A Listening Culture & New Technologies Driving CX Innovation

Guest posts by Denis Lucey, Vice-President of Dell EMC EMEA Commercial Support Services.

Emerging technologies, from AI and data analytics through to the Internet of Things are delivering new insights into how businesses in Ireland are engaging their customers. However, what is often overlooked is how these new technologies are helping Customer Experience (CX) leaders to transform their most fundamental responsibility – to know your customer and understand what motivates their actions.

The early part of my own business career was spent working for my father in our family bar. Initially, I grafted in the background stacking shelves and washing glasses and later graduated to serving customers from behind the counter. My father is an excellent businessman and probably an even better life coach.

He maintained that I was getting an education in life skills which was as important as an academic education. He was right. I learned life is about people, connecting with them, sharing in their joys, empathising with their sorrows, and listening to their opinions and their stories.

Listening is a key life skill, and it’s also a key skill in business, albeit often underutilised. It is good to be aware of your competitors, but it’s incredibly important to listen to your customers. They have valuable insights which can be tapped into. By listening, you come to know what the current needs of your customer are and what will motivate their behaviour into the future. That life lesson is as important today as it was a few decades ago.

Businesses and organisations across Ireland and the globe are living in an era where emerging technologies are opening new avenues for speaking and listening. With online chat the preferred support channel of millennials, the pressure is now on to embrace digital transformation and invest in its potential.

At Dell Technologies, we’ve sought to lead the way in harnessing emerging technologies to create a listening culture that drives CX innovation. Every day, our team is leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence, data science and machine learning across the digital mesh for deep insights to deliver the next generation of services customers need.

Automated, predictive and proactive support capabilities powered by connected technologies are enabling our team to identify and resolve issues facing customers from their PC to the data centre. Through ProSupport Plus and SupportAssist solutions, for example, our customers are experiencing up to 92% less time to resolve a failed hard drive issue and up to 72% less IT effort to resolve server issues.

A listening culture empowering a proactive support service has helped us achieve incredibly high customer satisfaction. Although never satisfied, our laser focus on listening to our customers and accelerating digital transformation in our support services has born clear results.

With every €1 invested in an innovative customer experience delivering €3 in return on investment, CX leaders have the opportunity to keep pace with the ever-changing demands of their digital-savvy customers. Your customer needs are changing. Are you listening?