AI analysis will improve budgeting, workload balancing, quality assurance, and training and knowledge sharing processes, freeing manager time to focus on important, strategic exceptions.
To access these benefits, it’s crucial to promote trust in and adoption of AI—while supporting employee autonomy. Employees need to understand how AI benefits them and the potential it holds. Leading by example and institutionalizing AI in field service can facilitate the way forward.Discover how AI is revolutionizing field service. And find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations embrace AI to improve field service management.
Deliver value by unifying lead-to-cash
Driving revenue while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction is among the top issues that keep sales, service, and operations leaders up at night.This is because the customer journey inevitably intersects with an organization’s lead-to-cash process, an inherently complicated set of workflows that need to be carefully orchestrated to ensure timely delivery and fulfillment of products or services.The better streamlined an organization's lead-to-cash process is—including quoting and order fulfillment—the higher the customer satisfaction and value, according to McKinsey.Addressing lead-to-cash challengesWhy is lead-to-cash difficult, and why have many vendors faltered in this area? Several factors are involved.Many configure-price-quote (CPQ) and order management systems aren’t flexible enough to handle the high variability of products, services, and the resulting workflows. This can drive up costs and delays time to market. Solving this lack of extensibility with a systems integrator can be expensive and time-consuming.Too much fragmentation across front, middle, and back offices can lead to incoherence and disconnected experiences. For example, offer and fulfillment catalogs are often in different systems, pre-sales and post-sales are handled by different applications, and customer-facing agents struggle to get a single view of the customer.Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are difficult to modify. The LIKE.TG Customer Experience Trends report found that order processing and billing/accounting are two of the top three internal functions that delay customer issue resolution.Customers demand more self-service across the buyer journey. They expect personalization, convenience, and consistency. According to another McKinsey article, “71% of buyers are willing to spend more than $50,000 in a single transaction, and 27% would spend $500,000 or more.”
Improving lead-to-cashOrganizations can solve lead-to-cash challenges by addressing three critical business imperatives:
Reducing costs associated with product and service complexity
Eliminating departmental silos
Delivering a cohesive customer journey
LIKE.TG Sales and Order Management unites sales, fulfillment, and service on one platform with a single data model. The LIKE.TG platform integrates with existing systems of record and provides one system of engagement to simplify and automate work—and provide oversight across lead-to-cash.Managing complexityTo address the high variability and complexity of product and service offerings, the Sales and Order Management product catalog and order fulfillment workflows are highly configurable. This composability is lacking in many CPQ and order management solutions.Because quoting and order fulfillment take place on a single platform, offer and fulfillment catalogs connect seamlessly. This means quotes flow directly to orders and fulfillment, which can shorten order cycle time, reduce errors, and accelerate cash collection.The LIKE.TG platform and workflows can be used to both extend applications and create custom applications.For organizations dealing with order exceptions, invoice exceptions, and disputes that aren’t handled by legacy ERP systems, LIKE.TG can serve as a system of engagement. The LIKE.TG platform can help manage those exception processes, increasing clarity and control and helping to accelerate order and cash collection cycles.Fusing the front, middle, and back officeWith one platform underpinned by workflows, LIKE.TG helps organizations progress work across front-, middle-, and back-office teams without manual handoffs. Moving from opportunity to quote, contract, order, fulfillment, work order, project, post-sale service, and renewal is seamless.LIKE.TG can deliver visibility to employees, managers, and executives across lead-to-cash processes. Customers gain omnichannel insights into their lead-to-cash data—quotes, contracts, orders, shipments, invoices, and service cases. By streamlining operations with LIKE.TG, Acronym saw customer satisfaction and revenue generation increase significantly.Delivering a unified customer journeyWhether customers are engaging in pre-sales or post-sales inquiries, they want a personalized, convenient, and consistent experience. Sales and Order Management helps organizations quickly respond to common post-sales order modification requests, empowering service teams to sell and sales teams to provide service when customers need it.Customer Service Management provides an organization’s customers with omnichannel self-service. Many inquiries can be completed via self-service, reducing contact volume. If customers need help anywhere across the lead-to-cash cycle, requests can be routed automatically to the correct team.A coherent, connected, and composable approach to lead-to-cash can accelerate revenue while reducing costs. Find out more in our ebook: 3 ways to optimize the lead-to-cash cycle.
Australia customer service spotlight: The power of AI
Australia has a customer service problem. The nation is stuck on hold. Wait times skyrocketed to more than 107 million cumulative hours in 2023, an 11% increase over 2022 (96.5 million hours), according to the annual LIKE.TG Customer Experience Intelligence Report.The friction is driving more consumers to demand better customer experiences. The majority (82%) of Australians say that because of rising costs, they have less patience to deal with bad service.This isn’t just frustrating; it’s hurting the economy—to the tune of $1.28 billion in lost productivity, according to the research. Meanwhile, Australians are forced to manage their service issues during work hours because 24/7 service support isn’t widely offered by businesses. That means employees are taking time from their jobs to sit in customer service queues.Why are businesses losing customers?According to our research, 94% of Australians say they’ll change their spending habits as a result of sky-high prices and poor service. Three in five Australians will spend less (60%) or search for better offers (55%).When a transaction goes wrong, Australians are giving businesses less time to make things right. More than half (59%) of survey respondents say they’ll take their business elsewhere after waiting two to three days to have their issues resolved.It’s currently taking businesses one workweek (5.1 days) on average to resolve customer issues.
