Global state of CX automation in APAC in 2022

Foreword

The sheer volume of data points available in societies today and the vast number of individual customers to serve can make it impossible for businesses to manually capitalize on all customer signals.

Advances in recent years in the field of intelligent automation are empowering APAC brands to democratize the delivery of personalized experiences. CX Network’s 2021 Global State of Customer Experience report surveyed CX professionals based in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and found that 44 percent are using automation predominantly to empower self-service (44 percent) and to power chatbots/personal assistants (44 percent), as well as to understand customers better (37 percent).

By using automation, businesses can tailor customer service according to consumer preferences at scale and adapt to various cultural norms around anguage, dialects, customs and Regions. This personalization can be very beneficial, as Forbes reported that 91 percent of customers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant recommendations and offers.

Achieving success in this area, however, is no easy feat. Automation requires high-quality data practices and careful workflow implementation to reap the benefits it offers.

This benchmarking workbook, compiled by CX Network and yellow.ai, provides learnings from the best-in-class automation strategies used by CX experts who serve customers within the APAC region.

“To make automation work, constant analysis on type of queries, response template needs to be reviewed on a regular basis. We always aim to make customers’ interactions as seamless as possible.”

Stephanie Kirana

Country customer relations manager at IKEA Indonesia

Use automation to create a smarter work environment

Companies that automate their processes can create better working environment for their agents and encourage higher productivity throughout the business.

Using automation to shoulder high-volume routine enquiries

Contact center agents are being challenged by more complex work. Non-compromising customer experience expectations from consumers often lead to tough on-boarding for new employees. Additionally, the introduction of new channels such as self-service means agents are required to handle multiple interactions simultaneously. Additionally, the introduction of new channels such as self-service means agents are required to handle multiple interactions simultaneously.

“Intelligent virtual assistants relieve CX teams by automating answers to simple customer queries, fetching data instantly, improving the speed of responses and reducing customer calls by a huge number,” explains Rashid Khan, co-founder and chief product officer at yellow.ai.

Also read: Data and analytics in APAC benchmarking workbook

After call volumes became unmanageable in the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, US-based waste services Waste Connections implemented a virtual assistant to communicate with its 285,000 customers. In addition to people requesting extra bins because they were spending more time at home, schedules and routes were disrupted when drivers became ill.

Waste Connection’s chatbot ‘Trina’, which was launched in collaboration with yellow.ai, addressed the majority of customer phone calls with on-demand query resolution in two weeks. The chatbot helped manage the influx of calls and common customer queries, which ultimately led to savings of US$250,000 per month.

Ensure compliance safety

By introducing automation, companies can ensure agents are meeting compliance requirements during customer interactions. Automation can provide automated real-time prompts, alerts, reminders and scripts to keep agents in compliance with internal policies, external regulations, thereby preventing incorrect process steps.

Shorten employee training time

By introducing automated personal assistants, companies can help agents handle calls more efficiently by providing next-best-action assistance and automating routine activities.

“Human intelligence augmented with artificial intelligence (AI) will help deliver customized CX automation strategies for an elevated customer experience,” says Rashid Khan, co-founder and chief product officer at Yellow.ai. Automated assistants can walk agents step-by-step through applications and use real-time scripts to suggest agent comments. By training agents on the job, automation reduces the amount of in-classroom learning and fast-tracks their productivity timeline.

Automated gamification is a creative way to train staff members and optimize their performance levels. It rewards employees for their efforts and motivates them through recognition by providing goals to strive for and rewards to be earned.

Khan highlights that it is critical to ensure CX automation strategies have clear boundaries for the division of work between humans and AI. He adds: “The end game is to build a plan that will focus on how the human and AI can play to each other’s strengths, thereby giving the best of both worlds.”

Provide omnichannel experiences for customers

Omnichannel engagement has become an essential element of customer experience, says Khan. “Customers today expect a seamless experience when they interact with brands irrespective of the channel of communication.” Rashid Khan, co-founder and chief product officer at Yellow.ai, shares his top tips for how automation can deliver omnichannel engagement models.

Customer centricity is key

“For any CX automation strategy to be successful, customer centricity obviously becomes the key ingredient. As a brand, it is pivotal to understand and decode your customer’s voice,” explains Kahn.

By recognizing each customer as an individual, companies can thoroughly understand their customers’ digital journey and channel preferences to map out all relevant touchpoints and create a blueprint of the automation process. Brands can use these learnings to set a definitive path for their automation strategy and engage with customers in the right place, at the right time, with the right messaging.

Also read: Omnichannel experts insights ebook

Drive automation across different modalities

While implementing a CX automation strategy, companies should aim for an all-inclusive approach to provide frictionless experiences to their customers, Khan notes.

“Essentially, it means that their strategy should be equipped with the ability to drive automation across different modalities be it voice or chat or across web or social,” he explains.

Brands operating in APAC should also work toward multilingual capabilities. Due to the sheer mix of cultures and dialects within the region, companies must customize their linguistics to effectively connect with customers.

