CX+EX=BG, with added AI: A winning formula for customer experience

AI at the heart of CX

The importance of AI in CX is also highlighted in research from customer experience technology provider Zendesk, whose Future of AI-powered CX report notes that AI will be at the heart of the emergence of the new CX organisation. In this future paradigm, says the analysis, CX organisations will become leaner, faster and more effective, with AI at the helm to streamline processes, personalise engagement and handle a higher volume of customer interactions. The study notes that this evolution will likely lead to smaller CX teams, with 64% of industry leaders surveyed expecting downsizing due to AI’s ability to simplify operations while delivering high-quality service to customers.

With IT leaders confident in AI’s ability to maintain quality service, the report also forecasts a fivefold increase in customer service interactions, making operations smoother, decisions sharper and boosting market competitiveness. It adds that as AI takes over routine tasks, it will enable teams to be more efficient and control costs, allowing for effective scaling of business operations even as customer interactions increase, reshaping the roles of agents, administrators and IT leaders to prioritise specialised skills.

The report also plots out AI playing a pivotal role in every customer interaction, stepping in to handle initial enquiries and maintain consistency across all service platforms. With AI projected to resolve 80% of interactions, the study predicts that as a consequence human agents will turn their focus to more complex tasks, while AI uses data to tailor and improve each customer’s experience.

Why employee experience matters

Tailoring and improvements were very much emphasised at Engage 2024, where Avaya chief revenue and customer experience officer Marylou Maco noted that CX and business growth are inextricably linked, and that the modern contact centre has now become “the tip of the spear” at the beginning of the customer journey and customer experience. She added that there was one thing that was central to all of this: agents.

“The future belongs to companies that are embracing CX plus EX. Those brands that are making that investment are becoming a new category. And that category is loyalty leader within their industry”

Marylou Maco, Avaya

“[Agents] are oftentimes the first conversation. They are representing a brand. They are representing an experience. They are the centre of the conversation. And sometimes in those conversations, it’s the first time we’re interacting with a brand, or maybe it’s a final conversation. Either way, that experience matters. What that really says is that the agent [fulfils] a business-critical role in all companies. Because the experience they have as an employee oftentimes will shape the conversation they’re having with customers. And that oftentimes determines whether it’s an amazing conversation, or one that doesn’t exactly go the way you’d like it to go. Their experience as an employee matters greatly.”

While stressing the belief that CX/EX convergence was now proven and that Avaya was very committed to making sure its formula works for its customers and for its customers’ customers, Maco suggested that using the concept was still really a choice that businesses needed to take actively, for their own gain.

“The future belongs to companies that are embracing CX plus EX, and we’re seeing in real time that those brands that are making that investment, that are leaning in, are becoming a new category. And that category is loyalty leader within their industry. And when they’re a loyalty leader they become differentiated and they have a competitive advantage. Why is that happening? It’s happening for a simple reason – these companies are investing in technologies that build deeper loyalty with customers. And when they do that well, they really stand out in the customer experience.”

While the technology to achieve these aims is new and rapidly advancing – embracing AI, sophisticated business processes, either on-premise, in the cloud or hybrid – it must also be stressed that creating experiences in the round is nothing new for business. Maco cited The Walt Disney Company as one organisation that has created experiences that have crossed generations and is seen as a clear leader, having done “incredibly well” in experience generation.

“They have become a master of building these cherished memories,” she said. “This company is an iconic company. They literally live by their truth, and that truth is that when your experience is magical in their brand, it transcends across generations and it builds life-long memories. Many of us have experienced the Disney brand. And one common factor is we keep coming back. How do you keep the customer experience front and centre?”

A touch of magic

For Disney’s director of infrastructure and support, Ben Yon, a key factor is that the organisation has been “very intentional” about who it hires. It wants to make sure that the people it is bringing on board are aligned with its vision that the customer experience is the most important thing to deliver.

“We did some studies a few years ago which showed that there are a lot of cast members that our guests interact with when they come to Disney World, but the longest single interaction happens in the contact centre space. We tell our cast all the time that it’s our opportunity to not just support the brand, but to enhance the brand. Let’s find ways to make each of those interactions – whether it’s a sales planning opportunity or a service opportunity – let’s make sure it’s magical. And then that pixie dust is extended not just in the parks and resorts, but for the entire experience.”

Another key element of ensuring CX at Disney involved listening to the agents and understanding their experiences. Agents were aware of the need to reduce handling time on calls, but the general consensus was that focusing on this was putting pressure on them. More importantly, reveals Yon, it was forcing them to behave in a way that was against what Disney actually wants from an experience standpoint. This meant replacing handling time as a metric with the “trust index”.

