TechCentral recently partnered with Smartz Solutions and Cloud On Demand to host a webinar titled “The human touch in digital CX – evolving with customers”.
The webinar, which was moderated by Jaydev Chiba, brought together a panel of experts to discuss a strategic road map for blending intelligent automation with human-centric design.
The panel featured Henry McCracken, CEO of Smartz Solutions; Vanda Dickson, business development executive for Smartz Solutions; and Kamil Hirjee, product architect from Cloud On Demand. After introducing the panellists and the partnership between their companies, which delivers an intelligent, scalable and locally supported customer experience (CX) platform on Microsoft Azure, Hirjee outlined the collaboration between Smartz Solutions and Cloud On Demand. They then dived into a detailed discussion on the topic.
The challenge: the ‘now’ customer and the digital disconnect
The conversation focused on the rise of the “now” customer, a digitally shaped consumer who expects immediate, relevant and seamless service across their preferred channels, be it WhatsApp, voice or email. This customer generally has no brand loyalty, making it more challenging for businesses to get the customer experience right the first time.
A central challenge identified is that despite having so many digital tools and channels available, companies often fail to deliver better CX. Some of the key issues identified and discussed included:
- Fragmented systems: Without a properly mapped customer journey, attempts at automation and artificial intelligence can lead to disconnected experiences, customer frustration and damaged brand trust. Panellists warned against operating in silos, which can lead to things such as “IVR jail” where customers have no exit to a human agent.
- Agent burnout and fear: There’s a prevailing fear among contact centre agents that AI and the emphasis towards digital engagement will replace their jobs. This, combined with the stress of navigating multiple systems, contributes to agent burnout, which directly results in reduced levels of CX versus the intended gains.
- Over-reliance on automation: Companies often rush into self-service and increased automation without a clear strategy, failing to deliver the expected return on investment because the human element is not properly integrated.
The solution: an optimal blend of technology and humanity
The panellists argued that technology should be seen as an enabler and an arrow in the quiver, not a replacement for the human touch. The importance is to find a balance.
- Empowering agents with technology: The webinar emphasised that digital CX and AI should be viewed as augmentation tools to the human agent. By providing agents with unified interfaces that offer a complete view of customer interactions across all channels, businesses can reduce friction and stress. Training is critical to help agents evolve from single-channel specialists to blended agents capable of navigating the full omnichannel matrix. Smartz Solutions demonstrated this with its automatic interaction distribution, a tool that uses AI to route customers to the best-matched agent based on sentiment, behaviour and profile, ensuring emotional intelligence is applied to routing.
- Human-centric journey mapping: The panellists stressed that the gap between success and failure in digital CX is the arena where humans have the biggest role to play. Success depends on carefully mapping the customer journey from the customer’s perspective inward, not the other way around. This ensures that automation enhances continuity rather than causing fragmentation.
- A robust, integrated platform: The partnership between Smartz Solutions and Cloud On Demand provides an omnichannel communications platform hosted on Microsoft Azure. This approach ensures a seamless experience by managing all interactions – voice, e-mail, WhatsApp and web chat – on a single platform. This not only tracks the entire customer journey for valuable insights but also provides the security, scalability and high availability needed for modern CX operations.
Watch the webinar on demand now
Key takeaway
The main message of the webinar was that achieving superior digital CX requires an optimal blend of technology and humanity. While great digital experiences start with data, they succeed with empathy. As the panellists concluded, upgrading your communication strategy with digital channels and AI cannot succeed without correctly trained and empowered agents who can provide the empathetic human touch when it matters most.
About Smartz Solutions
Smartz Solutions is the disruptor reshaping the contact centre landscape. Traditional legacy systems, with their entangled infrastructures and exorbitant fees, have held businesses hostage for too long. Contact centres are tired of being burdened by disjointed systems with hefty price tags and bad customer and employee experiences. We’re redefining the contact centre experience through our AI-powered, 360-degree experience platform. We’ve been there. We paid for the legacy systems. We had 15 different systems running (at a snail’s pace) at once to be able to run our call centre. We know the pain of not being able to find data quickly enough (sometimes at all) to help customers. And we sure know what it’s like to have employee information in multiple systems, never showing a clear view of the business. Losing money, opportunities and patience doesn’t have to be how you continue to run your call centre. Through a comprehensive tech stack, you will finally have your entire customer and employee experience in one place with the data and insights to make strategic decisions in real time.