Customer Experience (CX) is a powerful differentiator that sets businesses apart from their competitors. In today’s marketplace, where products can be replicated and prices matched, the experience that a brand delivers defines it. Organizations that prioritize CX scale faster by earning customer loyalty and repeat business.
Over the years, I’ve seen firsthand how great CX doesn’t just happen. Instead, it’s designed with intention. The brands that consistently deliver it understand one thing: experience is the product. Here are some of the best practices for enduring CX.
Defining the Challenge of Customer Experience
CX encompasses the entire journey your customer has with your brand. Online and offline. Before and after sales. To stay competitive, leaders must continuously evaluate whether their CX aligns with customer expectations. The challenge goes beyond winning loyalty. It’s about keeping it.
Organizations are increasing their budgets. Forrester’s Customer Experience Benchmark Survey reveals that CX across the U.S. is still in decline for the third straight year in a row. The company’s Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience report illustrates that 40% of CX leaders plan to increase their customer experience investments above inflation for the next 12 months.
Elevating the Human Touch to Empower Teams
Employee Experience (EX) needs to remain a top priority, as burnout is all too common in demanding call centers. AI supports human agents by taking on routine tasks, offering instant insights, tailoring interactions, and supplying predictive guidance.
Even with AI in contact centers, human agents remain invaluable for handling emotionally layered and complex interactions. The McKinsey Customer Service Survey found that 71 percent of Gen Z customers reported live calls as the easiest way to resolve customer service issues. For Baby Boomers, this percentage jumped to 94 percent.
Recently, we partnered with Zenarate, a leader in AI-powered training and solutions, to give our call center agents a strong head start. This advanced technology is integrated into our global networks to not only accelerate the development of the next-generation workforce but also drive strategic growth in the BPO sector.
Unifying People, Communication, and Experience
Cultural alignment means that an organization’s values, communication habits, and day-to-day practices reflect the cultural expectations of the regions it serves globally. To create a truly unified customer experience, organizations must harmonize their people, communications, and technology platforms.
In interpersonal communication, accents, unfamiliar dialects, and expressions can lead to misunderstandings that can easily escalate. AI sentiment analysis bridges cultural and language differences. Beyond evaluating a customer’s emotional state, it can interpret tone, cadence, word choice, and contextual cues to improve clarity.
Tools like DataScribe offer call center agents real-time transcription, advanced summarization, sentiment analysis, topic detection, and pronunciation assistance. Multilingual support can transcribe in one language and summarize in another. Valence’s emotional AI analyzes conversations in real time and provides next-best-action prompts. Combined, these two tools help call center agents maximize customer service and engagement.
Balancing Reactive and Proactive Customer Service
Reactive customer service remains an essential pillar of CX. When issues arise, customers want to know that help is just a call, chat, or email away. Fast, reliable support in these critical moments not only resolves problems, but it also builds trust.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, proactive customer service anticipates needs and creates opportunities to engage before problems arise. Strategies include automated messages that provide order updates or personalized recommendations, AI-powered chatbots that offer real-time assistance 24/7, and follow-up calls or emails that check in on customer satisfaction after a purchase or service interaction. By reaching out to customers first rather than waiting for them to seek help, organizations can increase brand loyalty by demonstrating genuine customer care.
I feel the best approach is a balance of both. An effective customer service strategy blends strong reactive support with proactive initiatives to ensure customers feel valued at every stage of their journey. (Read Understanding the Difference Between CS and CX)
Delivering Personalization that Scales with Your Customers
In today’s marketplace, CX means personalization. The only way to achieve success on a scale is with AI-powered personalization.
Imagine a leading wine retailer uses AI-driven insights to deliver hyper-personalized experiences across channels, based on past purchases, tasting notes, and even seasonal preferences. When browsing Pinot Noir online, the system doesn’t just recommend similar reds to the customer. Instead, it identifies whether they tend to prefer light or medium-bodied Pinot Noir, regional American varieties from California or Oregon, or imported wines from France, Italy, Germany, or even New Zealand. In addition to personalized wine recommendations, AI can suggest holiday gifts and offer promotions or discounts to customers.
Content can also be curated, such as making customers aware of food-pairing guides or inviting them to virtual wine-tasting events featuring wines they are sure to enjoy. AI-driven personalization keeps your customers engaged and your organization at the forefront of their minds.
Creating Seamless Journeys Across Every Channel
Providing seamless service and support across every touchpoint is no longer optional. It’s expected. Enter omnichannel customer experience (CX). Your organization needs to meet your customers on the channel they prefer, without losing the content and context of the conversation. It needs to stay consistent whether it’s at a brick-and-mortar location, online, or via mobile.
Omnichannel CX is anchored in technology that unifies data, systems, and customer interactions in real-time. Through high-level cross-channel integration, organizations can deliver a consistent service experience, a unified brand message, and strengthen customer loyalty. Ultimately, it streamlines and delivers value throughout the customer journey.
In Conclusion
Empower your team, unify communication between call centers and customers, balance reactive and proactive customer service, deliver personalization at scale, and create seamless journeys across every channel. As leaders, this is a challenging goal, but the rewards are great.
