The Metaverse and Its Implications for the Future of Employment

In response to these trends and shifts, organizations with the financial wherewithal are considering hybrid work arrangements and even planning for a wholly remote workforce in the not-too-distant future. It is at this point that virtual collaboration platforms such as the metaverse become very valuable.

Companies such as Microsoft have already experienced the advantages of the metaverse for their staff. For example, online meetings have made it possible for timid workers who might otherwise refrain from speaking at in-person meetings to feel more comfortable expressing themselves. Additionally, each participant in the meeting will be able to examine the profiles of the employees. Managers and other workers will be able to learn more about them and maybe reach out to them as a result of this. For a firm to be successful, it is critical that its employees feel seen and heard by not just the company, but also by their coworkers and supervisors. Bill Gates - Microsoft co-founder (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/12/10/bill-gates-metaverse-work-meetings-predictions/6459911001/ ) - predicts most workers will take their virtual meetings within the metaverse in the next two or three years. He did this prediction on his website, stating – “I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids – which I call the "Hollywood Squares model," although I know that probably dates me – to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars”.

I personally remember how effectively Nortel was using Web.Alive technology for similar use cases. Disclaimer - I used to work for Nortel - There were reviews such as this one by zdnet (https://www.zdnet.com/pictures/a-tour-of-nortels-webalive-virtual-world-for-business/) – “Nortel's new WebAlive world combines a virtual world with fantastic audio to make a business collaboration platform. Here's a preview of that world.” Remember, this was 2008 ! It was also covered by TechRepublic.om - https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/a-tour-of-nortels-webalive-virtual-world-for-business/

We did bag a few customers – (https://techmonitor.ai/technology/data-centre/nortel_bags_first_webalive_customer_120109) – “Communications vendor Nortel has announced that PC maker Lenovo has become the first company to take advantage of its web.alive virtual world technology in a new online virtual store. Web.alive is a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application aimed at enterprises and according to the company, can provide an immersive, interactive, and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics.”

However, as usual, Nortel was way ahead of its time by almost a decade and a half. The Market wasn't ready. 

Avaya also tried to keep this alive (pun intended)… https://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/avaya-web.alive-creates-avatar-based-collaboration-environment/ although it had to be kind of shutdown by 2016… and now Meta (formerly Facebook) and other tech giants have woken up to the potential of the same technology.

There is a popular construct known as creative destruction that explains how innovation helps forward-thinking companies replace organizations that fail to adapt to technological advances. Think of all the companies that went out of business because they couldn’t adapt to the digital age. Add the disruption of a global pandemic, and you get an economy where only those that modify their practices can survive.

Companies can learn how to navigate these disruptions from the tech industry, where businesses must constantly reinvent themselves to keep up with and surpass the competition and the network that most tech companies are looking to utilize for the future is the metaverse.

People's well-being is dependent on their ability to form and maintain human relationships. The metaverse may aid in the development of interpersonal ties, which are important for those who work from home. Instead of participating in a Zoom conference, picture donning a virtual reality headset and participating in an immersive virtual meeting as an incarnation of yourself. As an avatar, you will be able to engage with other people who are present in the conference via visual and spatial-audio links. A similar sensation would be experienced while dealing with a coworker in a real office.

Consider the possibility that your next meeting may be with customers from Company B. The gathering is taking place on their virtual reality platform. Company B's platform will be interoperable with yours, which will enable you to smoothly transition to their platform for the meeting and interact with their staff. Companies will benefit from the metaverse because it will enable them to save time, reduce travel expenses, and foster relationships that were previously impossible.

New possibilities with the metaverse

As amazing and futuristic as these new technologies are, they can also be incredibly intimidating. Building components for the metaverse include the capacity to host hundreds of individuals in one server (perhaps, future metaverses will be able to accommodate thousands or even millions of people at once), motion-tracking systems that can identify where a person's eyes are, and more

According to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/18/the-metaverse-the-future-of-work/?sh=525396b4267e ) – “Business leaders have realized that we now live in a new era of work and that the standard business practices of old no longer apply. Many understand that to succeed, they need to leverage the benefits of the metaverse.”

Not only have people's views of the virtual world evolved, but so have the possibilities that may arise as a result of it. Growing and developing possibilities will arise as the metaverse area evolves and develops. In response to technology improvements, new career opportunities will be developed. The need for individuals who are informed about the area will grow in the future.

Conclusion

The metaverse type technology began by emerging into everyday life as entertainment, but it took a global pandemic to reset a few things and then speed up its embrace by work culture. The once-in-a-generation event forced most companies to re-evaluate their operations, with many deciding to reduce the in-person office and attempt to transition to a more digital future. This is going hand in hand with the world's gradual transition to a post-pandemic period, technological advancements are having a considerable, life-changing, impact on the human experience in both the physical and digital realms.

Sooner or later, the metaverse will begin to have a greater effect on not just our workplace but also on our general everyday lives, eventually becoming the new normal. The metaverse is the workplace of the future, as well as the future of the whole globe.

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Metaverse – Current Trends & Changes

Chief executive officers and executives from related industries believe that the concept of the workplace is changing. Along with the technologies that influence the development of these concepts, there are new ideas about business culture, manager-employee dynamics, the convergence of real and virtual places, as well as the evolution of these ideas.

