Impactful CX in a disrupted world

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Covid-19 forever changed the way businesses and consumers interact. As the pandemic gave rise to new behaviors, companies around the world scrambled to meet evolving needs and expectations, many of which will endure long after the pandemic fades away.

Customer-centric agility proved crucial for survival amid lockdowns and the global economic slowdown that followed. And so it will remain. Customer-centric agility has become more important in the wake of the pandemic, according to, CX Champions: How CX Leaders who raise their game are driving business success, a new report by Zendesk and Enterprise Strategy Group

After interviewing customer experience (CX) leaders from all over the world, the report identified three levels of customer CX maturity: Starters, Risers and Champions. Respectively, those are businesses that risk falling behind if they stay on their current path, businesses that are steadily gaining ground and businesses that already have an excellent CX operation.

"Results show that CX Champions were better positioned to transition to remote working and manage surges in customer requests," said Colleen Berube, Chief Information Officer and SVP of Operations at Zendesk. "Companies that already invested in technology to not only deliver a good customer experience, but also support customer service agents with flexible and scalable operations, were able to successfully pivot their businesses quickly.”

Building a CX that Endures

Customer retention has been a huge challenge during the pandemic. More than 60 percent of global consumers tried a different brand or shopped at a different retailer during the crisis. Over 90 percent of consumers in India did so, as did 82 percent in China and 64 percent in Korea. With the cost of acquiring a new customer anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining one, attrition took a huge toll on businesses that couldn’t pivot fast enough.

Whether it was due to their teams being more capable thanks to increased training and retention, their helpdesk solutions being more flexible like SaaS-based solutions that only need an internet connection to work, their use of data to optimize operations, or a combination of all three, Champions were in the best position to navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic without dramatically harming their ability to support customers.

APAC’s Champions significantly outperformed organizations with less sophisticated CX operations during the pandemic, according to the CX Champions report. Champions were 14 times more successful in pivoting to remote work than Starters and 17 times more likely to be very confident in their business’s future.

Health and wellness giant Holland & Barrett, for instance, started using The Zendesk Suite in 2018 to consolidate a number of legacy solutions and enable more effortless conversations. As social distancing orders rolled out globally at the beginning of 2020, the company saw online orders spike as more customers remained at home.

The company converted a number of its in-store employees to online customer support agents to bolster support in this area. Its agility ensured that the same friendly faces that Holland & Barrett’s customers are used to seeing in stores are empowered to continue helping customers get what they need to stay healthy and well.

“While an atmosphere of uncertainty and change becomes the norm, it’s important to know companies still have the opportunity to focus on agility, continue to invest in CX, and prepare for constantly changing customer needs,” Berube said.

Preparing for a Digital World

Over the past year, the pandemic has hastened the push to all things digital. Around 70 percent of companies around the world have accelerated their digital transformation. In Singapore and Japan, the pandemic accelerated such strategies by over seven years. Retailers and consumers shifted to e-commerce out of necessity, creating new habits and behaviours with staying power. And healthcare institutions adopted telemedicine to reduce traffic in clinics and hospitals.

Online learning platforms also saw a surge of activity. When schools around the world closed their doors in early 2020 in response to the pandemic, educational non-profit Khan Academy’s online traffic grew by over 2.5 times - almost overnight.

Teachers needed help preparing remote-learning courses and schedules, while students required assistance adjusting to online learning and supplementing video conferences. Parents, thrown suddenly into schooling at home, needed to help their children with school work while also juggling childcare and jobs. But Khan Academy was ready–with advice, support and nearly 100,000 items in more than 40 languages, effectively scaling to handle a huge spike in traffic and support tickets.

With automated triage - the process that ensures a ticket is sent to the right person or team - built into the Zendesk ticketing process, it was possible for the team to prioritize who needed immediate help, who should help them and whose issues could wait. The triage allowed Khan Academy to maintain customer satisfaction (CSAT) of 92 percent even as ticket response times more than doubled.

Just like Holland & Barrett, Khan Academy’s ability to pivot in the face of the pandemic is a testament to the importance of customer-centric agility. With customer-focused leadership, skilled customer service teams, and the right investments in technology, they prevailed like only Champions can. The lesson: To survive this crisis and the next, organizations must maintain a CX strategy that enables them to meet every customer need.

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