Navigating the Growth Dilemma: Is Your SME Ready for CX Tech Enhancement?

In the dynamic landscape of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the journey from startup to a burgeoning business is marked by several challenges. One such challenge that often surfaces on this growth trajectory is the age-old dilemma of hiring the right talent. As an SME teetering on the cusp of expansion, the need for strategic decisions becomes paramount. Let’s deep dive into the question: Is your SME ready for CX (Customer Experience) Tech Enhancement?

The One-Leg-Kick Motto:
In the nascent stages of an SME, the “one-leg-kick” approach, synonymous with doing whatever it takes to survive and outshine competitors, is often the driving force. This mantra has likely been the backbone of your business, propelling it forward with limited resources. However, as revenue grows and the business evolves, the simplicity of this approach begins to wane.

The Growing Pains:
As SMEs witness a surge in revenue, new challenges emerge, and the one-size-fits-all strategies lose their effectiveness. One is in a constant battle for the right CX based talent! Hiring, which was once a straightforward task, now becomes a strategic puzzle. The maximum budget allocated for hiring restricts the number of new recruits, intensifying the pressure to get each hire right. The stark reality is that unlike multinational corporations (MNCs), SMEs might not have the luxury of endless attempts to hire the right CX agent.

The Need for Right Hires:
The success of any organization, regardless of its size, hinges on its workforce. For SMEs, the impact of each employee is magnified, making the recruitment process a critical determinant of success. Hiring the right individuals is not just about skills; it’s about finding individuals who align with the company culture, ethos, and can contribute to its growth. What more the training, and retention strategies thereafter?

CX Tech Enhancement: A Strategic Imperative via AUTOMATION!

By now, one might have heard about Omnichannel, Generative AI, Chatbots, and etc. It’s high time your business entered the Customer Experience (CX) Tech Enhancement, a game-changer for SMEs seeking to overcome their growth challenges. Investing in CX technology is not just about adopting the latest trends but about strategically positioning the business for sustainable growth. Here are 4 reasons why it’s a must!

1. Efficiency through Automation: Omnichannel Adoption

CX technology streamlines processes, automates repetitive tasks, and enhances overall efficiency. This is particularly beneficial for SMEs grappling with limited resources, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by routine operations.

360 view! An Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center tackles the hurdles of collecting Customer Experience (CX) feedback by offering a consolidated platform for interactions across diverse channels. For example, linking various communication channels: voice, video, email, web portal, social media. It facilitates real-time feedback collection and accommodates various communication modes, fostering personalized interactions and enabling instant reporting.

This setup streamlines feedback collection and report analysis, ultimately improving the customer experience. In essence, it prevents potential sales decline resulting from subpar customer service, ensuring that a great product or service maintains its momentum.

SMEs should choose an omnichannel platform which have all these offerings ready, such as
Accordia’s Omnichannel which provide linkage to Accordia’s Voice, Accordia Desk, Accordia Chat, and Accordia Social.

2. Personalized Customer Interactions: ACE Powered Chatbots.

In the era of personalized experiences, CX technology enables SMEs to understand their customers better. From data analytics to AI-driven insights, businesses can tailor their offerings, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Hence, chatbots are truly the perfect solutions.

However, moving from traditional chatbots to a Accordia’s ACE AI-powered chatbots will help propel the overall CX experience for your customers even further. At the same time, freeing you from the hassle of scouting for human talent on these repetitive task. Whereby these chatbots are able to perform it for you with the level of precision, adhering to company standard-answers, 24/7 and 365 days.

3. Scalability without Overhead: Start with Cloud Solutions.

One of the major hurdle for SMEs are managing technology implementations, where the concern is always the higher cost. But as we progress, there’s always the good news for SMEs on this front.

Cloud based solution is one type of CX technology that provides SMEs with scalable solutions, allowing your business to grow without incurring substantial overhead costs. This is crucial, for businesses with budget constraints, ensuring that growth is sustainable and profitable both in human capital and technology expansion at the same time!

The beauty of Accordia’s Cloud Contact Centre based solutions are you can scale UP or scale DOWN! Providing you with the best flexibility.

4. Empowering the Workforce: Flexibility, Accountability, Trackability.

Adopting CX technology empowers employees by providing them with the tools and resources needed to excel in their roles. This, in turn, contributes to a positive workplace culture and enhances overall productivity.