What does good customer service look like?Good customer service comes down to three things, according to the research: speed, ease, and accessibility.More than half of Australians rank quick issue resolution (66%), fast human connection (58%), and a single agent (56%)—rather than multiple people—as the most important factors in good customer service.Can AI help improve productivity?Achieving good customer service takes effort. Today’s customer journey is highly fragmented, with disconnected systems, multiple platforms of engagement, disparate information, and siloed front, middle, and back-office teams. Organizations are under pressure to remove process bottlenecks and connect every customer touch point.Analyst firm IDC predicts that “by 2026, to differentiate and drive loyalty, 30% of organizations will undergo structural and technological changes to deliver value outcomes, shifting focus from providing experiences to value parity.”1AI can help reduce wait times by contributing to a consistent and unified customer experience. Nearly two-thirds of Australians believe AI will improve customer service speed and efficiency, and 70% expect AI to help bring about the added benefit of after-hours service.
What about the human element?Some organizations are wary of losing the human element of customer service. They need not fear. One of the major advantages consumers see with AI is its potential to serve deeper insights, context, and solutions to human service agents so they can resolve issues faster.Automation, better self-service options, and increased digital customer services can help augment the workload for human service agents, freeing them to focus on providing empathetic interactions and solving more complex issues.“Reliability, empathy, and responsiveness are critical areas of customer service quality where automation can be employed to great effect in closing gaps with customer expectations,” says Linus Lai, vice president of digital business, trust and services, at IDC Asia/Pacific.Digital platforms can help organizations make their teams more effective, reconnect with customers, and grow their businesses. AI-powered digital transformation is the key to delivering 24/7 customer service and outstanding self-service and boosting first-touch resolution.Gain more insights in the LIKE.TG Customer Experience Intelligence report.1 IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Customer Experience 2024 Predictions, October 2023, Doc #US50111423
To fix customer service in Australia, put AI to work for employees
Australian business leaders can’t seem to crack the customer experience (CX) code. According to the LIKE.TG Customer Experience Intelligence Report, customer service has gotten increasingly worse over the past three years. Australians are waiting longer than ever—spending a combined 107 million hours on hold, 11% more than the previous year.We spoke to Simon Bowker, head of customer workflow solutions for LIKE.TG in Asia Pacific and Japan, to get his insights on waning CX and how to fix customer service in Australia.Why does Australia’s CX quality keep getting worse?Demand for better CX has grown, but supply hasn’t.On the demand side, consumers’ expectations continue to increase. Some companies are doing well, offering fully connected experiences. As a customer, I see these front-runners and expect more from other organizations—especially when prices are rising.On the supply side, increasing costs make it harder to hire at scale. Leaders have historically done a bad job of putting their stakeholders at the center of their technology. Completing even the simplest tasks can be time-consuming with legacy systems, making everything slower for both employees and customers.Many employees have to rely on clunky, problematic technology to deal with more demand from customers. With the wrong foundations, it’s inevitable to end up with a downward spiral that’s increasingly expensive and daunting to fix.
Where should leaders start to improve CX?If you transform work for your No. 1 asset—your people—it will naturally improve how they then serve your customers. But if your people aren’t empowered to do their best work, and technology is burning productivity instead of boosting it, then you don’t need to be an economist to see there’s a problem.So how do we improve employees’ experience of technology? Do we just rip and replace what we have? That’s almost like rebuilding the company from the ground up.We believe you can augment existing systems instead of replacing them. This is where AI plays an incredibly important role. If you use AI strategically, you can scoop data out of complicated back-end systems, make intelligent sense of it, and deliver the right information to employees in a clear and timely way that lets people do their best work.What’s more important: AI for customer or employee solutions?Start with employee-facing systems if you have to choose, but ideally, you want to apply AI to both, covering as much of the customer journey as possible.Chatbots, for example, can be used on both sides of the experience equation. If I’m a customer with a specific but relatively straightforward issue, a customer-facing chatbot can give me what I need quickly and efficiently.Some issues involve a lot of information in a lot of systems, or may be too complex, unique, or nuanced to be understood by a machine. In those cases, you need a highly skilled person, increasingly like a personal concierge, who can solve more difficult problems.These employees can also benefit from a chatbot that validates policies, checks that they’re up to date, and gets data from multiple messy back-end systems. If you start with employee experience, you can apply AI to accelerate processes, decisions, and outcomes—which streamlines every step for customers.
