For enterprises, that’s both a challenge and an opportunity. Handled properly, feedback reveals exactly where things are and aren’t working. It tells support teams which moments frustrate. It tells product teams what’s missing, and it tells the C-suite what customers value enough to fight for.

That’s the real job of customer feedback management, turning scattered input into structured insight, then routing it to the teams that can actually do something with it.

The best CFM systems don’t just capture data. They:

• Map feedback across the full journey, not just surveys
• Spot trends early, before they show up in churn
• Connect insight directly to actions: faster support, better products, clearer messaging

In short, modern customer feedback management platforms give enterprises a new kind of muscle: the ability to listen deeply, move early, and improve continuously

What is Customer Feedback Management?

Customer feedback management is the discipline of collecting, interpreting, and acting on customer sentiment – not just from surveys, but from every channel where customers leave a mark.

That might mean tracking a drop in CSAT after a product update, combing through live chat logs, or decoding a two-star review on Trustpilot. In most enterprise settings, it means building a feedback loop that crosses teams: product, marketing, service, and operations all relying on the same source of truth.

The best customer feedback management software doesn’t just store responses. It translates them into structured insight, surfacing trends, routing complaints, and pushing alerts to the right place, fast. It’s the glue between listening and resolution.

To work at scale, feedback systems typically include:

• Multichannel ingestion: Web forms, support tickets, NPS, app reviews, even social DMs. Every signal matters, even if it’s unstructured.
• Theme detection and prioritization: Tools flag repeat issues or keyword clusters before they become reputational risks.
• Workflow integration: A refund complaint can notify finance. A delivery bug can trigger a ticket in product ops.
• Dashboards and reporting: With the help of AI systems, leaders get a filtered view of real insights by product line, geography, or channel.

Leading companies aren’t collecting feedback in a vacuum. They’re wiring it directly into CRM systems, contact center tools frontline workflows, so the right people can act without delay. The tighter the integration, the faster teams can respond, fix what’s broken, and strengthen customer relationships that last.

Where Feedback Fits: Feedback Management, VoC, and EFM

Feedback is only useful if it leads somewhere. That’s where terminology starts to matter. Voice of the Customer (VoC), customer feedback management, and enterprise feedback management (EFM) are often used interchangeably. They shouldn’t be.

Customer feedback management is the engine room. It handles collection, sorting, tagging, and routing. Think of it as the operational layer that turns raw input from surveys, ratings, and comments into tasks and decisions. This is where data moves from inboxes and dashboards into action plans.

Voice of the Customer (VoC) goes broader. It doesn’t just listen to what customers say, it listens to how they feel, how they behave, and where they’re frustrated or delighted without necessarily saying it outright. A good VoC program blends direct feedback with behavioral signals and sentiment analysis. It’s about seeing the full picture.

Enterprise feedback management (EFM) stretches even further. It includes employee and partner insight, compliance triggers, internal process reviews, and often sits closer to risk management than CX. In highly regulated or distributed organizations, EFM is essential infrastructure.

At enterprise scale, feedback management isn’t just a support tool. It’s part of the system of record: connected to customer data platforms, CRMs, business intelligence tools, and employee engagement systems (WEM tools).

Each of these frameworks adds something. The most mature organizations use all three as parts of one loop: listen, understand, and act.

What is Customer Feedback Management? Feedback Types

Customer feedback isn’t always a form or a star rating. It’s often informal, unstructured, or buried in systems where no one’s looking. Recognizing the different types is the first step toward building something that works across departments and channels.

• Direct Feedback: The most visible kind. Surveys after support calls. CSAT and NPS prompts. Product reviews submitted through apps or portals. It’s usually structured, timestamped, and easy to analyze. But it’s also the most filtered. The people who answer tend to be at the emotional extremes, either thrilled or annoyed. Everyone else stays quiet.
• Indirect Feedback: This is what customers say when they’re not talking to you directly. Tweets. Public forum threads. Online reviews. Complaints posted to third-party sites. In many organizations, this insight slips through the cracks. But today’s customer feedback management platforms use NLP and sentiment tools to bring these comments into view before they become brand problems.
• Inferred Feedback: This is the feedback customers don’t say out loud, but show in what they do. Dropping out halfway through checkout. Asking the same question in three different places. Bouncing between help pages without finding what they need.

On their own, these signals can be easy to miss. But together, they reveal patterns of frustration that direct surveys might never surface.

Why Customer Feedback Management Matters

There’s no shortage of dashboards in a modern enterprise. But few of them speak with the voice of the customer. That’s what feedback management changes. It shifts insight from lagging reports to live reality, focusing on the real-time pulse of what customers need, want, and expect.

For enterprise leaders focused on customer experience, this isn’t a soft metric. It’s operational. According to Bain & Company, companies that excel at customer experience grow revenues 4%–8% above their market. But growth doesn’t come from tracking satisfaction scores alone. It comes from turning those scores into action.

