How Modernization Improves Customer Experience

AI + HI = Improved CX In today’s digital world, businesses strive to deliver exceptional customer experiences (CX) to stand out. While artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized CX by enabling automation, personalization, and efficiency, it cannot fully replace the human touch. AI enhances CX by processing vast amounts of data in real time, predicting customer preferences, and providing instant responses through chatbots, recommendation engines, and self-service options. It reduces wait times, offers 24/7 support, and ensures consistency across interactions. However, AI alone has limitations—it lacks emotional intelligence, creativity, and the ability to handle complex, nuanced customer concerns. Human agents bring empathy, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills that AI cannot replicate. When combined with AI, human agents become more efficient, as AI handles routine tasks, provides insights, and allows them to focus on high-value interactions. Impact on BPO KPIs 1. First Call Resolution (FCR) Improvement: • AI-driven knowledge bases and predictive analytics equip human agents with real-time solutions, reducing repeat calls. • Virtual assistants handle routine inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on complex issues. 2. Reduction in Average Handling Time (AHT): • AI-powered tools like speech analytics and automated summaries minimize the time agents spend on after-call work (ACW). • Virtual assistants can gather customer information before handing over to a live agent, speeding up resolutions. 3. Increased Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): • AI ensures faster response times and personalized interactions based on past behavior. • Human agents, equipped with AI-driven insights, can provide more empathetic and accurate solutions, improving overall satisfaction. 4. Enhanced Agent Productivity and Utilization: • AI automates repetitive tasks such as data entry, ticket classification, and FAQs, freeing up agents for complex interactions. • Sentiment analysis tools help agents adjust their approach in real time for better engagement. 5. Lower Cost Per Contact: • AI-driven self-service options reduce the volume of inbound calls and chats, lowering operational costs. • Intelligent routing ensures the right agent handles the right query, optimizing workforce efficiency. 6. Improved Net Promoter Score (NPS): • Personalized AI-driven recommendations and proactive outreach enhance customer engagement. • The combination of AI efficiency and human empathy fosters long-term customer loyalty. The synergy of AI and HI leads to an improved CX by ensuring speed, accuracy, and emotional connection. AI-driven insights empower human agents to offer proactive solutions, while human empathy ensures customers feel valued. AI and HI are not competitors but collaborators. Businesses that successfully integrate both will deliver superior CX, optimize BPO performance, and achieve sustainable growth in an increasingly digital world.

Crystal Mullins of OSG, emphasizes the need for businesses to modernize Customer Communications Management (CCM) to meet evolving consumer expectations. Companies must move from compliance-focused documents to dynamic, interactive, and user-friendly communications. Crystal Mullins highlights five key strategies for modernizing CCM: 📖 Prioritize Readability and Usability Beyond compliance, documents should be optimized for various devices, especially mobile. Clear layouts and concise content improve comprehension by 47%, reducing customer support inquiries. ⚡ Leverage Interactive Features Interactive documents—like one-click payments and embedded tools—boost engagement by 35% and streamline customer actions. 🤖 Enhance Self-Service Capabilities Embedding AI-powered chatbots and FAQs within digital documents allows customers to resolve issues independently. Over 60% of customers prefer self-service over direct support interactions. 🎯 Personalize Communications Using data analytics to tailor content strengthens relationships and boosts satisfaction by 20%, fostering brand loyalty. 📲 Enable Multichannel Delivery Providing seamless communication across email, SMS, and mobile apps increases digital adoption by 25%, reducing reliance on paper-based communication. 🏆 OSG and InfoSlips’ Award-Winning Innovation OSG and InfoSlips won the 2024 Xplor Application of the Year Award for transforming Explanation of Benefits (EOB) documents into interactive, customer-centric experiences, enhancing engagement and efficiency. Businesses must embrace customer-centric CCM strategies to stay competitive. Enhancing readability, interactivity, self-service, personalization, and multichannel delivery ensures superior customer experiences and long-term success.

Verizon’s customer experience transformation started with a clear priority: listen to employees, study the data, and rebuild from the inside out. On this episode of The Modern Customer Podcast, I’m joined by Brian Higgins, Chief Customer Experience Officer for Verizon Consumer. With more than two decades at Verizon, Brian has led everything from network operations to product and marketing. Today he’s leading Project 624, the company’s largest customer experience transformation yet. In this episode, we cover: ✔️ Why Verizon focused AI on employee pain points first ✔️ How they analyzed the root causes of churn and sales drop-off ✔️ The strategy behind opening 400+ new retail stores ✔️ Why they created a Customer Champion team to resolve long-tail service issues ✔️ How data, EX, and AI fuel continuous CX transformation This episode is packed with takeaways for CX leaders navigating AI, change management, and complexity at scale. Brian’s approach is smart, grounded, and refreshingly tactical. 🎧 Tune in now and share it with your team!

