Keith Dawson's Analyst Perspectives

Zendesk held its customer conference – Relate – along with a session for industry analysts in May. Zendesk develops software primarily for customer service and support and automating aspects of the sales process through customer relationship management. The conference presented an opportunity for Zendesk to showcase several new technology developments that it hopes will solidify its position in the customer experience marketplace.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous in discussions of contact center technology. Vendors are rushing to incorporate it into platforms and applications. And end users have understandably mixed feelings about where it makes sense to use and what its impacts will be. No one should be surprised that AI has arrived, especially for customer support: Software companies have been working on customer experience (CX)- -related AI applications for many years, and the fruits of those efforts have been gradually working their way into real-world tools, particularly chatbots. Solutions that help automate the self-service gateway to customer support are able to boost speed and efficiency in customer interactions, and this can lead to faster response times, reduced wait times, and improved first-contact resolution rates, all of which can have a positive impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Organizations are increasingly seeing the strategic benefits of enhanced customer engagement. But many are struggling to understand how to put a broader customer experience strategy into practice amid siloed processes and departments. Particularly in contact centers, new technology has to be melded onto existing platforms in ways that enhance experiences without disrupting operations.

Contact centers have long collected feedback from customers, usually through short surveys. It is very common for an agent or an automated system to ask for an assessment of the interaction that just occurred, hoping to get the customer's candid, instant view of whether they were satisfied. For the most part, what's learned in those short engagements is very narrow. It can be used for a customer satisfaction snapshot, and it can be used to find out if a particular agent is running into trouble. That is useful, but extremely limited in scope.

Organizations looking to improve the customer experience and contact center operations should closely examine the processes at work in the front-end self-service environment. Technology advancements are converging at this gateway, including artificial intelligence, chatbots and knowledge management. The front end of the customer interaction offers a greater opportunity for customer engagement than most organizations realize.

Modern business relies on having a clear, continuous understanding of customer perceptions and intentions. That insight is increasingly used to deliver them experiences that they would consider excellent, in turn leading to higher satisfaction and more profitable relationships. Qualtrics, a provider of Experience Management (XM) software, focuses on creating applications that analyze customer interactions and feedback so that different teams across the enterprise can better identify opportunities and challenges.

At its March 2023 analyst conference, 8x8 described a significant pivot in its focus. Going forward the company will be emphasizing the Contact Center (CCaaS) side of its portfolio, which to this point has represented a small portion of its overall sales. It made several product announcements to bolster the argument that it can effectively meet the needs of complex contact center operations while continuing to provide business users with a UCaaS solution. The overall XCaaS platform is aimed at both markets, which have been converging for several years.  

Contact centers are very often keen on optimizing their costs through automation. Technology vendors supplying this market have recognized this need, and in the past few years, they have been putting workflow and automation tools front and center in their offerings. This has raised some questions among practitioners about the most effective strategies for implementing automated processes.

The Internet of Things describes machines and objects that are enhanced with sensors and communication connections, enabling them to report on their operational status, including outages, faults or threshold conditions that require attention. The technology has gradually made its way into business and consumer systems over the past decade. Today, these connected devices are playing an important role in customer experience processes such as field service.

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories derived from RFP responses submitted by customer experience (CX) vendors. These categories reflect the real-world criteria required by organizations for CX software procurement. Using this methodology, we evaluated vendor submissions in seven categories: five relevant to the Product Experience — Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability — and two related to the Customer Experience — TCO/ROI and Vendor Validation.