Automated data management drives competitive advantage in the CX era

Customer satisfaction is a rather consistent variable across industries: It correlates directly with lifetime value and retention and, thus, indirectly with the resources you must invest in marketing and onboarding new business.

It’s also more important than ever. Keap reports that the average ROI of investing in customer experience (CX) includes a 42% jump in customer retention, a 33% increase in customer satisfaction and 32% more cross-selling and up-selling. 

Yet, CX quality is at an all-time low, according to Forrester’s 2024 US CX Index. That could be because companies are finding it harder and harder to identify and manage all the components that drive CX today, which are no longer limited to your front-end training or the friendliness of your support reps. The CX story begins with the information these reps can access — quality back-end data.

Let’s examine why a stable, high-quality CX may be hard to achieve by today’s standards and how automated data management as part of an automation fabric can drive better outcomes.

Why organizations struggle to provide superior customer service 

Delivering exceptional customer service across a large enterprise comes with unique challenges. In both everyday calls and high-pressure situations, you need real-time information. Whether your customers call in with questions about order fulfillment and delays, mistakes on a bill, or duplicate or failed payments, they expect immediate answers.

Before considering how to get your business to a place where you always have that information, we’ll cover the most common things that can impede the pathway to a strong CX.

Data silos and integration issues

Disparate systems often fail to communicate effectively. Fragmented data makes it difficult to acquire comprehensive insights that support customer interactions. For example, a customer service rep may have to check multiple systems to piece together a customer’s order history, leading to delays and potential errors.

High volume of customer inquiries

Large numbers of inquiries can overwhelm your team and extend response times if you don’t have the proper workflows to support accurate routing. During peak seasons or promotional periods, your volume can surge and put even more strain on your resources, almost guaranteeing a dip in service quality.

Out-of-date information

Your data must be stored and processed consistently and accurately so you can provide the answers your customers want on the spot. Data lags can slow down customer service operations and create confusion about what’s true and when team members made changes.

Slow systems

Sluggish technology can be a significant roadblock to CX. If your systems lack the capability to handle modern customer demands, they can get in the way of your team providing timely and efficient service. Upgrading to faster solutions is often costly and time-consuming, so you could find your customer service function stuck in a cycle of inefficiency.

Human error

Manual data entry and retrieval processes are prone to mistakes. Even the most diligent employees can make errors, which can cascade and cause the dissemination of incorrect information to your customers. Humans will always be unpredictable, so your technology needs to be reliable to counterbalance this risk. 

Resource constraints

Staff and budget constraints can also hinder your ability to maintain high service quality. Even with optimized processes, insufficient human capital or financial resources can keep you from delivering the quality of service your customers expect.

Industry-specific challenges

Creating a top-notch CX can be an even bigger job when you consider your industry requirements. Below are just a few examples of additional complexity.

• Manufacturing: Supply chain delays or disruptions in the procure-to-pay process can greatly impact product availability. If a key component is delayed, your entire production schedule could be thrown off. The outcome? Backorders and unhappy customers.
• Retail: Managing the logistics of returns and exchanges without accurate and real-time inventory data can lead to chaos. Customers are frustrated, employees are confused and the long-term decrease in loyalty is measurable.
• Utilities: Complex billing structures, usage patterns and variable rates make customer service particularly hard in this industry. You may not be able to answer billing inquiries with a simple lookup, and a small error on a statement may require a disproportionate amount of time and effort to resolve without automated systems that speak well to each other.

The impact of addressing these and getting issue resolution right is clear: 80% of customers feel more emotionally connected to your brand when you successfully solve their problems. 

Unsuccessful approaches to perfecting CX

Many companies implement superficial measures at the customer-rep interaction level to circumvent all of the above obstacles. They may adopt a new CRM, better call center software, a chatbot or a voice assistant.

While these can increase speed and offer the illusion of attentiveness, they do not guarantee that a call center team will be able to get the right data sets from the right systems at the right time. They’re only as effective as the data they’re being fed.

Automation fabric: The ultimate data management solution

Addressing the data behind your CX requires more than quick fixes. You need a data management ecosystem — an automation fabric — that supports end-to-end process automation across different data sources and systems.

A perfectly integrated tech stack ensures your systems communicate effortlessly. You never have to worry about the silos that often impede customer service. Inquiries can be resolved in seconds, and account history, inventory details and more are all available in a single interface.

One critical piece of automated data management is how you approach extract, transform, load (ETL) processes. Your data must be in a usable format and loaded into the appropriate systems for it to positively impact the front-end customer service side. Automating ETL tasks can speed up your data processing and reduce the risk of errors that often accompany manual data handling. For example, in a retail environment, automated ETL processes update inventory levels so customers get accurate information about out-of-stock items.

Build your fabric with a workload automation solution

Well-executed data management isn’t just about access; it’s about how well you collect, copy, move, manipulate and cleanse the data before your customer service professionals use it and offer it to your customers.

But data management pipelines are fragile. One wrong command, field or trigger can input a surge of bad data into your records. If you try to connect multiple automation tools and various data solutions, you’re at greater risk for these difficult-to-remedy cases, which could impact many customers at once.

A workload automation (WLA) solution can be the linchpin, bringing all these data management elements together. WLA goes beyond basic automation to harmonize and orchestrate your data and create a single source of truth. 

The value of WLA lies in its real-time data integration, validation and monitoring capabilities. A WLA platform orchestrates data across all systems, integrating your data warehouses, ETL tools and data sources. Continuous monitoring and management with powerful conditional logic, predictive SLA and data management integrations ensure smooth operations and, therefore, reliable CX. 

How WLA solutions address CX hurdles

Automating end-to-end data processes provides insurance for you and your customers, protecting you against the negative outcomes of slow systems, data silos, human error and more by generating:

1. Low failure rates: Automated systems experience fewer data-related issues than those driven by manual input.
2. Reduction in human labor costs: Automation frees up your team to focus on more strategic — and revenue-generating — tasks.
3. Scalability: Top WLA solutions can scale with your data management needs to accommodate growth and complex workflow changes.
4. Improved data quality: Consistent attention to data on the back end means the data that reaches your customers is thorough and accurate.
5. Increased efficiency: Automation streamlines data processes to optimize efficiency and enables your team to serve customers with less stress and fewer steps.

RunMyJobs by Redwood boosts customer satisfaction

The benefits of transforming data management processes are clear in the stories of Redwood Software customers. 

Anglian Water generates 16,000 invoices per day, but issues with its overnight billing processes were causing overruns and stressing its systems to the point of failure. Thanks to the increased efficiency the company achieved with RunMyJobs, Redwood’s workload automation solution, and the resulting call center consistency, it’s now ranked #1 on the Ofwat water regulator service incentive mechanism (SIM) table.

Want to follow suit? Book a personalized demo of RunMyJobs to learn how to implement an automation fabric, improve your data accuracy and build a winning CX.