How to design a CX that saves money and minimizes customer effort

Business has been turbulent in recent years, and sadly, the near-term economic outlook, with whispers of a recession turning into a near-constant tremor, looks bleak at best. In front of customer experience (CX) leaders, such precarious times usually mean two things: cut costs and automate where possible. To achieve those goals, a doubling of customer focus chatbot and automation solutions is certainly a tempting proposition, so it’s no wonder the chatbot industry is expected to have a $102 Billion Industry by 2026an increase of $17 billion in 2020.

Chatbots can’t outrun humans

However, the current crop of chatbots have a bad reputation to consumers and companies that use them. And of course, you still need to deploy human agents in the most valuable customer service conversations. The CX success in this next chapter of our economy is therefore not determined by those who automate the most through chatbots. It will be in their ability to best leverage a division of labor between bots and human agents, putting bots in the best position to succeed cheaply, and humans in the best position to impact profits.

Here are three ways CX leaders can do this today.

1. When deploying bots, “value-based routing” is a must

The sad fact is that I see little to no consideration being given to routing when it comes to chatbot implementation. There seems to be a “deflection at all costs” mentality where the first line of engagement is always a bot. As consumers, we’ve all experienced the horrific results: Regardless of the nature of your query, you’ll inevitably have to deal with a bot in the beginning, and only after you’ve used up your patience and demanded a human being escalated to another channel. (Hopefully it’s for a human, but often it’s for email support or a FAQ.)

CX leaders need to approach routing much more thoughtfully by first understanding that not all queries should be attempted by a bot first. Advance planning in determining the types of interactions best left to human agents will yield huge benefits in CSAT and NPS scores.

To maximize savings while maintaining or even improving the quality of customer service interactions, CX leaders must implement a value-based routing system for deploying bots. This means that low-value interactions are automatically routed to bots and high-value interactions are automatically routed to humans. Value is measured by the risk of revenue loss and the potential of revenue gain.

This is in contrast to ‘complexity-based routing’, where the gap between bot and human-led queries is based solely on the complexity of the interaction (ie how technical the nature of the research is).

Often there is an overlap between low value and low complexity. However, in very important circumstances they differ. A well-known example of this are product requests. Often these questions can be “resolved” by getting simple product information and sharing it with the customer, which is quite simple and can be easily handled by a bot.

However, delegating product queries to a bot is a huge missed opportunity. If a consumer asks about a product, chances are they are interested in buying it. A well-equipped human agent in this situation can develop a rapport with the customer, learn more about their interests and why they are specifically interested in that product to create a much more enjoyable and productive customer experience. The result is a much higher probability of purchase (and likely customer repeat purchases) than what the bot could do by just solving the question.

By directing a single product request to a human, the brand can generate an incremental amount of revenue or loyalty. But over time, the value-based routing system can make or break the cost of a CX organization, especially during times of economic turbulence.

2. Use empathy widely

As businesses grow, it’s challenging to maintain excellent, personalized customer service — what worked for 1,000 customers, won’t work for 100,000. CX leaders must invest in tools and processes that result in “empathy at scale” or in technology-enabled, personalized information that can create a real connection with a customer.

In practice, empathy on a large scale gives human customer service agents valuable information, such as what the weather is like where the customer is calling from or what they have recently purchased. CX representatives can use this data to connect with each customer and get feedback on how the product is working for them. When genuine and natural conversation is paired with effective problem solving, you’ve set the stage for a repeat customer who trusts your brand.

And this kind of empathy is exactly what customers demand. With 68% of consumers involved with brands under the expectation of empathy [subscription required]only 38% of consumers really feel like a brand to do show empathy consistently. Needless to say, a chatbot alone cannot provide the empathetic experience that people are looking for. But humans do have that ability. And the technology is available to enable them to be empathetic and develop a human-to-human understanding in every conversation.

And there are real consequences if customer expectations are not met. In case of platoontheir booming word-of-mouth success came to an abrupt halt in 2021, largely due to hundreds unsatisfied costumers share their bad experiences publicly. Peloton’s fault was not only that they couldn’t solve their customers’ problems, but they also didn’t have a CX team trained and equipped to show empathy and understanding. If customers are willing to share their concerns or concerns directly with the company, the company should recognize these questions as valid as well as valuable.

3. Implement bot-human collaboration that minimizes customer effort

The goal of CX, and the focal point of any well-designed CX integration, is to solve the customer’s problem quickly and easily. We encourage all our customers to prioritize the CES (Customer Effort Score) metric when it comes to measuring the success of their CX program. CES is a survey sent to consumers after interacting with a brand asking, “How easy was it to solve your problem?”

CES is a simple yet incredibly powerful statistic, a that has been proven be the strongest indicator of customer loyalty. When it comes to improving CES, bots and humans together can be more than the sum of their parts if they can share information, learn, and seamlessly escalate customer issues and resolve them in as few steps as possible.

There are two processes that leaders must put in place to get the magic of the 1 + 1 = 3 CX equation. First, when a consumer explicitly requests to speak to a human, that request must be honored. There are few worse customer experiences than asking for an agent and being thwarted. Just think of your last phone call to your local cable company. Second, when an investigation is escalated from a bot to a human, the transfer must be seamless. All the necessary information about the consumer and why he started a chat in the first place should be given to the agent in a way that enables him to take over the conversation most quickly. Whenever the consumer has to repeat information, he puts in more effort than he should.

Every business works hard to attract customers, and a bad CX can be an unnecessary awkwardness at the finish line. In uncertain economic times, every fumble becomes incredibly costly. To create lasting, positive relationships with customers and bring in their repeat customers, decision makers must use CX technology to better solve problems and do it as efficiently as possible. CX should be seen as an omnichannel operation, where chatbots, technology and people all work together to solve customer problems and build positive personal relationships with customers. As with any form of technology, chatbots are best used to enhance the customer experience, not replace it.

Amit Sood is the CTO and head of product at simple.