People think that the metaverse is about living in a virtual existence, when, in my opinion, it is actually an adaptive and functional way for the fictional worlds to join our reality.

According to an article in The Hindu (https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/virtual-banks-digital-humans-social-chat-spacesinsides-tcs-metaverse-gameplan/article65267748.ece) – “Metaverse is the new buzzword in the technology world globally, and IT companies seem to be leading the way. IT services major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has already started working on several metaverse projects including a “virtual bank” for retail transaction and a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace using its own blockchain solution, a senior company executive told BusinessLine.”

According to an article in the Business Standard (https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/ltts-forays-into-meta-world-to-carve-out-business-unit-for-metaverse-122032900666_1.html) – “Amit Chadha, CEO & MD, LTTS shared that while the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic accelerated digital transformation of the business across the globe, the confluence of 5G, digital products, AI and digital manufacturing is finally merging the physical and digital to create a plausible phygital universe.”

According to Yourstory (https://yourstory.com/the-decrypting-story/biggest-trends-metaverse-space/amp) – “One of the biggest trends that is already taking over the metaverse space is Cryptocurrencies and NFTs (Non-fungible tokens). Already more than a $10 billion market, digital items like NFTs can be created, sold, and purchased in an open market, owned by an individual user without interference from a centralised entity”

In spite of the fact that some changes had already taken place in the workplace before the outbreak, COVID-19 has demonstrated the necessity of a functional world separate from the real world, has accelerated the consideration of unorthodox practices, and has opened doors for the implementation of new practices. While the pandemic is in progress, businesses that wish to survive and keep personnel are adjusting to these changes. In the post-pandemic age, these changes will almost certainly become permanent.

Over the course of COVID, there has been a growth in the popularity of two significant themes in the metaverse and the future of work: hybrid work and the so-called "Great Reshuffle."

Creator economy is already there in Metaverse! “Internet 3.0” is entirely decentralized. Almost all virtual games or environments that are being built in the metaverse are already selling their assets, avatars, and all usable equipment as NFTs. The value of digital goods is increasing compared to their physical counterparts, for example, NFTs of tweets and avatars are valued higher than some high-priced paintings!

The idea of DAOs which represents Decentralized Autonomous Organizations is another pattern that is assuming control over the metaverse. The metaverse is actually an independent reality that isn't constrained by a brought-together substance. DAOs are advancing step by step and with time, will give clients more command over concluding what they look for from each computerized stage, great or administration

Building components for the metaverse include the capacity to host hundreds of individuals in one server (perhaps, future metaverses will be able to accommodate thousands or even millions of people at once), and motion-tracking systems that can identify where a person's eyes are, and more. 

Companies, brands, and individuals who are aware of these trends and the online culture that exists in the metaverse can develop and expand their digital identities, content, and products to outperform their competitors. The greatest way to expand your brand is to adapt to the ever-changing metaverse and embrace their digital development.

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Metaverse - Introduction!

The pandemic COVID-19, which is still ongoing, at least in some parts of the world, has had a significant impact on the dynamics of our society. Many individuals lost their employment, but they also had to adjust to fundamental changes in the workplace, which affected millions of people. However, the pandemic also accelerated the adoption of digital both by businesses and by the masses. it’s only a matter of time before the digital verse or the metaverse becomes a reality, given the speed with which technologies and businesses are developing creative ideas surrounding this immersive reality.

The Technology itself is not THAT new, however. We have had these kinds of “virtual worlds” available for more than a decade in the gaming world. There was a second life which way back in 2008 created so much hype that one article claimed that one-day second life would buy google itself. Of course, it didn’t’ pan out quite that way. Google went on to become the juggernaut that it is today and facebook emerged for the masses. However, the idea of an immersive virtual reality refused to die down. The most important mainstream depiction of the same was the “holodeck” of Star trek.

Nortel had its web.alive platform – which was a very immersive engine. We had a variety of games, too many to name them here. These transformations have resulted in the demise of rigid enterprises and the emergence of new economies, such as the metaverse economy. What will the future of employment look like if we go ahead in the context of a metaverse economy is an open question?

The phrase "metaverse" has always generated a lot of excitement in the technology community. The specific meaning of the term and how it will show to be an outstanding instrument in the future are not well understood by the majority of people.

In order to help you comprehend the metaverse's basics and functioning, we'll go over all you need to know about it in this post. So let's get this party started.

Introduction to metaverse

Imagine being able to build your ideal alter-ego in a virtual environment where you have complete control over every element of your persona. You have the freedom to do anything you want, to possess whatever you want, and pursue practically any opportunity that comes your way.

A scene like this was often portrayed in science fiction films and television programs. However, it is possible that it may become a reality in the near future since there is a lot of excitement in the business world about getting every layer, technology, and protocol ready to build "The Metaverse."

The conceptual breadth of the metaverse seems to be endless. It will vary from your house, street, business, and town or city, down to the solar system itself, and everything in between. It will also be a realm of fantasy worlds as well as social, economic, and cultural experimentation.

Those of us of a certain age may be hesitant about spending our waking hours in the metaverse where everything will be gamified, but it is the digital natives among us who inhabit today’s metaverse of Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft who will likely adapt the fastest and prosper.

