For us, it's about helping customers to help themselves
Customer service and experience expert Shep Hyken once said: "Customers don’t compare your service to that of your competitors. They compare you to the best service they ever received from anyone."
Organisations that enthusiastically embrace the importance of customer experience (CX) as a significant business strategy understand what he's talking about. They don't question the value of CX when it comes to business success—they're all in. Yet despite major investments in technology, they're not always seeing the ROI they'd hoped for. Why is that?
One of the barriers to true CX transformation that we've noticed is that organisations continue to invest in disparate and siloed solutions that, because they don't work together, aren't conducive to a positive customer experience. And they're not the kind of solutions that customers can interact with directly—and that is a major hindrance to genuine CX transformation.
The reality is that in this digital age, no matter what the industry, an organisation's customers are coming to expect automated service that helps them resolve issues themselves. Gone are the days when people would moan "I want to talk to an actual human!" Now, if they're presented with a self-service option, they're much more likely to choose that than remaining on hold.
What this means is that when it comes to providing a positive customer experience, self-service options are no longer 'nice to have', they're essential. Your customers expect to be able to engage with your brand in any number of ways – website, app, social media, chatbots, call centers — and their opinions are impacted and formed based how successful that engagement was. Offering a digital self-service option is also critical to attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
With the advent of Covid-19, the self-service trend has accelerated, but even late adopters of digital self-service aren't looking back once they've seen the results for themselves.
Of course, this kind of user interface (UI) must have robust and efficient back-end processes supporting it. Automating and streamlining those processes is no less critical than having a good user experience (UX) and UI. Speed is just one reason why streamlined processes, including automation whenever possible, make sense to improve customer service.
It's with that in mind that we've collaborated with our partner OutSystems to develop a new eBook on how to create frictionless customer service applications with a modern development platform. It's how your organisation can offer your customers the ability to resolve their own issues quickly and efficiently, without staying on hold waiting for your Help Desk staff. You'll learn how to achieve CX transformation using modern development platforms:
- Customer acquisition - creating frictionless self-service onboarding processes to minimise frustration and drop-off
- Customer engagement - keeping your existing customers happy by providing fast, efficient self-service capabilities any time they interact with your brand. It can happen within customer web portals, dedicated mobile apps and progressive web apps
- Challenges to creating great customer self-service experiences and how to use modern application development platforms to overcome them
- Best practices for digital self-service
- Development platforms - the modern vs. the traditional approach
Once you have checked out this blog on creating better customer service applications with a modern development platform, learn more about how our low code platforms can help your business evolve.
True CX transformation is about recognising that customer expectations are always increasing—they expect more speed, more simplicity, more service, meaning that your challenge is creating a unique, consistent user experience across all channels. A modern application development platform means you can take your new apps to market swiftly, and add new functionalities without endangering current apps.