Customer Experience is the Next Level

Saw this today from Evan Kirstel: “Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent Helping Telefonica Enhance Experience For Consumers in Europe and Latin America“. The strategic partnership between Accenture and ALU combines the PS of the consulting firm with the hardware of ALU. Integration of software systems is required for the customer experience (and adoption of services) to increase. Unified Communications means unifying the various components – texts, email, faxes, vociemail, chats, video, social media – into one inbox (especially for the contact center agent).

Already seeing in the SMB space – even for 10-15 employee companies – that the choice for their communications platform is based on software integration. For example, a woman opening an Allstate Insurance office is choosing from 4 Hosted VoIP providers based on integration with Allstate eAgency software.

At the Enterprise, the integration is more complicated than just the Hosted Phone with the professional practice management software. There are a bunch of databases and a myriad pieces of software that will need to be strung together for the customer experience to be great.

The Cloud holds a lot of Promise. A promise of changing how a business does business. A promise of productivity and efficiency. The dream of ridding the worker of swiveling in their chair. It is a great dream, but so far the Customer Experience has been more saving some money to get a replacement. Kind of like going from a 2013 Volvo to a 2015 Volvo – sure, you get the new car smell but not many other changes.

This isn’t a small step to deliver CX; it is a whole other level. Integration isn’t easy or cheap. It isn’t cookie cutter, which is what every service provider wants. What they want is for it to be as easy as making a Quarter Pounder. And it will never be. Will SPs actually put the effort in?

Tags: cloud communications, customer service, hosted pbx, UX
Related tags: customer experience, software, experience, integration, customer, promise