Why are leaders getting tech and process debt in CX?Inertia can create a huge drag on CX. Leaders often think, “Change is too hard. We just have to continue with what we have.”The global banking industry illustrates another path. Banks rely on mainframes from the 1960s and ’70s for their core systems. The “too hard” mindset would say digital banking is impossible—replacing the mainframes would come at enormous cost and potential disruption.But with online banking, we’ve seen the augmentation of that back-office infrastructure by putting something more modern and flexible on top of it. Banks had to do that because there was such huge demand for online banking that they couldn’t afford to say it was “too hard” anymore.There’s always a trade-off between effort and reward. Smart leaders realize, “I need to solve this now. Otherwise, I’ll lose market share.” The best time to shake that too-hard mindset is as soon as possible, before you reach a point where your competitor can do something in two minutes that takes your company 20.Is there any impetus for brands to get out of that “too hard” basket?Disruption can come from anywhere: newer digital-first firms, overseas market entrants, and so on. The customer expectations and market share composition of your industry can change overnight, like we’ve seen with banks and fintech. This makes the market concentration we’ve historically seen in Australian industries more susceptible to upheaval.Thankfully, at many of the enterprises we talk to, leaders recognize that AI can make the problem of “too hard” transformations easier to solve. Once you start with AI, the improvements tend to compound and accelerate very quickly.Find out more, including stories of successful CX transformations, in our full CX report for Australia and New Zealand.
5 principles of great experiences
Product experience is a key driver of business success for LIKE.TG and our customers. That’s why my product experience team and I spend a lot of time focusing on design principles that help ensure we exceed our customers' expectations.You don’t have to be a designer to use these principles and create great experiences. These are fundamentals that anyone can put into practice.1. CraftedThe first experience with any product, service, or solution defines the first impression people have about it. You get only one chance to make that first impression.At LIKE.TG, we work hard to create product experiences that are high quality, that we’re proud of, and that show the care and attention to detail we put into our work.Everyone who plays a role in building our products cares about their craft. We need to be thoughtful, thorough, and meticulous about what we develop. When we prioritize quality, performance, and value, implementing a design to pixel-level perfection, we make a positive first impression and build momentum for ongoing engagement with our users and customers.When we do this, customers and partners can feel the difference. It's like a beautifully handmade dress or garment, where every stitch is sewn with precision and only the best fabrics are used. When you wear that garment, you feel incredible. The result is that customers feel cared for, they trust the product quality, and they develop loyalty that turns into deeper engagement with the brand.2. PersonalPeople at work have a lot to do, and there's a lot riding on their work. That means every moment and every interaction matter. People love it when the software they use anticipates their needs, remembers their preferences, and feels tailored to them.Products should provide users with personalization options such as font size, layout, and accessibility tools. And products should go further, making recommendations, anticipating next steps, and providing a curated experience that’s customized for each individual.Like an attentive concierge at a resort, an exceptional product experience can predict user needs and provide personalized service that wows the customer.At scale, the productivity increase from persona-driven, task-specific, intelligent applications can generate tangible bottom-line impact for the business through efficiency and effectiveness. What’s good—and customized—for the employee is good for the enterprise.3. ResonantIncredible experiences trigger strong positive emotions, such as satisfaction, delight, joy, inspiration, confidence, and even love. In fact, our team’s mission is to “create product experiences that people love.” It’s both an aspirational and fundamental goal.Like a favorite song that you love to replay, an exceptional product experience will cement positive memories and compel you to revisit that experience again and again.This emotional resonance creates a virtuous cycle that can drive referrals and help businesses grow. It can lift customer satisfaction (CSAT) score and Net Promoter Score (NPS) and turn regular users into hardcore evangelists. If you’ve ever been to Knowledge, our flagship annual event for customers and developers, you probably have a sense of what that enthusiasm looks like for ServiceNow.
4. DynamicExperiences are journeys, not single moments. They have a beginning, middle, and end—from initiation to task completion. Dynamic product experiences seamlessly adapt with you through this journey, as you work across devices and change contexts, picking up right where you left off.Like our Field Service Management app, these experiences will update with real-time information—such as identifying the fastest route to your next task based on your location and the traffic conditions.Dynamic journeys are cohesive and adaptive, and they support you from start to finish. They empower users with forward momentum, providing help the moment it's needed, without losing context. This allows users to concentrate on accomplishment rather than obstacle removal, and on innovation rather than execution.Enabling users to focus on their goals despite changes in context enables people to move faster without friction, improving productivity for the business and continuity of experience for the end user.5. EnduringGreat experiences provide essential utility and daily value. They stand the test of time, giving people long-term benefits and critical assistance that they can’t live without. These experiences are not trendy, going in and out of favor with seemingly fickle customers. Rather, they provide enduring value by meeting fundamental needs.Providing a trusted and stable platform, with products that address important user needs, creates an enduring foundation upon which more can be built. When a customer has a great experience with LIKE.TG, they want to find more ways we can help them work better. That leads to greater product adoption and increasing return on investment for businesses that scale their use of the platform.When we deliver exceptional, scalable, and reliable products, we build long-term loyalty, enrich customer relationships, improve employee retention, and fuel account growth and expansion over time.As experience experts, my team and I are committed to providing exceptional LIKE.TG product experiences that people love to use. To do that, we maintain close relationships with end users, developers, administrators, implementation teams, and the those who bring LIKE.TG to life in companies worldwide.Great experiences are great for business. They deliver end-user delight and productivity, as well as enduring customer relationships that are fueled for growth.Find out more about creating great experiences.
