Building Better Customer Bonds

Building Better Customer Bonds

Transforming CX with AI-driven BSS

Every individual human is unique, and complex. Every person has different attributes, character, communication style, likes, dislikes, beliefs, desires, needs, skills, talents, and perceived values. This makes human relationships even more complicated, as relationships are a jigsaw puzzle of a multitude of factors that must be matched to seamlessly function to the mutual benefit of both parties.

To complicate matters more, these things aren’t static — they change over time. The survival of our species relies on these things working seamlessly together. But the duration of a relationship depends on the intent of the desired outcome and how satisfied the parties are with it.

Human relationships permeate virtually every aspect of our lives. How well we function or succeed in society is a direct result of our ability to master the changing dynamics of these relationships.

Mastering human relationships in business can have a far-reaching impact to customers, employees, shareholders, and society as a whole. The degree of success for a business can hinge upon its ability to understand the human relationship it has with customers and enhance the experience of each.

Pillars of Human Relationships

Human relationships are built upon understanding. Each participant must know the other. How well they know each other is essential to understanding mutual wants and needs and being able to communicate with each other effectively. This is important in good times, and critical when things go wrong. Understanding is also an essential component that enables each participant in the relationship to make the other feel valued.

Communication is the lifeblood of human relationships. Open, transparent, and frequent communication builds trust and creates a dynamic feedback loop for change. This allows each participant to adapt and collaborate as circumstances, life, and people evolve over time. Communication should be continuous and underpinned by understanding and empathy. Constant communication creates transparency and builds trust, the bedrock of all successful human relationships.

Unlocking the Customer Experience (CX)

Over the years, customer experience management (CEM) has evolved to compass various aspects of business, including the Customer Experience (CX), Digital Experience (DX), Employee Experience (EX), and what is now being called the Total Experience (TX). Within each of these areas, there are various solutions and technologies trying to address different pieces of the customer journey. But those who think technology itself can create or support human relationships are mistaken.

Even advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is artificial by its very definition. You can’t create, support, and maintain long-term human customer relationships with technology alone. Technology can, however, provide valuable capabilities that complement human efforts.

Long-term customer relationships require understanding and empathy, which has to be embraced across an entire organization. Positive customer experiences are created as a byproduct of a culture where the customer is valued, and where that value is communicated to the customer. To create a truly superior customer experience today, a customer-centric culture must be supported by transformative technology. Businesses are sitting on an overwhelming amount of customer data that can be effectively, efficiently, and responsibly used to communicate with and strengthen customer relationships.

Many service providers have been failing at CX despite the vast array of data they have at their disposal. We all have our own poor customer experience war stories to share. Some service providers still struggle with old, inflexible systems and attitudes. They have yet to realize that network and communication services have been commoditized. CX is the last-standing competitive differentiator, and customers now have more choices than ever before. Other service providers recognize the importance of CX, have invested in various CX technologies, but have failed to make the transformative shift to a customer-first organization where customers feel valued. CX is hard, and it takes the right combination of culture and technology to work.

Transformative CX Technology

Etiya is one of the companies innovating to help service providers deliver a superior customer experience with transformative technologies. Etiya was recently recognized by the Esteemed Judging Panel of Pipeline's annual Innovation Awards programs. Notably the judging panel is comprised of technical executives from service provider companies who leverage or are looking to leverage CX solutions, and they ranked Etiya as the Winner of both the Innovation in CX and Innovation in BSS categories, and Runner-up in several other categories including Innovation in AI.

Etiya understands the complexities of both the communications industry and human relationship, and it has designed products that responsibly harness the power of data and automation to specifically strengthen customer relationships. Its Digital Business Platforms encompass a comprehensive set of products and tools, including, among others, acquisition and retention in CRM, advanced bundling capabilities in product catalog management, flawless quoting and fulfillment with CPQ and order management, and an automated and intelligent customer service management system to support omnichannel digital experiences. Together, Etiya’s products work in concert, harmonizing CX operations across all departments so that communications service providers can better understand and communicate with their customers and personalize their experience to build valuable long-term relationships.

With AI at the heart of the BSS stack, and with outstanding digital twin capabilities, Etiya’s Digital Business Platform solution is truly transformative. It aggregates behavioral, sentiment, usage, and other data to create actionable scoring models for things like churn prediction and customer lifetime value. This enables the service provider to be able to offer retention campaigns, reward programs, proactive care, and personalized communications. Through the use of Etiya’s digital twin, service providers can then model potential promotional campaigns and activities to simulate, analyze and optimize each customer relationship. It’s like having a trusted advisor who can predict the future impact of potential actions before they are taken. Based on deep and comprehensive insights, it can predict the specific next best action for each and every customer.

By gaining better understanding of their customers, service providers can proactively and effectively communicate with them, create transparency, better address issues as or before they arise, and take accountability where and when appropriate. Service providers can also create personalized programs to reward customers, make them feel valued, and thus prevent churn. All of these combine to create trust and long-term loyalty.

Building Bonds with Customers

Understanding, communication, trust, and making others feel valued underpin all successful human relationships. Businesses can build better long-term bonds with their customers by embracing these fundamentals and advancing them with transformative technology. These relationships can create long-term bonds that strengthen over time.

Building positive relationships fosters brand appreciation and loyalty. Happy customers promote their positive experiences, stay with those who get CX right, and are the most likely to consume more of that brand’s products and services over time. Ultimately, these customers become brand ambassadors that bring new customers to you. In the era of social media, this has probably never been more powerful.

Getting CX wrong, on the other hand, comes at a cost. Those unhappy, dissatisfied customers are the first to take to social media to slam your brand. If they take one additional customer with them who is close to churn, and also dissuade one new customer from coming to you, you lose the lifetime customer value three times over. And then you still have to invest in replacing that revenue, and invest still more to repair your brand on top of it. It’s a losing proposition.

Contrast that with getting CX right. Each happy customer is extending the length of their customer relationship, increasing their lifetime value, and bringing more, new customers to you. It’s not as simple as it may seem. But technology innovators like Etiya are making it a whole lot easier

Author: Scott St. John, Pipeline

This article first published in Pipeline.