Several CX Metrics Don’t Work in The Modern CS Environment

Why is speeding customers off the phone no longer the solution? Author and CX analyst Mark Hillary discusses the challenges and opportunities in the CX ecosystem.

“Why are we still measuring how fast we can get a customer off the phone? That was applicable when customer contact was always a voice call after the customer purchased a product and had a question or problem. Now we need to build a 50-year relationship with the customer long before they buy anything and stay connected long afterwards,” says Mark Hillary, author and CX and technology analyst. 

Mark is a British/Irish writer based in São Paulo, specialising in customer experience and the future of technology. A former technology director turned communication adviser, he has authored 25 books on technology and employment and is the host of podcast CX Files.

Mark’s interest in CX deepened as he observed how new technologies were primarily deployed in CX environments. He had observed the significant impact of cloud computing, app-based services, and AI on customer interactions with brands. This fascination led him to explore CX in greater detail, ultimately shaping his career as a writer and analyst in the field.

Talking to CXM Today, Mark discusses the challenges and opportunities in the CX ecosystem. From irrelevant metrics to three big areas of potential change, he also discusses new tech trends that could potentially liberate brand creativity and allow new avenues of expression.

Excerpts from the interview:

What is the biggest challenge stopping a brand from attaining ultimate CX?

I don’t believe you can just define simple metrics or create a single strategy that will achieve success – it’s all about culture. Zappos is a classic example, but worth recalling. The company sold shoes online, just like many other online services, but they really cared about the customer, and that attitude came from the top of the business.

Many CX metrics don’t even work in the modern customer service environment. Why are we still measuring how fast we can get a customer off the phone? That was applicable when customer contact was always a voice call after the customer purchased a product and had a question or problem. Now we need to build a 50-year relationship with the customer long before they buy anything and stay connected long afterwards. If I ran an auto brand today, then I’d be ensuring that my cars are featured in as many games as possible because those players are future customers.

I recently cancelled my own mobile phone contract and moved to a rival company. My phone company changed my contract without any request from me. The new plan featured much less data than I had available before. When I asked them what they were doing they just repeated that I can now watch Disney+ free as a benefit of my new package. They had no idea what I valued, and they changed a service without informing me. I gave them a chance to correct the situation and their response was ‘you asked for the change.’

Imagine the effect. Losing a monthly subscription that I have been paying for years. Now multiply that thousands of times. This is entirely unnecessary and yet is common. If the cultural focus was on great CX then this would never happen.

What advice would you give CX leaders to maximise the success of their technology investments?

Understand your customers and what matters to them. In the past year, many CX directors have been exploring AI solutions, yet they don’t even have the existing tech running at a level that would deliver great service.

Tools like WhatsApp for Business can be deployed to handle all your most common customer questions in a highly interactive but automated way. This tech has been around for a while, but it fixes a customer problem and is reliable.

Don’t get caught up looking for the next big thing just because of FOMO or a fear of the ground shifting. It can happen, but it is much more likely that your customers are tired of your brand for more basic reasons. Nobody is switching to a new phone company just because they have great AI chatbots.

Do you think new, futuristic technologies or trends could potentially liberate brand creativity and allow new avenues of expression?

I think generative AI in particular could be truly transformative with regard to brand creativity. There is still a lot of fear around hallucination, but just imagine if a brand like Apple trained a bot on every product Apple has ever created, plus all the publicly available speeches and documents published by their founder Steve Jobs… you could enable conversations with a virtual version of the founder. Fans of the brand could ask about the inspiration for the iPhone in a live one-on-one conversation with Jobs.

None of this is traditional customer service. It is entirely focused on building a stronger brand to customer relationship, not just fixing problems, but this has been normalised in a primitive way on social media – it will develop into real interactions with brands soon.

What would be the most insightful discussion you’ve had on your CX Files podcast?

CX Files has now featured over 300 interviews, so it’s hard to just pick one single one that was the most insightful. We have featured the BPO companies, the companies that buy services from BPOs, and the tech companies and analysts that advise everyone.

In recent months our conversation with Rod Jones was memorable. Rod had just celebrated his 75th birthday and he started his first business that required a CX focus back in 1972. It was great to hear about such deep experience and how the world has changed.

The Covid pandemic in 2020 was also a very interesting time as there was a panic in the industry. We were getting case studies online immediately, helping company leaders hear how their peers were coping with the crisis – we even connected many companies together at that time. Business rivals were helping each other to survive.

Talk to us about the future landscape of CX.

CX is changing very rapidly. If I had to suggest three major areas of change then I would say:

It is becoming more than just a first step on the career ladder: Jobs in contact centres have long been seen as fairly junior roles that are a springboard to something else, but as CX becomes more complex, the range of jobs supporting and training AI, security, and the cloud will expand. Even the jobs directly helping customers will be more like subject-matter experts – people with real in-depth knowledge and troubleshooting skills. It’s no longer just a stepping-stone job.

It will become a primarily tech-focused industry: AI is transforming how agents interact with customers and how customers can directly interact with brands. Case studies are already appearing that demonstrate an enormous percentage of interactions can be automated. Imagine if AI could handle 80% of customer interactions. CX in this environment is a tech business that only relies on one contact centres for the really unusual problems AI has never seen.

Traditional BPO needs to pivot: Who can forget all the enormous contact centres and focus on offshoring as a cost-reduction strategy? As customer interactions change there will always remain some potential for human interaction with companies, but it will be drastically reduced – rather than the main focus. Companies that survive by selling as many seats as possible in a contact centre need to think again as the world is changing – this also affects destinations that sell themselves primarily as ‘low cost’ … a low-cost contact centre is meaningless when I can just use software to handle most customer interactions.