Organisations across the world are embracing digital transformation as they provide improved customer experiences. Doing so involves a significant shift away from traditional systems and adoption of a variety of new technical approaches. These include shifting from on-premise hardware to the cloud, greater utilisation of automation tools such as bots and AI, and usage of unified communications and collaboration. These shifts help to ensure consistent, high-quality experiences can be delivered, regardless of the channels customers select.
Digital transformation of this type is a substantial journey that depends upon a clear strategy, sustained investment, efficient execution, and education of agents and the market to embrace new capabilities that enhance service delivery and CX. The transformation is dynamic and complex, and this requires a vision that accommodates trial and failure as well as staged migrations that allow transformations to happen at the organisation’s pace.
The Moment of Truth
“All the things that lead up to a customer today having to get in touch with a person at your company put UC and CX at the moment of truth where the customer’s issue is either solved swiftly or hindered if the two people can’t see or hear each other properly,” says Chris Scimone, a collaboration architect at New Era Technology. “That moment of truth is where things fall apart, so aligning digital transformation with your customer experience is essential.”
Achieving that alignment demands flexibility so organisations can transform in ways that keep their people, budgets, and targets on track. Few companies are willing to invest in a monolithic transformation that aims for a predetermined final state because few can predict the impact of new systems and new innovations. Instead, they are looking for approaches that enable them to try new capabilities while continuing to maximise the value of existing assets, such as on-premise equipment.
What’s needed is a staged approach that enables organisations to trial solutions and scale up their adoption once success is proven and familiarity with the new systems has been achieved. Scimone points out that Cisco, with its Webex Suite, Webex Contact Center and Webex Connect solutions, is offering a modular approach to licensing that effectively allows organisations to blend traditional user licensing, while adopting digital channels and virtual agents in a consumption model.




