Event recap: Industry leaders share their tips for CX success

A great customer experience is the priority of every business, but it’s often easier said than done. Across two events on October 25 and 27, SmartCompany and AWS gave businesses the chance to dive into the world of customer experience, hearing from esteemed guest speakers from Deloitte, Amazon, NAB, Vodafone NZ and nib. If you couldn’t make it, here’s a recap of the major themes from the talks:

Bridging the gap between customer service and digital channels

Simon Stefanoff, Deloitte Digital Contact Centre Lead, spoke about the importance of businesses approaching customer experience in a ‘holistic’ way that brings customer, call centre agent and operational experiences together. Stefanoff has coined the term ‘right-channelling’, which is “a singular strategy across absolutely everything that identifies the best way to serve a customer. It has all the channels pulling together to get the best result for the customer.” 

For Mark Bayliss, Executive Direct NAB, the approach has been about picking the strongest channels for customer experience – such as in-app messaging – rather than trying to meet customers in every single digital channel. “Having a couple of good digital channels and a couple of good human channels and making them work together is the key. ‘Digital first and human when it matters’ – that’s our strategy for the contact centre. It goes to show how important it is to connect them, but connect them with fewer channels.”

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Improving agent experience

Kris Thornley, Head of Channels Technology, Vodafone NZ, suggests that to improve the customer’s experience, businesses need to first improve the contact centre agent experience through upgraded digital technology and effective cross-channel communication. “We want to make [the contact centre experience] as easy as ordering a pizza, but you can’t put that expectation on agents unless you make their lives simple too.” 

Pasquale Maio, Vice President and General Manager of Amazon Connect at AWS, proposed a similar idea, noting the importance of putting good technology in front of agents in light of a recent 1000% increase in customer service traffic, high agent attrition and increasing customer expectations. Cloud-based technology like Amazon Connect allows businesses to gain valuable data insights quickly, scale contact centre volume without limits and, importantly, makes the work of agents easier. “When the customer’s in front of them, they’re focused on the customer and not fighting the technology,”

Starting with a customer-first mindset

While the technological side is vital, Beck Condon, Senior Manager and Product Owner at NAB says that good CX starts by thinking about what the customer values first, using technology to meet those expectations. “We need to think about, what’s the ultimate outcome we want to achieve for the customer? Then work with the technology teams to bring that solution to life.” This philosophy is the same taken by nib, with Group COO Matt Paterson reflecting on how the business started from scratch, transitioning from Genesys to Amazon Connect and using it as an opportunity to redefine the entire CX model with a focus on the customer. “Don’t let the technology drive it, let the customer drive it.”

For Deloitte Cognitive CX Director Michelle Crain, understanding customer needs starts with first understanding your organisation’s business model. A closer understanding of the relationship between business model and customer will allow you to invest in more tailored CX solutions. “You tend to find that there’s two distinct groups in those business models – you’ve either got a relationship-based organisation or you’ve got something a little bit more transactional. If you’ve got a more transactional organisation, then we really need to make investment decisions around what aspects of the customer behaviour are really interesting to us. If it’s something like ‘is my customer going to churn?’ then yes, that is something that I’m interested in and I will invest in.”