Customer Experience Automation Demystified: Your Go-To Guide

You walk into a store, and every staff member knows exactly what you need, understands your preferences, and delivers the perfect solution.

This is what customer experience automation (CXA) helps companies deliver. From automating mundane tasks to delivering hyper-personalized interactions, it bridges the communication gap between customers and businesses. 

But how does CXA actually help your business? And how can it significantly reduce costs while driving growth? Let’s get these questions answered! 

What is customer experience automation (CXA)?

CXA operates at the intersection between what brands aim to communicate and what customers wish to receive. Simply put, it automates the interactions brands have with customers by taking a personalized, AI-driven strategy. 

Here’s an important distinction: CXA isn’t the same as customer service.

Predominantly, a CX automation platform uses artificial intelligence to craft human-like conversations using natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and generative AI.

Source: Twixor

Some prominent features of conversational automation include:

• Natural language processing: NLP ensures that systems can learn, understand, and generate content with training data. This ranges from text, speech, images, and videos. NLP plays an imperative role in enterprise solutions to simplify critical business operations.
• Advanced LLMs and machine learning: They continuously understand and learn from previous interactions to become more intuitive, engaging, and human-like. Scalable conversational automation tools are built to handle high volumes of inquiries without any difficulties.
• Omnichannel communication: As the name suggests, conversational automation provides targeted, personalized interactions across multiple messaging channels, such as FBM, GBM, Instagram direct messaging, Microsoft Teams, and more.
• Round-the-clock availability: As most business communication is automated, users can interact with businesses anytime, anywhere. 
• Agent handoff: If a virtual assistant is unable to answer a customer query, the conversation can immediately be handed off to a customer service representative. These assistants are trained to recognize the need for escalation.
• Vernacular language support: Conversational automation is not restricted to specific languages. Customers can interact with businesses in their preferred language.
• Insights-driven analytics and reporting: Convert raw conversation data into actionable information. This feature tracks your interactions to understand customer pain points, preferences, and overall performance of your chatbot automation.

Low-code/no-code workflow automation

LC/NC workflow automation is the process of performing business operations with little to no coding expertise. This makes business process management more inclusive and accessible to organizations, irrespective of their coding knowledge. 

Here are some prominent features of an LC/NC workflow automation platform.

Drag-and-drop designer

Most CXA platforms have an easy-to-design module through which you may create customer journeys, call APIs for third-party integrations, and swiftly build and deploy applications.

Source: Twixor

Document management

This involves collecting digital documents from multiple sources, creating a centralized knowledge base, and lastly, distributing the documents. It also ensures that no duplicate versions of the original source are created unless necessary. Indexing is also essential for maintaining a well-organized document repository since it allows quick retrieval.

Source: Twixor

Business process management (BPM)

BPM optimizes business processes to enhance operational efficiency and workplace productivity. For instance, a software development team with ad hoc processes can benefit from a BPM strategy. This would aid them in creating an efficient project workflow, assigning responsibilities to all team members involved, and drafting smart, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) projects and individual goals. 

Source: Twixor

Hassle-free task management platform

With a task management platform, tasks are generated by low-code workflows for specific users or groups. Each task has a unique reference ID for further analysis. These tasks are then segregated based on priority and status, with email notifications sent to stakeholders as needed.

Source: Twixor

Enhancing operational efficiency

CXA improves operational efficiency by optimizing customer service functions and effectively managing high query volumes. Here’s how:

Upgrading customer service functions

• Automated ticket routine: Classification is one of the key aspects of CX automation. Intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) automatically categorize and route conversations based on the intent. This increases issue resolution efficiency, and overall, improves customer satisfaction.
• AI-powered enterprise chatbots: With the advent of AI, enterprise chatbots can now focus on answering routine queries, such as basic troubleshooting or order tracking use cases. Your workforce can focus more on more compelling and nuanced customer issues.
• Self-service platforms: CXA has introduced the boom of self-service platforms, where customers can resolve minor issues with the help of self-service portals. Use cases include checking account balances, updating card transaction limits, retrieving health records, and more.
• Centralized approach for channel integration: CXA is integrated with several customer touchpoints in their journey, such as web, email, and social media. This allows for a centralized and uniform chatbot automation process. This does not give leeway for errors and ensures consistency in communication across all channels.

