It can be hard to gauge your customer sentiment, and CSAT surveys, though helpful, can present some major limitations.

When it comes to measuring customer sentiment, why is CSAT not enough?

CSAT surveys take a one-size-fits-all approach to customer sentiment—your CSAT score can easily be distorted by simple issues with easy solutions. Plus, you can’t be sure that your customers are rating you on the right thing—are they rating the quality of the service interaction they just had, or are they scoring the quality of a product they just purchased from you?

CSAT surveys are a good indicator of how happy your customers are, but they really are only an indicator

The fact of the matter is, customers don’t always fill out CSAT surveys. In fact, response rates linger around 5-30%. This presents two problems: 

1. Not enough data: everyone knows that the more data you have, the more accurate your conclusions will be. When you have a small percentage of returned CSAT surveys, you are likely to be working with a less-than-accurate representation of your customers’ true feelings.

2. The 5% rule: Remember that your 90% CSAT may actually lie between 85% and 95%. And if you have a low percentage of submitted surveys, this 5% deviation can be even higher.

So, is your CSAT score just a vanity metric?

Not necessarily, but:

Businesses that exclusively use customer satisfaction scores have a churn rate of 60-80%, including customers who indicated they were “satisfied” or even “very satisfied” in their last CSAT survey. — Fred Reichheld

CSAT alone should never be used to measure your customer sentiment, so it’s often coupled with NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CES (Customer Effort Score) to try and give a more accurate reading. This combination gives a much better indication of customer sentiment, but, even so, a major flaw in CSAT remains:

Only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain… and 91% of unhappy customers simply leave without complaining. 

You need a way of analyzing how every customer feels, especially the ones that aren’t giving you feedback. This is where customer sentiment analysis and sentiment scores enter the picture. 

What are the benefits of customer sentiment analysis?

Introducing customer sentiment analysis to your organization will give you a holistic view of how happy your customers are.

• It tells you how happy the customers who don’t return surveys are.

• It’s no extra effort for customers, so it doesn’t detract from the customer experience.

• It provides data that’s representative of your whole customer base rather than just a vocal portion.

Of course, customer sentiment analysis isn’t perfect, but it can be incredibly useful for bringing you closer to your customers and understanding a) what they are very happy with; and b) where their frustrations are coming from. 

When used in conjunction with survey results and KPIs, customer sentiment scores can be very powerful.   

How does a customer sentiment score work?  

Sentiment analysis essentially detects whether a customer is happy or unhappy after an interaction with your support team. 

Here’s one way to do it:

Goal: score your most recent customer conversations to determine whether customers are happy, unhappy, or neutral. 

You will have to score each word on how positive or negative it is to achieve this. And don’t forget emojis 😃 they can also be a great indicator of a customer’s state of mind. 

Adjectives and verbs are given more weight in the analysis because they are the most important factor in understanding a customer’s true feelings. Emojis are also a good indicator of customer sentiment or customer satisfaction.  Sentiment analysis essentially detects whether a customer is delighted, happy, indifferent, unhappy, or angry after an interaction with your support team. 

Let’s look at two customer messages:

“This is extremely frustrating. The app keeps glitching. I’ve tried for hours to get a ride, while the app says the car should just be minutes away. Worthless service 😕.”

Here, “extremely,” “frustrating,” “worthless,” and the emoji: 😕 would be weighted negatively, resulting in a sentiment score that is well below average. 

Now let’s look at a more cheerful message:

“Dixa is a great asset for our whole team. Our agents love it! 😁”

Here, “great,” “love,” and the emoji would receive positive points and the sentiment would be marked as positive. 

Messages are considered positive, negative, or neutral depending on syntax, semantics, and the sentiment score of each word. Neutral messages are usually factual descriptions of the user experience, while the customer perspective is made up of either positive or negative words.

This method allows you to get a view of all your negative customer interactions and break them down by contact reason, team, channel or any other dimension. By doing this, you can pinpoint exactly why your customers are dissatisfied and fix it. 

But it’s worth considering that…

Language is very complex and highly subjective. 

In the US, for example, “that’s sick!” is a positive phrase… The same is true for “painfully good.”

One drawback of sentiment analysis is that it’s hard to differentiate between “sick” being used in a positive way or “sick” being used negatively: “Your customer service makes me sick…” for example.  In longer messages, this won’t be a problem (the rest of the message will reflect a positive score despite “sick” being coded as negative), but shorter messages with similar slang will make scores less accurate. 

The reality is that what makes humans so brilliant – that every person is an individual with their own way of expressing themselves, is also what makes it tricky to gauge a customer’s sentiment correctly every single time. 

This is why we recommend combining sentiment analysis with CSAT, NPS, or CES, for a holistic approach that brings you as close to your customers, and their actual experiences, as possible. 

How to get up and running with customer sentiment analysis

First, you will need some way to process and analyze your data. There are a few ways to do this:

1. DIY: You can compile a list of words that you think express positive or negative sentiment and give them scores based on how powerful they are. You won’t catch every single word, but if you have a strong list, this could prove to be valuable. There are a few open-source libraries that can show you how to score conversations and how to weigh certain words. Full disclosure, this will be an arduous process — but, when done right, it can produce good results. Bear in mind, it might involve developer resources. 

2. Machine learning: This will absolutely require a lot of help from developers! You will need to read and code comments manually (for example, using Python), and assign scores to particular words or phrases that suggest a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment, and then weigh them based on how strong the feeling is. This could very well pay off in the long run, but it requires a lot of set-up work.

3. Find an out-of-the-box customer sentiment analysis solution: This could be a good option if you could benefit from sentiment analysis, but you don’t necessarily have the developer resources to build it yourself.

Once you have the foundations set up, you need to start thinking about how to use these actionable insights. 

3 practical applications of customer sentiment analysis

1. Getting a read on customers who don’t return surveys

Customer service sentiment analysis is an effective thermometer for how your customers are feeling. You can drill down into any dimension: Which channels are customers having a hard time with? What contact reason brings the most pain? Which product is associated with the most negative responses? 

2. Understanding why your customers are unhappy

After you’ve taken their temperature, you can diagnose and prescribe treatment. For example, a particular product is associated with a lower customer sentiment score, so let’s alert the product team to move the improvements up on their roadmap. This can prevent customer churn and result in massive retention gains.

3. Tracking customer happiness

To continue the metaphor – next comes rehabilitation. How are you going to make sure your customer experience is constantly improving? Sentiment is a great indicator of how your customers are responding to changes in your products and services over time. 

Customer sentiment analysis is a team sport

Introducing sentiment analysis to your customer service operations can provide you with valuable insights, but you can make it work even harder for you by combining it with other indicators like CSAT, NPS, or CES. If you’d like to learn more about customer sentiment analysis, schedule a personalized demo with us today.

In the customer service industry, we like talking about channels. A lot. Which is strange, in a way, because customers themselves don’t think in terms of channels at all – they decide how to get in touch simply based on context. So, if they’re already on your website, they’ll start a chat. If it’s an urgent matter, they’ll make a phone call. If they’re lounging on the couch, they’ll use social media. 

