The vast majority of IT decision-makers agree on the value machine-to-people interactions hold for unlocking the secret to improving customer experience, a new study has shown.
More than 75% say they plan on tying together devices, emerging technologies, and communications and collaboration capabilities within two years to enable such interactions.
Four out of 10 expect an increase in revenue by doing so, the research from Mitel has revealed.
The findings are the result of a survey to more than 2,500 senior IT decision-makers across North America, the UK, France, Germany and Australia.
Respondents represented businesses ranging in size from 250 to 10,000+ employees and a broad range of industries including manufacturing, finance, hospitality, healthcare, professional services, government, education and retail.
Mittel’s Wes Durow explained: “Customer experience is an active, strategic discussion across industries as organisations look to leverage new technologies associated with IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
“Giving machines a voice in machine-to-people interactions can be a powerful differentiator as the relationship between businesses and consumers shifts from transactional to more experiential, and customer experience becomes just as important as the product or service a company provides.”
Additional data highlights based on participant responses:
- Seven in 10 see machine-to-people interactions in which devices and machines directly contact assigned staff, route information to the right individual across a whole organisation, or directly contact a customer when a threshold is triggered, as key to increasing customer responsiveness and issue resolution.
Businesses looking to take advantage of technology to improve customer experience should consider moving to the cloud to keep pace with evolving customer expectations and combine contact centre applications with emerging technologies like chat bots, the Internet of Things (IoT) and omni-channel communications.
- More than 95% of respondents view accelerating workflows as a business imperative for improving customer experience. Increasing the speed with which tasks are completed ranked highest among those in manufacturing, finance and retail.
Organisations in these and other highly competitive industries should focus on automating business processes and leverage collaboration and productivity tools to reduce communications latency. This will enable them to better manage workflows and deliver a truly differentiated experience for customers through real-time support.
- Companies in North America have a clear lead in embracing technology to better serve customers. Entire 70% of those surveyed reported having made over 50% progress in improving customer experience as part of their digital transformation initiatives, yet barriers remain.
Business and IT misalignment were identified as chief among them in using digital transformation to advance customer experience. Legacy infrastructure and systems were cited as the second most common obstacle, indicating the need for breaking through organisational silos and finding ways to modernise existing infrastructure.