Source: Twixor

Handling customer query volumes: scalability and flexibility of CXA

• Adjusting to high demand: During peak production times (festive season or product releases), customer experience automation systems can adjust and scale to handle high volumes of conversations. IVAs are developed so that customers receive an appropriate, timely response, irrespective of a surge in demand. This avoids hiring more customer support representatives to handle the conversation volume. Additionally, CXA offers round-the-clock support. 
• Dynamic categorization of queries: IVAs are developed to efficiently allocate queries to appropriate live agents and ensure they are only given complex queries to resolve. As customer queries fluctuate, CXA systems dynamically adjust based on algorithms. This ensures optimal efficiency without any manual intervention.
• Adaptive customer experience automation: Irrespective of the volume of queries, CXA allows you to customize customer journeys. You do not need to choose between handling high-volume repetitive queries and hyper-personalization. 

What are the cost reduction benefits of CXA?

It was expected that in 2024, chatbots will save businesses 2.5 billion hours and $8 billion. Overall, investing in customer experience automation can increase leads by up to 110%, sales win rates by 92%, and overall sales efficiency by 109%.

CXA delivers cost reductions in three primary areas:

• Reduced labor costs: CXA substantially reduces costs by automating most time-consuming tasks. This automation reduces the need for customer service representatives to be present at all times and resolve all queries. For instance, an education and technology firm employing CXA as part of its business strategy can use a learning management system (LMS). It can help students get answers to frequently asked questions through a virtual assistant. 
• Smaller margins of error: A CXA platform can perform tasks with higher accuracy, reducing errors in customer interactions, data processing, and more. Overall, this minimizes rework, saving investments in error corrections.
• Scalability without an increase in investments: CXA allows businesses to handle huge volumes of queries without having to expand their workforce. This ensures consistent operational costs and growing profits, even when demand is high. It can lead to significant cost reduction in the long-run.

Use cases that enhance cost reduction

Effectively reducing costs while maintaining high-quality operations is a priority for many organizations. Below are some specific use cases demonstrating how CXA achieves this balance.

Automating internal organizational processes

CXA uses AI to supplement the day-to-day operations of current workers. These tasks include scheduling meetings, answering common HR or access-related questions from employees, and more.

Additionally, CXA can help organizations uncover customer preferences and voices that agents can reference when helping customers. Agents may not have to ask repetitive questions or toggle between systems to find information manually. 

Source: Twixor

Reduce cart abandonment rates

Cart abandonment on e-commerce sites happens when a customer does not check out the items they added. This may happen because of poor website loading speed or navigation, finding a better price elsewhere, or simply because they changed their minds. CXA tackles this by tracking an individual’s user behavior and sending personalized reminders to help potential customers complete their purchase process. 

What’s more, virtual assistants can help send messages on time. Overall, this ensures a consistent increase in revenue and employee productivity in the long run. 

Source: Twixor

Reduce marketing investments with personalized campaigns

A highly efficient customer experience strategy involves personalizing communication efforts. Manually sending personalized messages is time-consuming and expensive. CXA optimizes this process by using AI to design and deliver personalized communication efficiently. Businesses benefit from cost-effective personalized marketing strategies, while customers enjoy relevant and tailored interactions.

Source: Twixor

Strategic implementation of customer experience automation

As discussed, CXA has revolutionized the way businesses handle customer interactions. However, CXA’s success is dependent on strategy and execution. 

Crafting a CXA plan for a business needs to align with its core objectives. This involves developing use cases, specific pain points, and bottlenecks in the customer journey. Deeply understanding current customer journeys and ongoing upgrades is essential to ensure that a CXA plan succeeds in boosting customer satisfaction and scaling revenue streams.

Use cases for customer experience automation

CXA offers versatile applications across different business functions. Here are some:

For direct customers 

Conversational AI, or conversational automation is great for enhancing an organization’s sales and customer service processes. Often, the content of an organizations’s website, or social media platforms is extensive, which can overwhelm the users. Virtual assistants integrate into your website, or social media platforms to deliver information that a user asks for. 

Conversational automation can also be used as a HR or IT helpdesk for an organization. The virtual assistant can answer common HR questions, such as, health insurance queries, leave policy queries, and more. Additionally, it can also answer IT-related questions, such as access management, laptop setup, and more. 

The HR and IT team can focus on more strategic, and complex tasks that require one-on-one engagement, rather than spending their time answering frequently asked questions.

In a nutshell, conversational automation can be used in any situation where a user asks a question that can be sourced from a knowledge base. Use cases span across a multitude of business interactions, and not just limited to prospects, customers, suppliers, or employees – it depends on how you use it.

