Excellent customer service is not a new priority for businesses. But in an on-demand digital age with an unprecedented amount of market options, customer experience, now CX, is becoming a primary differentiator.

While companies are searching for new ways to automate processes across the board, customers are looking for their needs to be met with empathy and efficiency. An indelicate implementation of tech can hinder that connection, according to Steve Pappas (pictured), senior vice president/head of U.S. operations and chief marketing officer of Panviva Inc.

Pappas sat down with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss how companies can provide CX that benefits customers and their bottom line.

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Start us out with CX in 2019. What’s the scope?

Pappas: There’s three things that [the customer] could do with a company. They can interact with them and get some information, or they’re transacting, or there may be more of a back-office approach to it, someone operating on behalf of the customer. When we think about those three dimensions, it’s really about, was is frictionless? Did they get to the point where they felt delighted and [are] going to tell people about it?

The balance interaction between people, machines and technology has to be a hot button topic.

Pappas: All of those different things have their place, but there has to be a level of human aspect. You’re not going to call your hospital when you’re feeling chest pains and want a chatbot on the other end. When we’re thinking about bringing technology into organizations, we have to think about, how does this make the customer’s experience better?

How do we measure whether we’re doing good or bad?

Pappas: I recommend to every C-suite person that the best thing they can do is spend time in the contact center. Not only do you measure the customer satisfaction levels, but you also need to measure your employee satisfaction levels that way too. That’s more of a qualitative versus the metrics, but it’s one that’s missed all the time.

One of the keys is making sure that the employees, the people on the front lines, have what they need the second that they need it, not escalate to a help desk. If there’s lots of sticky notes around the monitors and binders on the desk, there are process problems.

One of the topics you’ve written about is omnichannel. Explain what that is, and what you’re finding.

Pappas: Omnichannel is geared around how we communicate with our customers, partners, dealers and distributors. It used to be the telephone, but now customers want to be communicated with on Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, and various other methods. The omnichannel is creating a universal way of communicating with the customer where they want to be communicated with.

One of the keys is to curate content better. You don’t write a procedure for the employee to speak over the phone the same way you’re going to write for Alexa as a virtual assistant — and the version of that content has to be pushed in a sub second to go to the right channel at the right time in the right format.

Looking forward, what are some of the big challenges?

Pappas: We’re seeing customer-centric conversations increasing now. Companies are looking for all of the methods that we could start bringing in to make our employees feel empowered around the whole customer experience paradigm.

Allow the customer to have a seat at the decision table. Companies are finally saying good enough is not good enough anymore. They have to get better at customer experience, because if price and size and color and all of those things are similar across the board, what a company’s starting to compete on is the experience. One of the best competitive advantages now is the experience that we give over and above our competition.

Watch the entire video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE