2021 was another interesting year and while (in NSW and VIC) we were mostly relegated back to online meetings we still kept our fingers on the pulse and kept well connected with clients and partners. Here are some innovative highlights and insights from our team of experts:
Shiny software needs a great CX too
Tech companies are realising the importance of great CX, even if you have the best software on the market. However, the capabilities required to build great software are very different to those needed for great customer service.
We worked with one client to design a future experience that meets the needs of technology and business stakeholders alike.
A growing trend is for organisations to apply CX prior to defining the technology required and recovering a technology project by incorporating CX design. We are seeing organisations moving further up the buying cycle to look at CX for their operations to ready themselves for the right technology. This shift is providing more rapid and sustainable performance improvements.
Local Councils are jumping on board with the Customer Central Design process
Councils face a big challenge in balancing the competing needs of their varied customers, from growing families, boomers, and businesses alike.
We are working with several councils to understand the underlying needs of customers and common drivers of satisfaction.
Indigenous traditional practices being incorporated into the workplace
Traditional best practices have been refined over millions of years so why not adopt them. The Queensland Government has recently incorporated traditional communication methods for better collaboration and decision making by using “Mobs”, “Yarns” and “Speaking Sticks”. Tangible financial and performance improvements have been recorded as a result. This is an exciting trend, as indigenous practices are one of many proven practices that can be incorporated into service design, maturing service design to be far more innovative and practical over the next few years.
We are introducing indigenous best practices into our service design, much like human centered design or data protection is applied. Providing clients new and more complete insights to consider which will deliver globally leading designs.
In 2022, I believe some key areas of focus will be:
Building a great experience in Service Management (ticketing, workflows, etc) also known as Proactive Services
Experiences with these types of flows can vary greatly, one experience receiving regular updates as your query or ticket progresses through to resolution or receiving a resolution ticket without actually hearing from anyone or even getting a resolution!
We see big investment in these processes as a way to improve CX for customers in 2022.
Reimagining the CX in an academic setting
The tertiary education sector has been through an overhaul over the past two years with a large portion of their market being essentially locked out of the country over the pandemic. How can these organisations differentiate themselves and appeal to a broader base of clients?
We are seeing investment in service excellence training for staff as well as designing new experiences and places for students to connect in 2022.
CX focused transformation remains consistent and focused on health experiences
We have seen a lot of pressure and change in this sector over the past year and some really great initiatives have been successful and will remain in the future. For example, Telehealth has just been confirmed to become a permanent part of the healthcare system after the successful adoption during COVID.
We are anticipating more transformation in this sector next year and the coming years focusing on making interactions better and access to information/apps more seamless.
CX has become a B2B selection tool
While Customer Satisfaction or NPS has often been in contracts, it is only more recently that businesses are measuring it effectively and actively removing suppliers with lower performance levels. Today this is with larger contracts and organisations. The trend is moving down to smaller businesses to business contracts and services.
We are helping build Voice of the Customer programs for these organisations that are a core continuous improvement capability. These programs pay for themselves with initiatives not only improving customer experiences but removing waste and cost caused by poor service.
Adoption of Digital Workforce to continue to increase
We have seen a big increase in adoption of Digital Workforce in our clients and we don’t see this slowing down. Once clients get a taste of how it can impact their business there are usually more processes that follow!
Rapid and Elastic CX
With Covid came the need to respond rapidly to customer and employee changing environments and needs with large volumes of spikes and new remote technology required. Incredibly fast solutions are now possible with chat, SMS and other channels integrated into workflows which have been used effectively by Health organisations.
Additionally elastic workforce models have been built. This has become a key competitive advantage with one of our award-winning clients more than doubling their revenue in the past year, while their competition had customers abandoning calls and spent time managing complaints.
Our clients are establishing a more “business as usual” rapid technology platform and an elastic workforce model to make them more agile and deliver scalable & robust experiences for their customers.
We are really excited to see out 2021 and feel really proud as a team how we came together to support each other and our clients during a challenging latter half of the year. As a team we delivered some great outcomes for our clients, worked with the largest number of new clients in a year and grew our team in 2021.
We see endless opportunities for 2022 and after a well-deserved break over Christmas we anticipate hitting the ground running with a number of clients already scheduled in to start their innovative transformations as soon as we open the doors in the New Year.
Thank you to all our wonderful clients, partners and team. Have a safe holiday and we can’t wait to reconnect in 2022.