I was beyond excited. I had the perfect gift for my wife for our anniversary planned out. After doing some initial research I had an ad pop up on my Instagram feed that provided exactly what I wanted — a personalized canvas with our wedding song on it. I pictured my wife opening up the package on the day of our anniversary and being overcome with emotion. I was sure that I had “husband of the year” in the bag. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as I had planned.
The order process for this personalized canvas was very straightforward. I specified how I wanted the canvas to look and provided the exact wording, the canvas size and the design. It was three weeks until our anniversary so I believed I had plenty of time. I put in the order and they sent me an email that said it would take them one to two days to provide me a proof and then another one to two days to complete the canvas before shipping it. It was exactly what I saw on their website before I ordered. I knew I was cutting things a little tight but wasn’t worried. After four business days, I approved the proof they sent me, I kept waiting to get the confirmation that my order was shipped. After four more days I emailed them on a Friday asking where my order was. I started to freak out as I was down to a week before our anniversary.
I finally heard back from them on the following Monday (as they don’t work on the weekends): “We are a little backed up on our orders. We had more orders come in that we weren’t prepared for“. While they were extremely apologetic in their response they were putting my “husband of the year” award in jeopardy. Two days later I emailed them again asking when my order would be shipped. They responded quickly that it would be shipped the next day and to my relief, it was. It’s too bad that it was shipped on the same day as our anniversary.
My wife is very understanding and wasn’t upset. I was disappointed though as this whole situation could have been avoided. Organizations need to consider how they can be more proactive in their approach to the customer experience so they don’t let down their customers and instead create lifelong customers. This is at the core of becoming an intelligent customer experience (CX) organization.
What Is an Intelligent Customer Experience?
Intelligent customer experience involves leveraging technology in tandem with data to create a better overall customer experience. This includes sharing data between the different teams such as marketing and customer service, creating new roles to act on the data, and leveraging new technology such as AI.
Eliminating the Silos
Too often, organizations suffer from a lack of communication between different functions such as marketing, customer service, sales and manufacturing. The loser in all of this is the customer, and ultimately also the business, as companies will lose potential revenue and customers.
Intelligent customer experience organizations have more open communication and data transparency which creates a more fluid transition between the discovery and buying customer journey stages. As an example, the manufacturing team at the customized canvas company should have informed the marketing and support teams that orders would be delayed. They then should have updated their website and order emails so I would be aware of any delays and sent me proactive communication about these delays while I anxiously waited for updates. Instead, I was the one that had to reach out to their customer service team a few times for updates. The friction points that existed in my customer journey could have been avoided by breaking down the silos within this organization.
Use Data to Provide a Differentiated Experience
The second component of an intelligent customer experience organization is leveraging the data you have about the customer to provide a better customer experience. This was the first canvas that I was purchasing from this company, yet there didn’t seem to be an acknowledgment of that. I felt like any of their other customers. If this data was appropriately used they could have:
- Proactively reached out when they realized that my order was going to be delayed.
- Routed my issue immediately to the next available agent.
- Provided me with an exclusive and personalized offer as a first-time buyer to help drive repeat business.
We’re seeing organizations with an intelligent customer experience mindset collect more data at each touchpoint. They are also creating new roles that combine CX and analytics to help deliver on an organization’s CX vision.
Embedding Artificial Intelligence
The last component of an intelligent customer experience organization is applying AI to inject automation and machine learning into the customer experience. AI takes advantage of the data that you have and helps organizations act on it in ways that could never be done before. This not only generates additional revenue but can result in significant cost savings.
During the purchase of my customized canvas, AI-powered technology could have detected a delay in the processing of my order and proactively sent me an email without having to reach out to the customer service team. Another example is having an AI-powered chatbot on their website that could have provided me with an updated status so I didn’t need to wait until Monday to receive a response. These examples are just a small slice of what AI can do. Smoothing out these areas of the customer journey by leveraging an intelligent customer experience mindset is what transforms a good customer experience into a great one.
The Time for Intelligent CX Is Now
We need to go beyond providing a great customer experience — customers are expecting more. Intelligent customer experience organizations break down the silos that exist between different departments, collect more data and better leverage existing data, and embed AI into their CX processes. This ultimately creates an extraordinary, frictionless experience for your customers that will result in brand loyalty and ultimately drive a more profitable business.
Check out Kustomer’s full research report for a plethora of additional data on what the future holds for CX organizations.
P.S. While it was late, the canvas has a special place in our home and reminds my wife and me of our wonderful wedding.
