Santa is synonymous to gift giving and this time of the year everybody turns into Santa (secret or not). Satisfying and attending the ‘King' (Customer) during this festive season can be daunting for the businesses. Businesses channelize their effort towards building a loyal customer base. This is the secret sauce to running a successful business. To build a loyal customer base, it's necessary that businesses have a communication infrastructure that listens and responds to their client needs. This is the only way to enhance elevate customer experience and ensure business survival in this increasingly competitive market.
Stay connected with cloud telephony
Cloud Telephony has emerged as a crucial technology for businesses, enterprises, and entrepreneurs across sectors to stay connected and improve the overall customer experience. Customer phone calls are the backbone of all business communication systems. This allows businesses to be accessible during all times and sustain the quality of customer interaction even during high demand.
2018 saw a huge uptake in the adoption of cloud telephony. As per global reports, we saw that the global cloud telephony services market is expected to reach a value of $41,768 million by 2026. Indian companies have also taken to this technology to provide personalised customer experience with multiple features like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), automated calls, building a single source of customer truth, etc.
Localisation to boom in 2019
We will see a lot of localisation in 2019. Everyone talks about the next billion users. These users are not going to be native English speakers. Internet giants including Google and Facebook are moving in this direction. With a simple feature phone at their disposal, phone calls/SMS in their native language, simple IVR instructions will also redefine how businesses get in touch with tier 2 and tier 3 customers and how they provide an engaging customer experience.
Customer data privacy
Customer data privacy will also be another aspect that will gain importance and it is likely to become an integral part of customer experience journey as they may differentiate brands on how they treat their data. Right now, phone numbers have become synonymous with a person's digital identity. Every service they use, every new business that works on easing the everyday aspects of life use phone numbers as unique identifiers. In such a scenario, technologies like number masking definitely come as a boon to businesses as they safeguard their customer's identity, and prevent misuse of sensitive information, by enabling the anonymity of the customer's phone number. With brands like Uber and Ola using it extensively for their daily customer interaction, the technology has opened doors for more brands to experiment with the process.
At the end of the day, brands are understanding the relevance of giving customers personalized experience without putting their privacy at stake.
The author is Founder & CEO, Exotel.