In parallel with the world's gradual transition to a post-pandemic period, technological advancements are having a tremendous impact on the human experience in both the physical and digital realms.

Sooner or later, the metaverse will begin to have a greater effect on not just our workplace but also on our general everyday lives, eventually becoming the new normal. The metaverse is the workplace of the future, as well as the future of the whole globe.

Building components for the metaverse include the capacity to host hundreds of individuals in one server (perhaps, future metaverses will be able to accommodate thousands or even millions of people at once), and motion-tracking systems that can identify where a person's eyes are, and more.

Let me know your thoughts.... and as usual - click here to follow this blog!

New Normal - Borderless Workforce

The world has changed, and it has changed very rapidly indeed in the last 2 years. We all agree that the COVID-19 outbreak is a world-changing event that will have long-lasting implications for the global economy. It has been a once-in-a-generation global impact event. While there is no doubt that the pandemic is amplifying the adoption of new technologies, technological advancements were already changing the world over the past two decades, from living standards to the very nature of our work. It takes a world-changing event like the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate certain trends so dramatically and workforce-related changes have been, perhaps, the most profound.

“Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win” – Max McKeown

See, even before the pandemic struck, some features of the state of technological progress aka digital transformation were especially salient.

First, technology was already disrupting production processes, especially through the rapid scale-up of digital platforms.

Second, technology created seismic shifts in the mix of skills required to succeed in the labor market. these include cognitive skills such as critical thinking, as well as socio-behavioral skills such as managing and recognizing emotions that enhance teamwork or selling better. Earnings are higher for those who have a combination of these skills.

Third, digital technology changed the terms of work. Rather than “standard” long-term contracts, digital technologies have given rise to more short-term work, often via online work platforms. These “gigs” make certain kinds of work more accessible and flexible.

A hybrid virtual approach in which some workers work on-site while others work from home promises greater access to talent, enhanced productivity for individuals and small teams, cheaper costs, increased individual freedom, and better employee experiences. There are three major obstacles in implementing remote working:

1.            Securing the infrastructure for remote working

2.            Implementing new work policies in a structural way

3.            Balancing the work and private lives of Employees

With 40% of companies encouraging increased flexibility in terms of the country or office to work from over the next three years, and over 36% increasing the number of international remote workers not necessarily affiliated with a local office, the workforce of the future appears to be far more fluid and globalized.

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence -it is to act with yesterday’s logic”- Peter Drucker

With such conditions, businesses' appetites will be piqued for one thing: A borderless Workforce.

Why?

1.            Is it More Effective? - Employees working remotely in various regions of the world save operating costs like salary, administrative expenditures, and business travel expenses. With a global workforce, you can provide round-the-clock support and significantly reduce your turnaround time. 

2.            Does it create new market opportunities? - Local skills may be unlocked and new possibilities can be created by a more globalized workforce. Striking for a borderless global workforce allows your organization to access high-quality personnel from all around the world, increasing your chances of being recognized in any market.

3.            Is it more sustainable? - Remote working decreases commute time and business travel, improving a company's environmental, social, and governance credentials. It aids in the prevention of brain drain from developing markets on a global level, and it aids in the creation of stronger social cohesion in smaller towns and rural regions on a local level.

As organizations start to reopen, they are finding that their workforce is not keen to give up remote work. Companies can no longer say that they cannot operate remotely (a common reason to avoid remote work pre-2020), but with an ongoing global pandemic, they also cannot ask employees to come back to the office full-time. The most popular solution is the thing that every organization seems to be grappling with now — the hybrid model.

People refer to the hybrid model a lot; it involves some combination of working remotely and from an office. So far, the hybrid model looks different for every organization, but there are a few clear themes. Whatever the specifics, however, companies that choose to incorporate a hybrid model will all face some challenges ranging from culture-specific to seamless collaboration to the kind of talent that is available. Borderless workforces break down geographical barriers and develop a culture of cooperation and complete adaptability, allowing businesses to grow at an unprecedented rate while leveraging global talent to solve business problems.

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Customer Journey Mapping: The secret to Superior CX

Customers' behavior is surmised to be rather unpredictable, thus businesses strive to make lasting first impressions and provide unique purchase experiences. Those who wish to learn how your clients purchase in today's digital environment should focus on the most impactful channels and touchpoints in their buying journeys.

 Customer Experience Mapping is a method that helps you identify your consumers' motivating elements during the purchase process. It may be defined as a customer's journey through the phases of their relationship with a company, which includes all interactions between the consumer and the firm across several channels. It's basically a flowchart that displays the steps of a client's interaction with a firm, from purchasing things online to contacting customer support.

 Although most firms are rather effective at acquiring data on their customers, data alone does not adequately express the customer's problems and experiences. At such instances, a customer journey map, which is a visual representation of a customer's interaction with a firm through time, may give insight into the customer's overall experience. It assists your team in better understanding and addressing the wants and pain points of your customers when they interact with your product or service. Thus, a customer journey map allows your company to observe how your brand contacts a potential client and then travels through the many touchpoints of the sales process.

