The experience economy is forcing organizations around the world to rethink how they do business. They can no longer simply focus on selling goods or providing services at a single point in time. Today’s digitally savvy consumers demand constant connection and memorable experiences through easy access to information, ongoing interactions with brands, and personalized and engaging service at any time and over any touch point.

An in-house customer service operation can be expensive to set up and maintain and takes a company's focus off its core mission. Experience economy organizations are embracing outsourcing services to grow in a highly competitive industry as service providers have the expertise and capabilities enabling them to remain agile and scale their business operations at a fraction of the cost.

Southeast Asia’s multilingual and low-cost workforce has made it an attractive outsourcing destination for some time, but the traditional contact center (a vast workplace of customer service agents answering queries, taking orders, and resolving complaints over the phone) is a thing of the past. Contact centers are no longer solely a means of labor arbitrage, but are now considered as collaboration hubs for process improvement, helpdesk services, tech support, sales and marketing, and value creation.

The ubiquity of mobile devices allows organizations to have a digital relationship with customers and has changed the way that customer experience center agents work. Agents must be able to answer complicated questions quickly and accurately. Customers do not want to repeat themselves or be put on hold or transferred to another department or agent.

Customer experience engagement and management now is the foundation of an end-to-end customer journey across multiple channels, including social media and chat. There is growing demand for modernizing the customer experience through non-voice communication channels and efficient operations. This is leading to the adoption of omnichannel, artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, automation, and chatbot technologies to map the customer journey and deliver deeply personalized, predictive, and proactive interactions.

Author: Sherrel Roche