Self-Service and the Customer Experience Marathon

Top marathoners invest months in training. Their weekly training regimens enable them to build up their mileage and stamina until they’re suitably prepared to defeat opponents, doubt, and fatigue to win the long, grueling race.

Customer experience is also a marathon, in which every interaction counts. They are all part of a complex journey with many ups and downs, that create an overall customer experience. Consider your customers’ journeys and train to win the customer experience marathon.

One size does not fit all

One of the most important things in marathon training is choosing the right shoes. Typical criteria include foot type, gait analysis, and pronation, running goals and past experiences.

Similarly for contact centers, tagging all customer touchpoints gives you a foundation for analyzing how your customers have engaged with you in the past and how they prefer to engage now. From this, you can map the most common paths your customers take through self-service, and so guide them to desired business outcomes.

Connect every touchpoint and bridge the self-service gaps

Following a customer journey requires identifying and connecting every point of engagement. With omnichannel capabilities, you can connect all engagement channels for more personalized self-service and assisted-service experiences throughout the customer journey.

While phone calls into contact centers about simple problems continue to decline, expectations of self-service for voice and digital channels are increasing. Consumers today want self-service that is easy and frictionless, via their preferred channels. And bots are critical to meeting those expectations. In fact, they are as integral as self-service.

Self-service is more than bots

At Genesys18, the CEO of a large enterprise noted that bots are imperative in today’s digital world and that bots must have easy access to agents to avoid poor customer experiences.

With Blended AI by Genesys, customers can combine bots with the power of human touch to provide a seamless customer experience.

Play the long game

Connecting the dots among all interactions—whether self- or assisted-service—takes patience, flexibility, and commitment. Customer experience is a long journey with many ups and downs across many channels. But like completing a 26-mile race, it can be a deeply satisfying experience. Start with the right focus and you’ll soon be in prime condition for the marathon.

Learn five ways you can connect the dots in customer self-service journeys and prove their value. Check out the Forrester Report: Five Methods for Measuring Call Deflection From Experiences That Begin With Digital.

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