The key to maintaining CX quality in a down economy

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No business is immune to economic downturn, but automation can help minimise the negative impact on your brand

Business is cyclical. There are times of growth and prosperity, and times of recession and hardship. If the past three years have taught us anything, it’s that we’re better off preparing, instead of predicting. Changes will happen, and they will be outside of our control.

Brand growth shouldn’t be at the mercy of shifting economic trends. Many companies, especially start-ups, are reacting to the current decline of external investment by reducing costs, downsizing the workforce and, understandably, shifting the priority from customer acquisition to profitability.

Brands that previously relied on headcount to scale their CX may find themselves scrambling to figure out how to keep delivering the same (if not better) service to new and existing customers. To keep CX quality high with limited resources, brands need the ability to personalise at scale – which is challenging, if not impossible, with a human-first approach.

Poor CX costs businesses over $75 billion a year. And 67 per cent of customers claim they would switch brands based on a negative experience.

Your best ally to be prepared for anything is automation. Businesses that are growing rapidly need to embrace automation to reduce their overhead, stay (or get) in the black, and continue to grow. And they need to do it quickly.

Despite widespread adoption, some businesses still worry that people find automation annoying and unhelpful. The chatbot industry is expected to reach $102 billion by 2026, but most chatbot solutions can’t deliver the VIP experiences customers expect.

The problem is, many of the solutions – or “chatbots” – out there don’t get at the core of what brands need to scale effectively. I’ll come right out and say it: typical chatbots are a Band-Aid fix. But done right, automation can actually increase efficiencies and reduce costs, without compromising the brand experience.

The key to rapid time-to-value of automation is:

• Defining the tasks best suited for automation, and those that require a human touch. This way, agents can focus on the high-value interactions that drive more revenue and customer loyalty. 
• Choosing a modern AI-powered platform. One that allows you to build personalised brand interactions without code of developer dependencies. This means the non-technical staff that know your CX best can design and deploy interactions across any channel and in multiple languages, within weeks.
• Quickly automating the bulk of your interactions by answering your customers most common, basic and repetitive questions. This provides your company support around the clock to control costs.
• Leaning on your automation solution to help you set and achieve clear business goals, both short and long-term. When the economy recovers, you’ll want to move from simply resolving common questions to providing personalised responses to specific questions, facilitating action and anticipating needs based on customer intent.

Today’s leading AI technology allows brands to understand and act on consumer intent in seconds. Real-time analytics enables you to continually optimise the experience for each customer or employee. And APIs unlock deep customisation, empowering internal teams to achieve business goals.

Protecting CX for the long haul relies on your ability to scale interactions up or down instantly. And you can only achieve this with the right automation platform. One that empowers you to own your automation strategy to weather any storm, and execute interactions that are consistently high-quality, effective and satisfying.

It’s time to pull off the Band-Aid and find a sustainable solution – one that doesn’t allow company growth and your CX to be dictated by economic instability.

Learn how BFA achieved $2.7 million in annual savings using Ada’s Automated Brand Interaction (ABI) platform.

Originally published on Business Reporter