Unifying the customer service value chain
Customers expect the same great experience no matter where or how they interact with an organization. Providing that seamless experience can be challenging for organizations spread across multiple entities, locations, and ownership models. LIKE.TG service organization management capabilities can help unify the customer service value chain on a single platform.Many players are involved in getting an organization’s products and services to customers. The company’s value chain may include physical locations that serve customers, such as branches and offices, and the staff members who work at those locations.The locations don’t have to be physical. Think fully online banks. They don’t have to be owned by your company either. Think auto dealerships, which are not owned by auto manufacturers. These locations could even have some products and services installed, such as self-service kiosks, to serve customers.We call these entities that make up this part of the value chain service organizations. They often serve as the face of the business to customers.
The trouble with inconsistent customer serviceTypically, the processes, systems, and data storage in the company’s headquarters—or in the brand’s internal locations, such as retail stores—are exclusive to company-owned locations. This leaves external locations, such as franchises, dealerships, call centers, and authorized resellers, unable to provide the same level of customer service, frustrating agents, external staff, and customers.Another common pain point is lack of visibility into the status of critical products and services installed at the location, such as equipment, self-service kiosks, and other hardware and software. This often results in broken equipment, delayed service, and decreased customer satisfaction.Unifying systems, processes, data, and peopleUsing a customer service workflow solution with service organization management capabilities can unify systems, processes, and business data on a single platform, connecting:
Internal, company-owned business units
External, third-party-owned business units
Outsourced operations
This empowers staff in external business locations to offer the same high level of customer service as internal business locations. It also provides the ability to observe day-to-day operations at noncompany business locations—and to roll out consistent processes and knowledge to both company- and noncompany-owned locations.LIKE.TG Customer Service Management service organization management capabilities can enable businesses to track and manage products and services installed at these locations. The solution can also facilitate case submissions, help requests, and case resolutions for these install base items.With this foundation, businesses can start delivering a unified brand experience across every customer touch point.
9 customer experience predictions for 2024
LIKE.TG is excited to peer into the future of customer experience (CX) to see what’s in store. Customer operations and service delivery have undergone significant disruptions in recent years. The year ahead promises to be no different.The continuing need to deliver a frictionless customer journey, a renewed focus on improving the agent experience, and the meteoric rise of generative AI (GenAI) are some of the many reasons why CX is poised for transformation.Join us in counting down our top CX predictions for 2024:9. Point solutions give way to platformsLike a kitchen filled with single-purpose appliances, today’s CX is often a hodgepodge of point solutions that make it more difficult for organizations to deliver a great experience.In 2024, organizations will “KonMari” their CX, removing any element that doesn’t give joy to their customers. Point solutions will give way to platforms, enabling organizations to streamline engagement and deliver enjoyable experiences through any channel.8. AI and automation mitigate process bottlenecksRising customer expectations and ongoing economic volatility will motivate organizations to invest in digital platforms that automate the flow of work across support teams. This shift will center on the removal of human middleware and point solutions that can cause process holdups and lead to costly service-level agreement (SLA) violations.Organizations will look to AI-powered platform capabilities such as predictive intelligence, process mining, and proactive customer service operations to break down work, assign tasks to the appropriate teams quickly, and address issues before they affect customers.7. Workforce optimization becomes imperativeStagnant customer service budgets and constrained resources put CX agents in the unenviable position of managing growing caseloads with reduced support.In 2024, CX leaders will turn to workforce optimization solutions to alleviate their most significant talent-related challenges. This can empower customer service managers to accurately forecast staffing needs, allocate work based on skills, identify training opportunities, and deliver performance-based coaching.As a result, CX leaders will be hailed as the productivity-enhancing champions of cost savings among their organizational peers.6. Technology solves field service labor shortagesThe global labor shortage will remain a key challenge for field service organizations in 2024. As more field service technicians and experts retire, organizations will focus on ways to decrease the time to recruit, ramp up, and empower new employees to perform their jobs as effectively as those with historical knowledge and tenure.Digital platforms, automation, and AI will assist field service organizations in quickly onboarding and optimizing the agent and technician experience by curating bespoke training plans and improving workforce allocation through regional demand forecasting.5. Organizations grow through retentionRetention is always an important consideration for customer service teams. In 2024, it will become a top priority for organizations as they realize the best way to grow is to nurture relationships with current customers. Organizations will invest in digital platforms underpinned by AI to provide a more cohesive experience for customers