Concentrix creates front-office focus to fix broken CX industry

Even with all the technology available, the CX world continues to be broken. So said Anil Kumar, Concentrix’s Vice President of Global Analytics, at Celosphere 2023. Kumar described how customers are being forced to work too hard to get the information they need and the services they’ve purchased.

Whether it’s retail customers chasing order statuses or healthcare customers navigating their provider’s procedures to access the cover they’ve already paid for, it all feels a long way from the customer-first experience we’re always promised.

So, what gives? Kumar suggested it’s because customers are being bounced from front-office functions such as customer service to back-office functions such as finance – and back again.

Every time these functions can’t fix the problem, it’s costing the organization time and money, annoying the customer, and raising the risk the company and customer part ways permanently.

In an effort to close the front and back office loop, Concentrix has doubled down on process mining.

“So often with process mining you look at an efficient process, at improving costs”, explained Teakaau Piho, Director of Customer Experience Solutions and Strategy at Celonis.“We are breaking into new ground with a front-office focus, we're really flipping the table on that. We're looking first at the customer's perspective and the front-office perspective.”

Welcome to CXBridge

The commercial opportunities presented by enabling organizations to visualize and address this front- and back-office process disconnect are huge.

Kumar explained: “The [value of the] CX industry is about $550 billion. We are excited because even if only 10 percent of the transactions that are coming into the CX space are being caused because of issues in the back office, we are talking about another $50 billion of opportunity sitting in the CX industry.”

With billions of dollars available, Concentrix started to build CXBridge with Celonis in summer 2023.

CXBridge blends front-office speech and interactive voice response (IVR) insights with back-office and AI conversational analytics. This combination creates a visual representation of the entire customer journey: from first interaction to final resolution.

CX is now the priority, with CXBridge optimizing interactions, solving performance gaps, and driving process excellence through a single system. All while driving down costs and creating processes that require fewer manual interventions.

CXBridge not only identifies the major contact drivers creating manual work for front-office advisors (such as returns, exchanges, order enquiries), but also the opportunities to solve them and, crucially, the quantifiable value of doing so.

Having first used the system to refine its own processes, Kumar confirmed that Concentrix is now in talks with a number of major organizations about adopting CXBridge.

Crossover success: what CXBridge delivers

CXBridge enables organizations to enhance customer experience while reducing unnecessary front-office costs by delivering three key benefits.

1. Reducing volume of manual interactions

CXBridge identifies what hits CX hardest and generates the most inbound calls. It also provides insights on back-office process inefficiencies that contribute to the issue and sets out automated steps to address them.

For an example, let’s take a look at a major driver of inbound calls: customers enquiring about overdue deliveries. A common root cause of these late shipments is single-item stockouts on multiple item orders. Even though only one item is unavailable, the whole order gets delayed.

CXBridge enables brands to avoid large volumes of ‘where’s my order’ calls by actively monitoring for multi-item orders with a stock-out and intervening automatically. Using Celonis’ automated workflows CXBridge can notify customers of changes to expected delivery times and split the sales order – rather than hold everything up.

2. Serve customers faster

Celonis ensures the CXBridge system provides advisors with all the necessary front- and back-office insights. This might include data such as expected delivery dates or alternative product recommendations – whatever is required to provide an informed, efficient, and professional service.

This level of understanding makes people feel valued, enhancing CX, but it also speeds up the time it takes to serve customers.

3. Provide better self-service tools

CXBridge helps map out the steps customers need to take to get to a resolution – and then walks them through it. This might include, for example, the creation of an interactive voice response workflow for calls regarding merchandise returns. IVR detects the call intent and channels the customer towards a self-serve chat or text solution, providing options and prompts to help complete the transaction. Simply, intuitively, and without involving front-office teams.