With that in mind, there’s no doubt that finding the right customer service channels (and channel mix) for your business is key to creating a great customer experience. And that starts by putting yourself in their shoes. 

While it’s admirable to have all channels enabled for all customers, all the time, it’s not the most efficient or effective approach. Building your customer support offering on a channel-by-channel basis will only lead to inconsistency and negative experiences. For the best results, you need to identify which customer service channels are suited to your customer base and feed this information into your strategy. 

Spoilt for choice

Let’s look at the most common customer support channels that you should be exploring, and what to consider when figuring out which ones will be most effective for you. Keep in mind that this is by no means an instruction to adopt them all. By considering what’s available and taking time to review your customers’ behavior, you can understand where best to focus your support resources.

Phone

Phone accounted for 31% of conversations across all Dixa customers in 2022, and we find it to be the best channel for first contact resolution. It’s a personal approach that offers immediacy as well as an opportunity for follow-up questions. In some cases, moving chat or email conversations to phone results in a faster resolution… 

You read that right – while digital channels continue to increase in popularity, traditional methods of customer communication still very much have their place. The detail lies in the demographic. According to Salesforce, even though Gen Z are 1.6 times more likely than Baby Boomers to engage through digital channels, 43% of customers overall prefer a non-digital route.

Chat

Live chat combines the control of email with the speed and immediacy of phone support. The benefits are such that 63% of customers said they’re more likely to return to a website with live chat enabled. Best of all, customer support representatives can handle multiple live chats simultaneously, which improves productivity. 

However, just like customers don’t want to wait on hold during a phone call, they also don’t want to wait for a chat to begin or have a lag time between responses. Hubspot reports that 60% of customers expect an immediate response when contacting live chat. 

Want to take your live chat game to the next level? Add a chatbot to the mix. Optimized self-service options like intelligent chatbots can help people help themselves and reduce customer attrition.

Email

Email is the most popular channel amongst Dixa customers – it accounted for a whopping 61% of our customer conversations in 2022. While it meets a wide range of support needs, it can be limiting for conversations that need back-and-forth dialogue, as both sides will be waiting for updates. That being said, we’ve found that customers prefer to wait a little longer for a response that resolves their issues completely, as opposed to getting a quick reply but having to reach out multiple times to resolve the issue fully. 

Which leads me to the next email limitation… trying to scale customer support with a single shared email account will quickly cause frustration for both customers and staff. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the average worker spends 28% of the work week managing email and nearly 20% looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specifics.

The solution? Conversational customer service software with a built-in knowledge base. Instead of long, confusing email threads, teams can track complete support history across all contact channels, all in one place. This allows customer service representatives to work more quickly and save time resolving customer issues.

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, & Instagram

Most consumers use at least one form of social media on a regular basis. And with the growing role that social media plays in our everyday lives, it’s become natural for customers to contact companies through these channels. 

In fact, a study from Statista shows that 47% of respondents have a more favorable view of brands that provide customer support responses over social media. However, it’s important to keep in mind that due to the immediate nature of social media, when customers do reach out, they expect a speedy reply…

SMS

Text messages are seeing rapid growth, especially as more customers recognize the channel as a hybrid between phone and chat. It offers an asynchronous conversation via a synchronous media like a phone. But again, just like you would expect an immediate SMS response from your friends and family, customers will expect the same from a business they contact in this manner.

5 steps to designing the right customer service channel strategy

Before you start adding multiple new channels to your customer service setup, it’s essential to consider the impact on your customers. Ultimately, their needs should dictate the support avenues you offer. 

You only need a few carefully selected channels to succeed, and which ones you add depends on your channel strategy. Here’s what you need to consider:

1. Be available

Make sure every channel experience you provide is excellent – even if it means offering fewer channels. Once you know what you can offer and what your customers want you to offer, it’s time to understand the industry expectations. One of the many reasons customers churn is because companies don’t offer the experience they want, need, or have found elsewhere…

2. Help customers work smarter – not harder

Customers frequently choose the wrong channel to resolve their query, which leads to channel switching, extra effort, and frustration. Rather than enabling customers to use any channel, you must guide them to the channels where they can resolve their issues with the least effort. 

While there are always exceptions to the rule, customers from different generations show typical channel preferences. If your customer base is dominated by one generation over another, their preferences can help you decide where to put resources and boost customer retention. As a general rule:

• Baby boomers prefer phone and email.
• Gen X can move between email, text, and chat.
• Millennials prefer social media.
• Gen Z lean towards social media.

3. Do the math

It sounds obvious, but you must make sure you have the right number of customer service representatives working at the right times. And keep in mind that not every customer service agent will be suited to every channel. Some people do well with fast-paced chat, whereas others excel via email. Pay attention to how your employees perform, and staff channels with the best-equipped people. 

4. Work out the “why?”

Collect all the customer service data you can, and build an insight-packed picture of your customer base. Correlate the contact reasons with CSAT, and keep an eye on first contact resolution, time to first response, total time to resolution, and average handling time. If, for instance, most of your support requests are technical, and you find complex technical queries are often better handled via email, it may not be as essential to open up a channel like SMS.

5. Find room for improvement

Audit your customer support offering and review performance across each channel. The best way to do this is to monitor how your customer satisfaction score has progressed over time. If you notice that one of your channels is suffering, focus on improving that channel before you add any more. 

Meet customers where they are

Finding the right balance of customer service channels will help you meet customer expectations while increasing your efficiency. But remember that the right channel mix will depend on your customers, your product, and even the kind of support you offer. It’s an equation and approach that should be unique to your business.

Are you excelling in all of your current channels? If not, adding a new one probably isn’t the right move. Be available on the channels customers need, but remember to guide them to the channels where they can resolve their issues with as little effort as possible.

By offering customer service on the channels where your customers are most active, you can make their lives easier, nurture customer loyalty, and help grow your business. Win-win-win!

AI is rapidly transforming the customer service space, most notably with Open AI’s ChatGPT, allowing businesses to offer customer support that is both personalized and efficient. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, natural language processing, and other AI-powered tools, customer service teams can now provide faster, more accurate, and more personalized customer support while also reducing costs and improving overall customer satisfaction.

What are the benefits of AI in customer service?

One of the most tangible benefits of implementing AI in customer service is its ability to automate routine—but time-consuming—tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, routing inquiries to the right agent, and even resolving simple issues without human intervention. This not only frees up agents to focus on more complex tasks but also ensures that customers receive timely and accurate responses to their inquiries.

Another benefit of AI in customer service is its ability to provide personalized support to customers. By analyzing customer data, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and social media activity, AI-powered systems can offer tailored recommendations and support that meet each customer’s unique needs and preferences. This improves the overall customer experience and helps businesses build stronger relationships with their customers.

AI in customer service also has the potential to transform the way businesses measure and improve customer satisfaction. By analyzing customer feedback in real-time, AI-powered systems can identify patterns and trends to help businesses identify improvement areas and make data-driven decisions to enhance the customer experience.

