Every so often, events come together, which causes me to reflect on how we’re doing as an organization to help our customers transform their customer service while keeping in mind the current social and business happenings. Let me explain.
The current reality is that we’re a few months into another challenging economic cycle because of the ongoing pandemic. In every economic downturn, leading companies across industries adopt a more customer-centric stance, resulting in a reevaluation of and, in fact, an refocusing on customer experience initiatives. Certainly, during economic downturns, corporate leaders look for ways to reduce expenses and save money. But they also realize they must continue to attract and retain customers, or they will quickly be out of business. Given today’s digitally savvy customers, using automation and AI is one of the best ways to both reduce costs while delivering better experiences. The current pandemic has accelerated customers and businesses adoption of a more digital way of life. Still, forward-thinking companies realize they must effectively use the power of automation and AI alongside a personalized human touch.
People Still Want to Speak with Agents:
Even before this crisis, PwC research showed that 59 percent of global consumers surveyed felt companies had lost touch with the human element of customer experience. And during this pandemic, some of our own research confirmed that people still want to speak with agents and were really frustrated by long hold times, the demonstrated inabilities of companies to address their needs and in many ways, customers felt they were not being heard.
With all the changes happening due to the pandemic and other important social issues surfacing in our communities to ensure every voice is heard, we at Uniphore continue to push ourselves to think and act differently. We are pushing hard to continue delivering innovative solutions that make a difference. We’ve come a long way but still have a long way to go.
Another thing that has caused me to reflect on the past, present, and future was a recent report put out from Gartner Group. Seven years after being named by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in a report on Human-Machine Interfaces, they included us again in their 2020 Cool Vendor report on CRM Customer Service and Support in the “Where Are They Now” section. Honestly, I’m not sure what is rarer: being a thriving startup after 12 years or being profiled by a Gartner Cool Vendor report twice? Either way, I remember how excited my team was back in 2013 to be included in that report but then facing the humble reality that we would not have that opportunity again. Nonetheless, it was a tremendously motivating moment to see that our approach and our technology was included in such an important report which is used by customers to help them along their journey. To this day, I vividly remember the feelings that stirred deep inside me that we were only at the beginning of an important journey.
AI and Automation Will Help You Succeed
Fast forward to 2020, where again, we were humbled and honored to see Gartner include Uniphore in another Cool Vendor report. In this most recent report, Gartner recalled why we were initially named a Cool Vendor and then went on to acknowledge that we have developed a complete platform that leverages AI for Conversational Service Automation. The report also calls out some of the Use Cases where our AI and Automation capabilities will ultimately help customers innovate and succeed. For those interested, you can view the entire 2020 Gartner Cool Vendors in CRM Customer Service and Support report here.
Attracting and Retaining Top Talent
We at Uniphore are extremely grateful for the opportunity to innovate and deliver value to the market and to help lead this major transformational wave in the customer service industry. To do this and to remain our leadership position, we also recognize the need to expand and grow our team. Along these lines, over the last year, we have more than doubled our global team, including today’s announcement of two new talented and capable senior executives. It is so gratifying to see our ability to attract and retain top talent.
The year 2020 has already cemented its place in the history books. So much change. So much opportunity. So much opportunity to change! If you have had similar moments of reflection and feel optimism too, reach out and share. We’re always looking to engage!
I have never been more optimistic about the future and look forward with eagerness to the second half of the year.
By: Umesh Sachdev – Co-founder and CEO