Here’s where feedback becomes a business driver:

• Alignment Across Teams: Sales hears one thing. Support hears another. Product has a third backlog entirely. When feedback lives in separate systems, teams solve different problems. When it’s centralized, patterns emerge, and teams move in the same direction.
• Early Signal Detection: A broken link on a signup form. A billing process that’s confusing in one region. A surge in cancellation requests. Customer feedback management platforms surface these issues before they hit churn reports. The earlier the fix, the lower the cost.
• Smarter Roadmapping: Feedback isn’t just a support signal, it’s a product roadmap tool. Tracking customer insights, linking them to outcomes, and activating responses leads to strategic action. Teams can prioritize features that drive loyalty.
• Competitive Advantage: Every brand says it listens. Few can prove it. Companies that consistently close the loop visibly earn trust. In a market where switching costs are low, trust is often the only real moat.

The case for customer feedback management software isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about agility, spotting the next risk or opportunity while competitors are still guessing.

How to Build a Customer Feedback Management System That Works

Enterprises don’t lack feedback. They’re swimming in it. The challenge isn’t collection, but coordination. Scattered responses, siloed ownership, and no clear plan for what happens next. That’s where customer feedback management becomes a system, not just a task.

1. Start with What You Already Have

Before adding new tools or channels, map what’s in play. Most enterprise teams already gather feedback across:

• Post-interaction surveys
• Help desk conversations
• Social and review platforms
• Product feedback forms
• Sales and account notes

But it’s often fragmented, or locked in spreadsheets, CRM fields, and third-party platforms. Start by listing every touchpoint where customers leave a trace. Then identify who owns that data, how it’s reviewed, and whether it drives action.

2. Build a Shared System, Not Just a Repository

A true customer feedback management system isn’t just a bucket. It’s a hub. One place where cross-functional teams can view, analyze, and act on insights. That requires more than storage. It needs structure. Look for tools that:

• Integrate with your CRM system and CDP
• Tag feedback by source, product line, sentiment, urgency
• Offer role-specific dashboards for ops, product, CX, compliance
• Allow for routing, escalation, and response tracking

Consider other integrations that might be helpful too, such as connections to your ERP and business intelligence platforms, or workforce management tools.

3. Design a Feedback-to-Action Pathway

Without clear ownership, feedback dies in the backlog. Teams need to agree on what gets prioritized, who responds, and how it loops back into service design, training, or product fixes.

The strongest systems:

• Flag urgent or high-impact issues automatically
• Route insights to the right teams (with deadlines)
• Track outcomes, not just volume
• Communicate resolution back to the customer

When that loop works, feedback becomes part of how the business runs.

How to Use Feedback to Improve Business Results

Most companies collect feedback. Fewer actually do something meaningful with it. In mature organizations, feedback isn’t just a sentiment report, it’s a driver of change. Done right, it informs strategy, sharpens execution, and reduces churn.

• Prioritize patterns over outliers: It’s easy to get caught up in the latest complaint or viral review. But high-performing teams step back. They look for volume, frequency, and trends, not just anecdotes. That could mean mapping repeat issues to product features, or tracking common service pain points over time.
• Feed insight to the right systems: Don’t keep customer feedback on a CX dashboard. Use it to inform product roadmaps, workforce planning, pricing models, training strategies, and anything else that impacts the customer experience.
• Expand your metrics: Go beyond NPS and CSAT. Think about customer effort scores, overall retention rates and churn. Determine the KPIs you want to keep track of in advance, and make sure everyone is watching them, including the C-Suite.

Choosing Customer Feedback Management Software

Customer feedback is everywhere. What separates good companies from great ones is what they do with it. That’s where the right customer feedback management software comes in, to make insights actionable, accountable, and accessible across the enterprise.

Start With the Business, Not the Tool

Software selection should begin with the problems it’s meant to solve. Are customers dropping off after onboarding? Or are service complaints slipping through the cracks? Are product teams getting insight too late to act?

Clear goals tend to point to the right tool:

• Real-time alerts for contact center agents?
• Text analytics for unstructured NPS comments?
• Trend reporting to inform product roadmaps?

Once those use cases are clear, it becomes easier to separate the platforms built for scale from those that just tick boxes.

Integration Over Isolation

In a modern tech stack, no system should sit alone, especially not feedback.

Customer insights gain power when connected to:

• CRM platforms, where individual records tell a full customer story
• Contact center solutions, where timing and channel matter
• CDPs, which consolidate behavioral and transactional data
• BI tools, for deeper cross-functional reporting
• Broader ERP, WEM, and business management tools

Make sure your platforms feed the systems powering decisions.

Think Long-Term: Governance, Scalability, and Fit

Even the most powerful platform will struggle without strong foundations. For enterprise buyers, that means focusing on operational readiness:

• Can the system support multiple teams and regions with clear permissions?
• Are escalation workflows and approvals built in?
• Does the vendor offer strong uptime guarantees and compliance controls?
• Is the reporting flexible enough to satisfy both executive leadership and front-line teams?

Ease of use matters too. If agents, analysts, and leaders can’t find value in it quickly, feedback won’t flow where it’s needed most.

Discover the best customer feedback management solutions:

Customer Feedback Management Best Practices

Technology may capture customer sentiment, but it’s what companies do next that separates good intentions from real improvement. At the enterprise level, feedback shapes products, and defines brand reputation, retention, and revenue.

