It’s unsurprising that improving the Customer Experience (CX) is the top driver for enterprises’ digital transformation strategies given that even in normal times they struggle to meet customer expectations. Call centers can't keep up, websites experience outages, and information shared online, in emails, and on social media, is inconsistent. Even the use of bots that try to scale responses and shift conversations outside public eyes have shown little effectiveness in calming rising customer friction points. 

• Improving CX is the main driver of digital transformation overall (61%), followed by reducing costs through operational efficiencies (54%)
• Going into the pandemic only 42% of businesses said they had efficient customer processes organized by department, 58% reported mostly or highly manual customer experiences processes with only some automation
• The top choices for future strategic software application partners are those offering full-suite, scalable CX portfolios with functionality spanning sales, marketing, commerce and service

Those most closely supporting the customer experience - marketing, sales and customer service employees – face new pressures from the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Sales and Marketing teams lack critical face-to-face opportunities and are being expected to do more with less, while those in customer service roles are having to strongly accelerate their shift to digital engagement.

In this webinar 451 Research’s lead Customer Experience analyst Sheryl Kingstone, and workforce productivity analyst Chris Marsh will discuss the challenges CX employees face and the strategies they should consider.