I attended another great CCMA seminar in London, focused on the customer journey and how personalising the approach with customers can affect productivity within the contact centre.

The afternoon kicked off at the De Vere Connaught Rooms in Holborn with an informative presentation by Stephen Yap of Intuit who delved into research surrounding the personalisation of the customer journey and the knock on effect for customers.

With the consumer now expecting the same level of speed, agility, convenience and experience that corporate giants like Amazon are able to provide (both across B2B and B2C sectors), this ignited the afternoon’s discussions around the definition, design and implementation of personalisation, and the subsequent affects for both the customer and employees internally across the contact centres.

Following on from Stephen, software provider Noble Systems presented and gave some great examples of how market disrupters are standing out from the crowd and making life simple for the customer. From using facial recognition on banking apps, to resolving and paying an insurance claim in 3 seconds from data capture to payment, Geoff and Andy gave a thought-provoking insight into the way businesses are making their own mark through the use of personalisation.

Following a short break, we were then provided with an insightful panel discussion with a number of industry experts including Alice Henderson of John Lewis, Joe Diskin of Cabot Financial, Mahadevan Krishnanof Vitality and Claire Lomax of ttec. We were informed of the technologies and processes that these businesses have been implementing across a range of industry sectors in the contact centre space; each servicing very different end customers. From the implementation of chatbot’s and automation to increase the response time for the customer, to the use of speech analytics and the future implementation of conversational analytics, it was great to be a part of conversations with a range of industry leaders who share a common goal and passion for customer experience and who are constantly evolving through means of digital transformation.

The changes in the choice of channels used by the consumer was a huge topic, as a drastic changes in buying behaviour has resulted in a need to change the way that customers are being serviced.   A member’s example from today’s seminar mirrors a recent recruitment campaign that I have been working on, whereby a typical B2B servicing centre is now beginning to receive direct contact from consumers through different channels for the first time. This has meant that these businesses have had to assess their contact strategy and are having to create new ways to service their customers, training employees on new outcome focuses. The shift in buying behaviour trends have created a need to analyse the approach to a customised customer experience to fulfil heightened expectations.

The afternoon session concluded with a round table discussion around members experiences and plans for their personalisation efforts and the common hurdles to overcome. A resounding outcome from the session highlighted that, amongst other things, the regular obstacles include: budget, ability to demonstrate ROI prior to implementation for senior stakeholder buy in and multi site operations working on multiple systems needing to migrate from many platforms and standardise across the wider business to make change.

I’d be interested to hear more from my wider network around your thoughts on personalisation, so please do get in touch. What is your business doing to improve and personalise customer experience?

If you are looking for a sector specialist to support you to hire the right leaders into your business we can help to find the personality and skills to support the improvement of customer experience for your business.  We partner with you to source top talent across the UK and overseas across contact centres, customer service, sales, change, digital implementation, programmes, customer experience, resource planning, insight and analytics, please do get in touch and see how we can help you.

Holly Beeston - please contact me directly at holly@douglas-jackson.com or, telephone: 01543 231074.  Holly specialises in the following market verticals : Utilities, Telecomms and Technology - SAAS.