There are two core reasons to invest in Emotive CX for Customer Interaction.
CX as a force for change needs to refocus on the emotive part of ‘experience’ to regain its mojo. Secondly, human assistance is being liberated through the blended impact of RPA and conversational AI and so needs to upskill.
In more robotically advanced places than the UK (e.g. China), the impact of automation on the service industry is clear to see.
I called for more coffee pods in my Shanghai hotel room and this is how they came to me: pic.twitter.com/zqc9OLpXHA
— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) November 20, 2019
The CCA’s latest report on ‘The Future of Work & Automation in CX’ (well worth a read) takes a more domestic view of how the UK customer service industry is now mulling over the implications. One theme that chimes with my own analysis is that:
future agent interactions have a higher likelihood of being emotive and offer greater value to both the organisation and its customers
The report also reflects the ongoing confusion in some minds around the future relationship between automation and human assistance. As in all hard won human wisdom, it is the extremes that hurt while the middle path prevails.
In other words, over automate at one extreme and you probably lose the loyalty that the human touch provides. At the other extreme, stay too people heavy and your operating model loses competitiveness. Both are therefore unwise.
I can see the middle ground occupying the imagination and skill of service designers for the next 100 years. The core question is this. Based on customer needs, what is the ideal blend of virtual and human assistance in this particular moment?
We see this decision acted out already. Some might say HMV should be long gone. Yet the brand now allocates more retail space to vinyl than ever before.
Functionally this is plain weird relative to the 30m+ tunes that Spotify and the rest serve up in endlessly iterating playlists. But in this instance, emotion trumps function. It just remains so satisfying to hold and own music in this format.
Have you noticed how paperbacks have returned to the daily commute? Evidently there is something more visceral about the feel of a physical book than the convenience of a Kindle which was winning hearts and minds just a few years ago.
Humans will choose what’s best in the moment. Incidentally the technology of a physical book remains superior in many ways. Ever managed to flick through a digital book as easily? That said, when I’m reading a business book for research purposes, I love the ability to highlight and capture relevant quotes.
To my point, it all depends. And the new world we are building is going to become one that blends the physical and virtual ever more deeply.
This disrupts the status quo even when we want both versions in our lives. Humans are now being pulled onto a new evolutionary track. Here is some evidence from the CCA report referring to a 2019 report from CIPD (People and Machines; From Hype to Reality).
Research from CIPD found that automation and AI are having a net upskilling effect on UK jobs, with many more low-skilled jobs being replaced than being created, while most new jobs that are being created are more likely to be highly skilled ones.
While we have comforted ourselves for the last few years that automation augments human assistance, a more accurate truth is that it is upending previous roles and refashioning what we have previously valued and what we must now invest in.
In the context of call centres, this is to be celebrated. Given the downright unimaginative way we have used human labour in customer services for the last three decades.
Unsurprisingly the impact of treating people in this way is reflected in the CCA findings.
CCA’s Future Workforce Survey found 34 percent of agents did not feel valued at work. Moreover, team leaders felt morale is often poor (32%) or just OK (57%).
To my mind, this is hardly the basis of call centres fulfilling their destiny as a major CX touchpoint.
So if it’s out with the old and in with the new, what does that look like? The CCA survey serves up this conclusion.
Welcome to the era of professional communicators. Able to talk and type. Able to think clearly and solve complex issues. Able to respond to unstated needs. Able to focus on both emotive and functional needs. And be equally responsive to generational and ethnic expectations.
If this really is the shopping list that is truly desired, then it’s a quite different profile of person needed and describing them as professional communicators (my description) is no exaggeration.
The implications are enormous. In summary, what we are starting to now value changes everything from the nature of the job, to those attracted to it, how they are developed and the way they are performance managed. The whole shebang.
My view, together with those who have joined me on the Emotive CX journey, is that it’s going to take time to migrate. So better start experimenting sooner than later.
This is what the course produces. Your first proof of concept for testing and learning what needs to change when you focus on both the functional and emotive needs and expectations of customers. It’s a highly practical and operationally focussed way of taking the current high level debate into actionable next steps.
The overarching aim of refocusing around Emotive CX for Customer Interaction is perfectly captured in the CCA report:
One of the most important emerging skills for the future is the need for employees to develop highly effective emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent agents can provide an improved experience for the customer but also make a lasting impression, creating a competitive advantage.
Emotion is indeed the new competitive front line in customer engagement.
