Megan Neale, Co-Founder and COO at Limitless explores the relationship between GigCX and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and how it enables brands to re-think their approach to customer service.

This period of history will forever be defined by human disconnection. In its place, digital transformation initiatives have accelerated to keep up with the pace of change. Organisations have had to pivot, adopting their strategies in order to reach their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) metrics which rely on empathy and support.

As a result, the relationship between gig customer experience (GigCX) and CLV has become intertwined, as companies strive to achieve that ‘human’ touch in a virtual world. To that end, customer loyalty can no longer be assumed as a given for brands, no matter how innovative or experimental the product on offer is. What really counts is the personal connection and relationship on offer. After all, determining customer lifetime value is all about estimating an entire future relationship with a customer – ‘relationship’ being the key word.

Experience first, product second

What many brands tend to forget is that AI – namely in the form of chatbots and other automated services – should be considered aids for the customer journey, as opposed to a replacement technology that only serves to alienate a customer.

Often with tens of other identical products on offer elsewhere, the customer experience is no longer just about the goods-monetary transaction but more about the value added experience. While AI chatbots aim to assist the customer journey, a fellow brand advocate, however, is more likely to resonate with other customers that experience a problem or query. In other terms, this is where the potential of GigCX can really be leveraged.

Customer Lifetime Value does not – and should not – concern special offers or loyalty discounts as it once did, but focus on customers getting value from the products or services and allowing them to feel heard by people who are empathetic with their responses. This can only be achieved when using human rather virtual agents. A customer making a specific query on a product function in relation to their own needs is unlikely to be successfully answered by an automated chatbot tool. Both context and understanding are essential for a genuine and useful exchange. Someone with a first-hand experience and reasoning skills will be able to give the most suitable response.

Influencing customer life cycles

An important part of supporting the customer experience is recognising the needs of the customer life cycle. Typically used to map every stage of the customer journey – from considering a product or service, to the purchasing stage and post-purchase offering – it was a model once thought as being able to predict the entire value of a customer relationship. As needs and customer demands become more complex, customer retention, loyalty and advocacy is harder to come by, and the customer lifecycle model – largely based on impersonal CRM data – can no longer map this out alone. It needs added context.

That said, GigCX tools can align closely with improved customer life cycle mapping. Used as one of the most accurate methods for achieving customer success, the personalised approach it offers enables better control of customer behaviour and outcome, navigating the exact customer experience and journey in line with their needs. What’s more, offering greater direct interaction with customers, brands are able to build a more detailed picture on their typical needs and expectations much better than any manual paper-based model could predict alone .

With GigCX, brands are able to react to customer needs in real time and give them what they really want to hear – not just a ‘best fit’ answer from an automated and impersonal AI tool or call centre agent who has been disconnected from the entire experience and query in question. With the buyer journey no longer linear, engaging with them on a closer and more personal level via gig agents will enable brands to better estimate a no longer predictable journey.

Customer success

To that end, customer success is no longer just about the end customer who is satisfied with their product. Rather, it is about the next step in that journey – converting them into loyal brand fanatics who identify and wholly believe in the product and brand in question. GigCX offers the opportunity to mature satisfied customers beyond the ‘repeat purchaser’ stage and turn them into proactive ‘gig’ advocates themselves.

The GigCX model has brought a new type of brand advocacy that operates beyond word of mouth between friends and family. It is more influential and genuine, enabling a representative to truly sit right alongside the product, a brand’s ethos and goals. Therefore, if a brand is successful in using the gig model to extend the potential offered by a satisfied customer, they’ll be on their way to achieving an entire network of passionate advocates .

Out with the old

Intertwining the principles of both GigCX and customer lifetime value offers a real opportunity for brands to re-think how they approach customer service and communications. Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Unilever & Microsoft, are taking this first leap and are already achieving impressive new results. Putting the real customer at the forefront of customer experience operations will offer a vital new take on services brands can deliver .

About the Author

Megan Neale is Co-founder and COO of Limitless, a Gig CX platform powered by AI that is empowering people to earn money for providing brilliant customer service for brands they love. Megan is widely regarded as a thought leader in digital innovation for customer care. Her passion for “customer & client first” combined with her constant drive for innovation led her to co-found Limitless in 2016.

Roger Beadle, CEO at Limitless explains why agile customer service models are needed and how businesses can take advantage of the gig economy to improve their customer experience.

Companies have a problem which their customers can solve, and I don’t just mean buying more of their products or subscribing to their services. Businesses are constantly struggling with how to make customer service available to their customers round the clock, yet are still maintaining the same time-restricted customer service offerings.

Meanwhile, customers are becoming increasingly frustrated with the limited communication channels that are provided by the business. Some recent research by Customer Experience Magazine indicated that 80 percent of Brits are having to contact call centres during their working hours.