across the buying and support lifecycle.Outdated, disconnected legacy systems that frustrate customers and fragment their journey will no longer cut it. That means optimizing onboard-to-service-to-renewal processes will be one of the biggest drivers of growth within the order-to-cash process.4. Contact center cloud migration acceleratesThe customer service industry’s gradual migration to the cloud will gain speed in 2024 as organizations—especially enterprise contact centers—take advantage of the flexibility, scalability, and security of digital platforms. Technologies such as AI and robotic process automation (RPA) will help motivate this move as leaders seek to create more intelligent, connected, and transparent experiences for customers.The push to the cloud will give organizations better, deeper ways to integrate cross-department customer-facing teams and systems of action. This will in turn reduce time to resolution, improve service operations, and drive customer loyalty.3. Agile, scalable platforms gain importanceIn 2024, customer service organizations will be asked to reduce costs, increase revenue, and accelerate return on investment. This will drive demand for trusted digital platforms rather than costly and complex point solutions.Organizations will prioritize investments in scalable enterprise computing platforms to consolidate IT spending and increase the pace of digital transformation while staying within budget. Solutions that deliver out-of-the box integrations, turnkey use cases, and the ability to build innovative applications with low- and no-code tools will help customer service organizations achieve higher value, improving agility and scalability.2. Industry-specific CX solutions dominateIndustries have unique needs that aren’t always solved by one-size-fits-all customer service platforms. In 2024, the biggest growth will come from modern solutions that can verticalize to cater to the specific challenges, opportunities, and expectations of different industries, from the public sector to manufacturing to technology to healthcare.Leaders will embrace platforms that can integrate with industry-specific systems and applications, such as point-of-sale systems and inventory management systems. This will help organizations exceed customer expectations from payment to recovery and shipment to delivery while improving service operations.1. GenAI hype becomes realityAs organizations evaluate and learn from GenAI pilots, they’ll start to realize its value and potential. GenAI will boost productivity for customer service agents through capabilities such as case and chat summarization. This can surface case-relevant knowledge instantly and act on customer requests directly while reducing customer effort and increasing satisfaction.Formal training on how to use GenAI will enable agents to become proficient with the technology so that they can focus on refining other skill sets, including problem-solving and emotional intelligence.GenAI will also improve the work order process for field service organizations by accessing all activity, parts, and incidental data to summarize tasks. This will be critical for field technicians who move from site to site and rely on mobile devices to understand and complete requests.We’ll be following these predictions closely to see how they come to life across customer service organizations and industries.Meanwhile, find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations deliver frictionless customer experiences.
Survey says an experience strategy can boost financial performance
The old saying “There’s no substitute for experience” has taken on new meaning in today’s digital environment. According to a LIKE.TG/ThoughtLab global survey of 1,000 C-suite executives, adopting a comprehensive experience strategy that encompasses all experiences can help:
Accelerate business growth
Cultivate an engaging work environment
Improve customer satisfaction
Enhance products and services
Boost performance across all areas
“Organizations want to deliver seamless experiences to customers and employees. And today, the expectations of those two groups are becoming very similar,” explains Dave Wright, chief innovation officer for LIKE.TG and guest editor of the Fall 2023 issue of Workflow Quarterly.“With recent leaps in artificial intelligence, companies are now in a great position to fundamentally change and improve that experience.”
Serving those who served our country
Karen Drosky, Senior Director, Human Resources Business Partner and LIKE.TG CEO John Donahoe (left to right).When she transitioned from the Army into the private sector, Karen Drosky had to change how she described her previous work experience. Telling would-be employers that she had been an “interrogator” seemed to surprise – and sometimes scare – people who were interviewing her. But highlighting the skills she’d mastered in her role worked wonders.“It was tough to leave a career in the service, but I was relieved to find that my skills transferred into the tech space and that there were a lot of great opportunities out there,” the HR senior director says. “Once I understood how to apply the training I’d received in the Army and started to emphasize active listening, my ability to read people, and the trainings I’d conducted, I found that many companies had immediate needs for expertise like mine.”According to the “Profile of the Military Community” report *, in 2017, nearly 175,000 service members left the military. Yet for those who want to transition from military-specific work to a civilian work culture, making the move can be difficult. Even with in-demand skills, many former service members are unsure how to best prepare and market themselves for a new career.That’s where companies like Breakline come in. Founded by Bethany Coates in 2016, Breakline seeks to help talented veterans transition into technology roles at well-known companies across the U.S.More than 40 of Breakline’s most recent cohort of student-veterans and military spouses visited LIKE.TG on Jan. 30 for an interactive session with LIKE.TG President and CEO John Donahoe, Drosky, and former service members-turned-LIKE.TG employees Dean Robison and Javier Chen.