“We worked with this outside vendor, and they take the Six Sigma approach to the sales interaction,” says Yon. “They break it down in about 58 different parts, each one correlated to a different outcome. Sometimes it’s an attempt to return, sometimes it’s revenue preservation. We chose the elements that we thought would help our agents build a more trusted relationship in every interaction with each of our guests. Because at the end of the day, we want them to be a consultant. We want them to bring [customers] along on this journey. And we don’t want them to feel pressure that they’re somehow penalising themselves.

“By focusing on those elements that create a more trusted interaction between us and the unique needs of each one of our guests, our agents invest themselves into that guest experience. We want to make sure [we’re] spending the right amount of time with each guest to make sure their experience is personal and relatable and filled with magic.”

With change comes challenges

While Disney believes it has a magic, winning formula for positive change, what is rather less magical is the threat of change fatigue as IT systems are deployed throughout organisations to bring higher levels of automation and efficiency to processes. For Avaya’s Maco, this is related to the volume of technology changes that are hitting the IT side of businesses on a regular basis. It brings up, she said, a number of challenges to be addressed. How can companies better support agents? How can they train them better? How can they develop them better? How can they invest in them more?

“There’s a very interesting transition from IT and change fatigue to something that’s happening with our agents. This is all about the employee experience. And in the context of the agents in the contact centre, they’re also faced with a number of new tools on a regular basis. Why? Because everybody wants to improve the customer experience. That doesn’t change. Then a number of tools and processes are coming at the agents and they’re dealing with something very similar, and it’s called cognitive fatigue. There are a lot of studies about it. It is really happening. It’s for real.”

As part of her “absolute mission” to immerse herself in customers’ experiences, Maco has spent time with customers, going into their contact centres, sitting side by side with their agents to truly understand how they are using the Avaya Experience Platform, the tech firm’s flagship contact centre and customer experience solution which has been enhanced with AI to offer added automation and orchestration. The aim was to see with her own eyes how the tools are working for customers and what Avaya could do better, and then invest in areas that would make their jobs easier.

Tools for success

Southwest Airlines was cited by Maco as a prime example of a firm that was driving culture and customer experiences through targeted investment in agents’ technologies and practices. Change is just a matter of fact in the airline industry – whether through weather, logistics, or for operational reasons, flight plans change. This affects not just passengers, but also suppliers, service providers and employees, such as the thousands of pilots, attendants and ground crew. Southwest does all this with agents who work remotely across 18 US states.

Southwest’s director of business strategy and initiatives, Sherri Milliken, told Engage 2024 that the company’s contact centre currently has about 3,300 representatives. When the business moved to its remote workforce in September 2022, there was a lot to learn, said Milliken.

“We were just coming out of Covid. We quickly pivoted and moved our folks out to remote, but we knew once we did this that we needed to commit to our employees. The importance of continuing the culture that Southwest is known for [is to] ensure that we’re providing them the level of support they need. Wellness and mental health are top of mind for our customer reps, so we’re now proactively looking at how we partner with our employee assistance programme to ensure our employees have all the resources and education [to be successful].

“We need our employees to feel like they have a sense of belonging to the bigger corporate of Southwest Airlines. Getting resources is the key, and really listening to…what they need so they feel supported. We’re here to serve them.”

To improve CX further, in 2022 the airline decided to open an experience lab. This involves flying frontline personnel monthly into the company headquarters in Dallas – helpful when you work for an airline, Milliken quipped – and then sitting down with the company’s different technology teams and, in some cases, partners. The facility is designed to offer an opportunity to share knowledge and offer advice, such as ‘this programme would be great if we could shorten this’, or ‘it’d be great if we could move this piece over here’, giving the true agent experience to the product owners. Southwest has already seen success with the approach and plans to continue to build on it.

But Milliken stressed there is also a big technology component unpinning the company’s strategy. “We use the Avaya telephony platform as we’ve got to be able to connect to our customers and crews. We have 17 business units on the Avaya platform, and it is crucial that these departments are able to continue to work together so that we can support our crews out there. It’s so important when we have irregular operations that we’re able to quickly talk with our frontline flight attendants and pilots and be able to quickly pivot. And they’re leveraging our Avaya platform for that. Reliability is very crucial for the success of keeping up our on-time airline.”

Far from simple

Is there a simple, one-size-fits-all formula to solve customer experience issues and generate growth? Famously, Albert Einstein said that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Is CX+EX=BG too basic?

Customer experience technology, whose roadmap includes being continually enriched with AI and other advanced functionality, cannot be described as basic or simple.

Concluding, Maco said it was worth repeating that customer experience and employee experience are really about how brands differentiate themselves. Southwest and Disney certainly believe they can fly and add magic this way.