You don't win customer loyalty solely by the "wow!" factor. You win simply by delivering on customer promises and resolving everyday issues.

According to research from CEB's book,The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty, two major factors affect customer loyalty during an interaction:

• The first is how much effort is required from the customer to resolve an issue.
• The second is the skills and efficiency of the customer-service agent.

To positively affect customer loyalty, you need to influence these factors during the interaction, not after it.

Influencing customer loyalty in this way doesn't require magic, it requires data -usually data that you already have but aren't using to full advantage. Regardless of industry, most organizations today generate mountains of data. In fact, many customers tell me that they have so much data that their biggest problem is how to manage all the data they have.

The challenge of data volume is also the opportunity. Bringing together structured and unstructured historical data across organizational silos - and combining it with information about an ongoing customer interaction - provides a compelling opportunity to influence customer experience in real time.

Nowhere is this more the case than within your contact center.

Adding Value on the Front Lines

Your contact-center agents are on the front lines with customers. They impact customer buying decisions, sentiment, and ultimately, loyalty through their interactions.

We created Cisco Connected Analytics for Contact Center with this challenge in mind. The software analyzes contact center data such as intelligent contact routing and call treatment to measure agent effectiveness and customer effort for each interaction.

The agent effectiveness score:

• Helps improve an agent's skills and efficiency
• Can be used to get the customer to the right agent at the right time
• Analyzes agent behavior to help managers better identify who their best agents are and who needs training
• Identifies how agents compare to their teammates

Meanwhile, the customer effort score:

• Helps reduce the customer's effort in resolving an issue
• Can improve call routing
• Provides visibility if a customer requires a call back
• Prepares agents to handle a call more effectively
• Provides segmentation for outbound campaigns

Customer expectations are evolving. Customer demand for personalized and seamless experiences is quickly becoming the norm. If you do not change the way that you're serving your customers, you'll find yourself disrupted by competitors.

New software capabilities such as Data Virtualization and Connected Analytics for Contact Center can help you be the disruptor. Are you ready?

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Check out the blogs of Mala Anand, Kevin Ott, Bob Eve and Nicola Villa to learn more.