Is AI the future of customer service? 

Short answer: Yes. While AI is transforming the customer service industry as we know it, it’s also changing the nature of work for customer service teams. As more routine tasks become automated, some customer service jobs may become redundant or require new skills. However, AI will not replace human workers altogether. Instead, AI will likely augment human capabilities and create new roles requiring a combination of technical and soft skills. 

To prepare their teams for the future of work, businesses must invest in reskilling and upskilling programs that help employees develop the skills they need to thrive in an AI-powered environment. This includes technical skills such as data analysis, programming, and machine learning and soft skills such as empathy, critical thinking, and communication.

In addition to training programs, businesses must create a culture of continuous learning and innovation. This means encouraging employees to experiment with new tools and technologies, sharing best practices across teams, and fostering a growth mindset that embraces change and adaptation.

By investing in their workforce and embracing the potential of AI in customer service, businesses can create a win-win situation where customers receive better support and employees are happy and empowered to do their best work.

What are the challenges when implementing AI in customer service?

While AI has numerous benefits for customer service, implementing it can be challenging. Companies may need help with several obstacles that can hinder the success of their AI-powered customer service initiatives.

One of the critical challenges is data quality. AI algorithms rely on large amounts of data to learn and make predictions, but if the data is incomplete or accurate, it can lead to flawed insights or incorrect recommendations. To overcome this challenge, businesses must ensure that their data is clean, consistent, and relevant to the problems they are trying to solve.

Another challenge is integration with existing systems. Many businesses already have complex IT infrastructures that include multiple systems and platforms. Integrating new AI-powered tools into these environments can be daunting and requires careful planning and execution. The key is identifying areas where AI can add value and prioritizing integration efforts accordingly.

Finally, user adoption can also pose a challenge. While some customers may welcome the convenience and personalization offered by AI-powered customer service tools, others may hesitate or resist change. Similarly, some customer service agents may feel threatened by the prospect of automation and may require additional training or support to embrace new technologies. To address this challenge, businesses must communicate clearly about the benefits of AI-powered customer service solutions and provide adequate training and support for customers and employees.

By addressing these challenges head-on, businesses can maximize the potential benefits of AI in customer service while minimizing risks and ensuring a smooth transition toward an AI-powered future of work.

5 examples of companies that have successfully implemented AI in customer service

Many companies have already successfully leveraged AI to transform their customer service operations and drive business outcomes. Here are some notable examples:

1. American Express

American Express has implemented an AI-powered chatbot called “Amex Bot” that provides 24/7 support to its card members. The bot is designed to answer frequently asked questions, provide account information, and even make payments on behalf of the user. Since the bot’s launch, American Express has seen a significant reduction in customer wait times and increased customer satisfaction.

2. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has implemented an AI-powered tool called “BlueBot” that provides personalized travel assistance to customers via Facebook Messenger. BlueBot can help customers book flights, check-in for their flights, and even provide real-time flight status updates. Since the launch of BlueBot, KLM has seen a 40% increase in customer interactions on Messenger and significantly improved customer satisfaction.

3. H&M

H&M has implemented an AI-powered virtual stylist called “Ask Anna” that provides personalized fashion recommendations to customers based on their preferences and purchase history. Ask Anna uses natural language processing to understand customer requests and provide tailored recommendations that match each customer’s unique style. Since the launch of Ask Anna, H&M has seen a significant increase in online sales and improved customer engagement.

4. On Running

On Running is a Swiss running shoe company that has implemented AI to enhance its customer service operations. The company uses AI-powered chatbots and personalized messaging to help customers find the perfect pair of shoes for their unique needs and preferences. By analyzing customer data, such as running habits and foot size, On Running’s AI-powered system can provide tailored recommendations and support that improves the overall customer experience. On Running’s chatbot has achieved a 70% self-service rate, a 40% live chat wait time reduction, and a 72% CSAT. Some impressive stats!

5. Hobbii

Hobbii, a Danish yarn and hobby supplies retailer, has implemented an AI-powered chatbot called “Hobbiibot” to assist customers with their inquiries. The chatbot is designed to provide personalized support by asking questions about the customer’s needs and preferences before making recommendations. Since the implementation of Hobbiibot, Hobbii has seen increased customer satisfaction and reduced response time for customer inquiries. 

Hobbiibot handles 22,000 monthly conversations, has an 81% self-service rate, and has delivered a 74% improvement in the company’s overall CSAT. Hobbii’s Head of Customer Success, Kasper Tvernø Hartvigsen, says, “I wanted a chatbot that could funnel requests to the right place and could help support our growth into new countries in multiple languages.” The company plans to expand its use of AI technology to include predictive analytics for inventory management and targeted marketing campaigns based on customer behavior data.

These examples demonstrate how AI can help businesses improve their customer service operations by providing faster, more personalized customer support while reducing costs and improving overall customer satisfaction. By following these successful cases, other businesses can learn from their experiences and implement similar solutions that fit their specific needs and challenges.

How can you maximize the potential of AI in customer service?

To maximize the potential of AI in customer service, businesses need to invest in the right technology, people, and processes. This includes selecting the right AI tools for their specific needs and ensuring they have the necessary infrastructure and expertise to support them. 

Additionally, businesses must create a continuous learning and innovation culture that encourages employees to experiment with new tools and technologies and fosters a growth mindset that embraces change and adaptation. 

AI is poised to disrupt customer service and boost modern support platforms. By providing faster, more accurate, and more personalized customer support, businesses can improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and build stronger customer relationships. As AI technology continues to evolve, we expect to see even more exciting innovations in the customer experience and customer service space in the years ahead!

Check out how Dixa is leveraging AI in customer service in two exciting new features:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that a little chatbot by the name of ChatGPT has taken the world by storm this year. In its first two months alone, ChatGPT reached 100 million active users. To put this in context, it took TikTok nearly 9 months to hit the same number, and Instagram nearly 2.5 years.

We know that ChatGPT is in the process of disrupting entire industries and modalities of work and study – but how will it affect customer service? Is it out to steal all of our jobs?  

Keep reading to find out, or, if you’d rather watch a video, check out our on-demand webinar!

Generative AI – from science fiction to reality

AI had already begun to capture the popular imagination in the first half of the twentieth century. Popularized by movies and books—everything from the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz to the humanoid robot Maria, in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—people were fascinated by its potential. 

Research really kicked off in the 1950s, and there were a couple of seminal moments that really defined the field, all the way into the present day. In 1950, Alan Turing wrote a paper that introduced what is still the logical framework for AI today, the Turing Test. 

The Turing Test is used to determine whether a machine has so-called intelligence or artificial intelligence. The term “artificial intelligence” itself was coined six years later, in 1956, by John McCarthy at a conference that was dedicated to discussing this burgeoning field. 

So we know that there was already a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence, as early as the fifties. The challenge was that computing power at this point was incredibly expensive and simply not advanced enough to bring any of this past the theoretical. So, even though we already had the basic principles of AI down, it wasn’t really possible to make some of the major advances that we’re familiar with today.

