Digital Solutions That Turn CX and EX into Powerful Growth Drivers

There’s no denying the link between customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). Satisfied employees create better customer experiences, which in turn drives business growth (BG). Investing in both areas can create a sustainable competitive advantage, boosting profitability by 21% to as much as 95%, as I discussed in this blog and this blog.

What kind of technologies lead to better performance? Here are five targeted investments that unlock the power of CX and EX as growth engines.

1. Seamless Digital Access

Essentially, this means providing customers with an effortless and intuitive experience across all your service touchpoints. The goal is to eliminate friction in the customer journey by ensuring that users can easily access support regardless of how they reach out or jump around.

Omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value, a 250% higher purchase rate, and a 13% higher order value compared to those who primarily shop using only one channel. Seamless digital access gives these high-value customers more fluidity, consistency, and personalization in their buying journey. It’s no wonder that companies investing in this area see 3x higher year-over-year revenue and a huge boost in customer retention, not to mention 7x lower cost per contact.

This kind of investment played a key role in some major transformations for one Avaya customer, including an 80% improvement in voice response times, 20% improvement in case resolution, 22% reduction in number of abandoned calls, and 11% increase in customer satisfaction (CSAT).

2. Intuitive Self-service

Customers want to easily find information, solve issues, and complete transactions on their own. Research shows that companies that implement smart self-service – advanced self-service solutions that leverage technologies like AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to enhance the customer experience – improve customer effort twice as fast as non-users and see more than twice as many positive brand mentions on social media – boasting higher overall CSAT.

What kinds of self-service solutions really make a difference? One great example is a chatbot that uses conversational AI.

This kind of chatbot can understand and respond in everyday language, keeping track of conversations and remembering previous interactions to tailor responses based on what customers have already said. It can also use data from past conversations to offer personalized replies, recommendations, and solutions. If needed, it can seamlessly escalate the conversation to a live agent or direct customers to other self-service resources like FAQs, tutorials, or forums.

This investment was a significant one for the above-mentioned Avaya customer. They developed a brand-new chatbot from scratch, complete with over a dozen self-service workflows, easy agent escalation, and conversational AI. As a result, they enhanced customer engagement, reduced costs, and improved both the speed of service and overall customer satisfaction.

3. AI and Automation

From real-time speech recognition and data analysis to AI noise removal, 70% of organizations are exploring how AI can enhance CX and EX in the contact center to drive business growth.

Here are two ways our customers are leveraging Avaya’s AI-powered CX platform:

• Standard Focus, a business process outsourcer (BPO), is using Avaya’s AI to analyze its historical data – examining past customer journeys, identifying important trends, and pinpointing CX issues that can be resolved. Call handling is down 50% with this strategy, and the company’s abandonment rate most months is under 1%. They’re also enjoying a 50% enhancement in efficiency through cost reduction. 
• Many of our customers are exploring biometric authentication through AI, which provides a more efficient and secure identity verification process than passwords or knowledge-based authentication (KBA). It typically takes 60-90 seconds to verify and authenticate a customer using these traditional methods. Eliminating this time has been proven to save as much as $3 per call while dramatically lowering the risk of contact center fraud. 

4. Advanced Analytics and Workforce Engagement Tools

Workforce engagement has evolved beyond just training and feedback. Today’s world is one of digital collaboration tools that connect and empower, data analytics to gain insights into behaviors and preferences, hybrid and remote work models, and a greater emphasis on employee well-being and autonomy. How can the contact center address these evolving needs? By prioritizing the holistic human experience.

This is what one Avaya customer, Aflac, did. Over the last 18 months, the company has increased its number of tenured specialists by 10% (tenured defined as frontline specialists who have been in the company’s contact center for more than a year), reduced average handle time by 15%, and significantly increased its customer ease scores. 

5. Customer Journey Orchestration

Want to improve CSAT by up to 20%, increase revenue by up to 15%, and lower contact center costs by as much as 20%? These are the proven results of customer journey orchestration, according to one study conducted by McKinsey. It’s no wonder nearly 60% of customer service and support leaders plan to invest in this area in the next 12 to 18 months.

Customer journey orchestration involves examining customer behavior across various channels and touchpoints to strategically enhance the overall experience. By gaining a comprehensive view of the customer journey, companies can create relevant personalization that strengthens connections and fosters a genuine sense of intimacy. Learn more about how customer journey orchestration acts as powerful growth driver.

Ready to start hitting new numbers? See how Avaya Experience Platform can seamlessly integrate these cloud capabilities into your current contact center environment to unlock your organization’s true growth potential.