Why going digital should not be a binary decision……

As the cost-of-living crisis continues, fuelled by rocketing energy bills and rising inflation, the personal and financial situations of the customers we are looking to engage with are becoming more and more complex.

During such times, the way in which we orchestrate the journey these customers experience whilst they engage with us is critical in ensuring we reach the most desirable outcome for all involved. Turning to digital solutions provides a fantastic opportunity to scale operations quickly, but it is key that in deploying such solutions we do not create binary decision points for customers, in essence creating a digital world that the customer feels trapped within unable to reach a human-to-human solution should they so wish. In the same way should a customer be speaking with an agent and wish to continue their journey through a digital medium, they must be able seamlessly transition the customer to a self-service environment to continue the journey in their own time.

When examining how we orchestrate the customer journey in this way a further key point to recognise is that the exchange of information between customer and the organisation must be looked upon as a spectrum with the simplest of digital journeys at one end and an enriched, well guided human to human conversation at the other. When deployed correctly and effectively both are hyper-effective in reaching the most positive outcome, but understanding the place for each, especially when looking to ingest complex or sensitive customer information, is key in retaining and maintaining high levels of customer engagement and satisfaction.

In these most challenging of times, it is well recognised that digital solutions provide the most effective point of initial customer engagement – they have minimal barriers to access and allow customers to engage in a non-threatening and safe environment, especially if the reason for engagement is one that is of a sensitive or complex nature. Once that initial engagement is achieved, the business or organisation has an obligation to steer that customer journey accurately and coherently. A resolution point may be clear from the out-set but where the individual challenges faced are multi-faceted, enriched customer information may be needed to reach that desired point of resolution meaning that only a conversation can truly identify a solution.