An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon

Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.¹

Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it?

Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy.

Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders.

Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.