Zingly: Overcome FORO (Fear of Reaching Out) with a Multichannel CX Experience

Martech Zone Interviews

Too often, companies begin with a solution and then search for a problem. Juiciero is a prime example. No one needed a high-tech juicer, so the company folded. This product-first approach is backward. The most successful businesses start by understanding customer pain points. Every product decision, feature, and innovation stems from improving customers’ lives.

But business isn’t just about building the right product but cultivating relationships. Every interaction between your customer and your company shapes the connection. Consider this:

85% of customers will go out of their way to do business with a company with better customer service.

Hyken

At the same time, a single bad experience damages or destroys affinity:

More than half of consumers reporting they would reduce or stop spending with a business after a negative interaction. Lousy customer service puts $3.7 billion of sales at risk.

Qualtrics

For long-term success, you must apply your customer-centric focus to both your product and your customer experience (CX).

Fear of Reaching Out

The current approach to CX isn’t working. Forrester’s latest Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) shows CX quality is at an all-time low.

The 1-800 number is a staple of customer service strategies, but this model is dying. Fear of reaching out (FORO) is real for a huge part of the market. Phone calls cause anxiety for 80% of millennials and 90% of Gen Z.

The reputation of 1-800 lines compounds the hesitancy. Many people have had bad experiences trying to call a company due to long wait times, unhelpful agents, and complex processes.

A lack of system integration hinders the customer experience. Agents may not have access to the right data, resulting in inaccurate information or multiple handoffs between departments. Staffing challenges and cost-cutting efforts can limit agent availability. Fewer agents mean longer wait times.

While many companies have excellent customer phone service, a single frustrating call can make people hesitant to pick up the phone with any other company. Some people may switch brands in today’s market rather than contact customer service.

If a customer does pick up the phone to call customer service, your agents are already behind the eight ball. No one calls a company to give compliments. They have a problem, and they want it fixed. The interaction starts in a negative place, making it hard to build a positive relationship.

We must adjust our approach to meet customers on their terms, not ours.

Chatbots: Better, but Not Perfect

Millennials and Gen Z prefer to conduct business online as much as possible. With this in mind, many companies have implemented chatbots. These tools remove anxiety from problem-solving for customers because they can resolve many issues independently at any time of the day. No waiting for business hours to muster up the resolve to pick up the phone and sit on hold.

Chatbots are a significant advancement in customer-focused CX, but they are not a perfect solution.

Almost three-quarters of customers don’t think self-service/automated support matches the quality of humans.

Hyken

The reality is there will always be problems too complex for a standard decision tree or GenAI algorithm.

Relying too heavily on chatbots can cause customers even more frustration than waiting on hold. Eight in 10 people report having to call customer service after a chatbot failed to provide a solution.

The solution? A blend of humans and AI.

Humans + AI = Good Customer Experience

CX needs to be seamless, omnichannel, and multimodal to serve customers wherever, whenever, and however they want. Forcing them to use a single channel is our preference, not theirs.

Delivering a convenient, quality experience requires:

Human Accessibility

Think about it. How do you communicate with friends and family? It’s likely a combination of channels, like text, social media apps, video chats, and phone calls. So why would you make your agents available only via phone?

Allow customers to interact with a human across multiple channels. This approach lets you meet customers in their preferred places and have meaningful conversations.

Making agents accessible is critical to customer satisfaction. Over 60% of customers have stopped doing business with a company because they can’t connect with a human.

Automation

There is a time and place for automation. Customers can easily resolve many problems and requests independently. For example, an order status inquiry doesn’t require human expertise. Chatbots can quickly provide that information.

Automation streamlines issue resolution while freeing valuable human capacity for high-touch actions, like answering complex questions and even outbound touchpoints.

Seamless Customer Journeys

Seamless interactions require integrated systems. Chatbots and agents must have access to all data to resolve a customer’s inquiry adequately.

When a customer reaches the end of a chatbot’s capacity, please don’t make them start an interaction with an agent from the beginning. Your technology should pass along the full context of the conversation so your customers experience one continuous interaction rather than repeating themselves. The best platforms will recognize when a human touch is necessary and automatically bring an agent into the conversation.

These facets make customer journeys convenient, seamless, and pleasant.

CX as a Revenue Driver

When you provide a multimodal, multichannel customer experience, you can turn CX into a revenue driver.

70% of customers are willing to pay more for convenience, and 87% are likely to recommend a company with convenient customer service to friends and family.

Hyken

True CX should go beyond reactive interactions. Reaching out only when there’s a problem or you’re trying to sell something builds transactional relationships. We don’t want this connection in our personal lives, so why are we creating it with our customers?

Proactively initiating conversations beyond transactions engages customers and engenders loyalty. This outreach might be a check-in on a recent experience or an invitation to a special event like a webinar. AI-driven analytics empower you to create personalized, relevant communication that resonates with individuals.

A proactive CX strategy boosts customer lifetime value and unlocks new revenue opportunities.

Zingly Blends Data, AI, and the Human Touch

Zingly.ai, a digital-first CX Center provider, offers a suite of AI solutions that blend the human touch and automation to create a positive, revenue-generating customer experience.

Zingly Rooms — the core product feature — provide a persistent, always-on digital space that unifies all customer interactions across chat, voice, video, text, documents, and media to provide seamless, 24/7 omnichannel and multimodal engagement. Rooms are supported by multiple GenAI capabilities, including:

• GenAI Buddy: This customer-facing AI agent is built on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to minimize hallucinations and ensure the chatbot has the necessary context to generate accurate, informative responses customized to your customer and business. GenAI Buddy autonomously manages routine tasks and inquiries, such as collecting information, setting calendar invites and opening service tickets, to shorten sales cycles and increase lead-to-opportunity rates.
• Relationship AI: This tool uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and conversational intelligence to elevate customer engagement by escalating high-value interactions with human agents at critical moments. The algorithm identifies intent signals to improve customer satisfaction while unlocking additional revenue through timely human intervention.
• Agent Copilot: This agent-facing solution empowers representatives to handle more inquiries independently, boosting productivity and freeing them to focus on high-value activities. The tool leverages all interactions and data stored in Rooms to deliver real-time summaries, suggested next steps and actionable insights.

Combining Rooms, GenAI Buddy, Agent Copilot and Relationship AI, Zingly provides a unified, personalized customer experience that fosters growth and operational efficiency. Agents can rapidly pursue new opportunities, streamline customer onboarding, and reactivate dormant accounts.

Zingly is designed to meet customers’ needs in highly regulated industries such as banking and insurance, making it a safe choice for companies operating in any space.

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Originally Published on Martech Zone: Zingly: Overcome FORO (Fear of Reaching Out) with a Multichannel CX Experience