How can organizations build and leverage resilience during times of uncertainty, such as today’s global pandemic? That important question was the focus of a breakout session at CXNext called Creating Resiliency. It turns out that the key to being resilient in the areas of customer and employee experience (CX and EX) is using self-service tools and knowledge base management tools, and blending them with human agents to provide a flexible, scalable, and future-proof approach to customer and employee engagement.
COVID-19 Has Accelerated Digital Channels and Remote Work
Patrick Quinlan, Senior Manager, Self-Service & Analytics, Citrix (a company supporting remote work), witnessed “a significant increase in call volume and in the utilization of our products” as COVID-19 compelled remote work for almost everyone. “We at Citrix have seen a huge increase in customer engagement with our Bold360 chatbot,” which Quinlan said has freed up his team to focus on fewer, but more complex customer interactions (and boosted the quality of both CX and EX).
Joli Hensley, Manager of Digital Channels, Advia Credit Union, saw a similar jump in call volume. “Our chat sessions went up 44% and our call volume doubled” in the early weeks of the pandemic. Like Citrix, Advia used Bold360 to manage the spike in customer demand: “we had a [chatbot] solution that answered all those basic customer questions and allowed our staff to serve more in-depth customer needs. It’s been our saving grace,” said Hensley.
Knowledge Base Management: Critical Amidst Uncertainty
Like Quinlan and Hensley, Chad Hassler (Supervisor of Digital Services & Support, Corning Credit Union) faced massive internal challenges around empowering and supporting his (suddenly) all-remote service team and surging customer demand. Fortunately, Corning Credit Union had already implemented Bold360’s knowledge base management solution, which centralized the organization’s knowledge and made it easily available for employees serving customers.
“We had challenges [pre-Bold360] with the complexity of our knowledge base, and we needed to help our employees find answers and knowledge fast in order to serve our customers,” said Hassler. “Now that the team is distributed at home, the Bold360 Knowledge Base Management tool has really helped us access and share knowledge fast, both internally and with customers. The bot is answering 80% of customer questions now and our team is dealing with the more complex questions.”
Tech + Human Service = Better, Scalable and Cost-Effective CX
Quinlan is clear on the benefits of blended service: “Now 30% of our call volume is being managed via the bot, which saved us $1 million in 2019 alone.” Quinlan is also moving the Citrix bot from managing incoming traffic to a more proactive model where the bot is also helping Citrix with its campaigns/customer outreach.
Joli Hensley loves how Bold360 is providing her credit union customers with more choice about when and how they interact with Advia: “it enables us to let our customers bank on their own terms, whenever and however they prefer.” As she sums up the benefits of blended tech + human CX: “now we manage our traffic more flexibly, reduce hold times, have customers self-serve if and when they want to, and better manage more complex customer interactions.” That sounds like a great CX built atop a great EX.