Depending on the sort of business and the types of consumers served, each customer journey map will be unique. However, there are a few key elements that will be consistent throughout every map you build. Some of them are:

 

1.      Personas: Personas, which are composite representations of a market segment of consumers with similar requirements, objectives, and motivations, are the greatest way to understand customers' behaviors and sentiments. It may provide you a comprehensive picture of who your consumers are, what they want, and how they engage with your company across all channels.

 

2.       Identifying the stages of the customer journey that your customer is attempting to complete. Rather than focusing on internal process processes, one should focus on creating a customer journey map with phases that depict your client's goal-oriented trip.

 

3.      Customer touchpoints: One of the most significant parts of the customer journey map is the touchpoints between the customer and the business. Each touchpoint specifies a specific action the consumer did with the business. Identifying your touchpoints is a crucial step in establishing a customer journey map and ensuring that your consumers are happy at every stage.

 

4.      Emotion: It's crucial to think about how your consumers could react to each engagement. Identifying the places of friction in the customer experience may help companies see their client personas in a new light.

 After you've established all of the components, it's a wonderful exercise to bring them all together from the customer's perspective. Companies frequently need to construct many customer journey maps based on a jumbled picture of how consumers interact with them.

Customer journeys aren't always going to be straightforward. Customers may hop ahead and back multiple times within the same segment throughout the course of their lifetime. As a result, taking exceptions into account while mapping the Customer Journey may be a smart idea. Another smart approach is to involve other departments since each department has a stake in defining the customer's experience and may give a distinct perspective. Customer Journey Mapping will, in the end, never be a static entity; like everything else in the digital age, it will be forced to be Agile.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a customer experience, so your company will have to figure out what works best for you. However, the Trip Mapping frameworks you develop should help you gain a better knowledge of the journey your consumers take as they interact with your organization, brand, goods, partners, and employees. Knowing where your consumer is on their journey might help you anticipate what they could encounter next.

Where CX meets Technology - Intelligent Experiences

As the pandemic forced us to change our very way of living, consumer behavior also changed drastically. Overnight, many people who were “fence-sitters” when it came to transacting “online” were literally forced to online since in-person contact became the least preferred way of doing commerce. This online commerce forced organizations to really take a deep look at their customer journeys both online and offline. Digital Technologies, earlier often relegated to “coming in future” or “nice to have” became “essential” to survival. Retail was the hardest hit with this realization.

However, we find that now almost every area of the customer experience is being transformed by new technologies. Customers have evolved to anticipate new levels of perfection, performance, and just about everything in between as the possibilities of digital technology improve. Customers' expectations are continuously evolving; thus, the current customer experience must go above and beyond old customer care practices. Companies that give a meaningful but relevant experience that meets or exceeds their consumers' expectations will be successful.

To stay on top of these advancements and trends, we must grasp these new technologies and use them to communicate, interact, and promote in novel ways. Today's organizations need to discover the proper digital tools to provide a great customer experience, build brand loyalty, and drive sales growth. CX is taking advantage of today's technology and data to improve the entire customer experience. This involves sharing data amongst teams such as marketing and customer support, developing new roles to act on the data, and using new technologies such as AI, resulting in the implementation of a class of digital practices that leverage data to improve the whole digital trip for customers.

Leading firms in customer experience management are already utilizing these new technologies to achieve a competitive advantage. This ranking is topped by the utilization of artificial intelligence. According to one Research, by 2022, consumers would probably be handling 85 percent or more of their interactions with the organization without the need to be engaging with a human, at least for simple interactions. Many of the technological breakthroughs accessible to CX delivery teams are determined by how artificial intelligence, conversational interfaces, and robotic automation are implemented. There are two aspects to this. One is related to productivity and efficiency. By automating frequent and repetitive processes, these solutions save expenses and boost agent productivity. The other aspect, perhaps more important, is to do with delivering superior experiences through quick, efficient, and empathetic engagements during various segments of customer journeys. Conversational Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence are another method for automating simple chores. Today's industry-standard chatbots offer an incredible step forward for organizations looking to automate and outsource easy, regular inquiries and interactions to an intelligent system, thanks to an algorithmic learning feature that allows it to learn from past discussions and adapt replies. Another widely used option, IoT, may boost a company's bottom line by cutting operational expenses, improving productivity, and assisting companies in expanding into new markets or developing new goods.

One technique, which seems to be gaining tremendous traction in understanding and delivering empathetic engagements, is speech analytics, which is being increasingly used to augment existing AI processes enabled processes by listening for heightened voice pitches and other emotional indications, analyzing the customer's sentiments, further contextualizing with backend order data and transferring them to an agent when appropriate. It also gives fresh sources of feedback by identifying emotional drivers and focusing on terms or themes that regularly provoke specific feelings.

Armed with this sentiment analysis technology and with comprehensive dashboards, agents can quickly acquire a full image of each client, their purchase history, and their expected goals for each engagement – and then take on a consultative role, alleviating emergent and even projected requirements as well instantly acquire a thorough understanding of each client. These new and continually growing technologies are assisting businesses not only to extend their client base but also to get a macro-level understanding of their customers. Adopting such technologies for one’s organization is providing a more competitive advantage over competitors that have yet to connect technology with customer experience.

