The New Digital Customer Engagement Imperative For The New (Ab)normal

Why more with digital now

COVID-19, aka Coronavirus, has literally and figuratively changed the meaning of the tech marketing cliché, “digital or death.” Consumers are still very wary of exposure to the virus and want to get more things done digitally. While this had always been the case with millennials and Gen Z, COVID-19 has forced older demographics, who are even more concerned about virus exposure, onboard.

Businesses are opening up a bit, but stay-at-home directives are still in force in many US states with restrictions being eased, only gradually. The economic meltdown, triggered by Covid, requires businesses to do even more with even less. Customer service is no exception to this new reality.

The answer to the soaring consumer demand for digital service and the business need to do more with less lies in digital customer engagement. However, the same old limited digital service capabilities do not cut it in the new environment. The new (ab)normal requires businesses to do more with digital.

• More with digital self-service; chatbots, for example. As phone wait times escalate and in-person interactions remain difficult or impossible, this is a win-win for the business and the customer.
• More with digital choice—self-service or human-assisted—since they are less expensive than traditional channels such as in-person and phone interactions.
• More with proactive digital service, which preempts the very origination of customer service requests.
• All of it backed with consistent omnichannel knowledge management and conversational guidance system across touchpoints since no digital service is better than digital service with no clue!

The new digital engagement at work

Here are some examples from our blue-chip clientele:

• A major tax prep services organization helps taxpayers at scale with a chatbot-fronted, omnichannel digital service and sales process, including human-assisted chat (text and video) and co-browse, all connected together for context and journey continuity. In a way, this company safe-guarded itself against coronavirus more than 18 months ago!
• A large insurance provider handled a 700% increase in customer service demand, while improving FCR (First-Contact Resolution) by 10% amid the COVID-19 crisis
• A multinational bank has been able to empower any employee to handle any call, the holy grail for any contact center, while reducing training needs by 50% with conversational guidance, powered by our AI knowledge solution. The bank vaulted to #1 from #3 in NPS (Net Promoter Score) at the same time!
• A leading telco improved FCR by 37% and NPS by 30 points, while speeding up agent time-to-competency by 50% across 10,000 agents and even 600 retail stores
• A pharmacy chain and healthcare giant provides proactive digital service through notifications across SMS, email, and voice reminding consumers about prescription status, pharmacy pickup, etc. The company has sent one billion notifications over the last three years!
• A financial services giant with over 10 million members provides proactive, omnichannel service based on a 360-degree context of members across the contact center, digital channels, and branch offices. The service organization proactively notifies members about events such as transaction threshold limits reached and impending credit card expiration. The notifications are based on members’ channel preferences and are branded uniformly, while integrating with existing systems for relevant data and events.

We’ve all heard the saying that in every crisis lies an opportunity. COVID-19 has presented a huge opportunity to elevate digital engagement and leave competitors in the dust. Why not get going now?