Employees or agents don’t perform well when there’s headwind and less guidance in obtaining the correct information to advise the customers. Easily demotivated, should there be no clear directions if left without a supervisory guide, and feeling of distance and not being heard, if there’s no interaction or feedback from core management.

With a CX and EX integrated platform, the above can be supported by the right tool via automation. With a few clicks and prompts, lower level employees or agents can feel supported. Managers or supervisors in turn are able to monitor service levels via statistics that can be produced easily. The managing team can benefit from consolidated data and make better informed decisions.

As your SME business stands at the crossroads of growth, the decision to embrace CX Tech Enhancement is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic imperative. While the one-leg-kick might have served well in the early days, evolving times demand a more sophisticated approach. Investing in CX technology positions your SME for not just survival but for thriving in an increasingly competitive landscape. The key lies in finding the delicate balance between maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that got you here and embracing the tools that will propel you forward.

Is your SME ready for CX Tech Enhancement? The answer might just be the catalyst for your next phase of success. Accordia Global is passionate about CX Tech Enhancement, call for demo!

Revolutionize Customer Engagement: Experience the Accordia Advantage – Your Gateway to Success!

Immerse Yourself in the Evolution of Generative AI in 2024! Wondering about Generative AI? Explore its transformative power!

Are you ready to take-on 2024 CX challenges? We at Accordia Global live, breathe, code, and create Customer Centric values platform! It’s after all our core passion, to continuously enhance ensuring better CX CRM Supports for all stakeholders, consumers/clients, and employees/agents alike.

How Generative AI Enhances Customer Experience:
For it or against it?

Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with a brand, from the first contact to the final purchase and beyond. CX has always been a key factor that influences customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction. An evolution of behaviours from way back in time, when human population began to barter and fast forward later evolving into the way commerce is being practiced today. In today’s competitive and digitized market, CX is more important than ever, as customers expect personalized, fast, and convenient service across multiple channels.

One of the emerging technologies that can help businesses improve their CX is generative AI. With all these talks and multiple articles on Generative Ai, sometimes do we ever stop to think what is generative ai? and how it can help with my daily life and not only in the spectrum of business sense. As laymen, do we understand?

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, or video, based on existing data or inputs. Learning from data and generating realistic and relevant outputs that can enhance various aspects of CX, such as marketing, support, and engagement. Which means, ever since the introduction of “smartphone” artificial intelligence has very much been a part of our lives. We forget how it has propelled us this far in elevating our daily lives. Businesses have been using these technologies to better serve us – the consumers.

Shall we explore some of the use cases and benefits of generative AI for CX, as well as some of the challenges and best practices for implementing it?

🔺Use Cases of Generative AI for CX

Generative AI is being applied and its usage is being continuously improved in these various domains and industries, such as e-commerce, healthcare, education, entertainment, and more.
How? One should think with businesses who are at the forefront in ensuring CX takes priority in their business expansion goals, the word OMNICHANNEL is certainly not something new at this stage. It’s onwards to the next stage of how to power these Omnichannel platforms to be even more efficient and “human-like” when dealing with their customers.

“McKinsey’s State of AI report shows more than half of companies are investing more than 5% of their digital budgets in AI. One such fiction-come-true generative AI platform making headlines in the market is ChatGPT. Source: Forbes”

Here are some of the examples of how generative AI can be used to improve your company’s CX overall journey:

🦾 Personalized Marketing:
“Get yourself ready, the world won’t wait for you,” he said. “Life will always have ups and downs, just like how our fingers are made. Therefore, don’t worry; rather have the mindset not only to change but to also revolutionise.” Quote by Dato’ Lewre, Royal Couturier, pioneer of Bespoke footwear. Source: DCInterNet.

Revolutionise your business strategy with the help of Generative AI. But first one needs to “identify” Which customers are the right target market for Bespoke services. Which can command high-value. This is one of the important aspects – the correct target market.

Generative AI then proceeds in helping marketers to create personalized and engaging content for their target audience, such as emails, ads, landing pages, social media posts, and more. Analysing customer data, such as demographics, preferences, behavior, and feedback, and generating tailored content that matches their needs and interests. For example, generative AI can create catchy headlines, compelling copy, and relevant images for email campaigns that can increase open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

🦾 Proactive Support:

Proactively Supporting CX Agents, in order to support your customers with accuracy in troubleshooting and providing solutions correctly. Generative AI can auto-generate customer replies, assist agents as they type, automate note-taking, and summarize call transcripts.