This changed over the following decades, with advancements on both the computing and theoretical side. This means that the first chatbots came to us as early as 1966. But not to get too into the weeds, let’s jump ahead to the phenomenon that is ChatGPT.

ChatGPT: AI for the people 

The reason your CEO is knocking on your door asking about ChatGPT, the reason your friends are talking about it at dinner parties, is because everyone is using it, and the reason everyone is using it is because ChatGPT makes AI available to everyone. 

It’s a conversational interface for AI, so you can engage with these super complicated models without knowing a lick of code, without knowing any math, without having to be a mathematician or data scientist. It has democratized AI and brought it to the masses.

In our recent webinar covering the rise of ChatGPT in customer service—one of our best-attended ever—we took a poll where 70% of participants answered “yes” when asked if they had used ChatGPT to help them in their jobs. So, we know it’s here to stay. But how can we best use it to our advantage? 

What is ChatGPT for customer service good for, anyway?

1. ChatGPT can help you learn from customer interactions

ChatGPT can analyze customer interactions and provide insights into customer behavior and preferences. By understanding your customers better, you can tailor your responses to their needs and improve their overall experience. This will help you build stronger relationships with your customers and increase customer loyalty.

It’s important to introduce ChatGPT into your organization in a strategic way – in order to analyze customer data, for example, you must have clean data and have processes in place to action any insights that come out of it.

2. ChatGPT can help you handle repetitive inquiries and tasks

One of the biggest challenges of customer service is handling repetitive inquiries that tend to use up your agents’ valuable time. 

With ChatGPT, you can automate the process of answering repetitive inquiries, freeing up your time to focus on more complex issues. This will not only improve your efficiency but also reduce your workload.

Even something as simple as getting up to speed with a customer by scrolling through past messages can take a lot of time. At Dixa, we’ve introduced Smart Conversation Summaries so that agents can quickly find the conversation that they’re looking for, get up to speed, and respond to the customer quickly and accurately.

3. ChatGPT can help boost your customer service team’s productivity

ChatGPT can help you handle more, without compromising on quality, making your agents more efficient. This will help you improve your productivity and reduce your response time, which will ultimately lead to improved customer satisfaction.

At Dixa, we’ve introduced Smart Conversation Replies, a new feature which leverages ChatGPT to draft responses to customer queries, saving you and your agents time, and helping you deliver personalized service at scale. 

The AI drafts a response based on existing (public) knowledge base content, which can then be checked and edited, if necessary, by the agent, before sending.

4. ChatGPT can help you stay ahead of the curve

The world of customer service is constantly evolving, and ChatGPT is just one example of emerging technology that can have a positive effect on the industry. 

By working with ChatGPT, you can stay ahead of the curve and develop new skills that will be valuable in the future. By embracing emerging technology, you can stay ahead of the curve and advance your career.

5. Spoiler alert: ChatGPT is not here to replace you, but to assist you

ChatGPT is by no means a silver bullet. It’s not designed to replace human customer service reps. Instead, it’s here to assist in handling customer inquiries more efficiently. 

By working with ChatGPT, you can improve your response time and accuracy, which will ultimately lead to better customer satisfaction.

ChatGPT for customer service: Use with care

ChatGPT is a Swiss army knife of sorts – useless if you don’t know how to use it, but powerful and versatile if you know how to operate it. 

It can make you more productive, helping you do things that you couldn’t before, at least at a certain speed or quality level, but it’s important to implement it with care. 

Introducing ChatGPT in a thoughtful and strategic manner will actually help improve the agent experience, removing tasks that they see as time-consuming and frustrating and helping them focus on the customer at hand. 

Is ChatGPT coming for your customer service job?

In our ChatGPT webinar, when asked if they were worried about AI, only 8% of attendees answered yes, with 42% answering “somewhat,” and 50% answering “not worried at all.” We think this is a good split.

ChatGPT is absolutely a disruptor – it’s natural to be a little worried and proceed with caution, but it can also be a game-changer when it comes to helping your customer service team increase their efficiency. 

And, just to be safe, we asked ChatGPT:

In any business that relies on repeat purchases, two key metrics are often used to measure success: Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and Net Revenue Retention (NRR). While both metrics are important in their own right, NRR should be the primary focus for businesses looking to achieve long-term growth and success.

As customer satisfaction has a significant impact on customer loyalty and retention, it is critical to focus on the right metrics to ensure long-term success.

In this article, I’ll explore the differences between ARR and NRR and why Net Revenue Retention is a more valuable metric for many businesses.

What is annual recurring revenue (ARR)?

ARR is a measure of the total revenue a business can expect to generate annually from its existing customers. This is typically calculated by multiplying the average revenue per customer by the total number of customers a company has.

ARR is an important metric because it provides a clear picture of the revenue a business can expect to generate in the coming year. It is also valuable for investors and analysts, indicating a business’s growth potential.

However, ARR can be misleading. 

While it is essential to clearly understand how much revenue a business can expect to generate in the coming year, you need to consider the impact of churn or upgrades/downgrades as well. 

In other words, ARR needs to tell you how much revenue a business retains from its existing customers.

What is net revenue retention (NRR)?

Net revenue retention, on the other hand, takes all this into account. It’s calculated by dividing the total revenue generated from existing customers at the end of a given period (e.g., a quarter or a year) by the total revenue generated from those same customers at the beginning of that period.

Why is NRR more important than ARR?

There are several reasons why NRR is a more valuable metric for most organizations.

1. NRR accounts for churn

Churn is a significant challenge for subscription-based businesses. If a company is losing customers at a faster rate than it is acquiring new ones, its growth will be limited. ARR needs to take churn into account, which means that it can be a misleading metric for businesses struggling with high churn levels.

NRR, on the other hand, takes churn into account. By measuring how much revenue a business is actually retaining from its existing customers, NRR provides a much more accurate picture of a business’s growth potential and health.

2. NRR accounts for upgrades and cross-selling

Another significant benefit of NRR is that it considers the revenue generated from upgrades and cross-selling. When customers upgrade to a higher-priced plan or purchase additional products or services, this represents a significant source of revenue for businesses.

ARR needs to take these revenue streams into account, which means that it can be a less accurate metric for businesses that are successfully upselling and cross-selling to their existing customer base.

3. NRR is a better indicator of customer satisfaction

NRR is also a better indicator of customer satisfaction than ARR. Suppose a business is retaining a high percentage of its existing customers and generating additional revenue from those customers through upgrades and cross-selling. In that case, it is a clear sign that those customers are satisfied with the product or service.

On the other hand, if a business struggles to retain customers and is not generating additional revenue from its existing customer base, it is a clear sign of issues.

