The quality of customer experience (CX) is declining, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in 17 years: 73.2 out of 100. Many factors are at play here, but there’s clearly an opportunity to improve the experience your customers receive. Adopting new strategies and technologies, such as AI in the contact center, can significantly improve efficiency and competitive advantage in three key ways.
The economy’s mixed messages—slow growth and high inflation, combined with resilient employment and consumer demand—are spurring business leaders to focus on ways to boost productivity, drive growth, retain customers, and remain competitive. A 2023 survey of 1,000 C-suite executives by ServiceNow and ThoughtLab found digital activities continue to be a key element of their strategic plans. This is especially true for companies that have prioritized digital innovation in the past.
It’s no secret that we’re experiencing a talent shortage in the tech industry. At the same time, the automation of many jobs is near. It’s easy to assume these two realities mitigate each other, but the situation is much more complex. Although automation may replace millions of low-skill jobs, it will create millions of jobs that require skilled tech workers, according to a report by consulting company BCG.
The pandemic shifted us all online, whether we wanted to or not. It forced the public sector to adapt more than most industries, requiring citizens to interact digitally with governments to receive the health and financial support available to them. Digital technology promises to elevate government customer experience (CX) by scaling services, cutting wait times, and reducing costs.
Picture this: A critical business service is offline. Instead of panicking, you’re calm yet concerned. You retrieve data about the service in question and instantly see exactly which infrastructure components the service depends on, as well as their statuses. You quickly engage IT operators to address the issue and notify the line-of-business lead with an estimated time for its resolution. This scenario doesn’t have to be an impossible dream.
The majority (83%) of employees across industries want their jobs to remain hybrid, Accenture reports. Yet nearly 50% of CIOs feel their cybersecurity initiatives aren’t keeping pace with their digital transformation efforts, according to research by ServiceNow and ThoughtLab. Neither are their cybersecurity budgets. Combining artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for IT operations (AIOps) can help.
The pressures that converged upon businesses during the pandemic forced the rapid evolution of both the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). In that make-it-or-go-under environment, many of those that survived came out ahead in terms of CX and EX. Now we face the next hurdle: strong macroeconomic headwinds. Inflation and the threat of a recession are forcing businesses to prove their resilience once again.
The promise of software as a service (SaaS) has always been value-based pricing. Rather than owning a suite of products they might not need, customers can choose only the services they do need to drive specific outcomes for their businesses. From day one, SaaS was about value. More often than not, products in the enterprise software space fail to live up to this ideal. In light of that, we came up with a crazy idea to help customers accelerate time to value. The idea clearly struck a chord.
