Bridging the CX Data Divide: New Sources of Customer Insights

Being "in the loop" has always been synonymous with being close to the action. But, you can't be entrenched in the front lines and simultaneously orchestrate the grand strategy. For Customer Experience (CX) teams, finding ways to get closer to front-line information isn't just valuable—it's critical. But how? Today advances in AI allow for both an intimate and scaled view of customers never before possible.

What does it mean to be “in the loop”? 

Imagine this: You're an integral part of a project team, yet you're consistently excluded from the weekly strategic meetings. Your manager fills you in with snippets of information days later. In this scenario, you're out of the loop, and crucial insights and opportunities slip through your fingers.

The 'Inner Loop' vs. 'Outer Loop' in CX

In the realm of CX, the ‘inner loop' consists of your frontline staff directly engaging with customers—support tickets, live chats, or phone calls. It's immediate, raw, and where the pulse of customer sentiment is felt directly. 

Conversely, the 'outer loop' is where CX strategists observe from a distance, relying primarily on survey data to measure satisfaction and piece together insights about the customer journey.

'Bridging the Gap'

The value of our conversational data platform is that it EXPANDS the amount of data that can make it into the outer loop. 

Until now surveys were the only tool that could easily capture customer feedback at scale. With AI, Dashbot can read all of the interactions that take place in the inner loop data—the raw text of conversations with customers—and transform this into structured data similar to surveys. 

Conversational data is enriched with satisfaction scores and categorized according to the reasons that customers are engaging with the business. And all of these capabilities are available out of the box with Dashbot.

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Closing the Loop — The Old Way

Many CX professionals are already familiar with the concept of inner loop / outer loop, but in the context of service recovery.

A decade ago, Bain & Company introduced the concept of "closing the loop"—following up with customers directly based on their survey feedback—as a cornerstone of driving NPS scores higher. The strategy recognized the potential of new technology for transforming survey feedback into an opportunity for service recovery. Suddenly, outer loop data collection efforts that captured a low CSAT score about “rude staff” or “out of stock items” could be redirected back to the inner loop, usually being handed off to a district manager to reach out and engage with the frustrated customer.

An Existential Problem for CX

Today the success of closing the loop is being undercut by a larger trend: diminishing survey response rates among customers. And as survey fatigue worsens CX teams must grapple with a pressing issue: less data to drive insights.

Put simply, vital signals in the 'inner loop' are not reaching the 'outer loop' as they once did. This is why CX teams need a platform like Dashbot. As the data gap between inner and outer loop widens, CX teams tasked with capturing customer satisfaction and the story behind what’s driving it face a significant and existential threat. Indeed, compared with 10 years ago it has become much harder to gain a close intimate understanding of customers. 

How can CX teams regain their ability to drive change with customer insights?

A Truly Innovative Solution

In the same way that new tech offered the genesis of “closing the loop”--offering CX an opportunity to drive business value–again new technology presents an opportunity. This time it is grounded in the ability to unlock intimate customer insights at an unprecedented scale.

This is made possible due to the convergence of several groundbreaking developments in AI technology—including, translating speech to text, low-cost access to vector databases trained on trillions of inputs, and prompt-based data annotation. These advances have quite simply redefined what is possible regarding the analysis of high-volume and high-complexity conversational data.

100% CSAT Coverage

Measuring CSAT no longer has to rely on surveys alone. Businesses can go from the limited voice of the customer coverage tied to surveys that customers take after an interaction with the business (in some cases as low as 3-5% response rates) to analyzing the interactions themselves to attain 100% coverage. And with complete coverage comes more data to drill down into for insights. 

Identify Drivers of Satisfaction

Understand the 'why' behind every conversation and use these insights to drive strategic CX initiatives. Dashbot employs AI to annotate and label data, creating categories dynamically based on the raw text itself. As a result, satisfaction drivers are available out of the box without the need for any preconfiguration. However, custom categories are also possible.

Intelligent Recommendations

We provide A.I.-based recommendations that improve over time. For example, multiple customer conversations and reviews mentioning issues at login will generate a recommendation that improvements should be made to the account access portion of the customer journey.

Financial Risk Scoring

Prioritize action planning around financial risk to the business. Data categorized by satisfaction and reasons may be prioritized according to LCV or MRR to help CX teams understand the financial impact associated with the drivers of poor experience.

Transforming Data Available to CX Teams  

Dashbot ensures that the intimate knowledge from the front lines informs the strategic decisions of the outer loop. As a conversational data platform, we deliver a truly innovative solution to drive CX outcomes by empowering businesses with a closer, more intimate understanding of their customers. Going ‘far beyond “closing the loop” our solution builds on the concept of “inner and outer” loops and solves a more fundamental problem—the gap that exists between them. Our solution expands the volume of information that is available in the outer loop to inform customer experience analysis. With Dashbot, CX teams can proactively harness every conversation to fuel comprehensive improvements across the entire customer journey.

Benefits for the CX Team

• Empower CX Teams: Equip your team with a 360-degree view of customer sentiments.
• Revolutionize Customer Understanding: Shift from reactive to proactive, from listening to understanding.
• Enhance Personalized Experiences: By analyzing conversational data, teams can identify individual customer preferences, pain points, and behaviors. 
• Seamless Integration Across Channels: Aggregrate multiple customer touchpoints – social media, email, live chat, and phone calls, for a unified view of the customer journey. 
• Predictive Analytics for Proactive CX: Predictive analytics will be a game-changer for CX, as it shifts the focus from reactive problem-solving to proactive customer care.
  

Conclusion

In the dynamic landscape of customer experience, AI is not just a tool; it’s a transformative force. Dashbot, as a conversational data platform, exemplifies this transformation. It bridges the gap between the inner and outer loops of customer experience, ensuring that no valuable insight is lost. By enabling a 360-degree view of customer interactions, enhancing personalization, ensuring seamless integration across channels, and leveraging predictive analytics, AI empowers CX teams to not only understand but also anticipate customer needs. 

The future of CX is not just about closing loops; it's about creating an ecosystem where every customer interaction is an opportunity to learn, engage, and improve. As we embrace these AI-driven capabilities, we set a new standard in customer experience – one that is proactive, personalized, and perpetually evolving.