Emerging technologies have the potential to transform CX and reduce costs

Soma Tah

Consumer behavior is changing rapidly in the always-connected world of today. The availability of mobile, social and various digital tools have empowered the customers in ways that were previously unforeseen, thereby putting increased pressure on the businesses to pay more attention to the customers and their needs. Businesses who fail to step up their investment in Customer Experience(CX) run the risk to be losing out to more nimble and more customer-focused competitors. 

Pavan Chandra, Senior Sales Director-CX Applications, Oracle India talks about the how a better CX approach can help businesses meet the increasing expectations of today’s empowered customers. 

Could you tell us a bit about the underlying concept behind the 'Smarter CX approach' and how does it help businesses?

Customers’ expectations from the businesses are no longer driven by any predefined path, but rather by their choices. The concept behind a smarter CX approach is to have the ability to understand the customers, their specific requirements, their pain points and then give them an effective and personalized response. Busineeses need to keep the customers at the centre of business and deliver a personalized and seamless experience regardless of the channels they choose. The Embracing a better CX strategy is certainly helpful for business and it is validated by a Forrester study too which showed that the organizations adopting a better CX approach are growing 14 percent faster than those are not.  

Could you highlight the top CX implementation challenges that businesses are facing today and how are you guiding them? 

Businesses have been implementing newer technologies to deliver enhanced customer experiences however they are faced with challenges now and then. Though challenges differ depending upon various factors, some of them include the lack of a unified and integrated platform, which will give them a seamless experience, as well as deciding on the correct time to deploy; defining budget and ROI; understanding the mix of legacy and new technology. 

Our teams work very collaboratively with our customers to develop a holistic understanding of their businesses, KPIs and their pain points. We then put together the right team in place which not only works closely with the customer but is also available at all the times to answer any of their queries and to receive any feedback. Our goal has been to help our customers to drive revenue growth and ROI for their businesses. 

How are some of the emerging and immersive technologies impacting CX? Is Oracle using any of them? 

The emerging technologies including augmented reality, the Internet of Things, and AI-powered virtual assistants—offer the potential to transform the customer experience while reducing cost. Data is playing a significant role through this transformation starting from providing insights about consumer behaviour through analytics, to helping businesses to tailor the user experience. Marketing teams can leverage the amalgamation of data and emerging technologies not only to improve the customer experience but also to deliver customer experience in a creative and innovative way.

Oracle’s approach to AI, known as Adaptive Intelligence, combines several technologies, including data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. AI-powered systems can recognize images, understand language, learn from data, and emulate human intelligence. Oracle’s recently introduced suite of Adaptive Intelligent applications is focused first on applying customer insights derived from AI to the transformation of customer experience and will soon span the enterprise to include applications for finance, human resources, and supply chain management.