OpenMarket – November 14, 2019
Nearly every big brand out there knows the benefits of communicating with customers via a multi-channel approach.
That’s why 88% of CX leaders interviewed as part of our Empathy in the Age of AI research wanted to understand which mobile messaging channels their customers preferred.
And that’s why 98 per cent of them said they recognize the importance of communicating empathetically across all channels.
Meanwhile, 84% of consumers called on brands to give them smooth interactions on channels that suit them.
But here’s the thing, if a multi-channel approach is so important, why isn’t every brand doing it?
Empathetic, multi-channel experience
The Empathy in the Age of AI research – a survey of more than 4,000 consumers and 600 CX leaders – sets out the scale of the customer experience challenge facing brands.
More than three quarters (77%) of CX leaders say their businesses need to review and overhaul their CX strategy within two years to ensure they become efficient and empathetic. And more than half (55%) feel they need to do this within 18 months.
The top three concerns about their customer interactions are:
– Too generic, not personalized
– Knowing which channels to use and when
– Too complex / customers moved from channel-to-channel or person-to-person.
But CX leaders seem to feel powerless to address these concerns:
– 83% struggle to integrate existing systems and processes
– 81% of their teams lack expertise and resource to design workflows and processes
– 80% don’t have foundations in place to communicate with customers in an automated fashion on various channels.
Nearly all CX leaders (93%) call for communication platforms that are easy to use, with only little training necessary. A similar number (91%) call for ease of integration into existing workflows. And 92% call for easy-to-use templated workflows.
The research report reveals important insights for brands that want to improve their CX using AI and automation.
And findings from consumers and CX leaders suggest a multi-channel strategy involving email, call centers, and mobile messaging is the way forward.
A multi-channel customer experience platform
But the report’s sister strategy paper goes deeper.
It sets out how AI-powered orchestration could help you simply route interactions through the most effective channels – reducing costs and improving CX.
In other words, a communications platform should be able to take your message and send it on the most appropriate channel – auto formatting it along the way. In other words it should gracefully degrade the richness and content of messages to suit whichever channel is right for the customer.
All automatically – without you having to do any thinking or legwork.
Download the Empathy in the Age of AI research paper here.
The strategy paper is coming soon.