A global Forrester study commissioned by LogMeIn has pointed to a widening gap between the leaders and laggards in customer experience (CX).
CX has matured this year, according to LogMeIn, but at the same time the drive for digital transformation is now means some are making bigger moves towards data-based intelligence, including AI.
The Forrester study, Short-Term Wins and Continuous Optimisation: The Roadmap To Customer Engagement Success, surveyed 463 global CX decision makers and found that the customer engagement maturity gap is widening as more channels emerge. Organisations must look to establish a foothold with artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate their CX maturity, it suggests.
Ryan Lester, senior director of customer experience technologies at LogMeIn, said that in a changing landscape of customer expectations and preferences, companies must be agile when it comes to their customer engagement strategy.
“However, what and how to evolve can be a roadblock that leaves companies stuck and customers disappointed. This study in combination with our Customer Engagement Maturity Assessment Tool helps businesses understand where they stack up when it comes to CX and helps identify where they can improve,” Lester said in the announcement.
Customer expectations are evolving, which suggests customer engagement practices should follow — or potentially fail to acquire or retain customers. Most decision-makers in the study were aware of this and had made ongoing improvements both in customer engagement metrics and mobile strategy.
Most, however, were either not using AI or where in the very early stages of an AI strategy.
According to LogMeIn, this is an opportunity missed. For example, building a foundation for self-service improvements should be a top priority, as well as what it describes as a “continual optimisation mindset”.
The study indicated that 68% of respondents had self-service options based on text analysis and capable of agent escalation.
However, this needs to go beyond chatbots and FAQs to the development of foundational knowledge bases for both agents and customers, said LogMeIn in its announcement. Over time, not only does this help customers solve their own problems but it can be a building block to self-service AI down the track.
Experimenters that are relatively early in their CX development might prioritise technology and process improvements.
Later on, strategy and technology, and finally technology and organisation, with benefits accrued at each step to fuel the next initiative. This is the methodical approach favoured, according to LogMeIn.
LogMeIn offers four identity & access and engagement & support solutions for flexible, dispersed and mobile workforces, whether at startups or large corporates. Used to improve CX, they are now poised to redefine access for a cloud-centric world where the individual, rather than the device, is at the core of the experience.
Products include LastPass, Central, Rescue and Rescue Live Lens.
LastPass by LogMeIn allows employees to securely authenticate into their work without needing to type a password for every application; Central by LogMeIn enables remote monitoring & management (RMM) for managing large groups of computers; LogMeIn Rescue helps IT professionals grappling with the challenges of supporting large remote workforce; and Rescue Live Lens, which assists support teams monitoring end users.
