In the pursuit for modern CX (customer experience) excellence, Generative AI and ML (machine learning) have quickly risen to prominence, taking centre stage amidst the sea of groundbreaking technologies. However, at Twimbit, we also firmly believe that the road to exceptional CX demands an actionable checklist across these 4 key experience segments – Digital, Service, Brand and Employee.

Achieving a blend between digital technologies and the human touch is essential to enhanced success for companies striving to achieve newer heights in their CX journeys. Hence, to guide you on your journey to exceptional CX, we’ve put together a practical guide featuring 45 best practices adopted by leading CX practitioners in Asia. Use this best practice checklist to identify innovation opportunities and benchmark yourself on your journey to exceptional CX.

Checklist to Exceptional CX

Digital experience

1. Deliver smarter and more personalised services
   • Develop AI/ML algorithms to predict customer preferences and needs
   • Use real-time data to personalise offers, product suggestions, and content
   • Utilise nudges and triggers to send timely prompts and recommendations based on consumer behaviour
   • Enable self-service personalisation tools i.e. data visualisation, progress tracking, goal setting, interactive calculators, financial and retirement planners

With more personalised services, companies can elevate customer satisfaction, improve business metrics and garner greater customer loyalty.

2. Provide a holistic mobile app experience
   • Design a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate interface
   • Offer an interconnected suite of services on your app

The greater accessibility and personalised interactions from a well-designed mobile app can be the game changer for exceptional CX, as it empowers consumers with a heightened sense of convenience and ease.

3. Drive deeper digital engagement
   • Build a subscription program with exclusive value (discounts, exclusive experiences, early access, VIP treatment)
   • Create forums and chat groups for users to connect and foster a sense of community
   • Develop a platform to engage with users through livestreams and interactive polls
   • Empower users and creators with earning potential (affiliate programs, robust tracking tools and marketing resources
   • Implement points, badges, and leaderboards to reward desired user behaviours

Strategic implementation of these actions enables companies to transform their digital spaces into a vibrant hub of engagement, turning customers into loyal brand champions that will help drive sustainable growth.

4. Orchestrate a seamless digital ecosystem
   • Extend beyond core offerings or onboard diverse partners to fill gaps and cater to various user segments
   • Implement single sign-on across all platforms within the ecosystem to simplify user login

By creating a more frictionless experience, companies further reduce consumers’ entry barriers, resulting in greater customer acquisition and retention.

Service experience

1. Provide omnichannel support and self-service options
   • Implement an interaction platform that integrates all support channels into one view
   • Empower customers to resolve common issues independently through FAQs, knowledge base, and troubleshooting guides
   • Deploy chatbots and train them to understand natural language, provide personalised responses based on customer context

Timely, efficient and personalised support on a consistent basis will benefit companies in the long term, instilling greater customer trust and loyalty towards your products and services.

2. Equip your contact centre with innovative tech
   • Make the identity verification process seamless (digital identity or voice biometrics)
   • Implement speech-to-text transcription and agent assistance to improve agent response time
   • Deploy video services to provide visual support and guidance
   • Utilise forecasting and simulation models to predict call volume and optimise staffing levels

By embracing technologies skillfully, your contact centres can become a symphony of efficiency, personalisation, and proactive care, ensuring your customers feel valued, understood and supported at every touchpoint.

3. Go the extra mile for your customers
   • Create a culture of customer-centricity within the organisation, where employees are encouraged to think creatively and come up with innovative ways to solve problems
   • Empower customer care professionals to make decisions and take actions that are in the best interests of the customer

By fostering a customer-centric culture within your organisation and creating a ripple effect of positivity, you will not only generate exceptional CX but also drive employee engagement, brand loyalty and sustainable business growth.

Brand Experience

1. Craft a compelling brand story
   • Know your audience, define your brand identity, and be authentic
   • Go beyond providing products or services and create a memorable experience
   • Curate “destination stores” where people want to visit

A compelling brand story enables the pathway to deeper levels of customer connection, fostering a shift from mere transactions to meaningful relationships.

2. Implement customer-focused strategies
   • Establish a data-driven approach to CX insights by gathering and analysing customer feedback
   • Design and innovate continuously to improve the experience
   • Communicate and reinforce a purpose-driven CX mindset
   • Standardise organisation-wide measurement framework with common metrics

Customer-focused strategies are necessary for your journey to transform your CX from good to exceptional because of their potential to generate more measurable result metrics, all while fostering stronger customer relationships.

3. Cultivate social media engagement
   • Segment your audience based on life stages
   • Create informative and engaging content that provides valuable insights to your audience
   • Leverage diverse content formats to keep your audience engaged

Transform your social media avenues into a powerful tool for exceptional CX, thus leading to a heightened brand image, an increase in new consumers and higher levels of customer engagement.

Employee Experience

1. Foster a people-centric culture
   • Treat employees as customers
   • Implement flexible employee-centric policies and programs that give them more control over their work and personal lives

By prioritising your most valuable asset, you eventually create a positive change throughout your entire CX ecosystem, resulting in passionate brand advocates across all spectrums – your employees and consumers.

2. Invest in employee development and training
   • Equip employees with the latest skills e.g. Digital and data literacy
   • Create a structured leadership program to address leadership competencies and skills needed for success
   • Offer a variety of learning formats, including formal classroom training, mentorship programs, action learning groups, and peer-to-peer learning sessions

Employee development is not just an expense; it is a strategic investment for your CX success.

3. Empower employees with the right tools
   • Provide employees with access to latest technologies that can help them automate tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance productivity
   • Consider implementing collaboration tools, project management platforms, data analytic tools, and customer relationship management systems

Adopting this proactive approach across your employees will reduce customer frustrations, unlock new levels of efficiency, and, most importantly, create memorable experiences that foster long-term advocacy.

4. Encourage collaboration and innovation
   • Encourage employees to convene cross-functional teams to develop solutions to challenges and opportunities.
   • Set up catalyst platforms, such as innovation labs and centers of excellence, to support employee innovation
   • Implement an immersion program for employees to gain firsthand exposure to customer experiences.

By actively nurturing a culture of collaboration and innovation, you empower your employees to become partners in shaping your ideal CX journey, one that is fuelled by diverse perspectives and customer-centric insights.

5. Celebrate CX as a team
   • Celebrate individual milestones related to CX achievements, such as exceeding customer satisfaction targets or resolving challenging customer issues.
   • Plan special occasions to celebrate recent CX successes and build stronger relationships within the team

Celebrating CX success isn’t just a pat on the back; it’s fuel for one of your most valuable assets (your employees) to perform better and consistently exceed expectations.

From the checklist, there are many avenues in which companies today should strive to elevate and enhance their customer journeys. More importantly, one shared commonality that was expressed throughout all key segments was the use and application of today’s technologies. While we understand technology’s capabilities and significance in elevating one’s CX, we must also remember that its its true potential can only be unlocked when empowered by the human touch. Therefore, aspiring individuals and organizations should aspire to strike a blend between the harmonization of technology and the human touch in the pursuit of exceptional CX.

In the upcoming reports, we will delve deeper into the CX landscape, which will detail a list of best practices across the 4 pillars – digital, service, brand and employee experience.