The global pandemic has forced enterprises to rethink their operations. Managing a remote workforce now means managing a decentralized, enterprise customer and technical support function amidst Customer Experience Management (CXM) challenges. This has inspired shifts in business models. Consequently, the digital transformation of product and technical support has now become an enterprise priority.
The post-COVID-19 world will bear an increased dependency on technology, smart devices, and software to enable ‘business-as-usual’ outcomes. Adoption of these technologies during the pandemic has created a new ask from an organization's support functions. By analyzing the current flux in the market, we have designed a 'reimagined' technology support ecosystem that addresses CIOs, CTOs, and product owners’ business needs. This ecosystem has identified five core solution/themes, which we believe should be the top investment areas for support teams:
- Integrating conversational AI assistants: Voice bots, chatbots, or any AI-powered omnichannel collaboration service allows responding to L0 and L1 queries in a fraction, including identifying and resolving repetitive questions. This approach reduces the cost to serve by almost 15-70%₁. Beyond this, conversational AI assistants focus on creating a personalized 'iExperience' for customers across channels, a key priority for customer retention.
- Product lifecycle management services: Product lifecycle management is pivotal to customer experience management. Enterprises must not lose focus on customer onboarding or management, despite tight revenue management. For a Fortune 500 digital printing major, we managed nearly five million asset installations and three million+ annual transactions across channels, optimizing yearly spending by 30%. One of the critical impact areas is improving asset utilization by 9% and a 12% increase in remote solves, reducing expensive field visits, a crucial post-pandemic cost metric.
- Collaborative AR/VR support: Enabling engineers with better support tools is critical. We are designing a support option that offers remote assistance by integrating live video and AR-based imagery. It allows engineers to handle complex technical queries without dispatching field technicians.
- Cloud contact center and remote workforce: Focus on WFH solutions due to the COVID-19 reset has seen a 20-30% uptick in cloud platform adoption. Working with global freelance and crowd-sourcing majors allows us to manage a decentralized team through an intelligent cloud contact center solution. Its fluid algorithms and interfaces bring in real-time reporting, quality management, and people management that adhere to security protocols, while maximizing resource availability and skill diversification, creating an integrated ‘iEnterprise.’
- Customer journey reimagination: Designing a 'digital transformation strategy' involves customer journey mapping and making that intelligent. For some customers, we have enhanced their backend support through ML-based ‘data cores’ to manage employee performance and design staffing patterns based on agent persona and customer demographic. The customer journey mapping eventually translates to a support ecosystem that focuses on better CX.
The current crisis need not be an obstacle in how you can innovate to connect with your customer. For enterprises in the middle of a digital transformation journey, this is the right time to accelerate adoption. iEnterprise transformation demands putting together a digital support roadmap today — one which has planned incremental steps for reaching their N+5 goal in the next 12-18 months. With 19+ years of experience in enabling our clients to embark on new frontiers in support across industries, we bring the right balance in process excellence and innovation to help you establish your digital transformation strategy.
- Deloite Digital. (2019). Conversational AI: The next wave of customer and employee experiences. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/strategy/au-deloitte-conversational-ai.pdf
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