For a few years, a huge focus of most of the organizations and service providers was to deflect a transaction or engagement towards a non-voice channel – with the hope that customers would find these easier and such channels also afford a lower cost to serve. However, as seen, most of the customers are not very comfortable using non-voice channels especially with an AI-powered bot behind the channel during a time of crisis or during a buying journey. In a country like India, literacy rates while climbing has also proved to be a challenge for a largely English-dominated non-voice channel scene. Hence, we see that voice is making a comeback, albeit in a different avatar for service providers! And Speech Analytics and related technologies are at the heart of this revolution.

This is not limited to service providers or call centers only! General use of such virtual assistants is happening on an increasingly wide scale. For example, Taxi and cab drivers in India are routinely seen using some form of voice-powered virtual assistant for doing routine things – hands-free! Mostly the interface is maps or google assistant. The next frontier in Speech-enabled virtual assistants would be real-time language translation capabilities, which would allow two humans to converse with each other even though they might speak different languages. 5G and increasingly powerful speech engines are the key. While we are far away from Star Trek’s Universal Translator, but such technologies, on a simpler scale can revolutionize the way we interact with each other and transact online.

The next frontier in CX and EX definitely involves a significant role for such technologies available through a variety of interface formats!

Virtual Assistants: Their Role in Superior CX & EX

The Digital era compels many companies to maintain continuous connections with their customers until the resolution of their queries or issues. As a result, with customer service as a top priority, the ideal customer experience allows consumers to communicate via the channel of their choosing while keeping the context of interactions intact. A limitless firm has a new operating system that incorporates a shift in thinking as well as the increased embrace of emerging technology. The conventional tethered and physical workflow is morphing into interactive customer communications through various digital channels.

The role of Virtual assistants is developing as businesses adapt to the Omni Channel experience which is increasingly being expected by their end customers. Though virtual assistants first appeared in the 1960s with ELIZA and IBM's Shoebox voice-activated calculators, this technology is now emerging as the go-to solution in the realm of customer experience.

A traditional virtual assistant may be conceived of as an application that responds to a user's voice or text command and does the work at hand. Emerging virtual assistants, on the other hand, are programs that integrate the use of artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, natural language processing, and machine learning to extract information and complicated data from conversations in order to comprehend and process them.

Structured data with standardized rules can easily adapt to RPA solutions whereas unstructured data with less application of standardization utilized Cognitive automation, a virtual assistant is a next-level combo that can extract information and complicated data from a conversation using a voice and text-based interface.

Virtual Assistant algorithms develop the capacity to construct data models that detect and adapt behavior patterns by merging past data. With the inclusion of historical data, preferences, and other user information on a regular basis, a virtual assistant can answer difficult queries, offer suggestions and predictions, and even start a discussion.

Pre-programmed virtual assistants, which are more rule-based, with logic mapped out with a logical next step for various answers users might ask, are giving way to more complex and dynamic AI virtual assistants, which can be divided into two categories: NLP virtual assistants and machine learning virtual assistants. As a result, virtual assistants are becoming smarter by ditching automated chats and becoming more participatory, as seen by one of the most popular products on the market, Google Home, which knows each user's voice and issues a secure ID to each. The trend is also emerging to integrate different Virtual assistants, which can provide enhanced functionality to consumers and end-users.

However, there are certain privacy issues with AI-enabled virtual assistants that gather and retain user data indefinitely for better upgrades and user experience; this may be mitigated with strict data privacy rules from the corporations that provide this technology. After all, technology is a double-edged weapon that must be handled with caution.

Virtual Assistants have a chance to build a new digital workforce that will supplement human talents while also benefiting B2C and B2B end customers. Virtual assistant technology may be efficiently applied to external customer-facing use-cases using Conversational AI and cloud-enabled services, assisting enterprises in meeting the demands of digital natives and growing omnichannel digital contact with Omnichannel digital virtual assistants. At the same time, with employee experience also becoming increasingly important in the delivery of holistic Total Stakeholder Experience, virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important role in enabling employees to perform their tasks with much more accuracy, speed, and efficiency. These assistants are used in a variety of formats including conversational text, guidance coaches, and even as “co-listeners” to a voice conversation and then providing guidance based on inferences derived from a vast database of previous interactions and persona-based profiling.

The next frontier in CX and EX definitely involves a significant role for virtual assistants available through a variety of interface formats!

Benchmarking Your CX Organization

 To develop your business, you must first improve the customer experience (CX)  that your business delivers to guarantee that your customers are well-served and have transformative interactions with your brand. For a fully connected, effortless CX that adds value to your consumers and business, you need a well-defined CX strategy and clear leadership.

It's good to see companies continuing to value customer experience as a key differentiator. Benchmarking assists businesses in understanding how these strategies and staff perform in comparison to rivals and what customers are truly saying.

Thus, for setting your organization up for long-term success, it's vital to take a critical step of Benchmarking.

The first step would be setting up KPIs such as Net promoter score, customer satisfaction scores, Customer acquisition and retention, Customer effort score, Average ratings across listing platforms, Volume and sentiment of online reviews, and Consumer engagement for Benchmarking Customer Experience that is important to compare to previous results both internally and outside.

Customer and Employees feedback - By interacting directly with your customers, blind spots in the organization can be identified and understood what’s not working.

