A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives, a curated forum for enterprise technology leaders, nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the CIOApplications Editorial Board.
Melio
Stay Updated with Technological Development to Drive Better CX
What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the industry lately?
The development of tools and technologies that benefit us on the consumer side is one of the positive trends. Today, we have a lot of incredibly cool tools and techniques to serve our consumers more quickly, which was not possible before. One of our challenges is keeping up with technology and adapting our business practices sufficiently to make those advances make sense for us without jumping onto the newest and greatest technology that may not be suitable for us at the moment. I believe there is a delicate balance between adopting new technology and realizing that what we already have may be what we need.
Can you tell me about any current trends that are kind of assisting in resolving these challenges?
I believe self-service should be prioritized more. Today, consumers want to be able to enter and access their own information and carry out actions on their own without having to speak to a human operator. But we ought to be there for them when they need us, too. The fact that you could still speak with someone directly is what I would call a brand-defining moment. Also, I believe that since the pandemic and lockdown, individuals have become a little bit more disconnected than they ever have before. So, there is a need for the customer service side of things to connect a little bit more. But I think leveraging tools to create a more individualized connection is what resolves that. And that's precisely where this process is going; I think it's become more important to be able to connect with a client, even if they only contact us once a year, by showing genuine empathy. Because we've been living independently under lockdown for three years, I believe the craving for socialization has returned.
Self-service and customer education are our massive projects. Since our business is only four years old and we expanded so quickly, we are currently catching up with what clients want. Thus, we are figuring out those customer journeys and perfecting where customers may access their own information quickly and where they genuinely require our assistance. I believe that we took on everything earlier, and it is not scalable. Therefore, hiring a large number of employees to deal with a problem that cannot be resolved in any other way is not a wise business decision. Thus, as a payment service, I must create a frictionless, smooth procedure so that they may pay their vendors, allow those vendors to request money, and then get back to business as usual. And for that reason, we assert that maintaining small businesses in operation is our motto.
I believe there is a delicate balance between adopting new technology and realizing that what we already have may be what we need.
How do you see the space evolving in the next 12 to 18 months?
We're going to leverage the AI component more in terms of customer experience. When we consider chat G P T and other competing models that are at the forefront that is still evolving, I believe there will be some competition over which tool, good, or service is best for the majority of businesses. And I anticipate that will have some consequences. But it's beautiful because you can see how much AI technology is actually developing. Customers really didn't like having an AI at the forefront of their talks, but now it's much more personable and actionable, and there is more specific information. Thus, I believe that it will take over in a number of areas. My team and I am going to start looking closely at how we can use that at the agent level so that they can gain more knowledge upfront and assist clients personally.
What would be your single piece of advice that you want to impart to your fellow peers?
Find your mentors. Therefore, I sought out others outside of my company, organization, and network to learn from. I believe that both the mentor and the mentee benefit greatly from being a mentor. You'll learn a lot faster and about a variety of topics via first-hand experience than you ever would at a single employer. I still have mentors, and that was a significant and helpful thing for me to learn. The second thing is to stay updated with technology. You could easily miss an opportunity to use that technology if you're not in the moment because it is developing at such a quick rate.
