Organizations across all industries have more access to data than they’ve ever had before, but they’re still evolving when it comes to transforming that data into actionable insights.
This transformation is especially crucial for customer experience (CX) strategies. Today’s consumers — and the employees who make customer support services run — expect more personalization and a more seamless experience when they have to interact with an organization’s contact center. According to 2022 Gartner research, a majority of consumers expect organizations to be knowledgeable about their personal information during a service interaction.
And consumers aren’t the only ones who want a good experience; staff members are valuable end users who also are looking for a coherent, connected journey so they can better assist the people who reach out for their help. A sound CX strategy can mitigate staff burnout and provide efficiencies to relieve employees of repetitive tasks so they can focus on high-level problem-solving.
As data analytics and artificial intelligence–powered solutions improve, healthcare organizations will be better equipped to act on user feedback to provide a more personalized, smoother experience so that patients and staff members have better interactions.
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Personalizing the Customer Experience for Healthcare
Previously, a personalized CX journey might have involved receiving an email in your inbox with deals tailored to your interests. That may still happen today, but the interaction is now informed by more real-time data and analytics. Healthcare organizations are striving to connect consumers across platforms, whether their entry point is on social media or on the organization’s website.
Because CX can be tailored to specific consumers, a CX strategy should be tailored to an organization’s needs, depending on the industry and the departments that need to be interconnected, such as marketing, finance and IT. The ability to leverage data with analytics and AI can transform an organization from just surviving to thriving.
“Even outside the contact center, AI tools can deliver insights that allow companies to provide personalized messaging and interactions that simply were not possible just a few years ago. Sophisticated AI tools trawl information gleaned from thousands of customer interactions — including browsing and purchase history, social media interactions, demographic trends, previous customer service interactions and customer survey data — to target customers with timely, hyper-personalized offers,” a recent CDW white paper notes.
Advancements in AI for the Contact Center
As AI continues to interest leaders in all industries, major vendors have been fine-tuning their solutions to better incorporate AI-powered features.
Cisco, for instance, has been testing its AI assistant for Webex in hybrid work and CX. Customer feedback has shown positive expectations for reducing agent response times and providing agents with more context for interactions. Google Cloud is also using generative AI to help with live transcriptions and structured summaries in the contact center.
“A team that is fully engaged and really proud of what they do is likely to engage with customers at a very high level, and customers feel it,” Ron Thurston, co-founder of retail recruitment agency OSSY, said in a 2024 Microsoft blog post.
EXPLORE: Three trends in healthcare contact centers that can improve patient experience.
According to research by Qualtrics, 63% of consumers feel that companies need to be better at listening to feedback, and a majority would buy more if businesses treated them better: “In today’s business environment — where omnichannel interactions are the norm — that can only really be achieved by augmenting human customer service agents with AI.”
CX should not be thought of as a burdensome budget item but as a real value-add and business opportunity. When healthcare organizations can revitalize their CX strategy to the satisfaction of employees, patients and consumers, they’ll find that they’re not only creating customer loyalty but also improving retention in a department that typically experiences high turnover.
Leaning toward CX platforms that are deploying AI in relevant ways to make the journey easier can set up organizations for success. Structured summaries are one way to create a smoother CX journey so that live agents can properly assist consumers from a self-service option. Emerging features that can detect the emotional levels of call center staff can improve agent support by suggesting a break or rerouting calls to another agent.