Veterans-turned LIKE.TG employees Karen Drosky, Javier Chen, and Dean Robison share their experiences with Breakline Founder Bethany Coates (left to right).“I am so grateful for everything I gained while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps,” said Robison, who runs LIKE.TG’s 24/7 customer support organization. “But when it came time to put my skills to use in a new way outside the military, I had to learn how to successfully pivot into different cultures and ways of working. I’m fortunate to have had strong mentors along the way, and I’m glad LIKE.TG can help support an incredibly talented and deserving group of people find their next challenge.”Adam Cave, U.S. Army veteran and Breakline student, agrees. “I spent 14 years as a linguist in the Army and it’s been eye-opening to see how welcoming the tech sector is to veterans. They really value our leadership experience, and I’m excited and honored to begin working in this challenging environment with my new teammates.”More than 100 veterans and former service members in many countries work at LIKE.TG, in a variety of roles. During the event last Wednesday afternoon, Donahoe thanked the veterans in attendance and shared a core piece of advice: “Be a continuous learner. The tech industry has plenty of people who think they know it all. But a growth mindset and a hunger to keep learning will not only keep your career moving ahead, but also help you personally as well.”Drosky encouraged attendees to use their resume to tell a story about their experience, and offered advice for exploring the culture of a potential employer. “Military veterans are not static in their professional experiences, so if your resume can convey a story line of how you transitioned from one role to the next in the service, recruiters will take notice,” she said. “At LIKE.TG, we look for people who are ‘additive’ to our company. You’ll hear a lot about culture ‘fit,’ but we want diversity of thought and perspective, and so we find out where we’re lacking a particular view or set of ideas, and then look for people who can help round us out.”Robison shared that sentiment and gave an additional tip. “Sure, a company is interviewing you. But more important is that you interview the company. Don’t leave it up to them. Take control of what you’re looking for, and make sure they show you what they can add to your life and skillset.”
Singapore spotlight: How to fix 4 top customer service issues
Singaporeans are growing increasingly frustrated with customer experience—and for good reason. LIKE.TG and Lonergan polled 1,030 Singaporeans and found major gaps between what the people of Singapore expect from businesses and what they experience. This translates into millions of hours wasted on hold per year and a concerning drag on business productivity.Singaporean organizations need to focus on the “customer” in customer service. Bad service experiences can turn consumers away. Business as usual tends to result in doing nothing. Adding new digital services to support customers is an investment choice.Without addressing the underlying issues, Singaporean organizations are in danger of alienating their existing customer base—and losing potential business. Here are four major customer service issues we learned from the LIKE.TG Customer Experience Intelligence Report for Singapore, along with advice on how to fix them.1. “It takes too long to resolve my issues.”Time spent on hold has increased over the past 12 months. Singaporeans spend an average of 16.1 hours—two working days—on hold. Issues and complaints typically take nearly an entire workweek (4.7 days) to resolve. This frustrates customers, hampers customer service agents, and decreases team productivity.Finding the information needed to resolve issues is often an obstacle, especially when data is stored across isolated databases and departments.Solution: AI-augmented processes can create a single system of action that brings front, middle, and back offices together to quickly and proactively address customer issues.Automation and AI tools aimed at simplifying case management and resolution can help improve efficiency. A self-service portal containing troubleshooting guides and AI-driven chatbots for real-time assistance can empower customers to troubleshoot without waiting on hold.
2. “I’m not confident in the company’s service.”Last year, Singaporeans faced one of the worst service disruptions ever. An estimated 810,000 online banking attempts at DBS and Citibank failed, as did roughly 2.5 million payments and ATM transactions, according to The Business Times. Banking wasn’t the only sector affected by disruptions.Our research found that 70% of Singaporeans encountered service disruptions from key providers across a range of industries. On average, each Singaporean experienced two disruptions per year, yet many of those disrupted chose not to reach out to customer service for help. More worryingly, 29% feel businesses make it intentionally difficult to get proper service or resolution.Solution: Be clear, honest, and transparent with your customers. Every organization experiences service disruptions. Prompt identification and trustworthy communication of these issues can help ensure they don’t turn customers away from the business for good.It’s worth noting that 27% of Singaporeans feel that being warned about issues in advance is key to good customer service—an increase from 20% in 2020.Being responsive works: 64% of Singaporeans who had five or more interactions with a company over the past year had a high level of trust in the organization’s ability to handle unexpected issues.3. “I don’t like using chatbots.”More than one-third of Singaporeans believe chatbots and automated services can’t understand the complexity of their issue. Although these consumers remain skeptical about chatbots’ usefulness, only 37% said they prefer to speak to a human.We’re seeing a greater willingness by younger generations to solve issues themselves through digital channels. More than half (56%) of Generation Z reported using self-service options, such as guides, wikis, and automated services, more frequently last year.This sentiment isn’t shared by older generations, however, as 55% of baby boomers prefer to speak directly to an agent.This suggests that Singaporeans aren’t intrinsically chatbot-averse—they just want to feel valued and supported when contacting an organization.Solution: Educate customers and support agents about how and when to use chatbots. For example, simple, low-urgency matters, such as requesting basic product information and scheduling appointments, can be easily handled by chatbots. Encourage this by providing options for seamless escalation if customers encounter problems.Chatbots and automated systems that are designed well and fully integrated with a robust, inclusive customer support system can greatly improve resolution times and help customers avoid long waits on hold.
