Building personalized customer experiences and brand loyalty cannot be done by chance. Here we look at seven ways retailers can maximize agent productivity and ensure customers get the personalised experiences that build brand loyalty, every time.

1. Optimize the customer journey

Optimizing the customer experience throughout their entire journey across online and in-store engagements calls for a single, consistent view of the customer across all communication channels. Ultimately, this involves integrating communications across everyone and everything that engages with customers, including self-service and assisted service across a variety of communication channels. An omnichannel experience is key to tying all these channels together for a seamless customer journey experience.

2. Empower the customer

Most customers prefer starting with self-service for assistance. In fact, Deloitte reported 60% of consumers research a product online when they purchase in-store.

Empowering the customer with self-service allows them to quickly find the information they need through the channel of their choice. However, to deliver outstanding customer experiences it is essential to ensure that when the customer wants a more personalized interaction, they must be able to connect with a live agent.

Failure to do so may result in your customer becoming frustrated and choosing an alternative retail outlet.

3. Keep it personal

80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. (Source: YouGov)

Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) is a powerful, user-friendly conversational AI platform designed to deliver effective and personalised self-service experiences. When a customer wants to speak to a live agent during their purchasing journey, ICA delivers complete customer context and all interaction details to the agent.

Armed with all the customer details, including past interactions and transactions along with the information from their current interaction from the ICA, the customer has no need to repeat themselves and the agent can deliver a fully personalised service, getting right to the issue at hand. This translates to the customer getting the information they need quickly and easily, in addition to increased productivity for the agents.

4. Deliver continuity and consistency

Customers use many channels to communicate with retailers depending on their personal needs. Handling all channels through a single routing system ensures the continuity and consistency that customers expect. 8x8 Agent Workspace provides a single interface, where agents can handle any interaction across voice, email, chat, SMS, social media and messaging apps. The seamless navigation between interactions saves time and reduces the complexity of servicing complex customer journeys. In addition, with comprehensive customer information at hand including past interactions, order history, returns and billing status, agents can anticipate customer requests based on historical data to create personalized experiences.

5. Empower employees

An informed, empowered customer service workforce is key to delivering exceptional customer experiences. 8x8 Supervisor Workspace has fully customizable dashboards that provide supervisors and team leaders with the intelligent analytics and workforce engagement management tools they need to ensure their teams deliver excellent customer experiences and optimize their performance in a complex, hybrid retail environment.

6. Continuous improvement

Every lost or abandoned interaction can equal lost revenue. Either the customer simply gives up or heads straight to another retailer, often a competitor.

Integrated contact center technology dramatically improves agents’ productivity, especially when coupled with customer self-service for low-touch interactions. Agents can do more, and add more value when their time is focused on creating greater revenue opportunities during high touch, more personalized interactions.

Coaching using call recording and speech analysis helps develop agents’ skills and improve performance, while integration with CRM applications and secure payment processing systems reduces friction at the point of sale and reduces lost or abandoned sales.

7. Deliver value from the first engagement

Taking an integrated approach to communications delivers value throughout the entire customer journey. It sets the scene for great CX from the first engagement through marketing campaigns and outbound outreach via application-to-peer (A2P) SMS messaging. Using AI and behavioral analytics allows retailers to target the right prospects at the right time, with personalized experiences to increase the effectiveness of the campaigns.

Next steps

Great customer connections, a connected workforce and improved revenue generation are three of the core deliverables unleashed by Experience Communication as a Service (XCaaS) from 8x8.

Take your next steps to improving agent productivity with 8x8. Download the 8x8 solution overview for retailers or visit https://www.8x8.com/solutions/retail.

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