Yellow.ai recently launched ‘INBOX’, a unified omnichannel customer support helpdesk that enables agents to manage customer queries across more than 35 conversational channels from a single dashboard in multiple languages with a complete customer history. The system aims to help reduce query resolution time, build brand recall value for prospects and improve retention rates for existing customers.

Overcome legacy silos with low-code automation

In Khan’s experience, one of the biggest challenges in implementing a successful CX automation strategy is technology integration. Legacy automation solutions can be time-consuming and present a challenge when integrating diverse systems. He recommends that brands invest in low-code automation platforms, as they have the agility to enable businesses to test, make changes and deploy automation solutions quickly.

Case study:

Bajaj Finserv’s multilingual omnichannel model

In India, financial institution Bajaj Finserv needed a solution that would help it offer premium customer experience while keeping costs under control. As a solution, yellow.ai built a multilingual Virtual Assistant, ‘BLU’, which was deployed on five channels to help users across the customer lifecycle. The bot solves user queries, has sold financial solutions and has automated more than 20 million conversations with 95 percent accuracy. Additionally, ‘BLU’ is now contributing to an increase in sales and revenue worth US$10m in just five months.

Eliminate customer pain points with automated 24/7 service

Not only can automation rescue agents from mundane tasks, but it also provides consumers with access to out-of-hours service. Chatbots are a particularly useful automation tool, acting as an always-available automated assistant who can solve common issues or escalate customers’ problems to the right agent if required.

Rashid Khan, says that the constant availability that chatbots offer is invaluable in today’s always online era. “Customers can connect with brands any time of the day or night, expecting a five star experience each time,” Khan remarks. “Availability, therefore, becomes a very important factor and this is where conversational AI can help brands get an added advantage to stand out in the clutter.” Chatbot workflows must be designed correctly so they do not frustrate customers with limited functionalities.

Chatbots need continuous improvement and training to ensure they are efficient enough to provide customers with the support they require, as seen in IKEA’s case study.

Case study:

How IKEA introduced chatbot automation to reduce first response times by 300 percent

When analyzing its customer enquiries, IKEA discovered that 47 percent were direct enquiries that could be handled by an automated response, for instance requests on store operating hours, delivery tracking, payment status and order status.

The chatbot automation implemented by IKEA to handle these questions empowered the retailer to shorten response times and allow agents to focus on more meaningful customer conversations.

Since implementing the chatbot, first response times has improved by 300 percent, IKEA has been able to cut down customer queues and keep first resolution rates at a satisfactory level.

Using automation to promote continuous improvement

Rather than become complacent, IKEA continues to train its chatbot to ensure it is as efficient as possible. Stephanie Kirana, country customer relations manager at IKEA Indonesia, says: “To make automation work, constant analysis on type of queries, response template needs to be reviewed on a regular basis. We always aim to make customers’ interactions as seamless as possible. We work on customer question flow to ensure that the bot automation is helping our customer to find the answers they need.”

When implementing automation, Kirana suggests that companies understand their customers well to implement automation in areas that will best benefit them. When introducing chatbot automation, she advises on building an automation flow that mimics actual customer conversations. Chatbots should give clear directions for customers to aid their usage, for example: ‘please select below to continue’.

Blending digital and in-store experiences via automation

Asia has seen exponential growth in e-commerce adoption among its consumers, with the number of online consumers soaring to more than 310 million. This shift in customer behavior inspired Sephora to analyze how consumers engage with brands at both brick-and-mortar outlets and their online stores.

The retailer discovered that customers usually searched for product details, reviews, best prices and recommendations before considering purchasing in-store. Based on this, the cosmetics retailer blended the digital and in-store experience by building a 360-degree omnichannel automated solution that enabled a personalized experience for its global customers with little human intervention.

The solution utilize yellow.ai’s dynamic AI agent. With a built-in proprietary natural language processing engine, the chatbot can understand consumer intent through WhatsApp messages and deliver desired services from providing store timings to order and refund details. The AI assistant fetches the right product details from the consumer’s nearest store so the customer can directly engage with in-store beauty advisors who can support their purchase decisions.

Vikas Gupta, senior manager of omnichannel and innovation at Sephora, said: “With yellow.ai we are able to enhance our omnichannel experience. It is always a pleasure partnering with a team that is aligned with your business goals and continues to strive to solve the next big business problem.”

“With yellow.ai we are able to enhance our omnichannel experience. It is always a pleasure partnering with a team that is aligned with your business goals and continues to strive to solve the next big business problem.”

Vikas Gupta

Senior manager, omnichannel and innovation, Sephora

Use automation to power predictive customer journey management

Using automation and AI for customers can help facilitate smarter, proactive customer journey management to reduce customer frustration.

Automation can assist with proactive issue resolution for customers online in the form of helpful webpage popups, emails and live chat prompts. By integrating notification triggers around common pain points in customer journeys, automated prompts can guide users and alert employees so customers can avoid encountering issues.

Joshua Tye, customer experience leader at non-profit healthcare system, Wellstar Health System, notes that these automation strategies create can sophisticated experiences. “As a brand develops a predictive and real-time presence in customer’s decision-making processes, it creates a concierge-like atmosphere that lends itself to the customer’s goals, providing consistent quality and efficiency,” he says.

