Flipping Your CX & EX For A Competitive Advantage In The Recession

We’re living in tricky times.

A recession is looming, you’ve been asked to cut costs, you’re worried about your customers and your employees…  and well, frankly, this damn heat is messing with your mood.

Am I right?

We can’t do much about the heat. But, for the rest of it, we strongly suggest flipping your CX and EX to get the competitive advantage. How? So very glad you asked!

We sat down with one of the world’s foremost customer experience experts—who also happens to be one of the kindest individuals you’ll ever lay ears on—for a masterclass on the subject.

Jeannie Walters is CEO and Founder of Experience Investigators, a top CX Influencer with over 20 years experience advising companies, and our honored guest this week on Flip CX’s Spamming Zero Podcast.

BIG FAT NOTE: We can’t get enough of Jeannie and her spectacular advice on this topic. So, naturally, we snagged her for a LIVE (LI, YouTube, FB) Webinar with our own Brian Schiff coming up this Thursday, July 28th at 10am CDT. Register HERE.

Now, where were we? Oh right… giving you the CX keys to the kingdom.

We can scarcely begin to cover that in a blog post, so we’ll let you listen to the full episode and attend our live webinar this Thursday. But—until then—here are a couple of key takeaways to whet your appetite.

Looking through the customer lense

When it comes to customer service, Jeannie points out that our perspective is not always dialed into how the customer experiences things.

Her suggestion? Really think about what’s actually happening in someone’s life – not how they’re interacting with us, but why they’re interacting with us.

As she says,  “Sometimes we disconnect from what’s really happening on the other end. People are living their lives, and they’re trying to get stuff done. They have other things happening. Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I really want to call customer service today.’ That never happens.”

Ok, blog writer – what does that have to do with saving money during a recession?

Well, as Jeannie emphasizes, if you want to maximize profitability by x %, start with the very basic idea of – hey, let’s increase revenue; let’s decrease expenses. If you do service better, you actually do BOTH of those things, because:

Jeannie’s hot take on the role automation plays in CX 

So, CX cuts costs. Sweet. Let’s talk about something that can massively support excellent CX: automation.

When asked what’s top of mind for her right now, Jeannie brings up the hand wringing around the idea of  robots taking over. And there’s an awesome ping-pong of ideas shared between hosts James Gilbert and Brian Schiff, and our expert.

Jeannie points out that – yes, humans are really good at certain things, and we absolutely need humanity in certain moments. But a lot of customer experience is just helping somebody get something done faster – which is what the right automation can do.

In her words, really providing good CX means “We’re trying to get somebody to where they need to go so that they can feel a certain way; and sometimes that feeling is just – oh I got that done. Cool. I’m gonna’ move on with my day. And if we can do that with accessible and easy and respectful and personalized automation, then I think we should stop the hand wringing about it.”

On the other hand, if we’re making people wait on hold (leaving our overworked CS agents to deal with the repercussions) and not utilizing automation where it can help, Jeannie believes we’re missing an opportunity to actually show up with more humanity when it really matters.

She puts it simply: “Save the people for what people do.”

Now, is automation perfect? Heavens no.

But—as Brian emphasizes—the raw, underlying technology is there. It works.

“The problem that has existed,” he says,” is in the delivery of the technology to the market for this specific use case of handling customer support interactions.” Shameless plug moment: We do it differently at Flip CX.

Still scared you’ll wake up one day to robots holding you (and all your passwords) hostage? Take comfort in James’ thoughts on the matter.

He believes there will never be a moment where robots can be so sophisticated that they replace a human. And here’s why.

“No matter how we look at it,” he says, “humans want some sort of interaction with another human. Sure, we can make robots and automation more human-like, and I think that that’s a good thing. But, no matter what, it is the combination of automation and humans that creates powerful experiences. And that is ultimately what we should all be striving for in our brands, in our interactions, in how we approach AI, and in how we approach robots.”

There’s oodles more actionable advice where all that came from, so 3 recommendations (bossy, I know):

If you’d like to see how Flip CX can slash the spamming of zero in your call center—cutting costs while improving CX metrics across the board—schedule a quick meeting to learn more.