By Andrew Hopkins
With automation inching its way into the heart of many industries there is no denying that AI is a future that awaits us all. Machines will be doing ever-increasing amounts of manual and specialised work, meaning that humans will need to either adapt or retrain.
With that in mind, it will come as no surprise that the vast majority of customer-service related jobs will be automated within the coming years.
Imagine a world in which every transaction will be done via pre-recorded, automated, and systemised responses. Where every query will be answered in a computerised, pre-set way. A world where you won’t be able to speak to anyone over the phone, or in person, in order to discuss your concerns, problems or issues.
What is Customer / User Experience?
User Experience (UX) is the interaction between a customer and product and the experience they garner from that interaction.
Examples of good User Experience can include:
- Finding information on a website quickly and easily
- Completing a task with simplicity
- Searching a web page effortlessly
Customer Experience (CX) deals with all the interactions a person has with a brand. This includes their overall experience, likelihood to return or continue using the services and whether they would recommend the brand to others.
Examples of good Customer Experience can include:
- Professional, friendly, and helpful interactions with company representatives
- Overall positive feelings relating to the brand/company/organisation, and everything associated with it
It is vital for all organisations to find the perfect balance between good UX and CX in order to thrive in the pending future of AI.
The concern for many is that the move towards automated customer service and experience is the loss of personalisation and meaningful, transformative exchanges.
So, if you’re looking to succeed within the future customer service-based industry, what essential skills do you need to keep your foot in the door of this ever-evolving role?
- Excellent data skills and strong data interpretation abilities: A lot of future customer experience roles will involve the assessment of customer feedback, surveys, and sentiment evaluations.Therefore customer experience teams with strong data skills will be a must.
- Communication Skills: Another critical skill for a Customer Experience professional in the future digital world will be communicative abilities. This will involve the capability to select and use the right communication channel for each task, based on customer and business requirements. This necessitates a mixture of technical knowledge and skill to know the best tool/channel for the job at hand — whether that’s acquiring customer feedback or acting on it.
- Problem Solving: The capacity to deliver customer experiences that result in increased loyalty and more frictionless interactions, it’s vital to understand the pain points and wider context.
It can be argued that customers buy experiences not products and therefore by enhancing your customer experience skills, as an employee, it can help set you apart from the competition.
As traditional customer service roles evolve, there will be a high demand for people with these user and customer service mindsets. Now is the time for up-skilling, reassessing and re-examining your abilities.
If you’re interested in finding out more about user experience or how to highlight these skills on your CV or within an application, then please contact Whitehead Ross for more information and guidance.
