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Robert Zirk: For many, the new year is a catalyst for change. A time to reflect on the way we've been doing things and rethink them, setting goals for our ongoing development and overall well-being.

And many businesses do the same, looking back at the successes of the previous year, as well as the areas for improvement, and starting to build their vision for the year ahead.

In 2023, we had the opportunity to ask experts today's biggest questions in digital customer experience, spanning topics from automation to consumer behavior. And from these conversations, we've made a list of six actionable insights you can add to your roadmap for the next 12 months. Stay tuned, because today on Questions for now, we'll ask: Are these digital CX resolutions on your list for 2024?

Welcome to Questions for now, a podcast from TELUS International where we ask today's big questions in digital customer experience. I'm Robert Zirk.

Number one: Leverage technology to scale your CX.

How can businesses of all sizes use technology to improve customer experience delivery while also bolstering the human connection?

This was a central theme of our episode asking how start-ups can achieve the same world-class customer experience as a Fortune 500 company. One of the experts we spoke with was Alroy Almeida, the director of deep tech at Velocity, a leading start-up incubator in Canada.

Alroy acknowledged that growing start-ups face challenges when trying to deliver a high quality customer experience, but he encouraged leaders to harness technology that maintains the humanity in customer interactions.

Alroy Almeida: It does take a lot of time, and that's where using technology to help you to augment what you're doing can be so valuable. Like, human interaction is one of the least scalable things. Software, for most intents and purposes, is infinitely scalable. So while you might not be able to go meet with every single customer - video calling has obviously done a lot to help there, but you can use tools to record yourselves and not just send a generic email, but you're responding directly to them. You're showing your face, you're showing your personality.

Robert Zirk: That type of empathetic human support is invaluable. And technology can actually play a critical role in making sure that type of human support is available.

Incorporating chatbots and self-service options into a holistic CX strategy to address human needs can help ensure agents have greater capacity to provide empathetic support and solve complex inquiries. A Salesforce survey of senior IT leaders reports that 84% believe generative AI will help their organization provide better service for their customers.

Brian Hannon, global head of customer experience innovation at TELUS International, highlighted how these technologies can help provide better self-serve options for companies while improving their resources.

Brian Hannon: Allowing the customer to self-manage their experience is obviously lower cost than not being self-managed. And so setting up to have the right access to information, the right access to tools that can help guide for information, whether that's positive chatbots that are functional and work effectively can be very positive as well.

But I think the judgment on what are the right technologies that will work for that company is an important one. So it's not just any chatbot, it's gotta be a chatbot that solves the problems effectively and that there's a safeguard against the chatbot not working as well.

Robert Zirk: Alroy and Brian share many more tips and strategies in the episode "How can startups achieve the same world-class customer experience as a Fortune 500 company?" Whether your business is a start-up or an established industry leader, you'll find a wealth of insights in this episode.

Number two: Make your customer experience effortless across all channels.

When we asked how customer expectations change in difficult economic climates, our guests noted customers are seeing less of a distinction between the in-person and digital experience. Charles Lindsey, associate professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management, explained why it's important to think of your brand experience, and by extension, your customer experience, holistically, ensuring that every channel is integrated and experiences are effortless.

Charles Lindsey: We use a term a lot, and you see this a lot everywhere now in business — omnichannel management, where companies are managing their in-store presence and their digital presence, whether it be online mobile, or online desktop, tablet, what have you, they're managing their various channels in a way to create a 360 degree experience with consumers that is seamless.

Robert Zirk: Charles noted examples like BOPIS, which is "buy online, pickup in store", and online grocery shopping — both of which became more widespread as businesses adapted to the pandemic, and have continued to be a popular option among consumers.

But while the share of online purchases continues to grow, Charles cautions that these changes don't mean in-store shopping is a thing of the past. In fact, some online retailers who started out strictly online are starting to open their own brick-and-mortar retail outlets.

Charles Lindsey: All we hear about nowadays: online, online, online. And online is important, no doubt. That's where the growth is. Eight, nine, 10%, still around double digit growth.

But what people fail sometimes to understand is in most product categories, 70, 80% of total spending is still in store. So four dollars out of every five, still in store. So that is going to be with us still for the foreseeable future.

Robert Zirk: Check out the episode "How do customer expectations change in difficult economic climates?" to learn more about how consumer behavior is shifting and the tactics brands are employing to adapt.

Number three: Create an automation roadmap with clear objectives.

Automation has the potential to reduce costs, improve accuracy, and streamline customer support delivery. And robotic process automation in particular can speed up repetitive tasks, like gathering customer information, searching a knowledge base, and completing after call work. But for RPA's many benefits, there are significant challenges when it comes to implementation. An Ernst and Young study found that between 30 to 50% of robotic process automation projects fail globally.