In a world where customer service is a major competitive differentiator (think Amazon and Apple), delivering round-the-clock, exemplary service is no longer a nice-to-have. Rather, it has become a strategic must-have for brands in order to stay ahead of the curve.

With rising costs and attrition, fluctuating demand patterns, legacy tech and talent sourcing challenges, traditional brick-and-mortar contact centres are ill-prepared to meet these needs of the ‘always on’, digital savvy, global customer.

Agile customer service models are needed, ones which can flex in line with demand and minimise the fixed costs generated by traditional cost-per-head commercials.

Quick, authentic, agile and cost competitive 

This is where businesses can take advantage of the gig economy. Customer service models are changing, particularly with digital marketplaces providing new work opportunities and freedom for people to earn money on their own terms.

When it comes to customer experience, having a gig workforce means you can access on-demand workers who are existing fans of your brand, and if they’re interested in working for you, it’s most likely that they have some knowledge about your product/service.

But the real key is that, with a gig workforce spread around the world thanks to the internet, you can cover customer requests at any time of the day. Don’t forget that a lot of people gig because they want to work outside of traditional times – something that will suit your CX function down to the ground.

The possibilities brought by GigCX go further. Talent pools are easily scalable and businesses can quickly train them to competency if they have pre-existing expertise. They’re often paid per task. This pay-per-resolved task model helps businesses drive out wastage otherwise associated with fixed cost operating models, while also embedding agile, on-demand working models within their customer service operations.

In practice, GigCX can help brands mitigate some of the common challenges faced by customer service functions today – scale teams at speed, flex in line with demand, reduce operational costs, provide 24/7 instantaneous support and source talent aligned to company culture.

Recent findings by Gartner’s Customer Experience Management Survey showed that more than two-thirds of CX leaders are able to confidently predict budget increases in 2020, with a considerable proportion of this expected to be allocated to gig agents.

The role of AI in driving gig performance 

AI underpins many gig platforms, from Uber to Deliveroo. GigCX platforms can leverage AI to build advanced rating and review mechanisms  to deliver quality and drive gig user performance.

A great example of this is using AI to handle greater volumes of low value customer enquiries, allowing the gig workers to focus on enquiries of greater complexity which might require empathy and personalisation. Using AI based routing in this instance ensures that customer service teams can focus their time and effort on queries that really need the human touch.

With GigCX, AI also has an important role to fulfil in the form of quality control and maximising the gig workers’ performance through review, rating and rewarding mechanisms. AI can help intelligent routing of queries to gig workers based on their competency and skill levels.

It can also aid in building demand-based pricing features, so workers get rewarded based on demand or even complexity of the tasks they receive. What is more, AI can even assist in helping gig workers answer faster through in-app suggestions, and also review their completed answers for accuracy.

There’s a virtuous feedback cycle in play too, whereby the ‘best’ answers from gig workers in the course of their CX duties are fed back to the AI, which can learn from these and formulate standardised optimal responses to similar queries. A classic case of AI driving the gig, and the gig driving the AI.

Helping drive value through the customer life cycle 

There are a number of existing use cases where GigCX is bringing impactful change to modern day customer service operations. For example, it is taking centre stage in businesses where customers have the tools to deal with product/service enquiries, provide technical support, or assist in refunds/cancellations.

However, GigCX need not just be confined to the areas of customer support. The knowledge and passion of your customers can be leveraged to make an impact on other areas of the customer lifecycle including customer acquisition and retention.

For example, car manufacturers could energise their pre-sales efforts by empowering existing customers to convince prospects to sign up for a test ride. Online marketplaces like eBay could tap into the knowledge of their power sellers to help retain new eBay sellers through personal coaching and guidance. Businesses could also use their customers to provide real time insight on products/services which can in turn inform New Product Development plans.

Your customers are your biggest assets and through the power of the gig economy, brands can now bring their customers into the very heart of their business and reward them for providing on-demand service.

What better way to improve your customer experience than to use your own customers for driving it!

About the Author

Roger Beadle is the CEO and Co-founder at Limitless. Roger is a UK-based entrepreneur and business leader who is reinventing how customer service is delivered via the gig economy. After establishing several businesses in the contact centre industry, Roger co-founded Limitless with Megan Neale in 2016.

Limitless is a gig-economy platform that addresses some of the biggest challenges faced by the contact centre industry: low pay, high attrition and access to new talent.

Previously, Roger and Megan helped to build one of the largest privately-owned outsourced contact centre business in Europe, before selling the business to the global conglomerate Hinduja Group. They were also both founding shareholders of Semafone, the leader in PCI compliant security solutions for contact centres globally.