Best practices for integrating CXA into existing business processes

Integrating CXA into your operations requires thoughtful planning to maximize its impact. Here are some best practices to guide you:

• Perform customer journey mapping: Begin your research process by understanding key pain points in the customer journey. Completing this map will help you brainstorm CXA use cases for your business. 
• A/B test, brainstorm, hyper-optimize: Execute your CXA plan slowly. First, execute a pilot strategy to test the results. If required, you can optimize this by checking the performance of your use cases. Gather feedback and implement it again for the rest of your database. 
• Cross-check integration capabilities: Ensure that the CXA platform you onboard sits well with the tech stack you use. There needs to be a free data flow without any siloed processes. 

Source: Twixor

1. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The most fundamental part of CXA is to improve customers’ experience of working with you. Measuring CSAT is pretty straightforward. Once your project is executed, you send surveys to your customers to understand if expectations are being met. 

For reference, on a scale of one to five, an average score between five and five is a high CSAT score. On a scale of one to ten, an average score between eight and ten is a high CSAT score. The market standard ranges between 75% and 85%.

2. Conversion rate (CR)

This predominantly measures CXA in sales processes. It oversees how many customer interactions lead to a product purchase. An ideal CR for e-commerce is 2.5% to 3%. The overall average B2B lead conversion rate typically ranges between 1% and 5%, depending on the sector and channel.

3. Average handling time (AHT)

Your CX automation strategy should reduce your time reverting to a user query, minimizing human representatives from answering most queries. AHT is often measured by the amount of time required to resolve a customer issue. The market standard for a live representative is around six minutes. The standard for an enterprise AI chatbot assistant is much lower, with an AHT reduction from eleven minutes to just two. 

4. Self-support conclusion rate (SCR)

SCR measures how many conversations are fully handled by the automated enterprise chatbot system without any human intervention. This gives you an understanding of how efficient your customer experience automation is. The market standard for an optimal self-support completion rate can go upto 85%. The higher your SCR is, the better.

5. First contact resolution (FCR)

FCR measures the percentage of queries resolved in the first interaction with a CX-automated digital assistant. It is considered best for most queries to get resolved by the AI chatbot within the first interaction. Eventually, FCR ensures a reduced operational cost and higher CSAT scores. An optimal first contact resolution rate is between 70% and 75%.

6. Net promoter score (NPS)

NPS measures customer loyalty by using feedback surveys. A CX automation platform can help with amplifying overall CSAT scores, which eventually increases NPS. After filling out your NPS form, your customers are either detractors or promoters. Detractors are customers who have rated you from zero to six, and promoters are customers who have rated you a nine or ten. 

Technologies to monitor customer experience automation

Using the right technologies for monitoring and evaluation is essential to maximizing the benefits of CXA. These tools provide actionable insights, ensure seamless operations, and help refine strategies for improved customer interactions. Here are some key technologies that support effective CXA monitoring.

• Analytical dashboard: Most chatbot automation platforms have in-built conversational analytics dashboards. These include data on user conversations, key performance indicators, predictive analytics to forecast future outcomes, and more. 
• Sentiment analysis tools: This measures the emotion behind each customer conversation to ensure the enterprise chatbots’ response is context-aware. You can measure customer sentiments in real time and reframe your bot response to make sure it is empathetic and hyper-personalized.
• CRM and ERP sync: Connecting your CRM and ERP systems secures a unified customer monitoring system. This also allows you to track real-time marketing, customer services, and sales automation metrics.
• A/B testing tools: A/B testing helps you create multiple different chatbot automation workflows and test which version garners the most traction. The successful variant is implemented as the final workflow to gather better outcomes. A/B testing tools help you understand which version of your strategy yields better results. 
• AI-enabled awareness: Advanced AI tools can analyze your strategies and suggest additional solutions to any operational challenges you may oversee. This helps you rethink your strategy to meet your customer needs better.

The CXA advantage

Customer experience automation is redefining how businesses and end users interact. By using an AI-powered CXA tool, businesses can mark the grey area between what businesses want to communicate and what users want to hear. 

What’s exciting about CXA is its scalability and versatility. From answering a customer’s query in real time to simplifying supplier communications or supporting internal teams, the potential is vast and industry-agnostic.

So, whether you’re just starting out or looking to optimize your existing CXA efforts, now’s the time to take the leap. The opportunities are immense, and the rewards – enhanced satisfaction, loyalty, and operational efficiency – speak for themselves.

Ensure your CX remains resilient and impactful. Discover strategies to sustain exceptional customer experiences during tough economic times. 

Edited by Monishka Agrawal