As we debunked myths and misconceptions in our episode titled "What do people get wrong about automation?", Nigel Devaraj, senior product manager of hyperautomation at TELUS International, outlined a few reasons why the failure rate is so high and what leaders can do to increase the likelihood of success.

Nigel Devaraj: One of the main reasons is lack of clear objectives, not understanding the business objectives and goals. If that's not clearly defined, the automation project is gonna fail.

The next one is going big, meaning you start with the most complicated thing and you're trying to do all of it at once. The concept of crawl, walk, run cannot be overemphasized when you're starting with automation. Start with something simple. Get a quick win. Everybody embraces that quick win and then start building on it versus trying to run out of the gate.

And by the way, not everything should be automated. Some things should just be optimized. Automation's a better solution for more of the long term, So that repeatable activity. The ROI is better there and you actually get more value as a company than just a quick fix. There's nothing worse than adding automation that does not add value.

Robert Zirk: Automation requires human support to succeed, and as you look to build your roadmap and plan for implementation, it's important to remember the technology and processes you implement are meant to improve the human experience: for your employees and your customers.

Nigel Devaraj: Companies need to spend time educating their team members on what is the impact, why they're implementing automation and what that means to them.

If you don't go through the process and put the effort into managing that change, getting your employees to embrace it wholeheartedly, then automation will fail because people are going to either try and work around that or they're just gonna be unhappy with it because they think "That's replacing me."

Robert Zirk: The most successful companies are the ones who take a human-in-the-loop approach, meaning human interaction and oversight is happening alongside the use of technology solutions. This ideally creates a feedback loop that allows the technology to improve over time for more accuracy. Nigel stresses that successful automation isn't just dropped in, it requires continuous management.

Nigel Devaraj: That's why we use the concept of a digital agent. We love to ask our customers to try and embrace the technology, name it, make it part of their team because it's something that needs, just like a human being, needs to be maintained, needs to be cared for. It needs to be monitored. So it's something you start off slow and you just build on it. I think that's the best way possible. And that also doesn't have you fully committed and allows you to test and modify as you go along.

Robert Zirk: We think of lifelong learning for human employees, right? So there has to be a digital equivalent for the digital coworkers, for the automation side.

Nigel Devaraj: Exactly. It's no different. It's just technology, meaning it can work all day long for you, but it does need to be cared for.

Robert Zirk: Our episode titled "What do people get wrong about automation?" explores the evolution of automation, the benefits of RPA in customer experience, and the impacts of automation on the employee experience. Be sure to listen to gain valuable insights for your automation journey.

Number four: Leverage innovative technology to recruit the CX talent you need.

Between fluctuations in the labor market, an ever-changing supply of talent and competitors recruiting for similar roles, it's not always easy to find and hire for the roles you need. So we asked our guests how brands can leverage innovation to recruit top-tier talent in digital customer experience and one strategy they identified was to look toward technologies like automation and generative AI.

Tricia Williams is the director of research, evaluation and knowledge mobilization at Future Skills Centre, a Canadian organization that works to help job seekers gain the skills they need to succeed in a changing labor market. She spoke to a collaboration that Future Skills Centre participated in, resulting in an AI-powered assessment tool that edited job postings to broaden their appeal to a wider talent pool.

Tricia Williams: So for instance, one job posting was submitted by an employer and they said, "You know, the title of this job is administration and financial coordinator, and if you make it administration and financial organizer and remove the university education requirement, you're gonna get a lot more job postings." That was all done by AI. The modified job posting attracted 80% more applicants than the original, and the successful candidate that they identified was through the modified job posting. So you can see that AI can be actually a really good tool for that we hadn’t thought of maybe through human intelligence of how to appeal to a wider range of candidates, remove some qualifications potentially or modify them, make them more skills-based, and actually create better matches between labor supply and labor demand.

Robert Zirk: Another tactic driven by technology is the use of predictive analytics, which can identify great hires not only for now, but into the future. Pamela Rodas, senior director of global talent acquisition at TELUS International, said that companies need to make the recruitment process less about themselves and more about the candidates that they want to receive applications from. She spoke to how her team uses AI not only to assess to the role that's been posted, but also to assess the potential that candidates have to grow within TELUS International.

Pamela Rodas: That type of AI-based analysis that we get at the beginning is embedded in our human capital tool where we store that information and ensure that when we are seeking for those roles internally, because we have a huge percentage of our talent being promoted internally, we check for those skills and competencies beforehand so we can do a proper match, and we can understand if they will be successful in the recruiting process as well as in the role.

Robert Zirk: But while technology can provide many benefits, Pamela noted the importance of finding the right balance in defining roles for the technology you leverage and your recruiting team.

