Customers today expect a far different customer experience (CX) than even just a few years ago. Last week I attended the Oracle ModernCX conference in Las Vegas. There was a lot of discussion about how automation, chatbots, AI, and good old-fashioned human-to-human customer service must work together to achieve customer amazement in a modern CX world. Here are a few of my thoughts and takeaways as I heard some great speakers and experts share their knowledge about what it takes to deliver an amazing customer experience.

1. Experience Over Product: The opening keynote speech by Rob Tarkoff, Executive VP and GM of the CX Cloud at Oracle, focused on what he called the Experience Economy. My mind immediately went to the book of the same name authored by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. Their book was a deep-dive into the idea that experience can overcome almost everything. Tarkoff made the bold statement, “The experience is just as important, if not more important, than the actual service or product you provide.” Our customers can usually buy something similar to what we sell from a competitor. Product alone is not a differentiator. 
2. Empowerment: Another bold statement from Tarkoff focused on empowering employees. “In the experience economy, you have to empower whoever gets to the customer first.” This comes from the guy in charge of the modern CX cloud technology of a $40 billion tech giant. But he’s not talking about tech. He’s talking about people taking care of customers.
3. Who Wins; AI or Humans: Daniel Foppen, Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle, grabbed me for a quick interview about the state of the modern CX. He talked about the idea that chatbots, automation, and AI would eliminate the need for the customer support center. He mentioned that 15 years ago, it was predicted that in five years we wouldn’t have a need for customer support centers (managed by humans) and asked me to share my thoughts about that prediction. My answer was simple. We’ll be having the same discussion in 15 years. AI, at least in the foreseeable future, will not take away the support center. It will change it. It will eliminate some jobs. But at this point, it won’t replace it. Did ATMs take away the teller jobs? Did video kill the radio star?
4. Data Helps Make Hard Decisions: Mark Herd, Oracle’s CEO, didn’t talk about replacing humans with technology; he talked about technology supporting humans. He shared an entertaining and over-simplified example to make his point. There was only one seat left on a plane and the gate agent had to decide which of the two passengers standing before him was going to get it. Would it be the better-looking passenger? The one that was dressed the nicest? The one that screamed the loudest? At that moment the gate agent had to make a snap decision. One was not getting on that plane. One was going to be upset. So, which one should get the seat? With the right data in front of him, the gate agent can make the right decision. And with the right training, the gate agent can manage what happens next to the stranded passenger.
5. Predict Problems and Solve Them Before They Become Problems: I sat in on a great presentation from Heather Miksch, VP of Field and Product Operations at Carbon, a 3-D printing manufacturer. They changed their model and took advantage of technology. Their customers don’t own their machines; they subscribe to the machines. (That’s convenient!) The machines at their customers’ locations are constantly being monitored by Carbon for problems. They refer to this as predictive maintenance. They can predict a parts failure before it fails. They can replace the almost-broken part before it takes the machine down with it. Their customers love this. There’s virtually no downtime. We’ll be seeing more and more of this in every part of our lives – from automobiles to appliances to just about anything that can connect to the internet.

This is a wonderful time for our customers. While we work to provide them with the best products and experiences, they are in the driver’s seat. Our customers drive us to innovation. Great companies set the bar higher and customers, in turn, have higher than ever expectations of every organization they do business with. That raises the bar for everyone. And that’s what’s driving the modern CX!

Shep Hyken is a customer service & customer experience expert, keynote speaker and NYT bestselling author.

Source : Forbes