Top Seven Tech Tools That Help You Avoid Customer Experience Pitfalls

Customer experience is the differentiator, and it is often considered the product in today’s business environment. When everything else is commoditized, how do you differentiate? It is through customer experience.

Customer experience is all about creating effortless, memorable, and personalized experiences.

However, you continue to use outdated technologies and tools, which frustrates your customers, ultimately affecting your bottom line.

Don’t fret! The good news is that technology can help you transform the way you provide experience to your customers.

Let us look at seven tools that can help you offer exceptional customer experiences.

1. Ignoring AI-Powered Chatbots: Don’t Kill Your Revenues

AI-driven chatbots can handle routine and transactional queries, which amount to more than 80% of the queries. It helps you provide instant response, freeing up your agents to handle complex queries.

Here are some statistics:

• AI-powered chatbots can reduce customer service costs by up to 30%.
• 69% of consumers prefer chatbots for quick answers to simple questions.

Real-World Example

Bank of America’s AI assistant, Erica, has facilitated over 2 billion interactions, assisting more than 42 million clients. It answers queries, provides banking insights, and even detects fraud.

2. Neglecting Omnichannel Experience: Don’t Frustrate Your Customers

Today, your customers would want to reach you through multiple channels, such as email, voice, chat, SMS, video, website, mobile, and social. Sometimes, the same customer can switch between channels depending on where they are communicating from.

If you have a fragmented system and all of these channels exist in silos, it would lead to frustration for your customers.

With omnichannel contact center , you would have a single view of your customers across all your interfaces and channels.

Here are some statistics:

• Businesses with strong omnichannel support retain 89% of their customers.
• Poor omnichannel experience drives 73% of consumers to switch brands.

Real-World Example

A major airline saw its customer complaints reduce by 40% within six months after implementing an omnichannel support system. Passengers can seamlessly switch between channels, and the best part is they don’t have to repeat themselves.

3. Overlooking Self-Service Portals: Don’t Burden Your Agents

How often have you looked to find answers yourself before calling customer care? Plenty of times, right?

Imagine having a knowledge base or a FAQ portal; the number of calls you make to customer service would come down drastically.

What does this do to the agents? They’d be free to handle complex queries instead of getting bogged down by routine transactional queries.

Here are some statistics:

• Businesses with effective self-service reduce call volume by up to 25%.
• 91% of customers say they’d use an online knowledge base if available.

Real-World Example

Zendesk reports that 67% of its customers prefer self-service over speaking to a representative.

4. The Data Chaos: Are You Disregarding CRM Systems?

Do you have a CRM system that captures all of your customer interactions across all your channels? I bet you should have one.

This would ensure organized customer data, personalized interactions, and near-zero misses on follow-ups.

Here are some statistics:

• CRM-driven personalization can increase revenue by up to 15%.
• 74% of businesses say CRM improves customer relationships.

Real-World Example

Mariott International uses a sophisticated CRM to track guest preferences and ensure personalized experiences, from preferred room types to dining habits.

5. Underestimating Sentiment Analysis: Are You Missing Out on Customer Emotions?

How do you gather customer insights?

Businesses use multiple ways of gathering them, like sending surveys and having one-on-one conversations. These are stated insights.

How about the unstated ones?

Do you do any sentiment analysis to understand whether your customers are happy, unhappy, or neutral? You must use sentiment analysis tools to gauge your customer opinions and act on them proactively.

95% of unhappy customers don’t just complain; instead, they move to your competitors.

Here are some statistics:

• Companies using sentiment analysis see a 25% boost in customer satisfaction.

Real-World Example

Coca-cola leverages sentiment analysis to assess reactions to its marketing campaigns, ensuring alignment with customer expectations.

6. Neglecting Social Media Monitoring: Are You Missing Out on Conversations That Matter?

I recently posted a negative Google Review about a brand after a bad experience. Did the brand respond?

They had a straightforward way to access Google Reviews, and they responded to me immediately. They acknowledged the problem, offered possible reasons for the bad experience, and also gave me an offer to compensate for my experience and the time I lost.

Likewise, every business should monitor all the common social and web platforms where customers would converse about you.

Here are some statistics:

• 78% of customers expect businesses to respond on social media within 24 hours.
• Businesses that engage positively on social media see a 20 to 40% increase in customer spending.

Real-World Example

Starbucks uses AI-driven social media monitoring to address complaints in real time, improving brand perception.

7. Underutilizing Real-Time Analytics: Are You Operating in the Dark?

Do you understand how you are going to engage with your customers? Do you have the means to figure out what their next obvious purchase from you would be, or are they looking at repeat purchases?

Customer lifetime value is a key metric that every business should monitor and measure to be successful.

How do you get these insights? You can use real-time analytics to get these insights proactively.

Here are some statistics:

• Businesses using real-time analytics improve agent productivity by 25%.
• 89% of customer service leaders say data-driven decisions enhance performance.

Real-World Example

Amazon relies on real-time data to enhance customer recommendations, increasing sales by a whopping 35%.

How do you move from being reactive to proactive in meeting your customer’s needs?

It is by leveraging technology and making use of tools mentioned in this article. With these technologies, your customer interactions will become seamless and delightful.

In the world of customer experience, falling behind is not an option anymore. Start leveraging technology to your advantage and ensure that you delight your customers.