Pamela Rodas: There has to be flexibility in technology. I've had many conversations with certain leaders in other companies that say, "You know, I implemented three types of tools. They were super expensive and we still needed the same amount of recruiters to actually hire that amount of people. So why don't I just stick with people and forget about that expensive technology?" It doesn't work that way. It has to be a combination, and that's one thing we have learned over the years. You can have the fanciest tool and still not have the best approach with candidates. You have to be careful with the vendors that you choose, if they will be [a] fit for you as well. It's not only the candidate.

Robert Zirk: Our episode titled "How can brands leverage innovation to recruit top-tier talent?" provides greater insight Into how candidate expectations are evolving and how rethinking your hiring and onboarding practices can help you build the best team for your business.

Number five: Design for security across your operations.

Customers expect the brands they interact with to keep their data secure. Research from McKinsey & Company shows that 40% of consumers and 52% of B2B purchasers have stopped doing business with companies that didn't protect customer data. So we asked how brands can rethink their data security practices to maintain the trust customers place in them.

One key principle our guests raised was security by design: the building of security considerations into the foundation of the products, services and processes you develop. As much as it can seem daunting to take action, Dr. Dave Chatterjee, associate professor of management information systems at the University of Georgia and host of the Cybersecurity Readiness podcast, had some words of encouragement for leaders who may be just starting down the path of adopting a security by design approach.

Dr. Dave Chatterjee: It's never too late to get on the track of proactive cybersecurity. It's never too late.

Top management has to lead the way. They set the tone, they set the standards, they set the culture and they do it not just by talking about it - by actively engaging in the process.

A guest on my podcast made a, I thought it was a very profound statement.

He said, Dave, I wish more senior leaders would consider cyber threats as a strategic opportunity. They should take it as a challenge to create capabilities, competencies which would allow them to reach out to potential customers and say, "Hey, if you keep your data with us, your data will be more secure because we care about security. Cybersecurity is one of our core competencies. It is integral to the mission of our company." Being very secure allows a company to promote their brand, to increase the customer base. So it's a win-win.

There is a myth out there that you can either have convenience or you can have security. You can't have both. Well, maybe at some point that was true, but today, if you have to be competitive, you have to provide both. You want to provide customers a very intuitive, easy to use kind of experience, but they also want to be assured that their privacy is not being compromised and their data is being protected.

So that's kind of the way organizations, the leadership needs to think about security. Security as a strategic opportunity.

Robert Zirk: For a deeper discussion on what brands need to be aware of in cybersecurity today, tune into the Questions for now episode "How can brands rethink data security to maintain customer trust?"

Number six: Create safe online communities for customers.

If your brand runs or is part of an online community, you'll want to familiarize yourself with algospeak. Algospeak is online language that's meant to evade algorithmic detection, and it can include code words, slang, deliberate typos, emojis or different words that sound similar to the intended one.

On our episode titled "How can brands keep up with algospeak?", Siobhan Hanna, managing director and vice-president of TELUS International AI Data Solutions, spoke to why people communicate online in this way.

Siobhan Hanna: Culture, youth culture, trends, meme culture, and then in some instances, there are certain groups within culture that may be influencing language for less benign reasons.

There are instances where of course it's problematic, whether that is because it's offensive or could result in a safety, a harm issue. But I certainly think, actually, it can help to create affinity in some ways. It actually can help to reinforce safety in some ways. I just think it's organic, right? I think it's just part of how language has always evolved. This is just a different means of how that is happening.

Robert Zirk: And Dr. Jamie Cohen, assistant professor at Queens College, City University of New York, concurs that the measure of whether algospeak is a good or bad thing depends entirely on how it's being used.

Dr. Jamie Cohen: I think algospeak is a very savvy way of interacting with this content. Trust and safety is a very important part of all social media platforms. And I think without that, safety is the biggest concern. Not just for people, but for brands. You don't want your advertisement showing up next to something that's wildly inappropriate. Even on the basis of like marginally inappropriate.

Robert Zirk: 41% of Americans surveyed say that if they come across the kinds of algospeak that negatively impact user safety, it leaves them with a negative impression of the platform or brand that it's being associated with. And another 9% say that it's enough for them to stop buying a brand altogether. So brands have some important questions to consider when they come across algospeak.

Dr. Jamie Cohen: They have to make a value judgment. Is the content valuable enough to maintain its ability to communicate, share information and keep people on the site without alienating anybody at the same time? And is it dangerous?

Robert Zirk: To learn more, "How can brands keep up with algospeak?" provides a glimpse into the relationship between algospeak and the way humans communicate and is a must-listen for brands looking to stay up-to-date on content moderation best practices.