Using reputation management software that uses natural language processing (NLP) can help you to evaluate client comments as one approach to gauge consumer sentiment. It might provide insight into the precise issues that need to be addressed in order to improve your client experience.

Another method is to use Voice of the Customer initiatives, which are aimed at gathering and evaluating customer feedback in order to find chances for operational or product changes, which helps to achieve the ultimate objective of increasing customer acquisition and retention.

Comparing the most recent available scores to these earlier scores can assist you to determine what is and isn't working with your client experience when you begin your benchmarking CX.

Competitive Advantage via Benchmarking – we must focus on our customer experience via Client satisfaction to create a loyal customer base and keep business away from our rivals. When we're evaluating our company's performance, look at how our rivals are doing via internet reviews and social media mentions to get a sense of how they're doing and what areas they're having trouble with. With this kind of study, we should be able to pinpoint areas where we can enhance our client experience and address some of their concerns, perhaps luring them to our company.

With at least one-to-one comparisons, the aim should be to figure out where your competitors are outperforming us, where we can improve, and how our customer experience stacks up against the competition.

Benchmark revenue measurements can reveal where our team spends more, less, or the same as comparable organizations of our size, and these insights can help us better allocate our company's resources.

Benchmarking in fact forces us to evaluate ourselves in comparison to other organizations in our industry, rather than our own prior success, and holding our firm to industry standards maintains the focus on becoming the best among competitors.

Identifying the relevant KPIs, gathering consumer insights, and evaluating our achievements against the industry are only the beginnings of a customer-centric organizational transformation.

Benchmarking and improving customer experience is a long-term marketing strategy which is a long-term investment after adoption

Digital Customer Experience Strategy

With an ever-expanding spectrum of digital technologies and tools at our disposal, the distinction between digital and physical customer experience is becoming increasingly hazy. For competitive marketers, digital channels are becoming increasingly vital in supporting their whole customer experience strategy.

In my opinion, companies will, increasingly, compete on customer experience as a focused area alongside their product or service, thus they will be prepared to pay more for a great customer experience.

A successful digital experience plan needs organizations to consider how digital interfaces fit into their customer engagement strategy, which utilizes customer data and provides businesses with customer insights to improve digital interaction across interfaces and boost customer retention.

In order to promote genuine gains, digital customer experience management must become an executive priority and fit with the overall business strategy. Delivering a seamless experience across individual customer contact points by leveraging unified communications as a service is a fantastic example of channel flexibility when consumers want to remain engaged with the same agent across digital channels.

This may be accomplished by deploying cloud management solutions that allow customers to switch between your brand's multiple channels, therefore addressing the growing need for response time, which customers rank as critical when they have a customer service query.

Companies must make the effort to completely map and understand their customer journey in order to increase customer engagement scores, where consumers are willing to share data with you in exchange for personalized experiences that make their journey easier, easy, and convenient.

When the objective is to decrease consumer friction and effort, it's critical to build complicated systems that simplify client interactions as every move in the firm has an influence on the consumers in some manner, hence companies must be aligned towards customer-centricity.

This is possible with the help of a specialized digital team that specifies alignment and synergies with other relevant business divisions. This team must define KPIs to push the organization's and culture's thinking toward digital transformation and customer experience, as well as simplify processes to generate efficiency and reduce redundancies.

When you simplify your digital journey and offer tailored digital experiences for your consumers, you achieve customer satisfaction with less effort, which leads to an increase in your customer lifetime value.

Brands that have a strong CX strategy make a concerted effort to connect company goals with these consumer expectations.

Building and Sustaining the Digital culture during COVID-19 & Beyond

COVID-19 outbreak is a world-changing phenomenon that will have long-lasting implications for our global economy. It’s a once in a generation global impact event. This is the opportunity for each SERVICE PROVIDER to conduct an organizational re-framing of their pre-COVID business model, behaviors & practices. Flexibility and adaptability in operational control whilst continuing to operate as close to the prescribed core organizational culture, are the traits that will secure their futures.

We are witnessing that:

·       Pandemic has severely disrupted production processes.

·       Digital has helped through the rapid scale-up of platforms resulting in changes to the traditional boundaries of firms.

·       With the advent of new business models, digital platform first firms have been able to evolve rapidly. The year 2020 can be described as the year that “a forced test of many things we had thought about but not tried.”

Building and sustaining a digital culture during COVID-19 & Beyond would require:

·       Introducing flexible and adaptable operational controls to secure SERVICE PROVIDER’s future.

·       Skill & hire for technologies such WFH, digitally secure online presence, blockchain, and IoT.

·       And most importantly, enhanced Investments in automation space as the next big thing.

COVID-19 induced pandemic and disruption is being seen as the catalyst for a global reset and the acceleration of digital transformation. Across the organization, everyone must recognize that, for a business to achieve sustained innovation excellence, it is very important that an innovative mindset must be integral to every employee’s job profile. Also, Leaderships teams need to measure and reward innovation so that it becomes a core competency that drives priority-setting, resource allocation, talent acquisition, and the development of influential leaders.

