Analysis of data from four of Conduent’s biggest technology customer experience management clients shows chat to be a preferred digital channel

During the COVID-19 pandemic consumers increasingly turned to digital channels to interact with brands. According to analysis from Conduent Incorporated, a global technology-led business process solutions company, customer service via chat grew from 14% of all interactions in January 2020 to 30% in January 2022 and remained at around that level through October 2022.

The impact of increased chat usage on customer experience

Using a suite of technology ranging from cloud-based Contact Center as a Service to AI-based chat analytics and machine learning, companies can quickly spot issues and emerging trends, identify process improvements and introduce automation to increase productivity.

Consumers tend to be more formal and succinct in writing about their issues. The content is more easily converted into data and can be analyzed to understand the issues driving customer service interactions. For example, if a brand changes packaging and products are arriving broken, it can show up quickly in customer experience analytics.

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Additional benefits of customer service in the chat channel include:

• Customers wait less time for help on chat.
• Customers can move from chat bot assistance to agent chat in a seamless experience to solve complex issues.
• Errors in communicating by consumers and agents are reduced.

“Since Covid, companies have become nimbler in navigating business disruptions,” said Jeff Weiner, Vice President, General Manager for Customer Experience Management at Conduent. “Through advanced technology, they can now harness key learnings that elevate the customer experience. Increasingly, we are seeing analytics from a chat customer service channel help brands build relationships, create a connection, and ultimately drive business outcomes.”

Ivan Kotzev, Lead CX analyst NelsonHall, said: “Customers increasingly opt to communicate with their brands over chat in all its forms including web, mobile, and in-app, to benefit from its convenience and flexibility. For companies, chat support offers increased efficiency through concurrent sessions for the agents and the ability to enhance the customer experience by applying conversational AI with chatbots.”

Conduent provides customer experience management services on behalf of some of the world’s largest technology companies. Conduent’s analysis is based on data from four of these clients.

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