What does your customer experience when she walks into your branch?   Many banking leaders will say: She is greeted by a knowledgeable advisor in a modern branch. She’s offered a coffee. She receives transparent advice, with the advisor sharing the screen to build trust. She leaves feeling her needs were understood.   And that is often true - up to a point.   But hours later, she gets a push notification promoting a loan she explicitly declined. Two days later, she receives a cold call about another irrelevant product.   What’s happening here? Is she interacting with two different banks? From her perspective - and too often from the backend data - she is.   The reality is, the information she shared in the branch isn’t always integrated with the data the mobile app and contact center rely on. The process often depends on the manual input from branch advisor.   Many of us remember when “omnichannel” was the aspiration: synchronizing data across all touchpoints. In practice, this often proved complex and fragmented.   Today, as most customers primarily engage through their mobile app, we don’t simply need omnichannel - we need integrated channels, with mobile as the single source of truth.   We believe the best customer experience happens when advisor and customer see the same thing - literally. When what the advisor has on their tablet is the same app the customer uses at home - not just for consistency, but for data integrity and trust. In addition, it empowers customers to explore new digital capabilities with confidence, whether on their own or with an advisor's support.   At Raiffeisen banka a.d. Beograd, we recently took a big step in this direction by introducing our mobile banking app on advisors’ tablets in branches.   This has already made a difference: bringing data together, making the advisory process more transparent, and improving satisfaction. Even in the pilot phase, we saw faster sales processes and double-digit growth.   We are building the digital bank with a human touch. Integrated channels help us seamlessly connect digital and human interactions, creating consistent, meaningful experiences.   Thank you to the great team who made this happen. Together, we’re setting a new standard for what banking experience can be! Jelena Aksic, Iryna Arzner, Mathias Fanschek, Piotr Niedziela, Karoly Treso

Driving Customer Experience Transformation through the 8P Framework In a rapidly shifting service landscape, organizations can no longer rely on fragmented improvements or isolated tools to elevate customer experience. True excellence begins when leadership adopts a holistic approach that aligns people, platforms, policies, and processes into one unified vision centered on the customer. The 8P framework represents a strategic leadership model that guides organizations toward sustainable, scalable, and measurable CX excellence. 1, Platform Invest in seamless, secure, and fully integrated service platforms that enable effortless access and engagement. 2, Performance Build a culture of measurement where CX indicators drive decision making, continuous enhancement, and operational discipline. 3, Policies Ensure clarity and fairness through customer centric policies that empower employees and reinforce trust. 4, Partners Create an ecosystem of strategic partners who elevate quality, accelerate innovation, and support service delivery goals. 5, People Enable teams with the right skills, empathy, and empowerment to represent the organization at its highest standard. 6, Products Design offerings that speak to customer needs with simplicity, reliability, and meaningful value. 7, Places Shape both digital and physical service environments that reflect excellence, accessibility, and confidence at every visit. 8, Process Redesign and streamline operations to remove friction, reduce effort, and enhance every step of the journey. Customer experience is not a department, a platform, or a training program, it is a leadership commitment. When CX becomes a strategic priority, transformation follows, loyalty strengthens, and trust becomes a measurable outcome, not a slogan. #CustomerExperience #CXLeadership #CXStrategy #DigitalTransformation #ServiceExcellence #CustomerCentricity #LeadershipMindset #ExperienceDesign #QualityOfService #CXInnovation #CustomerJourney

