Going Digital Still Requires Empathy, Genesys Xperience Speakers Stress

At a time when loyalty is fleeting, it's more important than ever for businesses to show they understand the unique circumstances of their customers and employees and take meaningful action to improve their situations, Genesys CEO Tony Bates told attendees during the opening keynote of his company's Xperience 2022 conference yesterday.

"Embracing empathy starts with shifting focus from efficiency and effectiveness to prioritizing people. In an increasingly digital world, empathy is the key to earning trust, loyalty, and long-term revenue growth, and it's what's driving our vision of Experience as a Service," Bates affirmed.

Indeed, Genesys is one vendor that has gone all in on the as-a-service model and cloud offerings, and companies can move to Genesys Cloud CX with confidence, said Olivier Jouve, Genesys Cloud CX executive vice president and general manager. "In addition to more of the best analytics and programmatic routing capabilities, you have the best proficiency and look-ahead routing."

Jouve added that Genesys Cloud CX supports global operations with a local footprint while also protecting data privacy and helping companies comply with ever-changing regulations, which differ from country to country, and, in the U.S., from state to state.

"The workforce and agent experience is a major area of investment for us," Jouve added. "We have introduced smart scheduling options and gamification tools for the hybrid workforce, enabling you to make work fun and identify key insights around coaching and performance to meet your goals. Digital-native expansive tools interact with the network to be as smart and easy as one in their personal life."

A Danish telecom achieved a 20 percent reduction in handle time and 10 percent increase in productivity with Genesis WM, according to Jouve. "Innovation and mobile capabilities will continue to accelerate the quality assurance process with help from multilingual speech and near-real-time text analytics to drive better insights and automate routine tasks," he said.

"In today's environment, whether it's voice or digital, customers expect you to know them and to impress them," said Brett Weigl, Genesys senior vice president and general manager of digital and AI. "Genesys Cloud CX is built with intelligent capabilities everywhere to help you do just that. We know the channel options used to interact with your customers are only as good as the insights that you derive that lead to meaningful outcomes. With Genesis DX, we unlock a wide range of the digital experiences we all use to interact with businesses every day, whether insuring a car, booking a holiday, or asking about open enrollment.

Weigl said outdoor adventure retailer Orvis has experienced a 30 percent improvement in chatbot answering speed, a 41 percent deflection of calls going to agents during the fourth quarter, and a 23 percent increase in engagement, all without hiring new agents.

"To support your digital presence you now have access to knowledge-first chatbots, allowing you to quickly roll out experiences that serve many customers without hiring costly employees," Weigl added. "These chatbots support a wide range of rich media options, from menus to videos to carousels and more, creating interactive and engaging experiences. You can even deploy a knowledge site on the web for better self-service."

Digital is more than just service; it's also a place to grow one's business, according to Weigl. He expects Genesys customers to benefit from the company's acquisition of exceed.ai late last year. Exceed offers conversational intelligence for qualifying leads and automating sales interactions, such as scheduling meetings on both email and chat.

The acquisition of Bold 360, also in 2021, added natural language capabilities to Genesys' offerings.

Genesys used the Xperience event to launch the Pointillist Contact Center Optimization solution, now available with Genesys Cloud CX and Genesys Multicloud CX. The solution is designed to provide businesses with more visibility into customer behaviors and help them increase customer satisfaction.

This solution was made possible by the company's acquisition of Pointillist last year, which enabled the expansion of its journey management capabilities to help businesses accelerate their delivery of advanced experience orchestration.

"Our journey analytics and orchestration solution does the work of operationalizing empathy at scale. You can aggregate customer data from any source or type of interaction across all touchpoints and, importantly, for all customers," said Ron Rubbico, general manager of Pointillist by Genesys. "The solution helps companies use journey analytics to uncover points of customer friction and detect opportunities for operational efficiency, providing a deeper understanding of the connection between customer behavior and business outcomes."

According to Genesys, a large broadcast and cable television company observed a lower Net Promoter Score and higher call-in rates for customers who suspended their mobile service through the website. A deeper analysis using the solution revealed that customers could suspend but not resume mobile services using the website, resulting in higher call volume.

Using the solution, the company improved its self-service functionality to provide a more complete digital experience. The journey analysis projected 10,000 customers per month could restart their service effortlessly via the website without calling in for assistance, which would increase NPS for these customers by 7 points and save more than $1 million annually.

"We're in an experience economy, and companies that fail to deliver great customer experiences will be left behind. Today's leaders are under increasing pressure to create intuitive experiences, developing the journey around individual customers' needs in a real-time environment," said Jim Tincher, founder and CEO of Heart of the Customer, in a prepared statement. "With its new solution, Genesys is empowering employees with real-time insights to better engage, prioritize, and understand people as they shop, buy, and need care, enabling businesses to drive better outcomes and create happier, engaged customers."

"Businesses today are competing on the value they provide customers and the ability to help them achieve their goals," Jouve said. "By extending our orchestration capability with deeper customer journey analytics, we're making it easier to uncover and employ insights so companies can break down every barrier standing between people and great experiences."

"Over the next year we'll also be investing to add new channels to give you new ways to monitor and measure digital interactions alongside voice and give you new ways to deliver digital experiences in the easiest and most personalized way possible," Weigl said.