Every channel matters: How to use customer interaction data for a better customer experience

When it comes to customer engagement and retention, all interaction channels and touchpoints matter. Isn’t that subjective, you might ask? Well, when businesses ignore any aspect of how customers interact with them, they miss out on vital elements of the customer experience. 

When a customer has a poor experience with a company, they are less likely to return or purchase again. Qualtrics' 2024 Consumer Trends Report found that a good customer service experience is a bigger driver of purchase decisions than low price points.

We want to discuss why it matters to monitor all interaction data, and how doing so can improve your customer experience and improve customer service.

Understanding your customer interactions

Customer engagement isn’t more important in one channel than another. To fully understand how your customers perceive your brand, service, and products, you need to consider all interactions across all channels. 

Customer interactions happen everywhere—on your website, via social media apps, blogs, chats, emails, phone calls, and even inside your brick-and-mortar locations. Whether a customer is talking to a human agent in your call center or interacting with one of your virtual agents, every touchpoint offers valuable insights into the overall customer experience.

Harnessing technology to listen across all channels

No matter what channel you analyze, you'll find instances of customer effort and feedback. By drawing insights from these interactions, you can identify problems within the customer service journey or product experience. The feedback your customers provide throughout their journey offers all the insights you need. You just have to learn to extract them. By using conversation intelligence platforms like Tethr, organizations can gather intelligence from conversations and derive actionable insights promptly to improve customer service and the overall customer journey.

Leveraging interaction data for performance improvements

Your customer interaction data contains one of the key components of a customer’s experience with your company–the agent’s performance during the interaction. By analyzing what agents say and do during customer interactions, contact center leaders can identify areas where they may be struggling and adjust training strategies accordingly.

Once your business identifies the most substantial areas for improvement, reducing possible customer churn, identifying areas for cost reduction, and developing strategies to reduce customer effort becomes much easier. Viewing the entire customer experience (CX) journey through a comprehensive lens does wonders when attempting to increase customer satisfaction. 

Using conversation intelligence for best results

Conversation intelligence platforms like Tethr use machine learning and natural language processing to analyze every customer interaction via any service interaction channel (calls, chats, support tickets, and cases). With this information, you can roll out more targeted initiatives that increase customer retention, improve agent performance, and drive revenue growth. The more you know about what your customers want (or don’t want) and what causes them the most effort during interactions, the greater chance you have of meeting their needs and reducing effort. Customers who have a great experience with your company often become your best brand ambassadors!

Using conversation intelligence to identify key areas within customer interaction data helps CX leaders identify all meaningful moments.

3 benefits of analyzing customer conversation data

Reduced customer churn

Magical things happen when you continue listening to the customer beyond the transaction. By continuing to analyze the interaction data that occurs after someone becomes a customer, you can have higher retention rates, more cross-sells and upsells, and increased loyalty.

Better-informed CX decisions

Understanding both where and how potential customers interpret and interact with your business helps you adjust your customer experience and customer service initiatives accordingly. More importantly, it can also prevent you from wasting your budget in areas that aren’t yielding results.

Effective agent training

Knowing how to inform agent training via conversation insights is a powerful component as well. Armed with the best insights, your contact center agents and management teams can increase customer satisfaction and data-driven agent training will help improve both the agent and customer experience.

Conclusion

While companies may have distinct teams managing various channels such as phone, chat, and email, customers perceive every interaction as part of a unified experience. They expect a seamless and consistent journey, regardless of the channels they choose. Ensuring journey fluidity enhances customer satisfaction and strengthens brand loyalty by demonstrating that your business thoughtfully considers every customer touchpoint and interaction.

Harnessing the power of customer interaction data with conversation intelligence helps you thoroughly understand the customer experience. If you're looking to generate insights that increase customer satisfaction and improve business outcomes, conversation intelligence platforms like Tethr are a great place to start.

By using technology to listen across all channels, leveraging that interaction data for performance improvements, and understanding the entire customer journey, businesses can significantly enhance the customer experience.

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This blog was originally published in July 2020 under the title “When it comes to customer engagement, all touchpoints matter.” It was most recently expanded and updated with new information in July 2024.