In today's manufacturing landscape, where platforms are replacing traditional point solutions on production lines, manufacturers are looking for the same level of operational improvement in how they communicate to deliver better customer experience (CX).

Enterprise-wide cloud-based communication solutions empower every team member and provide contact center functionality for internal help desks and customer-facing agents to enable optimized, tailored, and consistent CX.

Manufacturing digital transformation

Manufacturers have faced numerous challenges recently, with half reporting lost sales due to digital shortcomings and the same number set to use AI to assist with sales. The path to achieving operational excellence is becoming much clearer. Embracing a cloud-based communication platform that leverages AI and machine learning to drive operational efficiency and transform CX is necessary to stay ahead of the competition.

Consider technology integration for CX optimization

Technology integration across the whole enterprise is crucial for a unified approach to the customer journey. Contact centers and support desks play a vital role in CX and should be seamlessly incorporated into the overall communications strategy. By eliminating silos, integrating and strengthening communication and collaboration channels, and incorporating key technologies such as CRM and ERP systems, manufacturers can interact with customers, suppliers, and distributors from a single platform while improving productivity.

Research suggests that knowledge workers spend close to four hours per week switching between different applications. And research from MyCustomer and the European Customer Experience Organization (ECXO) shows that organizational silos continue to be the top obstacle for customer experience leaders. For customer-facing roles within a manufacturing organization, 8x8 Agent Workspace delivers an intuitive, design-led interface that transforms contact center agent roles by delivering a tailored experience that uniquely blends contact center and unified communications capabilities in a single application. It also offers a single view of customer data, and enhances agent productivity by reducing time spent switching between applications.

The 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform™ , integrating contact center and unified communications with CPaaS capabilities, also allows manufacturers to integrate their cloud communications system with other business applications, including CRM, ERP solutions, and more, from where they can create and manage custom workflows to respond faster to customer expectations. Additionally, this integrated approach enhances a company's ERP strategy by providing real-time communication data and insights to optimize business processes and decision-making.

Drive agility at scale

More than any other industry, manufacturers require broad, deep, and dynamic connectivity. Workforces are spread across several sites and geographies. Without the right tools in place, this separation creates silos between locations, offices, field, and production teams.

Orchestrating the communications and collaboration of lots of people at scale, separated in several ways, becomes exponentially more challenging when you factor in that many organizations still use several disparate and often incompatible legacy systems.

What’s more, manufacturers aren’t dealing with a static picture. The next few years will see further changes in the industry. To digitally transform and maintain a competitive advantage, manufacturers must establish scalable and agile environments where all teams can work from anywhere and communicate without restriction.

Embrace analytics, AI and Automation

The need to maximize operational efficiency through AI and automation has expanded to every part of the organization, including customer experience. And, given that CX leaders believe that every department will soon be responsible for customer experience, the ability to improve it needs to be enterprise-wide.

Communications platforms provide vast amounts of data that, with cross-platform analytics and AI, give every department across the supply chain the ability to measure, manage, and improve customer experience. Manufacturers must turn to these three resources that will become essential to the future of the industry:

  • Analytics: extracting value and insights from data
  • Artificial Intelligence: enhancing human performance
  • Automation: taking routine tasks out of human hands

Analytics: Extracting value and insights from data

Every customer-related call and conversation is a rich source of data. With 8x8 Speech Analytics, manufacturers can extract valuable insights from that data to measure KPIs and improve overall performance.

As each call happens, calls are automatically transcribed, time-stamped with sentiments, and sorted into predefined categories. Collecting and analyzing speech and text data in real time allows for tailored coaching to help desk and contact center teams where and when needed, fostering continuous improvement.

With these customer interaction insights, common conversation threads, call data and call journey analytics, supervisors can be resilient and adapt their strategies. Sales and customer support teams can tailor their approach to build stronger relationships that lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Artificial Intelligence: Enhancing human performance

During times of economic uncertainty, an exceptional customer experience is essential because it builds brand loyalty and it can be vastly improved with AI for faster response and resolution times.

Using trends and analytics data, 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) is a powerful, user-friendly conversational AI platform that allows manufacturers to provide compelling self-service experiences with seamless, contextual hand-off to a human agent. This is essential to reduce customer frustration and provides agents with the information they need to deliver more personalized customer experiences when a customer needs help beyond what a chatbot can deliver.

Automation: Taking routine tasks out of human hands

Most customers prefer starting with self-service when they reach out to a business to find the information they need. Although analytics and AI can provide manufacturers with detailed information to automate routine tasks and improve productivity and CX, it can be a challenge to know where to start.

By collecting and analyzing speech and text data in real time, manufacturers can identify and map graphical customer journeys, inspect how common pain points are being addressed, and optimize automation strategies.

Optimize the customer journey

Optimizing the customer experience throughout the entire journey calls for a single, consistent view of the customer across all channels—whether internal help desks or external facing contact centers. This involves integrating communications across everyone and everything, including automated and self-service communication systems.

In the new service model landscape, manufacturers who create scalable, agile environments to deliver meaningful, personalized experiences will ensure their brand stands out, attract new customers, and keep existing customers returning.

To explore how cloud communications can power innovation in manufacturing and drive transformative customer experiences, download the Manufacturing Solution Brief here.