New age leadership teams know that many old ways of working are basically incompatible with a successful digital transformation culture and a tremendous, yet subtle cultural change is required. Given that every company is different, according to Protiviti (https://www.protiviti.com/IN-en/insights/bpro102) the leadership teams should consider whether the organization is a digital follower, expert, or leader:

• Digital follower — under this category, a given company has developed a digital strategy and has a proven track record delivering on digital initiatives, which are typically focused on discrete aspects of the customer journey as well as internal process automation.
• Digital expert — under this category, a given company has a proven track record of adopting emerging technologies has achieved high levels of process automation and quantitatively manages digital aspects of its strategy enterprise-wide.
• Digital leader — under this category, a given company has a proven track record of disrupting traditional business models; digital aspects of strategic plans are continually improved based on lessons learned and predictive indicators.

Other experts tend to agree. According to the Danish business leader and leadership author Torben Rick (https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/culture-change-is-key-in-digital-transformation/) , digital transformation isn’t really about technology, it’s about organizational agility - and culture plays a vital role in the digital transformation of any business.

Building and sustaining a culture of digitalization is also the new core for each organization making an attempt to grapple with the onslaught of economic process fuelled by digital disruption from its competition. digitalization is regarding permitting technology to drive your organization – your product, services, client interactions, and core operations – so as to maneuver quicker. However, digitalization conjointly needs an organizational culture where folks are both ready and willing to adapt. Thus, digital culture and transformation go hand in hand. Ignore culture and risk transformation failure. Rick identifies digital culture transformation as leading the adoption of recent technology; it's the shift from ancient, analog culture, wherever choices area unit supported marketing research, careful business cases, and careful in-house reportage, to a digitally-driven surrounding, wherever choices area unit created by cross-functional groups supported live customer-centric information. It’s being ready to fail quickly instead of being averse to risk.

Organizations don’t transform, people do.

Digital culture is a company-wide change in mindset and behavior that has a good chance of succeeding only if it is instilled from those at the top. Leaders need to demonstrate their enthusiasm for new technologies and be prepared to develop new skills themselves in order to empower people to transform within the organization.

But then one might question, why all this fuss around digital and digital culture? Well, as it turns out, with empirical evidence, it does appear that digital organizations move faster, favoring continuous iteration over refining a product or service to perfection before launching it. Another fundamental tenet of digital culture that is highlighted in multiple articles is the great benefit of flattening organizational charts. When collaboration across teams is encouraged and valued over individual effort, and employees are trusted to make judgment calls – no matter what their role – empowerment follows, and this empowerment fuels motivation, which can lead to faster decision making and, ultimately, more wins.

As the teams learn to collaborate, the organization will become more transparent, and finally, as digital culture embeds in the business, the organization’s focus will inherently shift outward. Outside expertise and customer feedback will be sought-after rather than feared as the organizational culture changes into an agile and resilient digital powerhouse.

To summarize, digital transformation depends on having a digital culture supporting it because digital culture:

·      Enables focus on customer needs rather than internal processes

·      promotes agile thinking

·      places high emphasis on collaboration

·      drives transformation

·      empowers workers across the company

Creating a customer-centric value chain through Digital Transformation

Customer Journeys and resultant experience has been impacted severely due to the pandemic. When the lockdowns initiated and people started working from home, a lot of our daily habits, rituals, and work-related practices become digital. It affected us both as service providers and as customers or consumers. I believe that this digital-first customer behavior is here to stay. 

After all, what matters to customers is their experience derived throughout the journey when dealing with your brand. It doesn't matter to your customer as to what your processes are, whether your SOPs are documented in a certain way or whether you have a funnel of some sort through which you are categorizing your prospect or customer – what matters to them is their experience, across the channel of the interaction of their choice and at the time of their choosing. That's a big sort of a dilemma. As a company, as a brand, we are used to thinking about the process, while the customers have always been thinking about the experience. There seems to be a big disconnect. No wonder, in spite of massive investments by brands in streamlining their processes and attempts to enhance customer experience, the customer perception conveys a big departure from what brands think and what customers experience.

Digital, among other things, can facilitate in bridging the gap between the business process and customer journey. That's the best thing that digital technology affords us as brands or service providers when it comes to customer-centric value chains is that it can allow us to have much more control of the measurement and hence improvement in customer journeys and hence customer experience. However, there are certain rules that we have to follow which include the cycle of Predict, Intervene, Collaborate, and Integrate.

The following aspects are crucial to creating a customer-centric value chain:

·       The ability to predict in advance what the customer experience is going to be is a crucial advantage in delivering a superior customer experience. However, questions remain as to what this ability constitutes. Is it going to be a score that one calculates, based on a lot of factors? Well, as it happens, there’s a lot of factors, based on the demographic based on the past transaction history, based on their service, complaints that, have come to you or to your competitors. However, the more data points that we collect better becomes our ability to predict the kind of experience we are or can deliver. This is a crucial pillar of the customer-centric value chain. The focus is the customer and not the process itself.

·       Then next is the ‘intervene’ part. Once one can predict, the next logical question is what can be done about an adverse experience about to happen. Being able to intervene in real-time is critical and that makes one relevant as a brand for the customer in that moment of truth. Can we design the systems in such a way that relevant intervention happens at the right time in the journey?

