Robert M. Keay hosted a recent webinar focused on the “Golden Zone”, where customers and businesses meet to generate loyalty and revenues– critical to catching up on pandemic losses – and the technological advances fueling improvements in F2F engagements.
Monitoring Face-to-Face CX is Essential
Robert M. Keay, International CX Guru, Author, Founder and CEO of the UAE-based company StagFox, held a webinar this week to discuss the latest developments in monitoring customer experience (CX) and how artificial intelligence (AI) is making these innovations possible.
He opened the presentation by emphasizing that CX incorporates every encounter a customer has with a business, regardless of the context. So it is particularly relevant that, for more than a decade, customer interactions and feedback are being recorded and monitored on digital platforms, such as social media, emails and web sites, as well as on calls that are “being recorded for quality control and training purposes.”
The Need for More On-Site Data and More Objectivity
Keay, a veteran Mystery Shopping CEO, said, until now, face-to-face (F2F) interactions are monitored through customer and employee surveys and mystery shoppers, all of whom provide their opinion, lacking objectivity, and providing data on a very small scale.
There is a need, Keay stressed, to capture large volumes of objective data regarding customer-company face-to-face interactions to enable businesses and their employees to “Do Better: to be more Productive, more Professional and to offer employees more Tools to help them learn on the job.”
Capturing large volumes of customer-employee feedback will provide objective insights – and not just from a few encounters. These actionable insights will help businesses make management decisions that will generate additional sales revenues, critical for catching-up on losses sustained during the pandemic.
Luxury Brands are about Differentiation
With offices in Dubai, Keay remarked that he frequently shops (and Mystery Shops) luxury hotels, dealerships and stores. He said the key appeal of luxury brands to their clientele is how they differentiate themselves through training and service, above all else. In his experience, when he has entered a luxury shop and left without a purchase, the most frequent contributing factors were:
- The customer service was not good enough.
- The service personnel did not have sufficient knowledge about the company’s products.
- The sales personnel did not know how to close the deal.
AI Technology Offers the Breakthrough in F2F CX
Having clearly outlined the urgent need to leverage face-to-face interactions to collect clear and objective feedback from both customers and service providers, Keay disclosed the solution.
New, AI-driven technology (developed by Reveal) facilitates capture and analytics of customer experience in face-to-face situations. This is a major breakthrough, providing the previously missing component of the critical 360-degree customer view.
Keay mentioned several use cases where the technology has been used in cooperation with his clients for revenue generation intelligence, compliance management and on-the-job training.
Voice of the Customer App to be Released
In Keay’s experience, he says, customer feedback rarely takes more than one minute. As a result, Stagfox, a pioneer in providing customer experience analytics, based on artificial intelligence, will release a Voice of the Customer App, powered by the company’s technology partner (Reveal), to serve as the ultimate conduit between customers and companies. The manager of a restaurant, for instance, will receive a customer’s brief complaint immediately, enabling the manager to handle and resolve the situation, resulting in better CX and improved loyalty.
And just how do you verify that the customer feedback is real, and that the customer was really there? Stagfox’s own technology provides a “digital handshake”, triangulating between the app on a smart device, the location and a time stamp, providing “proof of presence”.
This new app will amplify the Voice of the Customer, while providing businesses with analytics from all the feedback received from customers. This data may then be translated into enhancements and efficiencies that translate into revenues!
The Case for Face-to-Face
“Brick and Mortar stores are not going away,” Keay reassured. People still want to visit stores, dealerships and healthcare facilities. It is imperative that businesses listen to their customers and employees in that “Golden Zone” where they meet and enjoy mutual benefit.