Generative AI is able to help CX agents in leveling up the momentum to support their customers, such as answering queries, resolving issues, and providing recommendations. How? By understanding customer intent, context, and sentiment, and then generating appropriate and accurate responses, based on various knowledge sources, such as FAQs, knowledge base, CRM, and more.

🦾Enhanced Engagement:

Constantly evolving by reading and immediately turning the collected data into what the customer needs’ or potential wants’, Generative AI can help businesses create enhanced and immersive experiences for their customers, such as interactive games, virtual reality, augmented reality, and more.

Bouncing ideas off-Generative AI! Helping to generate realistic and dynamic content, such as characters, scenes, sounds, and dialogues, that can engage and entertain customers. For example, generative AI can create personalized avatars, stories, and scenarios for gamified learning.

🔺Generative AI: The Next Frontier of Customer Experience Innovation

How can I make my business better for my users’ experience? This is one of the forefront questions successful businesses have built on. Making experience better for users, before the next question – how can my business generate more revenue? Because, a product or service is stemmed from a firm belief, a passion and an intent to share with the world that this is a “really great product”! The rest will follow.

“While businesses work on the above, the importance of great CX Support is vital, having the option of Cloud Contact centres for those who prefer flexibility of starting small or for larger businesses who have an allocated tech-team for On-site Contact centres , which can enhance the growth of many businesses across industries. Malaysia is moving into the direction and achieving the goal of being the “Asian Digital Tiger”. Providing incentive to international companies in investing Data-centres here.”

Have you heard this phrase from a disgruntled customer – “I’ll be supporting your competitor, even if their prices are slightly more comparatively, I received the service and my money’s worth.” These sentiments ring true today.

Generative AI changes the landscape of Omnichannel CX Support. Enhancing what was a great platform, into something more better, offering various benefits for businesses and customers.

Chatbots such as 𝐀𝐂𝐄 = 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 • 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 • 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠, it brings a fresh and much welcomed experience to your customer in several ways. After all “Services” are tangible, hence that’s why we value CX Agents who have these soft skills. Now with Generative Ai, we “enhance” these soft skills to the next level. Here are are three great points:

1. Omnichannel Mastery: ACE excels in delivering self-service and personalization through AI, guaranteeing immediate and precise responses across a wide range of channels, including web chat, messenger apps, WhatsApp, and Twitter.

2. Seamless Multi-Channel Connectivity: ACE effortlessly establishes connections with customers around the clock across multiple platforms, enriching satisfaction levels and fostering customer loyalty.

3. Intelligent AI Capabilities: Loaded with cutting-edge predictive dialer technology, extensive knowledge resources, effortless integration, and targeted messaging capabilities, ACE enhances the quality of your customer interactions.

With ACE, you capitalize on customers’ growing comfort with chatbots. It’s time to implement this LiveChatbot to handle FAQs and guide customers to payment pages, reducing wait times and enhancing CX. Take your system to the next level with AI-powered chatbot capabilities, making interactions truly memorable. ACE is your path to transforming CX and making a lasting impression.

🔺Challenges and Best Practices of Generative AI for CX

Generative AI is a powerful and promising technology, but it also comes with some challenges and limitations, such as:

Generative AI can create content for businesses, but it faces challenges such as data quality and quantity, ethical and legal issues, and human oversight and collaboration. Businesses need to ensure that they have reliable and diverse data sources, and apply data processing techniques, to improve the performance and accuracy of generative AI. They also need to use generative AI responsibly and transparently, and comply with the laws and regulations, to avoid ethical and legal risks. Moreover, they need to have human monitoring and evaluation, and quality control and feedback mechanisms, to correct and improve the outputs of generative AI.

Hence it’s utmost important to have a trusted technology partner who is able to support and walk you and your team through all the way in this journey of discovering the benefits of integrating Generative AI.

Is Generative AI a game-changing technology that can revolutionize CX? Certainly! One would not think the world will be turning its back on this technology. Instead, it will only propel many businesses to invest heavily in the next coming years.

However, generative AI also comes with some challenges and limitations that require careful and responsible implementation. Businesses need to ensure that they have high-quality and relevant data, adhere to the ethical and legal standards, and collaborate with human experts, to leverage the full potential and benefits of generative AI for CX.

The pros outweigh the cons at this point of time from many thoughts leader’s point-of-view. Generative AI can help businesses create personalized, proactive, and enhanced CX, that can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Generative AI can also help businesses improve their operational efficiency, productivity, and innovation, and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Does your existing Chatbot system require an overhaul? Or perhaps you are looking to implement a fresh solution to your CX support framework? Partner with someone whom you can trust, for your businesses can ride the wave of changes smoothly. Chat with Accordia Solutions for more insights.

𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠: 𝑰𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑪𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒓’𝒔 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔. What defines generations and within which boundary do you find yourself in? Different people experience it one way or another, just in different contexts.

ACCORDIA GLOBAL @WCIT x IDECS 2023 (4th – 6th October 2023)

Chatbots are the perfect Launch Pad to greater customer engagement & High-value sales leads.

Just as how time is of essence for many FMCG products or services, your response to customers should equally be as important in terms of speed.

Thriving on Product Feedback but Struggling with CX?

Customers are more than willing to pay a premium for a superior experience, as evidenced by the significant investments brands make in crafting captivating unboxing experiences for their products or services. To engaging with KOL’s to Celebrities. These experiences go a long way in enhancing a brand’s image, allowing customers to immerse themselves in the overall journey.

However, it’s essential not to overlook the significance of a continuous “Pre AND After-Sale service.” Both aspects must be executed flawlessly to create a lasting impact on customers. This is where a reliable CX-powered Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center should be implemented, enabling your brand to excel in both realms.

Here are 3 Reasons on Why Customer Service should always be the forefront of your company, and why Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center is the way to go:

“If experience isn’t your strategy, you’re doing it wrong, according to a PwC report. Among all customers, 73% point to “EXPERIENCE” as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, behind price and product quality. Customers are willing to pay more for the experience qualities that matter most to them: 43% of consumers would PAY MORE for greater convenience, 42% would pay more for a FRIENDLY, WELCOMING experience and 65% of U.S. customers find a POSITIVE experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising. As reported by PwC”

👍🏼 Customer experience refers to the overall impression and perception that customers have about their interactions with your company throughout the customer journey.
👍🏼 CX feedback includes customer responses and opinions about various touchpoints, such as website usability, customer support, delivery process, etc.
👍🏼 A positive customer experience can result in increased customer loyalty, advocacy, and word-of-mouth referrals.
On the other hand, a lackluster CX can lead to customer churn, negative reviews, and a decline in customer retention rates.

👍🏼 Some customers may not actively provide feedback unless asked, and the lack of feedback could be due to insufficient engagement or communication channels. However, from a customer’s point-of-view, they might think the company does not value their feedback, hence why bother?!
👍🏼 Negative feedback might be less willingly shared, making it crucial to create a safe and anonymous feedback mechanism.
👍🏼 Analyzing and interpreting CX feedback can be time-consuming and resource-intensive for companies without proper tools and methodologies.

“59% will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience. 32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience. Source PwC.”

An Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center addresses challenges in gathering Customer Experience (CX) feedback by providing a unified platform for interactions across multiple channels.

It helps to gather real-time feedback and supports various communication methods. This setup enables personalized interactions, offers immediate reporting, and allows for ongoing improvement.

Overall, it streamlines feedback collection and report analysis to enhance the customer experience. If you have a great product or service going, don’t allow the sales to plummet due to bad customer service.

Why should you wait further for your company ratings or a competitor product to overtake you? As the saying goes,

“Strike While The Iron is Hot”

👍🏼 To improve customer experience, it’s crucial to actively seek and encourage feedback from customers through various channels like surveys, emails, or feedback forms.
👍🏼 Companies can leverage technology and data analytics to better understand customer sentiments and identify areas that need improvement.
👍🏼Implementing customer-centric strategies, investing in employee training, and refining processes can positively impact CX.

We understand the pivotal role that customer experience plays in building a loyal and satisfied customer base. An Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center solution empowers your team to deliver seamless and personalized experiences across all touchpoints, leaving a lasting impression on your customers from the very beginning to well beyond the sale.

With a state-of-the-art CX, you can streamline customer interactions, gain valuable insights, and ensure consistent excellence in service. By investing in your customers’ satisfaction, you’ll unlock unparalleled opportunities for growth and success in the market.

Don’t let your CX feedback lag behind your product feedback any longer. Embrace the power of our CX CRM-powered Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center and watch your brand soar to new heights of success. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your brand thrive in the world of customer experience.

AI in Customer Service: 4 Essential Factors to Assess Before Adoption.

The rapidly evolving landscape of customer service has led businesses to embrace digital transformation, making the omnichannel contact center an essential component of their strategy. To keep up with customer demands and provide exceptional service, many organizations are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. AI can significantly enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and optimize resources. However, implementing AI is not without challenges.

