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How to Pinpoint CX Journey Failures and Fix Them Fast

John Flood
Nov. 18 2022
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Hammer’s free CX Benchmark Assessment ensures contact centers are ready for the moments that matter.

When the Beatles sang, “All these places have their moments,” the song fused the essence of two profoundly important aspects of human experience: moments and memories.   

While the song “There Are Places I Remember” is laced with recollections of love, it’s perhaps illuminating to point out that all of us are subject to the same range of profound experiences: from the noneventful to the horrible to the unexpected moments of delight.  

Admittedly, that’s a long way from the moment-to-moment frenzy of the contact center. But, when two strangers meet, a matter of seconds transpire before both individuals sense a connection – in a moment that matters.   

So goes the seconds – and moments – that start a customer and agent conversation. These are moments that decide the fate of a customer relationship.  

Customer Experience (CX) Failures Leave Clues: End-to-End Testing to the Rescue

The technical environment in contact centers is complex and typically a mash-up of new and mature systems from different vendors. That’s where successful customer journeys depend on interoperability.  

Unfortunately, manual testing can’t address the scope and complexity of today’s contact centers. Moreover, vendor testing is often unreliable because it’s at the cross points of multiple vendor systems where customer journeys often break down.   

Thankfully, end-to-end testing exposes weaknesses within these integrations too.   

From the Root to the Fruit: End-to-End Automated Testing Helps

Automated testing simulates thousands of customer calls into the contact center. It tests the caller connection and ensures that every step of the subsequent journey works.     

Such failures may include network connection problems, systems downtime, and outages.  

Unfortunately, across the industry, each issue persists, despite increasing cloud migrations. Indeed, Hammer research finds that the frequency of systems outages in contact centers has increased by 66 percent in the past year.

Thankfully, Hammer helps proactively prevent such issues while isolating further journey frictions, including IVR dead ends.  

Lost In the IVR Loop? Hammer, the Lifeguard.

It’s the moment when a company doesn’t get that second chance. Dubbed the ‘black box’ experience for customers and agents, the IVR is where first impressions are made – or lost. It’s where problems are too common, too frequent, and too costly. It means longer wait times and frustrated customers.  

The risks are high because managers are only sometimes aware of how many negative experiences occur before they notice customers are not getting through in an IVR outage.  

Worse, contact center managers might not know that the IVR has ceased to work as intended, and that’s why customers get trapped in IVR loops. Alternatively, they may receive misconfigured messages that offer incorrect information.  

Fortunately, Hammer provides end-to-end test functionality. Their solution analyses, tests, and monitors the network’s performance, infrastructure, and applications to evaluate and improve the quality of calls and customer and agent experiences.  

Here’s a summary of Hammers end-to-end testing capabilities: 

  • Provides factual information into the customer and agent experience 
  • Expands test coverage 
  • Verifies IVR and call routing 
  • Identifies CTI data delivery 
  • Automates complex transfer scenarios 

By leveraging these with end-to-end testing, customers can ensure a pain-free customer journey. 

Hammers Free CX Benchmark Assessment

Moments matter – in seconds and minutes. Your business may not get a second chance if the service experience is stilted and cumbersome. 

Hammer’s free CX benchmark assessment tests the end-to-end journey for friction.  

By acting on these insights, businesses can ensure seamless experiences and combat unexpected pain points during those crucial moments that matter.  

Learn more about this free baseline test.

Alternatively, for more insight into Hammer’s automated end-to-end testing solutions, download Hammer’s e-book “Exploring the Full Testing Lifecycle”.

John Flood, CX Today - Read the original article here.

Written By
John Flood
John Flood

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