“We are a customer experience company,” declared Chris Lord, Global Head – DigiCX; Growth, Strategy, and Marketing at Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS). This was in response to a discussion about HGS’ decision to partner for most of its tools and technology rather than to take the road of internal development. During its recent Analyst Day, the ~$550m BPO shared how it will use its expertise as a provider of customer engagement services to fuel growth and adoption of its “DigiCX” vision. HGS focuses on a suite of solutions aimed at finding the right balance between digital and traditional customer engagement for a unified customer experience.
DigiCX aims to guide the customer to an answer regardless of channel or device. Components include:
- DigiWEB: Website self-help that maps out the common issues and has resolutions built in, including videos (made by HGS) for demonstration. One client engagement cited a 97% resolution rate using DigiWEB self-service.
- DigiMessaging: A chatbot that works inside messaging apps (What’s App, Facebook Messenger) and pivots to a live agent while retaining the conversational context.
- DigiTEXT: Chatbot capabilities deployed within SMS, with phone number recognition and connection to a business rules engine for greater analytics power.
- DigiINSIGHT: Post- conversation surveys increasing survey response rates and analyzing customer expectations.
- DigiSOCIAL: Uses social media sites to derive customer insight and sentiment.
- DigiEMAIL: Automated email responses. In one client example, was able to cut down the # of email correspondence to resolve an issue by more than half.
What’s holding these elements together is a vision for “unified CX” designed to find the right components for each client’s customers’ needs. And with this vision is a keen interest in helping clients understand their own needs and maturity, including a digital maturity matrix assessment.
It’s refreshing to hear the unified CX discussion in contrast to the hackneyed “omnichannel.” What these solutions aim to achieve is not a CX strategy that is everything to everyone all the time—it’s about providing the customer with options, guidance and journey paths that make sense. HGS’ messaging is to intelligently integrate “BOTS and Brains” as the optimal way to transform CX to provide business impact for their clients. HGS is hoping to use its aggressive governance and engagement model to drive adoption of these solutions and become a more strategic partner with clients—engaging in quarterly strategy sessions for example, instead of just the standard QBRs. It’s wise for HGS to not try and re-invent the wheel, especially with ubiquitous technologies like chatbots. HGS leadership is well aware and transparent about the need for cannibalization of volumes and revenues that come with this kind of self-service and automated strategy—“we need to get smaller to get bigger,” is the refrain we heard throughout the event.
But when you’re making this kind of play– focused on the expertise and design, not on the platform– a service provider then needs to more clearly articulate its value and differentiation that the expertise brings. It’s the human connection and outcomes that matter—those that impact customer experience and ultimately top line growth at their clients. For example, what does an improved resolution really mean to clients in terms of CSAT, NPS and loyalty? What kind of training and differentiated talent strategy is required to serve the higher value customer interactions that leading by self-service demands? These are the questions that need to be answered in order to prove the DigiCX vision can execute, and are the next steps in HGS’ journey as a customer experience company.
Posted in : customer-experience-management
