New age of consumers demand hybrid customer experience

OVER the years, ‘self service’ has gained traction across Asia. Consumers are increasingly becoming more comfortable with the automated support options companies offer to help them with their queries and accessing services. It’s convenient and mostly fairly reliable. However, some consumers consciously still depend on live agent support, where phone and online live chat interactions are among the top most preferred touchpoints across all support scenarios in some Asia Pacific countries. This is where hybrid preferences come in, which present opportunities for businesses to optimise digital channels while ensuring accessibility of human agent engagement.

There are a few points business decision-makers should note when designing their next hybrid customer experience map.

Human touch is still pivotal

We have seen how remarkably businesses transformed their operations digitally and created new virtual experiences for their customers at the height of the pandemic. Now with most places operating almost back to normal, businesses that have adopted virtual practices are slowly shifting towards a hybrid model, which leads to a whole new set of expectations from customers.

Based on our commissioned study, titled ‘Redefining Human and Automated Engagement – How APAC Consumers Have Impacted the CX Agenda’, we found that some consumers from China, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam still rely on live human support out of old habits. Our study also suggests there is a strong correlation between the customer experience scores and the value of human-agent interactions in addressing highly “emotional” or complex cases. When human interaction is involved, customers may express their concerns and needs not only on a transactional level but on a personal level as well. The “quality” of personalised human interaction boosts overall customer experience scores.

Four APAC consumer personas that redefine the hybrid CX

While businesses try to increase overall customer satisfaction through strategic human touchpoints, these touchpoints need to be relevant and targetted. One way to ensure that is to distinguish between the different needs of their customers to enable a positive experience. As our study found, four distinct personas have emerged in the digital age:

Affluent hybrid shoppers: Consumers between the ages of 25–39 years, with high income. This group makes up about half of consumers, the majority from China; they are comfortable with cross-channel interactions across various touchpoints.

Reserved high-touch seekers: Making up 25 per cent of consumers, this group prefers human-assisted touchpoints. Most noticeably from Japan, they typically come from the medium-income group and are above 45 years old.

Low-touch digital natives: Mostly 24 years or younger, with low-medium income, they grew up with the Internet and have high confidence in digital interactions. This group is more distinct in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan; many of these consumers profess that accessibility to human agents is not very important to them.

Neutrals: Making up 12 per cent of consumers, this group prefers to keep all communications within a single touchpoint, be it human-assisted or digital. They are aged 30–44 years, and span all income levels.

Developing a deeper understanding of consumer personas provides tremendous value and insights to businesses by equipping them with the right tools to engage audiences and guide strategies about automation-human interplay.

Challenges in delivering a hybrid experience

While it is ideal to design a hybrid experience that caters to the needs of these different consumer types, businesses must first address any gaps that exist within their enterprise. It is crucial to ensure that their internal capabilities are flexible and agile enough to meet fast-changing consumer demands.

But these days human-led service capacity has been stretched due to resource constraints, leaving organisations ill-equipped to address demands for human agents as part of a hybrid customer experience offering. Our study found that 38 per cent of consumers felt that it was not easy to connect with a human agent, with 60 per cent citing some “recent” customer service interaction that failed to meet expectations.

This is a struggle that businesses face today in finding that synergy between digital and human ecosystems. Businesses need to recognise that delivering a hybrid customer experience demands additional investment in processes and tools. Such investments are key to achieving seamless communication and synergising the capabilities of both machine and man for an excellent customer experience.

A robust hybrid customer experience brings tangible and intangible business value. Recognising that today’s virtual experience indelibly complements the human experience is the right step for businesses. When they understand that the human touch still drives customer experience, businesses will have a better chance of designing a customer experience that that truly delivers.

To achieve this, businesses can no longer take a cookie-cutter approach as consumers demand differentiated experiences with a human touch. When mapping their customer journeys, companies must look for opportunities where automation and human assistance are best positioned. By leveraging new technologies that can utilise the strengths of both humans and machines, businesses can compel instant, always-on collaboration and seamless omnichannel interactions for improved customer satisfaction and strong customer loyalty.

The writer is regional manager APAC at Infobip