Technology and software firm Lenovo developed its own AI platform ‘Lenovo Brain’ as part of its own intelligent transformation. This transformation aims to enhance how Lenovo devices proactively interact with users and upgrade efficiencies of its IT operations and smart factories to remove friction from customer journeys.

Also read: AI in omnichannel world

By using automation, companies are able to look ahead on the customer journey and preempt pain points. The quality and efficiency created ultimately increases customer loyalty and customer lifetime values.

When looking to implement automated solutions, Hardianto Utama, regional business solution specialist for South East Asia at beauty company Oriflame says that while changes of process can be painful in the beginning, since all of the project members have the same objective and passion – namely, to improve the customer experience – any initial areas of friction can be overcome.

“As a brand develops a predictive and real-time presence in customer’s decision-making processes, it creates a concierge like atmosphere that lends itself to the customer’s goals, providing consistent quality and efficiency.”

Joshua Tye

Customer experience leader at Wellstar Health System

Automation implementation tips

Hardianto Utama, regional business solution specialist for South East Asia at beauty company Oriflame, offers this advice to companies looking to implement automation:

• Make sure your current process is well-mapped, and create a “blueprint” of the process
• Focus on your customers - put yourself in their shoes and automate what would be useful for them
• Focus on processes that really need to be improved
• Find the best partner whether this is a provider or vendor) that can help give advice on how to best implement automation.

Boost your data literacy with automation

High-quality data management is crucial for successful automation. Once implemented automation itself can boost your firm’s data literacy and guide your CX strategy.

Rashid Khan explains that conversational AI technologies can feature integrated analytics dashboards that generate deep insights on customer behavior and communication. Various metrics that can be recorded for analysis include chat volume, goal completion rate, number of bots initiated, bounce rate, fallback rate, retention rate and satisfaction score.

“Brands can use these metrics to understand customers’ intent and perception, tracking the positive or negative sentimental trends to optimize future conversations and processes. Observations from the conversational AI automated dashboards can educate brands with dataled tactics to drive higher CSATs and better conversions,” he shares.

Data-driven automated customer engagement

Customer insight and data can be used to guide automated engagements that are customized to customer preferences.

The information collected by automated systems, such as virtual assistants, can be utilized to expose brands to new lead generation streams with multilingual capabilities and broad engagement opportunities at scale.

For instance, brands can use Instagram chatbots to effectively re-engage with customers who visited their page but did not convert. The chatbot can then greet repeat visitors with a welcome message that includes recommendations based on past engagements. Automated engagements can generate data to further bolster how your brand provides relevant and convenient experiences to customers.

“Brands can use these metrics to understand customers’ intent and perception, tracking the positive or negative sentimental trends to optimize future conversations and processes.”

Rashid Khan

Co-founder and chief product officer at yellow.ai.

Providing multilingual support for customers at scale

Premium fashion and retail destination ZALORA recorded more than three million app downloads and witnessed a seven to 12 percent increase in the share of new customers by revenue ratio, from new customers located in varied geographies.

With millions of app users using multiple languages and with a presence across multiple geographies, ZALORA was exploring a multipurpose solution that would simplify their online support operations and promotions, while working within the limitations of the same workforce bandwidth. They introduced the ZALORA chatbot as a solution to these issues.

With the addition of the ZALORA bot, operations have been automated to a large extent and customers can now track orders, returns and refunds, and make exchanges through an information center, leading to higher customer satisfaction scores.

The ZALORA bot can converse in at least three languages including Bahasa Indonesia, English and Mandarin, and ZALORA plans to deploy chatbots in many more languages soon.

“We are glad to be able to partner with like-minded companies who strongly believe in seamless customer experience while uplifting operational efficiency. We are able to handle double the volume with the same team size and support our customers extensively with a yellow.ai powered chatbot.”

Kannan Rajaratnam

Regional director of payments and customer operations at ZALORA

Final remarks

By employing the use of automation to enhance the customer experiences provided to buyers across APAC, brands place themselves in a stronger position to foster customer loyalty.

Automation can unlock workplace upgrades including higher employee engagement, multilingual support, 24/7 service, predictive CX capabilities and reduced customer disruption.

While chatbots and automated assistants require time and effort to implement, they can bring a host of positives to companies, such as fast-tracking customer query resolution and reducing repetitive workload on employees, opening them up to handle higher value interactions.

By using customer data to locate areas of implementation that will benefit both the company and consumers, brands can ensure that their customers and employees gain real value from automation. Additionally, automated engagements can help generate data that can be used to provide personalized experiences to customers.

To keep up with customer expectations in the APAC region around streamlined convenient service, companies should consider dedicating themselves to optimizing their automation capabilities, otherwise they risk losing their competitive edge.

“The end game is to build a plan that will focus on how the human and AI can play to each other’s strengths, thereby giving the best of both worlds.”

Rashid Khan

Co-founder and chief product officer at yellow.ai.

Read the PDF report here