How to Improve Net Revenue Retention

Improving Net Revenue Retention requires a customer-centric approach. You need to understand your customer’s needs and preferences and provide them with a product or service that meets those needs. Here are some strategies that can help you improve your NRR:

• Focus on customer satisfaction: Make sure your customers are happy with your product or service. Address any issues they may have and provide excellent customer support. You must consistently meet customers’ expectations in every interaction across every channel. In their Future of CX report, PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience. In contrast, 92% will leave a company entirely after two or three negative interactions.
• Offer personalized experiences: Use data and analytics to personalize your customers’ experiences. Offer them products or services that are tailored to their needs and preferences.
• Upsell and cross-sell: Offer your existing customers additional products or services that complement what they already have. Upsell and cross-sell can increase their lifetime value and improve your NRR.
• Improve customer engagement: Keep your customers engaged with your product or service. Offer them new features, updates, and promotions that keep them interested and invested in your brand.
• Reduce churn: Identify why your customers are leaving and take steps to reduce churn. Reducing churn can include improving your product or service, offering better customer support, or incentivizing customers to stay.

Now, not never

As we continue to venture into uncertain economic waters — with growing inflation, rising interest rates, and talk of a recession, battening down the hatches and ensuring you’re ready to ride the wave starts with improving your customer experience. 

Take our product tour, and learn more about how Dixa can help you transform your customer experience today.

If you’re a customer service leader in 2023, your job has become a lot more complicated. Shifting business priorities, with a renewed focus on reducing customer churn, net revenue retention, and a drive toward profitability, have turned the spotlight on your department. Customer retention has never been more important—but you’re also being asked to cut costs, run more efficiently, and improve service quality, all at the same time. 

Customer expectations are higher than ever, and that’s not changing anytime soon. As brands compete for market share, customer service is now a differentiator, with 32% of customers saying they will stop doing business with a brand they love after only one bad experience. 

Oh, and don’t forget about emerging technologies disrupting the industry. Or that employee engagement has never been more important, or costly. And that your business still wants to scale into new geographies, or bring new products to market. Plus, you’re now being asked to bring the voice of the customer to other departments—and be online 24-7. The list goes on!

Efficiency. Adaptability. Availability. Quality. Accuracy. Insight. Engagement. Automation. 

You’re fighting a hard battle on every front. 

But hey, you didn’t come here to hear about your problems, you want the solution. The answer probably isn’t as complicated or as magical as you’re expecting. It might even be why you got into CS in the first place: to create effortless service experiences for customers that allow them to build a connection with your brand and remain loyal to it. 

2023 is the year of customer loyalty

The real-world value of customer loyalty is no secret. It reduces churn, leads to higher lifetime value, helps you demand a better price for your product and services, and distinguishes you from your competition. But building loyalty can be difficult, and requires a thoroughly modern approach to service.

“Building customer loyalty requires an evolution of the service mindset,” says Tue Søttrup, Dixa’s Chief Customer Experience Evangelist. “We have to check our old beliefs at the door. It’s a move away from the contact center and ticketing age where support was passive, transactional, and CS was viewed as a cost center or, worse, a necessary evil.”

“What we see today from the world’s best service organizations—the ones that create raving fans—is experience-centric service. Building loyalty means building great relationships, and every good relationship starts with a great conversation,” says Søttrup. 

Experience-centric, conversational customer support is quickly becoming the new standard for businesses that care about their brand and their bottom line. According to PWC, “65% of all consumers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.”

How to build a customer loyalty machine

Conversational customer service (CCS) is the answer to many of the problems that customer service departments face today. CCS helps service organizations fine-tune the balance between quality and efficiency and is able to drive revenue, while reducing costs. An experience-centric, conversational approach provides a uniquely human touch to service and reduces customer effort to increase loyalty. At the same time, it also reduces agent effort to boost efficiency.

Modern problems require a modern approach. If your business is ready to transform the way you engage customers, you’ll need more than a shift in mindset. You’ll need the right tools to get the job done. The kind of conversational service that drives effortless experiences can be tricky to pull off if you’re stuck in an antiquated platform. 

At its core, any conversational customer service platform requires 6 fundamental pillars. At Dixa, we invented conversational customer engagement—and we still lead the pack when it comes to a purpose-built conversational customer service platform. Here’s a quick look at what your tooling stack needs, and what Dixa has delivered here in early 2023. 

The 6 pillars of conversational customer service 

1. Automation

At its best, automation is much more than simple deflection. Modern businesses need to be able to help customers solve problems, 24/7, without going wild on staffing costs. Automation serves customers by giving them a toolbox to efficiently solve problems without waiting for an agent, and it serves your business by ensuring fewer contacts and shorter waiting times for customers that do need an agent’s specialized help. 

With Dixa’s new chatbot, integrated directly into your Dixa Messenger flows, you can master the art of automation, while creating the perfect customer experience. That means that you can serve the chatbot on your terms: for example, launching it only to non-VIP customers or only after business hours. And with effortless, context-rich handoffs from bot to agent, you can tap into your support team’s expertise when a bot isn’t enough. 

To learn more about what automation can do for you, check out how Dixa customer ON used our bot to decrease wait times by 40% even in the face of sky-rocketing contact volumes, increasing their self-service rate to upward of 70%. Slick shoes, too! 

2. Built-in channels

Multiple platforms and plug-ins can create disconnected service experiences—those annoying moments when customers are forced to repeat themselves when your systems can’t keep up. You need a single point of service to keep the conversation going with your customer, while allowing them to connect with you across whatever channel they choose. 

At Dixa, we’re built for conversations, which means that every channel is built natively into the platform, so the experience is great for both agents and customers alike. In 2022, we added more channels to the Dixa platform than ever before. With a brand new flagship messenger, plus, SMS, Twitter, and Instagram, Dixa is leading the industry in native channels. 

3. Agent empowerment

Hiring, training, and supporting a world-class support team is a tough job. You can make it easier by allowing agents to focus on the customer while proactively building their skills and developing talent. Great tooling reduces barriers for creating great experiences, while next-generation QA provides insights for agent growth, shorter training times, and higher engagement. 

Dixa is designed by CS professionals for CS professionals. That means we know the pains that can go hand-in-hand with working in customer service, whether you’re a leader or an agent. To combat these, we’ve built the Dixa Agent Hub, so agents can have a more enjoyable and efficient working experience, with customer conversations, context from past conversations and outside tools, knowledge, and more, right at their fingertips.

In addition to this, we’ve just released a bunch of quality of life improvements for agents that make their day-to-day tasks easier to accomplish—improved offering, conversation sorting, conversation previews, file previews, and more. You can read more about these improvements here. 

We wholeheartedly believe in empowering agents to grow their skill sets and mature in their roles, and, as part of this, we’ve launched our new analytics tools that make it easy for agents to track their impact and performance over time. And, with new team and individual dashboards, it’s never been easier to keep an eye on how your team is doing (or to compare to past periods).

4. Knowledge 

Using a deeply-integrated self-healing knowledge base means that customers get the same accurate answer whether they’re talking to a bot, an agent, or doing their own research in an FAQ. Integrated feedback loops keep knowledge flowing and up to date, even as the world changes. 

We’ve spent the last year rebuilding our native knowledge base offering from the ground up to make it even more powerful. It’s now available to all customers and can be managed directly in Dixa. That also means it’s easier for us to leverage the power of knowledge across the platform. 