4. “I don’t feel heard.”Singaporeans report having trouble connecting with organizations. Indeed, 40% say they experience poor service because "customer service is not listening to me"—a twofold increase from 2021.This lack of connection hits younger customers harder. Gen Z is more likely than other generations to feel less heard (47%) and that organizations make it deliberately difficult to seek help (33%—the national average is 29%).Solution: Tailor your customer experience strategy with greater empathy for customer pain points and acknowledgement of their preferences. It’s important for leaders to put themselves in the shoes of their customers to better understand their needs, as well as identify gaps in systems.Leaders should also look for ways to consolidate existing customer and operational data to better understand different types of customers and their needs and behaviors. This can provide insights to help increase personalization and segmentation, as well as speed and accuracy when responding to service requests.MedAire, an international emergency healthcare company, automated processes using LIKE.TG Customer Service Management. The solution helped MedAire manage “fit-to-fly" health assessments and improve communication with more than 5,000 airports, airlines, and teams in handling medical emergencies midflight.In-flight app integration provides crews with real-time access to information and guidance and has resulted in a 10% reduction in the time it takes to conduct a health assessment.Closing the gapsIt will take more than technology to close Singapore’s customer experience gaps. Organizations will need to adopt fresh approaches to digital business strategy that can scale efficiently to address diverse customer needs.Choosing the right platform to unify fragmented customer data and processes has never been more important. The faster Singapore organizations can act, the better—for the nation’s consumers and economy.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations deliver frictionless customer experience.
LIKE.TG and the future of work
John Donahoe kicks off Knowledge18LAS VEGAS—LIKE.TG President and CEO John Donahoe took the stage this morning in front of some 18,000 registered customers, partners and employees at the company’s annual user conference.During his 90-minute presentation , Donahoe laid out an ambitious vision for the future of work, based on LIKE.TG’s purpose, a core aspect of which is the belief technology should enable people – and help make the world of work, work better for people.He also unveiled a new brand identity for LIKE.TG reflecting this purpose, showcasing the company’s Customer Success program and previewing new mobile capabilities in the upcoming LIKE.TG Platform (Now Platform) release. “We’re at an inflection point in history,” said Donahoe. “The next three to five years will be a revolution at work.”He compared this revolution to the sea change in consumer tech experiences over the past decade since the launch of the iPhone – the advent of intuitive, cloud-based consumer platform offerings from the likes of Amazon, Uber, and eBay PayPal, the company Donahoe ran before joining LIKE.TG in early 2017.Donahoe argued workplace IT experiences have generally lagged behind the consumer world. “With born-in-the-cloud platforms like LIKE.TG, there’s no reason not to serve up the same great experiences at work that we get at home,” he said.LIKE.TG sells cloud-based workflow automation software. Donahoe noted there is public debate about how automation and AI are shaping the future of work. “Is the goal to eliminate jobs or to enhance the quality of jobs?” he asked, referring to widespread fears automation will put people out of work.Donahoe made clear LIKE.TG is in business to enhance the quality of work. The company’s goal is to provide experiences that enable people to focus on more meaningful work, not just be more efficient and productive.He contrasted the new LIKE.TG logo (play video below), which features a human form in the design of the letter “o” in “Now,” with the old logo, which featured an “o” in the shape of a PC power button. The goal was to place people, rather than technology, at the center of the brand, he said./content/LIKE.TG-blog-docs/en-us/servicematters/wp-content/2018/Youmoji_H.264-Quality-1.mp4Donahoe described LIKE.TG as a proud partner to the thousands of IT pros in the audience who are using the Now Platform to deliver great experiences across the enterprise, from IT to HR service delivery, customer service management and security. He unveiled LIKE.TG’s new Customer Success program, which he said has been a top strategic priority for the company over the past year.Designed to help customers maximize the value of LIKE.TG in their organizations, the program includes dedicated Customer Success teams and an online hub that presents best practices drawn from the company’s most successful customers.Donahoe noted top-performing LIKE.TG customers share four common traits:
First, they are committed to using out-of-the-box functionality, while minimizing customization. This allows them to accelerate upgrades and benefit from the latest Now Platform features and tools.
Second, successful customers tend to have clear leadership and governance protocols in place. This allows them to upgrade the Now Platform in weeks, not months.
Third, they also invest in change management by working with partners who deploy certified LIKE.TG professionals and are building LIKE.TG centers of excellence inside their organizations.
Finally, Donahoe explained the most successful LIKE.TG customers use the Now Platform to drive business outcomes. They set clear goals, and then monitor and measure rigorously to make sure they achieve those goals.
