GBS WORLD NEWS | WEEK 4 | APRIL 2023

 A notable portion of global enterprise executives place customer experience (CX) as the top strategic priority, according to the Information Services Group (ISG) Buyer Behavior Study. The report surveyed 250 senior executives in February 2023 and found that 48% cite CX as extremely important to their organization’s strategic direction. Approximately 53% stated that they intend to “completely protect” CX from cost optimization programs.

However, when it comes to the airlines industry, many consumers are not happy with CX when traveling. In fact, 76% expressed negativity regarding flight disruptions and 67% expressed dissatisfaction with customer service interactions. This was according to a Clootrack study.

To equip the African workforce with exceptional CX skills, Ingenium Concepts Limited in partnership with the US-based National Customer Service Association (NCSA), has launched an initiative to train 4 million people annually across the continent. Running for five years, the training program will be conducted virtually and will onboard individuals from the West, East, South and Central African regions.

In the UK, Capita was trending for all the wrong reasons, as the renowned BPO organization is still managing the cyber breach crisis that hit the firm in late March. The cyber-attack impacted Capita employees’ access to Microsoft Office 365, disrupting services provided to individual clients. However, Capita and its technical partners have managed to restore workers’ access to Microsoft 365, maintaining that the majority of its services were unaffected.

A leading Chinese artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer engagement solutions provider, Infobird, has integrated ChatGPT to upgrade its AI customer service system. The firm is one of a handful of organizations that leverage ChatGPT to augment their customer engagement platforms. Looking forward, Infobird is in the process of integrating the AI tool into more of its products, such as the existing quality control and dialogue generation robots.

In fact, customer support agents in the US who were given access to a generative AI assistant increased their productivity by 14%. This was noted by a group of researchers at Stanford University’s Digital Economic Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The study encompassed more than 5,000 agents working for a Fortune 500 firm. The chat assistant monitored customer service chats while providing agents with real-time response suggestions.

Also making US CX headlines this week is iBex, a global BPO operator, that will be revealing its full suite of integrated CX solutions for the utilities market at the CS Week Conference 47 from May 2-4, 2023. The product suite is designed to help organizations engage and stay connected with their customers throughout the modern utility lifecycle.

The top customer-centric homebuilders in Canada were recognized this week in the 20th Annual Avid Awards hosted by Avi Ratings Canada. The awards reveal homebuilders with the highest scores associated with Avi Ratings homebuying CX survey. Over 470 qualifying North American builders participated in the survey, which analyzed homebuyer data from January to December 2022. Rinaldi Homes, Maison Design + Build and Minto Communities-Calgary were among the winners.