The Retail Reboot: Why Connected Experiences Define Survival   Poor Sarah! She drove across town because the website promised a dress was in stock, only to find the in-store inventory system was "different". Her story is the perfect example of digital silos killing a customer experience. In modern retail, a smooth, connected experience isn't a "nice-to-have"; it’s the definition of survival. Customers are channel-agnostic, and they expect you to be too! In the article, you will learn how to: 💠 Transform your culture by adopting a product-led operating model, empowering cross-functional teams to own business outcomes (like "demand forecasting") instead of just tasks. 💠 Rethink your technology architecture by embracing headless commerce to separate the front-end from the back-end, allowing for unparalleled, consistent flexibility across all touchpoints (mobile, in-store displays, etc.). 💠 Move beyond mere speed in delivery by deploying data analytics to optimize logistics for the right speed, precision, and flexibility based on individual customer preferences and return patterns. 💠 Integrate advanced technologies like AI for hyper-personalized virtual try-ons and automated content creation, while ensuring robust cybersecurity, the non-negotiable foundation for maintaining customer trust. The future of retail is a truly integrated, customer-obsessed ecosystem. Survival depends on shedding old models, unifying your digital and physical presence, and empowering employees. Is your organization ready to build seamless customer journeys and drive operational excellence? Let Digital Transformation Strategist help you transform your retail and e-commerce strategy.

Behind every great transformation story, there's a number that changes everything. Picture this: Two MediaMarkt stores, similar products, comparable locations. One generates 10.8 percentage points more sales per square meter. The difference? Transformation. This isn't theory – it's our reality at CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn. "How do you measure if transformation is working?" It's a question I hear frequently, and one that fuels my passion for what we're building. That's why I'm starting a small series called "Transformation in numbers" where over time I'll share some key metrics that show how our strategic initiatives are creating real value. TODAY’S SPOTLIGHT: Store Modernization Impact This number genuinely excites me: +10.8 percentage points increase in space productivity after store modernization in our financial quarter Q2, compared to the same time last year. Simply put: our modernized stores are generating significantly more sales per square meter compared to our traditional locations after a few months. We're also seeing a +3.5pp boost in visitor frequency. Customers are actively choosing our upgraded stores! And the payback period is really short. Why? Because we're not just renovating MediaMarktSaturn stores - we're reimagining the entire customer experience with four distinct store concepts, tailored to different customer needs: ✅ CORE STORES: Our proven mid-sized format delivering expert advice and full-service experience ✅ XPRESS STORES: Neighborhood convenience with smart product selection and digital integration ✅ SMART STORES: Compact city locations for quick, targeted tech shopping; convenient online pick-up points for Click&Collect ✅ LIGHTHOUSES: Flagship destinations offering immersive product experiences in major cities So, those space productivity numbers reflect something fundamental: better shopping environments drive customer behavior. When we invest in modernizing stores, customers visit more frequently, stay longer, and generate higher returns per square meter. This isn't about aesthetics, it's about growth and operational efficiency. With 64% of our stores already transformed, we're well on track to reach our goal of modernizing over 90% of our European stores by 2025/26. The transformation is working. The numbers prove it. Behind every metric is a customer with a better experience and sustainable value creation. Let's Go! What aspect of retail transformation resonates most with you? #MediaMarktSaturn #CECONOMY #transformation #strategy #ExperienceElectronics Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner Kathy Keppeln Sascha Mager Iris Pruefer Alexander T. Rauchut Michael Schuld Andy Wolfe Faruk Kocabaş Guido Monferrini Marcus Tengler

It’s rewarding to see a nearly 200-year-old institution reimagine itself for the AI era. During a recent conversation with the team at Citizens Bank, I was impressed by how they're shifting data management from a back-office function into a strategic competitive advantage. This example also reminded me that the most powerful transformations happen when you build on a foundation of trust.     Citizens took a bold approach with their master data management (MDM) modernization. They moved from batch processing that took days to near real-time data synchronization across their 1,000+ branches in 14 states. Using Informatica's Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS), they've reduced data onboarding time by approximately 85% and transformed MDM into what they call a "Tier 1" operational asset, meaning it’s always available, accurate and ready to power customer interactions.    The results speak volumes. What used to take three days — even something as simple as updating a customer's phone number — now happens instantly. Their contact center call volumes decreased, their mobile experience became seamless and every customer interaction now draws from a single, trusted source of truth.    What I find particularly compelling is how Anand Vijai M R and his team built flexibility into their architecture while maintaining consistency across every customer touchpoint. The cloud-native approach freed their teams from infrastructure complexities so they could focus on what truly matters: ensuring data accuracy and powering AI use cases. With CLAIRE as an AI copilot, they've democratized access to trusted data across the organization.    This is the transformation I'm seeing across industries. Organizations that treat data as a strategic platform are building sustainable competitive advantages in the AI era. For a bank with roots dating back to 1828, Citizens proves that innovation and tradition can coexist harmoniously. https://lnkd.in/gZCua-M9