Donahoe reinforced his points by calling customers to the stage to share how they use LIKE.TG to deliver great experiences for employees and customers. Patricia Tourigny, senior vice president for HR shared services at Magellan Health , explained how this healthcare provider used LIKE.TG to build a self-service employee portal called VERN, short for Virtual Employee Resource Center.Later in the morning, Accenture CIO Andrew Wilson explained how his team uses LIKE.TG and other key platforms to deliver great experiences not just to the consulting giant’s 442,000 human employees, but also to the thousands of nonhuman algorithms that work alongside them. “There’s an irony there,” Wilson said. “In an age of ultra-fast technology, humans are more important than ever.”LIKE.TG’s Founder and Chairman Fred Luddy was seated in the front row of the audience for Donahoe’s speech. One of the biggest applause lines of the morning came when Donahoe asked the founder to stand and recalled why Luddy started LIKE.TG in 2004.Luddy’s goal was to “build a cloud-based platform that would enable regular people to route work effectively through the enterprise,” Donahoe noted. And 14 years later, this remains the core of LIKE.TG’s purpose as a company.
4 customer experience insights from the Singapore government
In many parts of the world, government and good customer experience are poles apart. That’s not the case in Singapore.The LIKE.TG Customer Experience Intelligence Report for Singapore found that 82% of Singaporeans feel their government provides customer service of a quality equal or superior to that of the private sector. And 85% of citizens believe Singapore is widely regarded as a world leader in citizen experience quality.This is no accident. It’s the result of a clear strategy and consistent execution. From my time in public service to corporate leadership, I’ve witnessed firsthand the evolution of Singapore’s government to raise the bar in citizen-centric innovation. Here are four customer experience insights that may help leaders in the public and private sectors.1. Put the whole above its partsOne thing that distinguishes the Singapore government’s customer experience is its unity. All digital public services can be accessed through the country’s Singpass system, a single sign-on mechanism linked to each Singaporean resident’s national identity card. Singpass makes transferring data between departments and agencies seamless.The government also continues to make strong progress on its “No Wrong Door” policy, whereby citizens are promptly routed to the right agency for their situation—regardless of the agency or channel they initially contacted. This is particularly relevant for complex transactions such as business licensing.For example, instead of going to different agencies for health, environment, and public safety, entrepreneurs should be able to contact any one agency to handle the entire process.This aligns with what citizens increasingly want and expect. Our research found 37% of Singaporeans want more connectivity between government services, while 45% want to reduce the number of people they need to speak to from different departments.
A unified experience is especially important to the six in 10 Singaporeans who rank repeating themselves to multiple people as one of their top customer experience gripes.To create a truly unified experience, leaders can start by bridging departmental silos with common threads such as centralized identity management or single sign-on. These can pave the way for more integrated services and synchronized responses to customer issues, ideally built on a common platform and data model that connects the dots without having to rip and replace decades of prior technology investment.2. Acknowledge customers’ expectationsConsumer apps and digital channels have set entirely new standards for customer experience. Citizens don’t expect anything less from government—something Singapore acknowledged early on in exercises such as its Smart Nation strategy.Besides defining bold targets around citizen and business satisfaction with government services, the strategy held public servants accountable to adopt specific improvements, such as support for prefilled digital forms, e-signing, and e-payments.These improvements matched the best customer experiences in the private sector and made the citizen experience faster and more efficient as a whole—something one in two Singaporeans demand from government today, according to our research.A more unified customer experience will only take hold if it’s built on a strong understanding of customers’ expectations and challenges. Tools for sentiment analysis and process mining can better quantify how customers are feeling and what processes are letting them down. Making public servants accountable for continuously improving these metrics is the real key to effective policy and strategy.3. Don’t take trust for grantedWhen services are digitized at scale, any attack or downtime has a multiplied effect on citizens. The impact on public trust is particularly severe: More than 80% of Singaporeans say that if a company gets hacked and loses their data, they’ll stop using it.In addition, 70% have less trust in companies today to keep their data safe than they did a year ago. As a result, cyber resilience and risk management are constantly prioritized and communicated by the Singaporean government.
Systems like Singpass boast an enviable track record of defending against data breaches while the government invests continuously in ensuring citizens are alerted to potential cyberthreats.For leaders, the lesson is simple: Put cybersecurity at the core or risk losing the trust of customers. Adopting strategies to automate compliance and minimize exposure to cyberthreats, with regular audits of cyber processes enterprise wide, can go a long way to safeguarding public trust in customer experience.4. Instill an efficiency cultureSingapore’s public sector has a constant drive for greater efficiency. Every year demands greater productivity and automation, with the savings being reinvested into improved customer experience and areas such as infrastructure, skills, and welfare.Any leader who can deliver these efficiency dividends will likely enjoy greater support for their own agenda. Technologies such as generative AI (GenAI) can provide a significant efficiency boost. Case summaries generated by our Now Assist GenAI experiences are helping agents eliminate tedious review work more than 50% of the time.Leaders will also benefit from encouraging their teams to innovate for efficiency that serves the public interest, rewarding solutions that can do more faster without compromising accuracy, empathy, or security.The time is nowSingapore’s government has been investing in the strategy and technology of world-class customer experiences for decades. As the proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”Customers can’t wait for a more cohesive, efficient customer experience. Neither can governments or enterprises if they want to achieve their targeted business outcomes.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations deliver frictionless customer experiences.
