Simplicity and empathy are rewriting CX for the virtual economy

The Situation: Today’s leadership mindsets are full of aspirations to ensure their business is future-proof in the virtual environment. For customer experience (CX) leaders, that translates to a simplified, frictionless customer experience. But creating simplicity is a complex undertaking.

Today more than ever, CX is the great differentiator making or breaking success for companies. The pandemic-induced disruptions of last year exposed many broken processes and lifted customer friction to an all-time high. Many enterprises decided to step back, re-examine their approach, and design a new strategy to improve customer experience and their brand.

HFS, with support from Tech Mahindra, organized a digital roundtable in January 2022 to discuss what firms are doing to re-imagine their CX-related processes. More than 20 CX executives from around the world attended the event, representing major industries and geographies (see Exhibit 1). So, what are CX-savvy firms doing to write off legacy CX and rewrite the future of experience? Read on.

Exhibit 1: More than 20 CX professionals from around the world attended the roundtable

Source: HFS Research, 2022

Talent, not tech, is the key to re-wiring CX

For the first time, we’re looking at the fluency of business and technology together in a hybrid environment, and CX lies at the heart of it. Digital fluency must be cultivated by the organization—it is ultimately a skilling initiative.

The attending SVP of CX at a major US insurer discussed the uplift occurring when teams become more engaged in agile development and collaboration with IT. The upskilling process helps teams shift from what was likely slow-paced, task-oriented work to becoming strategic thinkers driving CX to get to metrics that matter.

When asked to rank the most important initiative to help “re-wire” and improve CX at their organization, 40% of roundtable respondents in Exhibit 2 ranked training and reskilling as the top imperative. Training and reskilling is seen as the pathway to move employees beyond rote work to more collaborative and strategic capabilities.

Exhibit 2: Empowering employees is the top initiative for CX improvements

Sample: 15 CX DRT Delegates
Source: HFS Research, 2022

The devil is in the data—the roundtable sees data quality and data access as the top two barriers to CX excellence

The top two challenges to CX are both data-centric. Number one in Exhibit 3 is the concern about data quality, followed by the inaccessibility of data across the customer life cycle due to organizational silos. A Senior Experience Owner of a major North American insurance firm shared the challenge that “Data is still the toughest part—to have good data across the organization. It’s still disjointed. We’re putting a lot of effort on the data component.”

Reaching and responding to the customer throughout their journey are critical for reducing barriers to data. The Consumer Design Director for an international banking firm comments on the nature of rewriting their CX, “The customers see us as one business, so we have to give continuity from any point they engage with us. We’ve had to go right back to how we imagine and consolidate data to respond to customers in a more meaningful way.” Data, of course, is also a powerful tool for decision making. VP & Sr. Customer Experience Manager for a leading North American financial institution targets data and decision making for speed; “In a modernized tech environment, we can move faster and stronger, but where do we move to next? We want to be more proactive and ahead of [the customer] so leaders who make decisions can do so at any given moment.”

Exhibit 3: Data quality and silos trump all other CX challenges

Sample: 15 CX DRT Delegates
Source: HFS Research, 2022

Building and maintaining customer trust, particularly in this “new normal” of remote interactions and self-service experiences, is at the forefront of CX culture

Our delegates found transparency, accountability, communication, and “security by design” the key building blocks for maintaining customer trust. The only way of earning customers’ trust is by being honest and delivering on what you promised. When it comes to consumer data privacy and hyper-personalization at scale, most delegates agreed that there is one way to get it right: Earn the right to get data from customers, and be clear around data usage.

Most CX teams take cybersecurity risks seriously and are becoming more cyber aware. According to the Global Head of Service of Optimization in large banking and financial services company, “CX teams are trying to be as proactive as possible in understanding and managing cyber risks. They are now closely working with security, risk, and compliance oversight functions to better assess risks and respond to threats or incidents.” In general, cybersecurity awareness training has significantly increased for employees and customers.

But implementing digital trust must not frustrate customer experience. It is important to reach a balance between frictionless experience and digital trust. As the CEO of a company offering customer engagement solutions notes, “Customers will trust you even more when experience and engagement become even easier. You need to get customers to love you and almost become invisible.”

Simplicity and empathy emerge as critical factors for CX leaders

The EVP–Head of Business for an international telecommunications group clearly articulates this directive, “I run B2B for the organization; our single greatest aspiration is to make a very simple and empathetic CX for all customers.” Many of the delegate firms represented are taking an empathy-led design approach, particularly for customer interactions involving sensitive topics. But empathy is fundamentally putting yourself in your customer’s shoes; practically speaking, what makes sense for what the customer is trying to achieve? Milos Djokovic, CEO, Eventus Solutions Group, conveys that “Digital-first is great, but it has to be good … Do it right, or don’t do it at all.” So just because you have some bells and whistles on your tech capability doesn’t mean they should be implemented; design the experience from your customer’s viewpoint.

The Bottom Line: Talent, data, and trust are the building blocks for re-wiring CX in the virtual economy.

CX of the future is being designed for simplicity. Creating a frictionless customer experience will be a lynchpin of competitive differentiation across all industries; top CX leaders today are taking bold approaches to re-thinking experience through the eyes of their customers.