And for starters, check out our new Smart Conversation Replies feature that uses the power of OpenAI’s chatGPT to create a personal reply to a conversation based on your public knowledge base articles. By using knowledge as the backbone of our automation strategy, we ensure accurate, on-brand answers to customer questions—delivered at the speed of AI. 

5. Data insight

You need to understand performance at all levels of your service department, plus have a handle on what’s driving support volumes, emerging trends in customer questions and sentiment, not to mention feeding valuable insights back to product and service teams.

Extracting value from the goldmine of customer support conversations is what Dixa Discover is all about. At the end of 2022, we launched a huge upgrade to our in-app analytics, and we’re not done yet. January saw the release of an all new Queues Dashboard which provides valuable insight into customer experiences through data. 

Plus, we’ve also just launched Custom Conversation Attributes — a powerful new way to learn more about the context of the conversations that you’re having with customers. This feature allows you to attach information to conversations in new ways, so you can track things like “contact reason” in great detail. Plus you can now make it mandatory for agents to add Attributes, making sure that you have data integrity. Finally, you can now filter by custom attribute in our in-app analytics, giving you a whole new perspective on your data and your customers.

6. Flexibility 

Your platform shouldn’t hold you back from responding to changing business conditions—and neither should your IT team. Low and no-code solutions allow you to respond at the speed of business, whether that’s opening up a new market or launching a new product line. 

Dixa also makes it easy to test, iterate, and improve your contact center management. It’s easy to A/B test your flows using our filter nodes and any external data you like. Route customers by something simple like contact source, or get fancy and route by number of orders, lifetime value, or completely at random. Then use tags to compare segments in analytics and test for outcomes like handling time, waiting time, or CSAT. 

We’re also improving contact management and excited to announce that you can now merge contacts across contact points — with more improvements coming soon!

Building a customer loyalty strategy for 2023

It’s clear that securing customer loyalty is the name of the game for businesses in 2023. If you’re looking to bring your A-game, be sure to reach out to one of our Customer Success Managers or book a demo today. Watch your business results improve as you innovate on your customer service strategy and introduce conversational customer service with Dixa.

Press “play” to learn more about Dixa’s Conversational Customer Service Platform

Customers today often don’t get the service experiences they want – and deserve. From way too long spent on hold to an agent who doesn’t understand the issue or, worst of all, passes them on to a colleague, your customers are well-versed in disappointing service experiences.

In fact, according to The Effortless Experience author Matthew Dixon, customer service is four times more likely to drive disloyalty than loyalty.

Customers often dread customer service, expecting a painful experience. 78% of customers believe brands could do more to deliver happiness to their customers. And when it goes wrong, it can hurt both your reputation and your bottom line.

But it doesn’t need to be this way!

Rather than be discouraged, view this (very) low bar as an opportunity. While many of your competitors are out there providing service experiences that actually worsen their relationships with customers, you can look for opportunities to create experiences that build loyalty and help you grow your business. 

With a few changes, you can provide effortless customer service. We like to think of this as customer service as it’s meant to be – easy, helpful, and honestly delightful. 

Focus on providing a smooth customer experience, and you’ll leave your customers feeling seen and valued. But how? Let’s take a closer look at the four attributes of effortless customer service.

#1 Convenient

Your customers want to reach out in the most convenient way. Whether they prefer social media, email, or live chat, they want to get started immediately and move between channels easily.

Siloed channels create friction for customers. They have to repeat themselves with different agents. They might get conflicting information…

In some cases they might even hear the dreaded words “I can’t help you, you need to call / email …” 

Being told they have to reach out in a different way when they’ve already spent time and energy explaining their problem is definitely a no-go!

How to create a convenient customer experience

Embrace omnichannel customer service. When you create effortless customer service across different channels, you make life easier for your customers.

Make sure your agents have access to all the context they need. Your customers will appreciate never having to repeat themselves. And having the right context makes every interaction feel like the continuation of a conversation. It’s friendly, warm, and human. In addition to this, give your agents access to information that will prevent customers from reaching out again for the same or a similar issue. Issue avoidance is an important part of creating an effortless experience. 

To create the ideal omnichannel customer service experience, be sure to opt for a consolidated CS tech stack, perhaps using a customer service solution that brings it all together.

Let your customers know you’re there for them day or night with 24/7 customer support. And make it quick! For example, on Facebook if you want to earn a “very responsive to messages” badge, you need to respond to 90% of customer comments and posts within five minutes. Thoughtful use of chatbots alongside agents means your customers can get an answer any time. 

#2 Painless

Your customers want help and information available at their fingertips. Make sure they get it.

How to create a painless customer experience

Start before they ever contact an agent. Provide a self-serve knowledge base, so customers can search for answers themselves. 48% of buyers said finding up-to-date product or service information was a top challenge when researching purchases. Take that pain away from your customers with an up to date knowledge base that helps your customers get what they need faster.

Providing a knowledge base lightens the load on your agents too, as customers can look for their own answers before reaching out.

Make it easy to contact your team when they want to. Display contact information clearly on your website, app, and socials. And provide a range of options for contacting you including phone, email, live chat, and social media.

Use chatbots to direct customers to the right answer, article, or person. And make sure it’s easy for your customers to transition from a chatbot or knowledge base to a real live agent any time.

Create a painless agent experience too

Effortless customer service starts with creating an effortless experience for your agents. Always keep in mind the three pillars of agent happiness that your agents need to know for every interaction:

1. What is the customer reaching out about? And not only what are they reaching out about now, but what have they reached out about in the past? How did that go? 
2. Who are they? What is their name, their shipping address, and their purchase history with your company? Knowing these details makes customer service real and personal, instead of impersonal and bland.
3. How can the agent solve the problem? Give them access to an up-to-date knowledge base so they know where to look for the answers.

Serve your agents the knowledge they need automatically so they don’t need to spend time searching for it, or asking colleagues. Customers get more accurate help faster and first contact rate and CSAT increase. Companies are waking up to this, with 40% of knowledge experts agreeing that embedding knowledge management into applications should be a key priority.  

#3 Transparent

Customers appreciate honesty. Whether it’s good news, like introducing them to a newly-launched product you think they’ll like, or bad news like an upcoming outage or even a shipping delay, they want the truth. The whole truth. 

Frictionless service journeys and transparency go hand-in-hand. When your customers know exactly how they can reach you, and what they can expect from you, their journey is easier, and they don’t automatically tense up when they know they need to get in touch. When you offer consistent and reliable service, their trust in your company starts to grow.

How to create a transparent customer service experience

Be proactive. Reach out to your customers about impending changes or service delays that could impact their experiences. Forewarning reminds them that you care about their experiences with you.

Be proactive about keeping waiting times down, too. Use automatic reminders to reach out to customers who haven’t replied to your questions. Choose software that helps your team prioritize customers who have had to wait longer than they should have.

Have visible and accessible customer reviews. Use a site like TrustPilot or B2B peer review site G2 so your customers know your reviews are genuine and unbiased.

Transparency goes both ways! Ask your customers for honest reviews and feedback, and use that to create effortless customer service. Reply to customer feedback and suggestions and let them know what, if any, changes you’re making as a result.

