Ascension to Modern CX Leadership

I had the privilege and opportunity to attend NICE’s annual analyst summit last week. NICE assembled a world-class team to accompany their brilliant CEO, Barak Eilam, on a journey to share their vision, collaborate with a diverse community of analysts, and share ideas. I came away from the event believing that NICE can empower a customer service organization to lead its organization in delivering a modern, unified customer experience. 

What trends define Modern CX Digital Experiences?

In my nearly 25 year tenure as an analyst, I focused on the digital (and primarily mobile) portion of the customer experience. In the last 5-10 years, I did extensive research on why brands deliver such disjointed customer experiences (especially the outbound) along with the consequences. 

For context, here are a few calls I’ve made about consumer digital experiences over the years:

2012: The future of mobile is context

2016: The arms race to be THE virtual assistant is on

2017: Virtual agents will assemble services dynamically and act on behalf of consumers

2019: Future experiences will be simultaneously invisible and immersive

2022: It’s 2050: Your website is deserted

2023: There will be an explosion of digital touch points

What does this mean (WIM) practically for brands:

1. Websites will be less relevant as consumers use a breadth of touchpoint.

2. Orchestration of experiences across touchpoints will become more essential.

3. Brands must anticipate the needs of their customers and engage them more proactively.

4. Conversational interfaces will move beyond customer service to help consumers throughout their journeys. 

5. Brands must ingest more real time context and act immediately - this will require automation. 

6. Data and some element of consensus about what it means is critical (and too much to unpack here). Conversations will be a source of some of the most important context. 

Customer Service Organizations Could Become Strategy CX Leaders

Customer Service organizations stand to become a more strategic component of this modern customer experience. Why? They have:

• The most experience with voice- and chat-based conversations with consumers. Executing on chat - whether with humans, chatbots, or both - effectively will become an even more crucial element of customer experience. 

• Real time information offered by consumers in conversations. Consumers will tell brands what they need if asked. Brands can use the insights to make recommendations rather than relying only on historical data. Consumers will tell brands what they need if asked. 

• Knowledge of unhappiness. Orchestrating outbound communication to ensure a consistent brand voice is a noble aspiration with many possible permutations. The worst case scenarios, however, happen when marketing teams are trying to sell to consumers with problems - often known by a customer service team. 

• Long histories with multi-modal experiences (e.g., voice, Email, messages). 

• Technology that integrates many backend systems (e.g., billing, product, sales, loyalty, etc.)

• Early experience using AI/genAI to assist their staff. 

NICE Has A Vision, Track Record, And Tech Stack To Deliver This Modern CX

NICE’s vision and product offerings (as outlined at the Summit) map into these competencies. They have deep experience enabling customer service organizations globally. They also have a culture that employees crave which leads to longevity and continuity. A few highlights that stood out for me: 

• Vision to build a hyper platform (i.e., move well beyond silos of all types - systems of insights, engagement, record, and workflows, data) including a System of Everything.

• Track record - partners said customers were buying NICE for its completeness (tech stack), omnichannel abilities, proven AI value, and flexibility (tech stack). 

• Rapid pace of innovation with cash in the bank to accelerate product offerings as needed. 

• Scale (growing) in managing AI interactions (250M/month). 300% growth in AI deals. They have operationalized genAI while many organizations are still piloting it. 

• Ownership of unique and highly desirable control points. Orchestrating 15B interactions annually. More interactions will be conversational and outbound - they enable both. 

#NICESummit #MakeExperienceFlow #TheHyperPlatform #CXOne