Thought Bubbles Q&A: CX and Relationship Building

Jul 22, 2020 9:15:00 AM

We get a lot of questions whenever we meet new people at conferences, host webinars, give one-on-one demos, and even as we onboard new customers. We welcome the opportunity to answer these questions, dig deeper, and help organizations elevate their customer support to be truly great. When we get questions like these from prospects, analysts, and customers, we can't help but answer them here. See what Edify CEO and co-founder Cameron Weeks had to say recently about customer experience and relationship building.

Do you think technology drives customer experience or does customer experience drive technology? 

Honestly, for the last 20 years, no one’s been driving. In a perfect world, however, customer experience drives technology. Because the customers… they are all of us, so the power needs to be with us as well. Sometimes companies make it too complicated, but it’s really about getting into the shoes of the customer. Think about what you demand when you’re a customer in your day-to-day life. 

The important tools needed by the people on the front lines serving customers didn’t exist natively together (until now). For example, technology platforms that support phone capabilities don’t typically support video and text functionality too, which causes all sorts of complications and issues for agents. So, we decided to finally solve the technology problem that’s been holding customer service back for far too long. Why does a $1,000 iPhone have omnichannel capabilities that million-dollar contact centers don’t? That’s why we built Edify; it was simply born out of the customer experience we all wish we could have with the companies we buy from. 

How does your company help an agent build a relationship with the customer instead of only completing a transaction?

Edify exposes an entire customer lifecycle to an agent in real-time. Agents have the ability to see every purchase, transaction, and inquiry -- without having to bounce between different applications or platforms or windows. Everything they need to help that customer is in one place, built to work together from the ground up. It sounds so basic, but it just didn’t exist before. And thanks to our intelligent bot, Hammond, agents can focus on doing what the computer can’t do, which is to have a human interaction with another human. With bots, sentiment analysis, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and other cutting-edge technologies at play, our platform does the work of figuring out exactly who is calling, why, and where to route them. 

Taking it a step further, we can start using meta-data about a customer from the routing standpoint. If agents are willing to provide some data about themselves, we can even match agents and customers based on personalities, interests, or lifestyles. I believe it’s time to move people past a transaction and into a relationship. Imagine how friendly and personalized those conversations could be. With Edify, we are creating customer service experiences that are efficient and even enjoyable. 

Originally answered live on The Experience Maker podcast. Tune in here.

Cameron Weeks

Written by Cameron Weeks

Cameron Weeks is tech-savvy, entrepreneurial and visionary--the driving force behind what’s happening now and what is to come. As CEO, he guides the team at Edify to drive new business, seek growth in existing and emerging markets, and push the boundaries in the cloud-based business communications sector.