ADDRESSING CUSTOMER NEEDS BEFORE THEY EVEN ASK

According to Aparna Gupta, Executive Director, Customer Success, Microsoft India, there is a need for customer first digital strategy that enables enhanced omni-channel customer experience to be more agile in adapting to changing customer needs

- Sunil Rajguru

The pandemic saw techceleration. What are some of the changes that came about in CX as a result? 

The pandemic brought a tectonic shift in the ways we communicate, work and play. With social distancing measures in place, customers had to rely more on digital channels to meet their shopping and other essential needs. This directly affected how businesses manage resilient operations and customer experiences, leading to an increased adoption of digital channels like mobile apps, websites, and chatbots.

As a result, customer expectations and behaviour has also evolved as they now expect companies to provide more he personalised experiences to them. According to Forrester, 75% of consumers say that the pandemic and related crises will drive long-term changes in their behaviours and preferences. There is a need for customer first digital strategy that enables enhanced omni-channel customer experience to be more agile in adapting to changing customer needs. The growing affinity of consumers for quick and round the clock service availability is pushing businesses to invest and deploy conversational Al. Also, organizations are pivoting to use insights drawn from the vast amount of data available to personalise customer experience, provide better recommendations and reduce the turnaround time without any human interaction. With the increased use of digital channels, companies have access to more data on their customers, which can be used to personalize the customer experience. For example, AskDISHA, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation's (IRCTC) chatbot built by CoRover and powered by Azure, uses Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to handle billions of transactions with nearly zero waiting time per query.