Before diving headfirst into AI integration, it is crucial for businesses to carefully consider certain factors. In this blog, we will explore three essential considerations to bear in mind before adopting AI in your omnichannel contact center.

The first and most critical step before implementing AI is to identify the specific objectives you want to achieve. Many AI solutions cater to different aspects of customer service, such as chatbots for basic inquiries, sentiment analysis for customer feedback, or predictive analytics for resource management. According to Gartner, Inc., by 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organizations. By understanding your specific requirements, you can narrow down the choices and select the AI technologies that best align with your business goals.

Start by conducting an in-depth analysis of your existing customer service operations and pain points. What recurring tasks could be automated? Are there bottlenecks in your communication channels? What customer needs are currently underserved? Answering these questions will help you focus on the areas where AI can have the most significant impact.

Implementing AI into your chatbot needs to consider a selection of pertinent chatbot metrics (e.g., goal completion rate, abandonment rate, conversation steps, handle time, etc.) to align with the organization’s specific context.

Additionally, involve key stakeholders from different departments to gather valuable insights and ensure alignment with the overall business strategy.

Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report found that 75% of customers expect a consistent experience across multiple channels, highlighting the importance of implementing AI in omnichannel contact centers.

The success of a chatbot hinges on its ability to empathize and effectively address customer needs. Invest in user-centered design to create a chatbot that mirrors natural human conversations and displays understanding. Integrate sentiment analysis to gauge customer emotions and tailor responses accordingly. By delivering relevant and personalized interactions, your chatbot can foster positive customer sentiments.

A McKinsey report suggests that generative AI could further reduce the volume of human-serviced contacts by up to 50%, depending on a company’s existing level of automation, which resulted in a significant reduction in operational costs.

The above example of table provides an overview of an ideal flow of cycle, from a customer’s request through social media channels, up until the issue has been resolved on-field. Made possible with the implementation of an Omnichannel CRM integration.

AI thrives on data, and an omnichannel contact center generates vast amounts of customer data from various touch points like calls, emails, chats, and social media interactions. Before integrating AI, it is paramount to address data privacy and security concerns.

A survey by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) revealed that 86% of consumers “care about data privacy” and want more control, and 79% of consumers are willing to invest time or money to better protect their privacy, emphasizing the importance of stringent data protection measures. In addition, the global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over 3 years, sourced by IBM.

Hence, ensuring that the AI solution you choose complies with industry regulations and data protection laws. Customer trust is vital for a successful contact center, and any data breaches or misuse of information can lead to severe reputational damage. Having a reliable Omnichannel contact centre provider is of utmost importance citing the above examples, given facts and figures.

Invest in robust security measures to safeguard customer data throughout its lifecycle. Implement encryption protocols, access controls, and regular security audits. Additionally, have a clear data retention policy to limit the storage of unnecessary data and minimize potential risks.

While AI can automate various tasks and improve efficiency, it is essential to remember that human agents still play a crucial role in delivering exceptional customer experiences. Implementing AI should not be viewed as a replacement for human agents but rather as a tool to empower them.

A blend of human and AI-driven customer service is important. PwC’s survey of 15,000 consumers across 12 countries found that two-thirds feel companies have lost touch with the human element of the customer experience. Additionally, three-quarters of respondents expressed a desire for more human interaction in the future, not less.

Ensure that your AI systems are seamlessly integrated with your existing infrastructure and workflows. AI should support human agents by providing relevant information, context, and suggested actions in real-time, enabling them to make more informed decisions and focus on complex customer interactions.

Harvard Business Review predicts that AI could add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This projection has sparked discussions about the potential transformation of our workforce, with some envisioning an unrecognizable landscape by 2040. AI should enhance, not replace, the role of human agents.

Invest in comprehensive training for your agents to help them adapt to AI-driven processes. Encourage open communication channels to gather agent feedback and continuously improve the AI system’s performance.

Embracing AI in your omnichannel contact center can revolutionize the way you deliver customer service. However, to maximize the benefits and avoid potential pitfalls, it is crucial to carefully consider your objectives, prioritize data privacy and security, and foster a seamless collaboration between AI and human agents.

By setting clear goals, prioritizing data protection, and ensuring a harmonious blend of AI and human capabilities, your contact center can offer a superior customer experience that sets your business apart from the competition. Remember, successful AI implementation is a journey, and continuous monitoring and adaptation are keys to unlocking its true potential. Accordia Global can help with that journey!