89% of ‘highly confident’ business leads say expanding their use of digital channels has improved CX
Two-thirds of business leaders feel they are in an effective position to meet modern consumer expectations, and their confidence is leading to increased investments in solutions across multiple parts of the company, according to research published by Verint.
The Melville, NY-based provider of applications designed to drive customer engagement surveyed close to 3,000 business leaders to produce its report: Closing the Engagement Capacity Gap.
While Verint found 33 per cent of those surveyed aren’t confident in their ability to deliver modern CX, it focused on analyzing the behavior of business leaders who are. Overall, 85 per cent of the highly confident cohort said they had expanded their use of digital channels over the past year. Eighty-nine per cent found these investments had been highly effective in improving CX, the study said.
There was also strong support for the use of technology tools such as chatbots, which 72 per cent of highly confident leaders had found effective. That could be why 54 per cent said they were increasing the budget dollars allocated towards chatbots and other forms of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs).
“Many business leaders believe their digital-first engagement, workforce management and quality and performance efforts have given them a sure footing to improve customer engagement and experience delivery,” the company said in a statement accompanying the report. “But the threat of a global recession, budget cuts and a challenging labor market are causing significant disruption .”
360 Magazine Insight
The Verint study is curious in that it wasn’t able to dig deeper into the underlying source of confidence among 67 per cent of the leaders it surveyed. The authors suggested not putting all your eggs in one basket could be key, but there is surely more to this story.
It would have been interesting to know, for example, if they had achieved a similar lift in common areas such as customer satisfaction, reduced call volumes or even repeat purchases.
Similarly, “quality/performance” was cited as the top area that was getting more budget dollars (by 57 per cent), but these weren’t really defined. The other two areas were social and messaging channels (56 per cent) and chatbots/IVAs (54 per cent).
It also would be helpful to see through the research what the “not-confident” proportion of the respondents need to feel their efforts are more effective. Perhaps some need greater executive buy-in, or example, or support and collaboration with their peers in myriad lines of business. Maybe some just need more time to assess their use of digital channels and chatbots — and where necessary, to optimize their use of them.
The report also delved into talent management issues. Verint said more than half of business leaders rated coaching and mentoring, supporting employee well-being and skills training as their three most critical areas. Perhaps investing in the employee experience — even more than in tools and technology — could build greater confidence too.
