Verint: US Retailers Should Consider Automation to Ease Holiday Staffing Shortages
More than 60% of US retailers say they are having difficulty finding qualified workers to staff their stores for the upcoming holiday season, while 45% are struggling to fill contact center and back-office positions, suggests new research from customer engagement company Verint.
Faced with labor shortages and challenged to meet consumer demands for superior shopping experiences across numerous engagement channels, Verint says this year’s holiday shopping season may be a reckoning for retailers in realizing their need for automation. “Leveraging automation is absolutely critical to fill workforce gaps and create a connected customer engagement strategy of humans and bots,” says Jenni Palocsik, Verint vice president of marketing insights, experience, and enablement.
Related Article: US Retailers Hesitate to Hire More People for Busy Holiday Season
Automation can help retailers expand their organizational capacity in many areas, including interviewing and qualifying new hires, managing orders and inventory, processing returns, connecting with shoppers through private messaging, and providing customer support at scale. In its recommendations, Verint suggests that retailers consider automating contact center operations, employing intelligent hiring solutions for streamlined staff acquisition and assessment, leaning into private messaging and automation to scale customers, and using bots and virtual assistants to help brands manage high-volume, low-effort queries.
SAP: Younger UK Consumers Are More Supportive of Sustainable Christmas Shopping
Despite ongoing challenges with the rising cost of living, more than half of UK consumers aged 18-34 are actively looking to shop more from retailers with strong sustainability credentials this Christmas, reveals new research from global software provider SAP. And even though less than a third of all UK consumers are prioritizing sustainable purchases, two in five among 18-34-year-olds are prepared to pay significantly more for a sustainable product or service.
Findings from SAP show that growing consumer demand for better sustainability credentials has not taken a back seat during challenging times for consumers. While supply chain issues have been disastrous for organizations in the UK this year, brands are hoping that the run-up to Christmas will see the traditional spike in retail spending.
Related Article: Consumers Favor Sustainable Brands, but Retailers Believe Otherwise
Among other findings: 40% of UK consumers are prioritizing food and drink when it comes to their Christmas spending this year, and 43% are looking to buy locally sourced products for their Christmas dinner or lunch, with the number rising to 54% in younger respondents. Locally sourced food is, in fact, the most popular sustainability option among UK consumers.
Second-hand goods as Christmas gifts are more popular among younger consumers with 49% expressing preference for them, compared to just 12% for those aged 55 and over. Younger consumers are also more patient, with 51% of 18-34-year-olds willing to wait longer to obtain sustainable purchases, compared to 28% among 35-54-year-olds and 24% for those 55-years-old and over.
Waterfield Tech: CX Leaders Lag in Deploying Conversational AI in Contact Centers
The broad adoption of conversational AI for customer experience has been crucially delayed, despite AI’s potential to have a demonstrable positive impact on business and customer satisfaction metrics, reveal research findings from global customer engagement solutions provider Waterfield Tech. While 91.5% of leading businesses invest in AI on an ongoing basis, only 14% of Waterfield respondents say they have specifically implemented conversational AI, which includes natural language processing.
“When it comes to technology for driving superior customer experiences, AI implementation is lagging—and the missed opportunities are significant,” says Steve Kezirian, CEO of Waterfield Tech. “With AI, and specifically conversational AI, businesses can quickly and effectively address contact center staffing shortages and lower costs by enabling value-driven self-service that reduces the volume of human agent interactions. Conversational AI can deliver an exceptional customer experience while enabling companies to more efficiently deploy their human and financial capital.”
In financial services, 72% of respondents say they are developing or getting started on a strategy on conversational AI, while 50% indicate they need to develop a strategy. None, however, have yet implemented the technology. In telecommunications, 69% believe conversational AI will have a major impact on customer service in the future, but 65% have not yet begun or are still in the early stages of adoption.
Additional findings from the research touch on the value of the contact center and its future. The primary initiatives for improving the contact center in 2023 are to advance contact center efficiency and to obtain better data and analytics from systems. For half of the respondents, conversational AI will be the most important technology of the future for the contact center, while for nearly a quarter of respondents, it is the metaverse and Web 3.0 that holds the most promise.
Zenarate and Execs In The Know: Consumers Want Human Agents
Consumers prefer human agents to automation, and they also want better-trained agents, the latest findings from the 2022 CX Leaders Trends & Insights Report indicate. The report is from Zenarate, a provider of simulation training with an AI coach for customer prospecting, together with global CX professional community Execs In The Know. “The data from [the report] makes it clear that, despite the push for automation and chatbots, consumers prefer the ‘human touch’ when engaging with their favorite brands,” says Brian Tuite, CEO and founder of Zenarate.
The report found the lack of access to a live agent to be the most frustrating aspect of customer care for consumers. “Over the past couple of years, access to live help has become increasingly restricted, and consumers are taking notice. Although automation is somewhat inevitable in today’s contact center, brands must take care that they are striking the right balance between self-help and live assistance,” the report says.
The findings also show that consumers still use traditional methods in contacting customer service. At least 67% of consumers use the phone to engage with a brand’s customer care department, and that leading brands are expected to have well-trained contact center agents to deliver the best brand experience possible.
The research also shows that 61% of multichannel engagements begin in the voice or text channel, with 69% of customer resolution occurring in the voice or text channel in the past 12 months. Yet agent training and coaching is an area that needs attention, as most consumers want businesses to focus on better CX, but only a third believe the area has improved in recent years.
Qualtrics: Data Privacy Will Be the Most Important Data Initiative in 2023
Companies expect digital revenue to grow in 2023 but are struggling to meet customer privacy expectations while maintaining customer profiles in real time, according to experience management firm Qualtrics in its State of Digital Experience Report 2023.
Despite rising costs and a bearish economic landscape that are changing consumer spending habits, 85% of digital leaders believe revenue from digital channels will continue to grow in the next 12 months. Across industries, nearly 75% of companies say that more than 40% of revenue already comes from digital channels, and the most valued data are digital identities, such as email and social IDs, as well as transactional data.
However, the most important data initiative to an organization among digital leaders is data privacy, given that state legislatures throughout the US are introducing comprehensive data privacy bills in 2022 that will go into effect in 2023. In particular, the report says digital leaders have low satisfaction in how their organizations handle timeliness, consent management, and identity reconciliation with their digital data.
To achieve their revenue goals, the top priority for digital leaders is to create a cohesive customer journey across channels. The most effective digital channel today is social media, followed by websites (17%) and digital ads (15%). “Given the current market dynamics, companies cannot afford customer churn caused by disjointed digital experiences,” says Shek Viswanathan, head of product for digital CX at Qualtrics. “Digital leaders will be asked to clearly demonstrate how their programs are generating revenue in 2023.”
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
