We all know that customer experience is the most important consideration for modern businesses. In fact, 89% of companies are soon expected to compete almost entirely on customer experience (CX). The question is, are companies really meeting customer expectations as well as they think they are? According to LogMeIn, an innovator in communication and collaboration solutions, the answer is a resounding "No."
LogMeIn recently conducted a study into customer experience and how businesses are supporting the modern consumer journey. The LogMeIn AI Customer Experience study looked at the responses of more than 5,000 people, including both business leaders, and consumers around the world. The research showed that over a third of today's consumers aren't impressed with the experiences that they get from companies. Yet, despite this, 80% of businesses believed that their customers would give them a positive review for experience.
Clearly, there's a severe disconnect between the experiences customers expect, and the ones they're getting. It appears that modern organisations are setting the bar too low for what they consider to be "good" service.
Today's Customers Experiences Just Aren't Cutting It
Just because businesses know how valuable customer experience is to their organisation, doesn't necessarily mean that those companies know how to deliver the service their consumers are looking for. In fact, research shows that even the best-performing industries in CX (hospitality, travel, and retail) only managed about a 58% good experience rating from consumers. Telecoms ranked in the lowest section of the study, with only 41% of consumers saying they had a good interaction with a comms company.
So, how are these less-than-favourable conversations taking place? The LogMeIn study suggests that email and telephone are still the most common options, despite the rise of things like chatbots and virtual assistants. Unfortunately, these channels aren't the most efficient, as consumers reported an average resolution time of about 11 hours.
Not only are standard communication channels slow, but they're also somewhat ineffective. Only 49% of consumers said that their problems were solved on the first interaction using email or telephone calls. Some business owners believe that the reason for this inefficiency is the fact that their agents are struggling with the sheer volume of customer requests they must deal with each day.
Could AI and Chatbots Be the Cure?
In a world where older forms of interaction simply aren't working, it makes sense that companies would want to turn towards more innovative solutions. Artificial intelligence and chatbots could be a useful way for today's organisations to transform the customer experience with more access to information, quicker resolution times, and greater context. However, it's going to take some planning for companies to make sure that their disruptive new technology makes the right impact.
The good news is that many consumers do feel positive about the idea of adding AI to the buyer journey. Around 62% of European customers agree that brands should be leveraging more of this technology to reduce the amount of time it takes to handle customer inquiries. However, LogMeIn's study also showed that Europeans can be slower to warm up to new technologies than their global counterparts too. Only four in 10 consumer respondents believe that AI can genuinely change customer experience for the better.