So those are six digital CX resolutions that can help your business grow and thrive in 2024, and as we wrap up today's episode, I have one more resolution for you, and that's - if you're not already following - to hit the Follow button on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to Questions for now. That way, you'll be among the first to hear compelling insights from business leaders and top experts that can give your brand a competitive edge in digital customer experience.

In 2024, we'll be asking big questions pertaIning to topics like voice technology, generative AI and much more. So again, be sure to follow to hear episodes as soon as they're released.

Thank you so much for listening to Questions for now, a TELUS International podcast. And a big thank you to everyone who is following and sharing each episode. I'm Robert Zirk, and until next time, that's all... for now.

On this episode, we look back at our first season of Questions for now — and highlight six customer experience (CX) resolutions to consider as your brand rings in the new year.

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Robert Zirk: Brand loyalty isn't what it used to be.

Research from TechSee, a technology partner of TELUS International that provides visual customer experience solutions, shows that more than one in three U.S.-based customers aren't brand loyal and would leave for a competitor if the right opportunity presented itself. And the SAP Emarsys 2023 Customer Loyalty Index found a 14% drop in the number of U.S.-based consumers who considered themselves loyal to one or more brands.

Those numbers might seem alarming at first glance, but they don't mean that loyalty is going away altogether. Today's customers are looking for personalization, speed and convenience, and as technologies like AI continue to be leveraged to enhance the customer experience, this represents an opportunity for brands willing to put in the work to swim against the tide.

So today on Questions for now, we'll ask: What does customer loyalty look like in the age of AI?

Robert Zirk: Before we get to our big question, we need to start by clarifying that when we're referencing loyalty, we don't mean "loyalty programs" like frequent flyer miles or a freebie after a certain number of purchases. That's a distinction one of our expert guests was keen to emphasize.

Shep Hyken is a keynote speaker, author, host of the Amazing Business Radio podcast and customer experience expert with more than four decades of experience in the field. He views loyalty programs more like incentivized marketing programs. They can be a great tactic to deploy as part of your overall marketing strategy, but shouldn't be confused with the overall concept of customer loyalty.

Shep Hyken: What it really drives, and I love this, is repeat business. Now, my question to the people that do these types of programs is simply this: if we took away the perks and the points, are we strong enough in the experience to make customers still want to do business with us? That's true loyalty.

Robert Zirk: In his book, I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, Shep dives deep into the concepts of customer loyalty and retention, and clarifies the difference between repeat customers and loyal customers.

Shep Hyken: Sometimes we think customers are loyal to us because they keep doing business with us, but sometimes it's just easier to do business with us than switch to a different vendor. Sometimes it's, you feel like, "Eh, these sticky solutions make me want to stay. Even though I'm experiencing frustration, I still stay."

So one of the things we want to find out is why does a customer keep coming back? Is it because, if we're just, say, a retail location, is it because I'm closer than my competitor? What happens if a competitor moves one mile closer to my customer or even just a quarter of a mile? Does that mean I'm going to lose the customer because that customer was more interested in convenience? Then they were my store, I just happened to be the more convenient store at the time.

What about price? We advertise low prices. Does that mean the customer is going to go wherever the lowest price is? If that's the case, they're loyal to the price, not the business. Maybe it's somebody inside our business. This happens, especially in the B2B world, where an inside sales rep decides to move to another company and in the process may end up taking customers with them because it turns out that the customers love the rep and it just happens to be where they were working.

So all of these factors need to be considered to understand: why does a customer keep coming back? And are they truly loyal or are they coming back for other reasons?

Robert Zirk: Shep challenges leaders to think about customer loyalty as something that's built one interaction at a time.

Shep Hyken: I did a keynote speech for an organization and we talked about loyalty and I said, "Here's the way I want you to think about it. Think about: 'What am I doing right now as I interact with this customer?'"

At this moment, as the customer interacts with us in any way that they do, to ensure that the next time they do what it is that we sell, they're going to come back and want it from us because of the experience we're giving them right now.

If it's people to people, are we doing all the things that are expected? Are we showing empathy, concern? Are we supportive? Is it an easy experience? Was it easy to reach a person? Was it easy to get an answer? Are the self service options intuitive? Is AI being used to deflect human-to-human interaction, or is it used to support and augment the interaction?

All of these things go toward creating an experience that makes the customer want to come back.

Robert Zirk: In a TELUS International survey, 62% of US-based consumers said if they had to choose between the two, they would prefer a more personalized customer experience over one that takes less time. Furthermore, 55% of respondents said that nothing excuses a bad customer experience.

And while it's important to consider the questions Shep raised from a business perspective, it's also valuable to take a step back and look at how your customers think about loyalty.

Are these digital CX resolutions on your list for 2024?

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