Crafting Great Customer Experiences – Cisco’s Story

As an example of a OneOffice journey underway, Cisco saw an opportunity two years ago to transform the business, in large part using automation to take out costs and improve efficiencies, in turn re-investing into a redesign of the business to better support the customer. Focusing on these quick wins and “low hanging fruit,” Cisco has been able to see real benefits in terms of simplifying operations and creating efficiencies by experimenting with ways to create more seamless processes for customers.

As the fog lifts on the business services industry, we are having more realistic discussions with services customers and providers exploring fundamentally different ways to deliver a digital customer experience. Digital means different things to different businesses and there is a wide breadth of maturity when it comes to supporting digital customer engagement and becoming a customer- or human-­ centric organization.

In a recent HfS webinar with Ian Pestel of Cisco and Chris Caldwell of Concentrix, we talked about how operating with the customer always in mind can help enterprises align with a shared vision of creating a better customer experience, the HfS OneOffice concept. These “immersive” customer experiences leverage mobile, social, and interactive technologies for meaningful analytics and a real-time digital interaction for the organization and its customers, employees, and partners.

This isn’t an endeavor to be planned overnight; the design of a OneOffice framework is a company-wide effort involving many stakeholders. In a recent survey, we asked respondents where they felt their organizations are on this OneOffice journey and where they want to be within the next two years. The range of maturity levels is broad, but a key data point is that 52% of respondents want to achieve a OneOffice operating model within the next two years (see Exhibit 1). Relatively few (21%) see themselves as operating in this model currently.

Exhibit 1: OneOffice Maturity

Source: HfS Research, 2017, n= 154

As an example of work underway, Ian Pestel, Head of Global BPO Vendor Management at Cisco, described Cisco’s journey to OneOffice. Two years ago, Cisco saw an opportunity to transform the business, in large part using automation to take out costs and improve efficiencies, in turn re-investing into a redesign of the business to better support the customer. Focusing on these quick wins and “low hanging fruit,” Cisco has been able to see real benefits in terms of simplifying operations and creating efficiencies by experimenting with ways to create more seamless processes for customers. At a basic level, making things easy and seamless for customers is one of the greatest goals of a OneOffice effort. Cisco is very excited about the opportunity to get customers to the right person the first time by putting smart technology and design on the front end-– including automation and analytics – and then putting smart people into the support.

Enterprise Appetite and the Path Forward

Not all enterprises are as advanced in their thinking about this as Cisco. One of the webinar listeners asked whether most enterprises truly have the capability, or even the appetite, to tackle such an undertaking. Chris Caldwell, Concentrix CEO, felt that many of its clients are just at the start of this journey—which is also reflected in the survey findings—but competition whets the appetite. New and innovative companies, sometimes seen as “disruptors,” are more aggressive about a digital customer experience and are driving more traditional companies to change.

As Ian described from his experience, it’s important to pause, reflect, and look at the big picture – not just the technology. The tools are an enabler, but the biggest changes will be to process, policy, governance, and talent and human capital management. It also will involve retraining, re-skilling, and hiring new types of talent. In particular, as automation and self-service becomes more advanced, companies will need to re-think their people strategy to better support these interactions. Our study found a high level of interest in interactive automation, not just with the traditional rules-based chatbots but also with more sophisticated cognitive agents that use natural language processing and experiential learning to enhance customer experience.

The Bottom Line: There is no silver bullet, but lots of levers to pull

In addition to internal talent and digital technology, the OneOffice paradigm is changing how clients and service providers work together. To get the level of integration needed to deliver an ideal customer experience, Ian noted that Cisco is looking for service partners to integrate people, tech, and process to take on this effort sustainably, which means working even closer with providers. The fight to take out cost and improve quality will continue, so clients will look to providers who can impact both of those elements. There is also tremendous value in thought leadership and rethinking talent models; technology will ultimately not deliver on the transformation, people will. Customers are looking to a mix of different types of service providers, all which are working hard to carve out a niche in the OneOffice ecosystem. The OneOffice journey ultimately needs to be a conversation between IT and business operations, between services providers and buyers – a holistic effort toward putting the customer first will drive the thinking and the investment.

Read our initial Creating Great Customer Experiences Point of View here and stay tuned for more data and insights from the study in our upcoming research.