#4 Personalized

Your customers don’t just want an answer to their question. They want to feel seen and understood as individuals.

Customers want agents to know who they are and their purchase and service history with your brand. They want to know that the agent handling their issue cares about their specific situation and has the knowledge at hand to solve it.

Do that, and they’ll feel reassured that they’re not just a number to you and your agents.

How to create a personalized customer experience

Empower your agents with a customer service platform that lets them see:

• Customer preferences
• Account history (which agents they’ve interacted with and the outcome)
• Purchases
• Returns and any other issues raised
• And, more!

Now your agents can offer your customers effortless customer service without having to spend extra time searching through external systems and internal notes to gain context. Your customers will love getting tailor-made solutions, suggestions, and recommendations that provide the best outcomes for them personally.

Find the balance between automation and live agents. Automated messages and chatbots should support personalization at scale, not diminish it. Use them to guide customers to the right resources, but make sure their contact with agents is relevant and personalized.

Deliver customer service as it’s meant to be

Create effortless customer service experiences, and you’ll do more than create happy customers. You’ll also boost customer retention, increase your revenue, and stand out from the competition. And with 82% of customers saying they’d recommend a company based solely on their customer service, great service creates brand evangelists who tell others why they should check you out.

If you want to learn more about creating effortless service experiences, check out our on-demand webinar with Matthew Dixon, best-selling author of The Effortless Experience, here.

Prioritizing the employee experience isn’t a new concept, but with employees the world over continuing to exit their jobs in droves, it’s become increasingly relevant. With customer service enjoying the unfortunate distinction of having above-average employee attrition rates, service leaders need to start prioritizing the agent experience, well, yesterday. 

Apart from retaining talent and avoiding the need to constantly onboard and train new employees—not to mention what this costs—prioritizing the agent experience can have an outsized impact on your customer experience as well. And this goes beyond the “happy agents equal happy customers” adage, which, though it sounds overly simple, has some truth to it.

In our latest report, State of the Agent Experience, our Senior Director of CX Strategy, Devin Poole, dives into exactly what has gone wrong with the agent experience and shares concrete steps service leaders can take to improve it. Devin has been researching and advising leaders in customer service and customer experience for over 16 years, having been an analyst at Gartner prior to joining Dixa. We sat down with him for his top takeaways from the report, but if you want all the goods, you can download the full report.

Hi, Devin. Thanks for being here! Let’s get started.

If you’re a service leader today, why is it important to prioritize the agent experience? And what should be top of mind for you when you think about reducing agent effort? Where do you start?

“For so many customers today, the only human experience they’ll have with your brand is through a customer service agent. So, to the customer, the agent is the living breathing manifestation of your entire company. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person! So, our job, as leaders, is to set agents up for success by making it as easy as possible for them to focus all their energy on helping the customer. The first step to improving the agent experience—so often overlooked—is to involve your agents from the very beginning. Sit down and talk to them about the most difficult parts of their job. Watch and observe their workflows to see the pain points in action. Once you’ve done this, any actions you choose to take already have implicit buy-in from your frontline.”

We hear the term “effortless” a lot when describing an agent’s ideal workflow – yet your report talks about reducing effort. Can you explain why this is more realistic? 

“Any workflow will require at least some type of effort, but the idea here is to remove unnecessary and low-value tasks from your team’s day-to-day, freeing up agents to spend time on activities that will bring more value to the customer and the company. The desire to reduce effort and optimize our tasks is inherently human. We naturally seek out ways to make our own lives easier, finding more convenient ways to get our personal tasks done, so the same should apply to our working lives. And as I mentioned above, your frontline employees will already have lots of ideas about what would make their lives easier. But while agents will be able to provide insight into the most frustrating parts of their work, they may not be able to pinpoint exactly what’s causing the pain. This is why the observation of workflows is so important. It’s up to us as leaders to seek out the common frustration points and remove them.”  

You break down how to improve the agent experience in four steps. Could you give us a sneak peek at step number one? 

“Absolutely. The first step will come as no surprise; it’s all about automation. Agents spend a lot of time on tasks (and I’m not talking about customer issues here) that create no value for the customer but are necessary for the business to function effectively. One great example of this is the manual tagging of customer inquiries. This is really valuable information for the company to have, so you can analyze why customers are contacting you and how frequently each type of query is occurring, but not something that requires a human to complete. There are tons of great examples like this that I’ve observed in my time working with customer experience leaders, and they often get passed over in favor of the “one big gain.”  If you can find and remove two to three smaller tasks, which are usually much easier to fix, not only will your agents be much happier, but the entire service function will run much more effectively, producing higher quality experiences in more efficient ways. It’s a total win-win for leaders!”

And, last but not least, could you talk a little bit about how low agent effort can tie directly into low customer effort and an improved CSAT?

It really comes down to this question: “Where do you want your agents to focus their time and energy? On the customer or on the systems and processes they’re working with? Of course, it’s the former. When we inadvertently make the job of serving customers harder by adding too many different systems or making our agents hop from screen to screen, it’s the customer who feels the effects of that effort. They feel it in the form of long wait times, and they feel it when they’ve got to tell their story all over again. And they especially feel it when they’re stuck with an agent who lacks the skills to handle their inquiry. All of these key drivers of customer effort are directly linked to how well we set our agents up for success. 

And, if you want to hear even more from Devin on why the agent experience matters, check out this video.

How to Democratize Voice of the Customer Insights

From our friends at

Do you make major business decisions based purely on gut instinct? If you answered “yes” then don’t worry, you’re not alone, but it’s time to switch to a more data-driven approach.

Making this switch, however, isn’t necessarily as easy as you may think. At many organizations, data is siloed, with internal teams lacking proper access to it –– despite the important role it plays in strategic product-building and decision-making. 

When it comes to customer feedback in particular, although it’s quite standard to collect Voice of the Customer (VOC) insights from customer conversations, the insights often aren’t leveraged to their fullest potential. This usually comes down to lack of access and can have a negative effect on your customer experience as well as your bottom line. Put another way: Democratizing access to VOC insights in your company is key to true customer-centricity and customer-led growth.

If you’re not familiar with the term, at its core, data democratization is the process of ensuring your internal teams have access to quality data to help them make well-informed decisions that benefit the company.

This brings us to our next question…

Why Is it Crucial to Democratize Customer Insights Across Internal Departments?

There’s an ongoing debate about who actually owns customer data—customer support or the product team—but we feel this debate focuses on the wrong issue. Regardless of who owns the data, what matters is who can access it.

Without access to VOC data, cross-functional teams can’t make use of actionable insights that could reveal major issues with your product or service. By pushing customer-centricity to the back-burner, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for optimization and growth.

Democratizing customer insights helps other stakeholders in your organization, too. Decision-makers across the company get access to insights without needing to continuously reach out to the support team, and department heads can set KPIs and OKRs based on real-life data as well as make faster data-backed decisions.

