CX: From contact center afterthought to core competency

Insta-worthy houseplants and cushions or influencer-endorsed apparel – the ‘Checkout with Instagram’ feature is a game-changer for retailers.

Just the latest example of ways in which brands are looking to reinforce their customer experience (CX) and deepen their relationship with their audience.

But before you start factoring a potential Checkout uplift into your predicted sales, remember that great CX is not just about how slick your social is. At its core, it still exists in your contact center.

Whether you’re offering support via friendly sales advisors, SMS capabilities, or a toll-free support line, what matters is the quality of your engagement and support for customers, not to mention the consistency of experience across different channels.

Get these things wrong and it doesn’t matter how frictionless your purchasing journey is.

As your business grows, your CX operations will need to scale up too.

Typically, a good CX strategy will be built around a centralized contact center and/or CRM And while this might start off as multiple physical centers in every country you operate in, the more you scale your operations, the stronger the arguments for centralizing and migrating these components to the cloud.

Agile contact centers, always on and available

Research from Stratistics MRC shows the global cloud contact center market growing from $6.2 billion in 2016 to $31 billion by 2023.

What’s driving this growth is changing consumer expectations – for example, being able to connect immediately with a support agent no matter what time of day or night.

Forget about telling your buyers that their call is important but they’re number 63 in the queue – you’ll need to be able to hire more agents in order to stay responsive.

The cloud facilitates rapid and agile expansion – just what you’ll need when a celebrity tags your product and your sales shoot through the roof. Most importantly, cloud enables you to differentiate your business by making your CX a true competitive advantage.

Look for a CX uplift at the point of sale and beyond, including driving engagement and repeat purchases through better support and outbound sales and marketing campaigns.

Taking the next step in the contact center journey

We’ve got plenty to say about the big ideas shaping contact centers and we’ve partnered with NoJitter on a white paper outlining the key questions for enterprises plotting a roadmap to cloud-based CX centers.

Aside from the whys and the hows of moving your contact center to the cloud, take a moment to consider what some of the most successful companies around have done to take their CX to a different level.

For giants like Netflix or Airbnb, their (cloud-enabled) CX is a core competency, not just an add-on.

Owning every touchpoint with their customers, building on the data from every interaction, and making it easy to get seamless support across devices means creating new value for their businesses.

This is where customer experience meets customer service; the difference between an old-school cable TV company helpline and the omnichannel support from Netflix baked directly into their platform.

Making great CX happen

Whatever the current size of your enterprise, you’re likely to have already identified the cloud as the cost-efficient, agile solution to many of your contact center needs, including core telephony and CX.

When considering the potential benefits of cloud, compliance has historically been a sticking point due to security considerations. But today, cloud communications can be (and should be) just as compliant as your legacy telephony.

Maybe you’re gung-ho about choosing an all-cloud CX center from the get-go.

In reality, a hybrid solution of legacy premises plus a combo of outsourced, offshore solutions and capabilities developed in-house will ensure smooth continuity of service and maximize ROI on your pre-existing infrastructure investments.

This is all par for the digital transformation course. A common approach is to buy the core infrastructure, then build the apps that give you valuable ownership of your CX. Voice and messaging are mission-critical here – they’re the cornerstones of communicating with your customers.

Whatever your mix, don’t lose sight of what matters; investing in reliable, scalable technology that empowers you to deliver your best CX, grow your business, and enhance your reputation.

The customer is always right – your challenge is to facilitate them telling you exactly why anytime, anywhere, and anyhow they choose.