·       The third part is ‘collaborate’. Being able to collaborate in bringing the automation and human experience from both the employee side and the customer side together at that moment. This is also where the human part comes in. So you intervene and then are able to collaborate through an omnichannel engagement system where your employee, with your subject matter expert, can be tagged into that particular moment of truth and become contextualized to what the customer is reaching out there for and imagine the system being able to tag the right subject matter expertise from within the same automation system (for example a chatbot). So that's the collaborative part in bringing the human experience and both from the employee side, and the customer side together at that moment.

·       The fourth part is the ‘integrate’ part. Being able to integrate that flow mix into the core business process and provide seamless and continuous services even if one of the components fails. Once that happens, the great experience can be delivered, so your ERP, the back office, your CRM and when you combine all that together, you get an amazing value chain that's making your customers happy, excited, big advocates a few at the same time, making you money as well.

We all know customer experience delivery through various services comes at the top in the BPO industry. Even though the BPO industry has been facing many challenges in current times, we should keep eye on the ball in order to get through these difficult times. Customer-centric processes are the new normal where we are adjusting our business models according to the needs of the customer.

Traditional approaches, however, do not work when the operation is in thousands of agent’s homes. We witness that a lot of businesses often rely on their documented culture when challenged on how they wish to work. Yet culture is ethereal. Non-physical. Difficult to prove. But there’s little doubt it exists in every Service provider, especially BPO businesses. Service Providers or BPOs typically employ operating culture with a great practical purpose as compared to many other sectors. This may be because of the desired ability to influence the behavior of a large number of associates in an environment with relatively low numbers of managers & supervisors since managing large groups of people requires procedural controls to guarantee steady and predictable output. However, this also presents a dilemma of delivering consistent and predictable, and most importantly positive customer experiences across various touchpoints with different associates and other backend systems participating in the whole journey.

These days, thousands of contact center advisors and back-office staff are working from home with little or no managerial ‘eyes’ on behavior. How can the operation be evidentially controlled? How can Data Security be guaranteed? How can BPOs ensure that the operating culture is consistent, especially in a very dispersed and distributed workforce?

Digital is playing a key role in addressing all these aspects. Systems and practices intertwine together to provide a perfectly monitored, yet more collaborative environment, with virtual assistants (aka bots) not only helping automate tasks to bring efficiencies but also helping keep associates aligned with the culture of the organization. This brings benefits in areas of both experience and efficiency as well as ensuring compliance.

Customer-centric processes are the new normal where we are required to adjust our business models, practices, and processes according to the needs of the customer with a predict, intervene, collaborate and integrate cycle.

Overcoming Digital Challenges with Learning & Development

A lot of businesses, across the world, are disconnected digitally and may not have access to workers with the relevant skills and are hence facing multiple challenges in their business environments. Employees also, have scant little protection and usually do not have the necessary flexibility or skills to adapt to the markets in which they operate. These challenges can be faced, however, we need to embrace technology, and training programs need to be upgraded to equip our employees with the best skills.

The rapid evolution and adoption of technology on a widespread scale and further accelerated by the virus pandemic has led to a pressing need for businesses to adapt. While there is no doubt that the current situation induced by the pandemic is amplifying the adoption of new technologies, advancements in technology were already changing the world, from standards of living of the species to the very nature of work we do. It can be observed that even before the advent of the current pandemic, some features of the state of technological progress aka digital transformation were especially relevant.

The workforce imperatives of automation, digitization, and other similar technological trends are significant, and BPOs will need to invest in and hire for radically different skillsets and capabilities in which digitization could affect their businesses.

Main Workforce Skill related challenges facing business today include:

·      A Significant mismatch between technologies available & skills of the existing workforce

·      How to rapidly access or hire workers with the right skills amidst a challenging business environment

Overcoming these challenges require:

·      Alignment with a digital transformation goals of the organization by redefining individuals’ roles and responsibilities.

·      Adequate investment in training from top to bottom levels; for example, we have initiated large scale programs, remotely delivered, for employees to re-skill themselves in various digital technologies

·      Innovative and online virtual training methodologies which allow self-paced learning and certifications.

·      Incentivize through career growth options linked to self-paced re-skilling by employees.

One finds that one has to adapt to new processes and new tools to stay relevant. To further empower the Digital workforce, organizations need to first redefine individuals’ roles and responsibilities to align them with a transformation goal, which can further help in clarifying the roles and capabilities that the company needs.

We need to have Digital learning as an integral part of growth and career development

With a lot of the focus right now on employees, we have to reskill and redirect the workforce as needed — as one of the keys to delivering digital transformation for an organization.

With changing times, employees should start going back to the blackboard and reskill themselves for the new technologies and domains in their organizations. Success in the current business environment requires both digital-savvy leaders and employees with the required capabilities to make changes happen. We know that there are numerous ways in which companies with successful transformation record are enabling employees to embrace changes, however, two methods stand out.

The first method relates to reinforcing new models of working, methods, and behaviors as well, through formal mechanisms, long proved that it supports the organizational change.

Another is giving the workers a say on where exactly the digitization could and should be adopted. It has been observed that businesses are more likely to succeed when employees have a say in generating their own ideas about where digitization might support. To ensure that workers in key roles play parts in reinforcing change it is essential to empower the workforce. Success, largely, depends on both senior leaders and those employees and other stakeholders who are engaged during the transformation!