immersive CX boils down to one simple idea: people want to be seen and heard, to be treated not as a transaction or a ticket but as the highly valued customers they are. By doing so, businesses stand to greatly strengthen customer relationships, a benefit whose value cannot be overstated.
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As Zendesk has discovered, there are five distinct trends behind these new standards: 1 AI experiences are becoming more evolved and seamless 2 Conversational experiences are empowering consumers 3 Customers are eager for deeper personalization 4 Consumer well-being and sentiment are reshaping CX 5 CX teams are breaking down silos as they become more integrated
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Sixty-nine percent of consumers who seek support find themselves asking bots a wider range of questions, though tellingly, a large percentage—78 percent—end up needing to connect with a human agent anyway.
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Consumers who often interact with support: say AI/bots are helpful for simple issues believe AI/bots help get faster replies believe bots often provide the correct information
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75 % AI should be able to provide the same level of service as human ag
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73 % Expect more interactions with AI in their daily life/AI will improve customer service qualit
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Fifty-nine percent point to the bane of every organization: siloed data. Combined with a lack of tools and expertise, many companies find that their vision for immersive CX that’s powered by AI remains elusive.
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Zendesk’s bot capabilities include Flow Builder, and customers who use it see improvements in customer satisfaction and agent efficiency, with resolution times improving by 21 percent on average, and CSAT scores typically improve by two percentage points.
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When consumers reach out to a business, they want an interaction that is fluid and natural, an exchange in which they’re in the driver’s seat. That can take many forms, such as being able to move a conversation to a new channel—say, from messaging to a phone call—or having a discussion stop and then resume with a different agent seamlessly. Importantly, customers want help that doesn’t interrupt their current task
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Customer expectations for conversational service 72 % of customers want immediate service 71 % demand natural, conversational experiences 70 % expect anyone they interact with to have full context 66 % want interactions to not interrupt their current action 62 % think experiences should flow naturally between both physical and digital spaces
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According to Zendesk benchmark data, just 42 percent of businesses offer two or more support channels. Meanwhile, 60 percent of consumers report interacting with agents who have little or no context, which leads to customers having to repeat themselves—a sure recipe for dissatisfaction
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62 % of consumers agree that personalized recommendations are better than general ones; 60% say they can tell when they receive personalized recommendations and find them valuable
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As 67 percent of leaders told Zendesk, they’re seeing disorganized, reactive efforts to use customer data, a trend that’s compounded by organizational silos that prevent that information from being shared widely.
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By connecting data and leveraging untapped service data, businesses can achieve deeper personalization, thus moving their organization closer toward immersive CX. To get there, however, business leaders must enact plans that will connect data on the back endbreaking down silos—and create systems in which the right data is surfaced when agents need it most. That said, just 22 percent of business leaders say that their organizations share data well, and 57 percent think they’re also not collecting enough data. So while a significant number of respondents—79 percent—believe that service data is invaluable and should be used to drive personalization efforts, stubborn roadblocks remain.
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- [note::This sounds like a serious data engineering/technical implementation problem. "79 percent say service data is invaluable, but only 22 percent of business leaders say that their organizations share data well."]

Leaders want to combine customer service data with the other types of data to use across their organizations are interested in combining service data with customer feedback data want to merge service data with product data seek to combine service data with sales data hope to integrate service data with marketing data
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- [note::"Leaders want to combine data across all business areas" - But data silos and technical implementation challenges hinder them from doing so]

For example, service data can provide a host of insights: ticket volume, ticket time, sentiment, CSAT, channel used to contact, length of time to complete a ticket, interaction histories and transcripts, help center article views, FAQs, as well as interaction reasons. That valuable service data—directly into their customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. These leaders also envision unifying customer feedback and service data across channels to create real-time customer insights, which could help decision-makers form more effective business plans.
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just 31 percent of agents report being able to effectively see and use customer data to improve and personalize experiences.
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In Zendesk’s Support Suite, conversational data organization is a feature set that enables businesses to create custom automations and integrations with external systems such as Slack or Shopify. That means rich service data becomes readily available to agents in a unified workspace. Those customer service representatives can then use that information to offer the personalized experience consumers want. By leveraging conversational data orchestration’s automation features, companies can handle routine tasks such as customer refunds and membership renewals—that removes time-consuming work off agents’ plates so they can focus on making real connections with consumers.
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- [note::We should better utilize these features]

29 % of agents point to a lack of basic information online, a self-service gap that also plays a role in angering customers
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- [note::This is a huge issue at FORT - Remember that article about how Monday.com 10x'd its content production? I should understand what their approach was and see if we can do the same here at FORT.]

37 % of agents say when a customer cannot complete simple tasks on their own, they often become noticeably angry, frustrated, or stressed
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53 percent of agents say that how their organization approaches service leads directly to negative customer behavior. And because leaders aren’t formally tracking sentiment, their organizations fail to remedy these persistent issues —what’s out of sight ends up being out of mind.
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53 percent of agents say that how their organization approaches service leads directly to negative customer behavior. And because leaders aren’t formally tracking sentiment, their organizations fail to remedy these persistent issues —what’s out of sight ends up being out of mind.
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Meanwhile, Smart Assist serves as an AI-powered mentor for agents: it guides them toward successful outcomes by providing context, provides recommendations of next steps, and even trains support reps so they level up their skills as they’re helping customers.
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- [note::Is this available in our Zendesk plan?]

endesk’s intelligent triage feature leverages AI to automatically enrich support tickets with highly valuable information: customer intent, sentiment, even language predictions.
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- [note::Is this available in our Zendesk plan?]

Business leaders who see customer support as a cost center would change their minds if: They could share customer insights across teams Their agents received more relevant data They could train agents to sell effectively to customers
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n. More than half reported training agents how to identify expansion and sales opportunities, and 47 percent ensured that their agents had access to the type of customer data that makes revenue generation easier. A significant number—38 percent—also developed workflows and processes geared toward revenue generation
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- [note::Trend: Increased sales training for customer success agents]

TOP 5 WAYS ORGANIZATIONS ARE USING AI TODAY FOR CX: 1 To make recommendations to customers 2 To intercept requests going to agents 3 To answer general questions 4 For order management and returns 5 To provide customers with 24/7 service
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PERCENT OF ORGANIZATIONS THAT PERSONALIIZE CUSTOMERS' EXPERIENCE USING: 35% Customer sentiment 27% Overall tone 15% NPS™
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- [note::A minority of companies using customer sentiment or overall tone to measure CX performance (29% and 24% respectively). Net promoter score (NPS) only used by 14% of companies - why is that?]

22% of leaders say their organization is excellent at sharing customer data across their teams and systems
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As Zendesk discovered, 68 percent of leaders in your region already have plans to increase their investments in AI.
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It’s important to not let data sit in silos—be sure to make it widely available so your teams can put it to its optimal use. Personalization is difficult at scale if you don’t, and 70 percent of leaders in your industry agree.
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59 % who don’t currently track customer sentiment are planning to in the next 12 months.
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- [note::This is illuminating]