Refreshingly 8×8, together with CX South 2024 conference sponsors Verint and Awaken Intelligence, took their thought leadership event to the South, making it easily accessible for their customers and partners based along the South Coast and beyond to attend. Held in the “home of the Saints” Southampton Football Club, the famous backdrop and warm engaging atmosphere made for a great CX (Customer Experience) for delegates themselves and a good opportunity to reflect and collaborate on delivering the highest level of CX to customers.
The line up
Focus for CX South was on the latest tools, trends and technology to accelerate CX Strategies, and the delegates thoughts were provoked, enlivened, entertained and knowledge increased with the following line up:
Andy Rawll, Head of UK Product Marketing, 8×8, who spoke on AI and automation adoption trends and challenges
Chris Angus, VP Contact Centre Solutions, 8×8, who elaborated in his presentation of “The role of humans in an AI-enabled contact centre”
Neil Titcomb, Head of Global Sales, Awaken lntelligence, who presented on how transforming the agent experience will elevate your contact centre performance
Tony Degruttola, Director of Solutions Consulting EMEA, Verint, the CX Automation Company
Huw Fielding, Director of IT, Southampton FC, who held a “Fireside Chat” with 8×8’s Managing Director, EMEA Jamie Snaddon
Andy Rawll, 8×8’s Head of UK Product Marketing, shared insights regarding the trends and challenges facing the Customer Service function adopting AI and automation, coupled with customers increasingly demanding instant, personalised service. Advances in AI are changing self-service customer service from the basic queuing and routing to conversational AI which is an automated, interactive, response and resolution solution. Andy shared the customer satisfaction scores by sector, and typically local Public Services and companies in the Utilities sector sat at the bottom of the ratings chart. Andy reiterated that getting high customer satisfaction ratings is the job of everyone in the organisation, and not just those in the omnichannel. Preferred communication channels varied greatly by generation – with no consistent trend from Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, Boomers and the Elderly. Boomers were highlighted as preferring the phone above all other forms of communication with a company, and yet “Voice” is now considered the last resort for some organisations. Andy covered the customer expectations of CX automation which is faster contact resolution, seamless handovers and end-to-end reporting. Andy left us with what to consider before implementing AI, from encompassing the 8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant all the way to showing the delegates how it is possible to create one platform in an ecosystem with the customer at the centre – essential planning for successful results.
Chris Angus took us on a journey of the role humans play in an AI-enabled contact centre and helped us to understand that AI is more than just bots. Chris provided some great insights on how AI can create and enhance personalised workspaces and wisely left us realising that it is time to support the evolving role of the agent with the necessary tools that have the capacity to transform CX.
Awaken to AI
Neil Titcomb, Head of Global Sales at Awaken, led nicely in from Chris with his insights on elevating contact centre performance by transforming the agent experience. Interestingly, Neil’s insights proved that today’s customer interactions are longer and becoming more complex, and hence the need for experienced agents is more pressing than ever. The amount of applications that an agent currently uses within a call means that organisations are making life hard for their agents, making them prone to walk away. Generally, there has been a systemic lack of investment in the contact centre and as Neil puts it “customer conversations are a goldmine to transform any business”. Awaken’s approach is to listen to every conversation, understand with AI in real-time and act to improve agent and customer experience, all the time driving commercial results. Sharing Awaken’s case study with the delegates helped bring the issues to life.
Achieving AI outcomes
Tony Degruttola, Director of Solutions Consulting EMEA at Verint, took to the floor and gave us poignant information about how far and fast the market is moving. Verint’s research shows that AI will have the biggest impact on any organization’s CX automation efforts during the next twelve months, but somehow organisations are not achieving AI outcomes – nearly half are not effective at providing self-service on digital channels or at using AI to augment the human workforce. Tony shared that data availability and exploitation remained an issue, with as many as 40% of all organisations not effective at removing data silos between customer-facing departments. Frustrations remain when delivering the Omni-channel service – for example Tony shared that research found 60% of agents cannot work across multiple channels, this fact amongst a number of other insights Verint found when compiling the “The Open CCaaS Advantage: Future Proofing the Contact Center with CX” report. Verint focuses on helping brands close the engagement capacity gap and Tony took us through the Verint Open Platform. To increase CX automation, and therefore off-set costs, organisations should consider investing in an open platform, AI powered bots and data-driven operations. Tony had time to introduce us to the Verint TimeFlex Bot and delighted us with ways it can be integrated in all sectors of an organisation, giving us lots of examples of it in action – even on 8×8’s Agent Mobile App.
“What an event – and what a venue! – Chris Angus, 8×8
Chris Angus commented: “It was great to see what goes on behind the scenes at the iconic St. Mary’s Stadium, home of Southampton Football Club. Southampton and the surrounding area have seen a lot of large-scale businesses and companies making an impact, so it’s good to be able to meet with them, see what their concerns are and learn from them around what sort of customer experiences they deliver and what challenges they face. The blend of thought-leadership sessions, practical guides and networking conversations, reflected many of the issues we know are giving CX experts and CIOs sleepless nights. It’s relentless for them at the moment, between tight budgets and multiple demands from both internal stakeholders but also external parties like their customers. What really stood out to me was the mix of where companies are on their CX journeys- and by extension, their employee experience – journeys. Some feel that they’re really good at it while others accept that they still have quite a way to go. What was fascinating to see though was that all of them felt that they needed to improve what they do. There was a strong curiosity and willingness to learn more. That’s a real win because ultimately it’s their customers who will benefit from that willingness to improve. The audience really challenged our expert to zero in on what is possible now. Conversations weren’t just about what’s coming in five years, it was about the things that can be achieved now – how AI can make a difference and what it can’t do, how people are reacting to AI in the contact centre, the trends we’re seeing. There were a lot of really good, high-level conversations”