The pandemic outbreak has not spared any business. In the past 18 months, even digital natives – big and small – that are intrinsically more agile than traditional institutions have had to quickly adapt to the shifting landscape. As businesses across some states in Australia continue to navigate lockdown restrictions, customers expectations continue to rise, putting pressure on businesses to invest in customer experience (CX) to meet those needs.
It’s imperative for businesses to remain agile and maintain their high level of CX as they scale up operations. Agility is tied to business success, and to be agile, businesses need to tick these three boxes:
1. Make it easier to hear what customers are saying
The ideal for any business is to understand customer needs and know how to respond to feedback or opportunities that arise. But how can you get there? Firstly, it’s important to have reliable ways to listen to what customers want and take note of how they want to communicate with your team.
Providing customers with the right channels and improving self-service will help streamline the way customers interact with your business. Not only will offering customers their channels of choice make it easier for them to engage with your business, it will also enable your customer support agents to manage requests more effectively and help improve their efficiency.
While it’s critical for growing businesses to keep a pulse on evolving trends – such as channel preferences – it’s equally important for businesses to stay on top of customer data. Access to real-time data provides businesses with a more unified view of their customers, allowing for more insightful, agile decisions to be made.
2. Design your team and processes to stay productive through change
Agility hinges on having people and processes that are nimble and adaptable through change. Introducing automation to streamline repetitive tasks means customer service agents have more time to spend on more complex work. In addition, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities such as chatbots are a must-have for any business with scalability in mind.
Building out workflows is also beneficial for growing teams because they help automate the routine administration of incoming tickets. Potential issues can be escalated to admins, and workloads can be more easily balanced across teams if there’s a spike. Ultimately, workflows increase quality, transparency, and control – resulting in a smooth and seamless experience for customers and agents alike.
3. Invest in flexible technology that supports your CX goals
When it comes to tech investments, scalability and usability should be foremost, particularly for small businesses. It is common for small businesses to adopt tech tools that help address short-term needs of meeting increased customer demand, but it’s important to consider a long-term view by making tech investments that can integrate easily with each other and therefore, are scalable as the business grows.
When integrating apps, look for a CX solution that complements your existing system. You might already use collaboration apps like Slack or Zoom, and being able to integrate them with the new tools you bring on board will help your team access customer data, move quickly to solve customer problems, and remain on the same page. Put simply, with the right apps, you can work smarter, not harder, your business scales up.
Agility depends on both speed and effectiveness, and empowering employees with easy-to-use, collaborative tools will help them respond faster to change. If it takes several tech staff members to amend a process, then you aren’t being agile.
Agility should be top of mind for any business looking to scale up while also delivering exceptional CX. With the above steps combined, businesses can ensure they’re ready to adapt to change and continue to provide their customers with the standout experiences they are looking for.