Best of all, it ensures customers stay at the center of every decision. To better illustrate the benefits, take Gousto’s secret to growth as an example. Having easy access to granular customer insights helps everyone in the company make decisions that center the customer, leading to increased loyalty. 

Joe Quinlivan, Head of Customer Care states: “All functions across the business have access to the analytical tool, they use it for a variety of reasons, from discovery work to identifying any customer friction points and driving broader strategy for the business.”

How to Unlock Customer Satisfaction with VOC

To start a data democratization revolution in your organization, you need to focus on three main actions:

1. Empower Employees with Customer Data 

Regardless of seniority level, every employee in your organization should have access to VOC insights. This ensures that every employee has what they need to make in-flight decisions that benefit the business, and you remove any potential roadblocks that stem from gate-keepers that likely don’t have time to answer questions. If your employees have to request data from the support team every time they need customer insights, it can prolong the decision-making process unnecessarily. 

2. Give Employees the Tools to Work With Granular Data on Their Own Terms

Using the right analytical tool is just as important as giving employees access to relevant (and granular) customer data. Switching between multiple VOC channels merely complicates the data-analysis process. To avoid this, introduce a tool that unifies all channels on one platform. This will empower team members across your organization to access VOC data.

3. Lead the Shift from an “I Think” Organization to an “I Know” Organization

Peter Drucker, a leading management expert, came up with the following analogy: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It’s a powerful reminder that organizational success hinges on your people more than anything else. Fostering a data-driven culture is a crucial step to ensuring data democratization across your company. Creating this culture shift won’t be easy, however, culture comes from the top down, and if you can get your company leaders to buy into data democratization, half the battle is won. 

How to Make VOC Insights Accessible Across Your Organization

1.  Choose the Right VOC Insights Solution

Not all Voice of the Customer (VOC) analytics tools are created equal. Choosing a customer feedback tool that uncovers actionable, granular customer insights from every source is vital. It’s best to have a customer feedback tool that brings all your customer insights together in one easy-to-use dashboard so that you can democratize access to insights, and every team member can leverage them for better decision-making. 

2. Share Your Findings

A great way to maintain transparency throughout your organization is by conducting regular meetings to share findings sourced from customer conversations. When your customer support, product, and marketing teams, plus any other relevant departments, can come together, you’ll experience a plethora of ideas and knowledge-sharing that promotes optimization of your product(s) or service(s). Here, an easy-to-use dashboard that brings all customer insights into one simple interface is key.

3. Increase Accountability and Report on the Right KPIs

When every employee is able to access VoC data, they are empowered to set objectives and KPIs based on real-life numbers. This encourages higher levels of accountability when working to achieve their departmental goals.

Creating A Data-Led Future

Data democratization helps you visualize, scrutinize, and uncover actionable insights from across your company to make impactful decisions for your customers and become a truly customer-centric organization. It’s a process that requires consistency, but––when done right––will boost business profitability and increase product innovation.

VOC insight tools like SentiSum make it fast and easy to access Voice-of-the-Customer data. SentiSum enables you to quickly understand emerging customer trends and common questions, and receive actionable feedback. Want to drive growth using actionable and accurate customer insights? Learn more about SentiSum here, and see how Dixa and SentiSum work hand-in-hand to put your customers at the heart of every decision here.

Traditionally, customer service leaders have been tasked with one thing: playing defense. The holy grail of customer service was to resolve customer complaints, styled as “tickets,” as quickly and inexpensively as possible – pushing agents to move through as many inquiries as possible in a day. As long as a customer wasn’t overly upset, everything was okay.

This emphasis on quantity over quality meant that securing customer loyalty through meaningful service interactions was out of reach, and contributing to top-line company growth wasn’t even on the table. But that’s all changed — a recent Gartner survey revealed that 64% of service leaders ranked “grow the business” as their top priority for 2023. 

So what’s spurred on this change? In large part, it’s due to improvements in technology. Customer service leaders can now choose from a bevy of software that allows them to grow customer loyalty, and increase word of mouth and lifetime value, all through providing service experiences that build customer trust and confidence. Along with this, the perception of the customer service function as a cost center has also changed. Customer service leaders now have a seat at the table; they know their value and they have the data to back it up. 

Great, but…

What happens when loyalty is out of reach?

Encouraging customer loyalty should be the ultimate goal of each service interaction, but sometimes even the best of intentions fail, and a customer falls through the cracks. 

Regardless of how you got here, there’s only one thing to do: act! The time for reflection will come later, once you’ve saved this customer from a terrible fate (not being a customer of yours anymore, obviously). These three prevention tactics will help you hold on to customers that are on the verge of falling out of “like” with your company.

3 tactics to save customers that are about to churn

1. Introduce a knowledge base

Agents should be fully-equipped to answer any question that may come their way. And no, this doesn’t mean you should up the number of training hours and get agents to memorize the answer to every possible customer query. Quite the opposite, actually. Instead, save time and effort and introduce a centralized knowledge base where you can bank your team’s collective knowledge. 

In a survey conducted by Dixa late last year, 74% of the 3000 consumers we surveyed across the US and UK indicated that agents being knowledgeable about the product or service they were reaching out about was most important to them in a customer service interaction. Having an informed team also impacts first contact resolution (FCR) – agents are more confident in their abilities and less likely to escalate an issue to a supervisor.

And if you’re worried about resourcing, creating content for your knowledge base doesn’t need to be a momentous task. If you introduce knowledge-centered service (KCS) to your organization, you can simply make the documentation of how to solve a problem part of the problem-solving process. So when an agent gets a question from a customer and uses a support article to solve the problem, if that article has incorrect information, the agent either need to update it or flag it to be corrected. If no support article exists, then the agent needs to draft one. 

2. Make proactive outreach part of your day-to-day

By setting proactive outreach reminders for customers who are churn risks, you can ensure that no one slips through the cracks. Set outreach reminders based on data like how many times a customer has been in contact with your service team in the last month or a low CSAT score.

Calling up a customer out of the blue to check in and apologize for their bumpy ride with your company is an entirely unexpected, but much-appreciated, gesture that customers will value. You can compound this good will by sending them a follow up email afterwards with a discount code or providing a free gift in their next order. And if a call isn’t feasible, sending an automated email to check in and offer them that discount or gift will also go a long way.

Delivering customer delight begins with providing something unexpected, but welcome, in each interaction. Customers who are about to churn will most likely have had at least one negative experience with your company, and showing that you care about them will go a long way. Data from our own research shows that 96% of consumers rate empathy from customer service agents as very important.

3. Build smart flows

You can’t cover every front on your own, so automation will be a huge help when saving customers that are in danger of churning. Setting up an “at-risk” queue that routes customers to agents suited to handling more complex and delicate situations will allow you to put your best foot forward in tense situations. 

Create action and time-based automations to ensure high-risk customers are never kept waiting. Leveraging external information from your CRM or eCommerce platform, whatever business-critical solutions you use, will allow you to make these flows as intelligent as possible.

Losing a customer is never fun, but when someone leaves due to poor service, it stings a little more. Use these three tactics to save your at-risk customers and maybe even secure their lasting loyalty.