CX Assurance Blog

In our work with Cyara customers, the Domain Consulting team has found that many organizations are struggling with maintaining alignment between and within their business and IT teams while working to increase the speed of their deployments. This point was reinforced during an Agile-focused panel at Cyara Xchange 2018 and also in conversations I had throughout the event. 

In my last post, I talked about ways to get business and IT working from the same CX agenda. In this post, I'd like to talk some more about organizational alignment between the business and technology sides, as it is key. I will examine how maintaining alignment requires prioritization, feedback loops, and coordination.

I love Nashville. Over the years I’ve been to Nashville for three conferences, all at the Opryland Hotel. If you’ve never stayed at the Opryland Hotel, you’re in for a real treat — it’s like being in a terrarium. Enclosed, lush green grounds with winding paths. Why, there’s even an indoor boat ride!

The answer is, it depends. The cost of a SEV1 depends on many factors including when the error is discovered and how difficult it is to diagnose and repair. But first, what is a SEV1?

At Cyara Xchange 2018 in March, I had the great privilege of hearing a presentation by two experts on performance testing of CX applications: Pete Dhadwar of Royal Bank of Canada and Chandra Golla of Cyara. In this blog post, I will share a few of their pearls of wisdom.

71% of organizations say that customer experience is a competitive differentiator (Dimension Data, 2017). That’s why CX Assurance is so important. And that’s why Cyara is laser focused on delivering the best CX Assurance solution available. Cyara 7.2 includes a wealth of enhancements, across the entire platform, that enable our clients to more effectively test and monitor their CX.

Our Xchange 2018 conference was a momentous occasion for us as a company, as well as for me personally. This was something I envisioned twelve years ago, so it was with both pride and humility that I took the stage to address our customers and partners. Even more valuable were the conversations we shared — over dinner, in the hallways, and in the breakout sessions where everyone shared their experiences and learnings with each other. Xchange 2018 was also a great opportunity for us to hear from several industry thought leaders. 

A couple of weeks ago, we were honored to host our inaugural Cyara Xchange conference up in San Francisco. It was such an energizing event where everyone was sharing best practices and war stories from the CX trenches. One of the highlights for me from the three days was the main stage panel titled, “Transforming Your Development Organization to Support an Agile World.” The panel included CX leaders from three of Cyara’s most innovative customers: Anil Ravula, Staff VP at Anthem, Mitch Glaser, Contact Center Systems Manager at Airbnb, and Mark Remington, VP of Application Services at Capital Group.

Can you measure CX real-time, in the moment? Are you confident that you have an objective measure of your CX? Can you benchmark your CX with your competitors?

In my experience, the answer for most organizations is “No.”

Organizations find themselves anxiously awaiting CSAT and NPS results, investing dollars and time in the process. Don't get me wrong. These KPIs are great metrics. They are common, simple, and easy to understand. However, they are incomplete measurements on their own, more specifically:

• They are not forward looking
• They are not directly actionable
• They are not real-time

I would like to introduce a new approach around measuring, testing, and managing CX with an innovative series of operational metrics. We call them...Operational Customer Experience (OCX). These metrics are:

1. 1)  Measured in real-time,
2. 2) Based on actual customer interactions with your channels,
3. 3) Scientific and not subjective, and
4. 4) Allow you to benchmark to your industry or with the broader market.

In our work with Cyara customers, the Domain Consulting team has found many examples of organizations approaching software development the same way: with the business side dictating their requirements to the technology side. But I believe that to encourage buy-in from the technology team as well as a better outcome, the business should be sharing their objectives or outcomes instead. In this post, I will outline my reasons and give some examples as well.

Over the past few years, Cyara, like so many other software companies, has moved to a cloud-first delivery model. With the Cyara Platform Cloud, you get an evergreen environment that is constantly on the current release, and has quick access to bug fixes and enhancements, as well as easy access to new product trials. And, with two completely redundant sites per region, our investments in hosting enable us to sustainably deliver less than 0.1% unplanned downtime.

It’s a topic I’m so passionate about that I am taking the opportunity to write my first post on the Cyara Blog to share with you the top reasons our clients are making the move to the Cyara Cloud.