Here’s what the most effective teams get right.

• Track consistently: Feedback isn’t a file to review later. It’s a feed that’s active and ongoing. Companies need to review regularly, discuss in depth, and build around it.
• Make feedback cross functional: Operations needs visibility into service complaints, marketing needs to know where messaging misses, and HR should see how poor feedback is affecting teams. Get everyone involved.
• Close the loop: Replying to feedback, or acting on it, is crucial. Customers want to know their input mattered, and teams want confirmation their fix was felt. Ensure that your action is clear, powerful, and visible.
• Read between the lines: Surveys are useful, but raw behavior can say more. Combine behavioral insights, structured survey data, and conversational analytics for a comprehensive view of what customers really feel, not just what they say.
• Make it easy to act: Help teams fix issues quickly. Check if workflows are in place for feedback routing, and whether CX agents can escalate recurring problems. Give people the tools they need to act.

Customer Feedback Management Trends

Customer expectations haven’t just shifted, they’ve splintered. Channels have multiplied. Responses move faster. The tools used to manage it all are catching up. Here’s what’s defining feedback management right now:

The Rise of AI-Powered Analysis

Enterprise teams spent years circling AI as a concept. Now it’s operational. The strongest feedback systems today don’t just categorize responses, they break them down by tone, urgency, and underlying cause.

Platforms like Medallia, NICE, and Sprinklr are using natural language processing and conversational analytics to surface issues before they mutate. Instead of waiting for quarterly survey analysis, teams can spot sentiment drops and recurring themes as they happen.

Feedback Is Becoming Embedded

Feedback used to live in standalone forms: a survey here, a rating box there. That’s changing. Leading platforms now capture signals from everyday interactions: chat logs, call transcripts, even app usage.

Feedback is moving closer to the moment. A delivery delay triggers a quick prompt. A cancelled subscription opens the door to ask why. Systems are listening all the time, and they’re getting smarter about what to listen for.

Structured Feedback Loses Traction

It’s not just about ticking boxes. The most valuable insights often show up in open comments, social threads, or long-form email replies. That unstructured data used to be hard to sort. Now, it’s where the action is.

Enterprises are investing in platforms that can handle nuance: that can understand sarcasm, spot emotion, and cluster feedback without a human reading every line. Forrester calls this shift “human insight at scale”, and it’s showing up as a core capability in nearly every customer feedback management platform leader.

Everything Connects Or It Doesn’t Work

Feedback is most valuable when it flows. Into support platforms, product roadmaps, agent scripts, and CX dashboards. But that only happens when systems talk to each other.

Leading tools now integrate out-of-the-box with CRMs, contact center systems, VoC platforms, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. That allows customer concerns to influence decision-making across the business, not just in service.

Privacy Remains Crucial

The line between “listening” and “surveilling” is thin, and enterprise buyers know it. In a post-GDPR, opt-out-default world, customer feedback strategies need to include transparency.

That means clear consent prompts. Data handling disclosures. Anonymization features. Especially in regulated sectors, ethics now sit beside analytics in the buyer’s checklist.

What is Customer Feedback Management? The Voice of CX

Customer feedback management It affects product decisions, shapes brand reputation, and drives loyalty at scale.

Done well, it connects dots across departments, from support and sales to marketing and operations. It puts real-time customer truth in front of the people who can do something about it.

But it only works when the systems are connected, the insights are trusted, and the loop is truly closed. That’s why enterprise teams are investing in modern customer feedback management platforms to operationalize input.

For companies focused on loyalty, innovation, and experience, the question isn’t whether to invest in customer feedback tools. The only real question is: which one will help you act faster, and smarter? CX Today is here to help:

• Join the Community: Be part of a dynamic CX-focused network. Swap ideas with thought leaders and elevate your feedback strategy.
• Test the Tech: Discover the top-rated platforms, meet vendors, and explore trends at live and virtual events.
• Plan Your Next Investment: Use our CX Marketplace to explore top vendors in feedback, VoC, CDP, and contact center tech.

Or visit the ultimate CX guide for enterprise experience leaders, for insights into how to build a better CX strategy, one step at a time.

A loyal customer isn’t just someone who comes back. They spend more. Stay longer. Recommend faster. They open emails, tolerate hiccups, and ignore your competitors’ ads. They’re also far cheaper to retain than any lead your sales team is chasing right now.

Loyalty isn’t a lucky break. It’s the outcome of moments that go right consistently, and often quietly. A first experience that flows without friction. A support interaction that resolves more than just the issue. A product that keeps its promise. Each of these moments builds equity in the relationship.

When those touchpoints connect  across teams, systems, and time something stronger than repeat business takes shape. Customers begin to trust. They stick around, not because it’s the easiest option, but because the experience earns it.

What is Customer Loyalty?

Customer loyalty reflects a decision: the conscious choice to stay with a brand when alternatives are just a click away. It’s not just about satisfaction, plenty of satisfied customers churn. Loyalty runs deeper. It’s emotional, earned through consistency, value, and trust built over time.

In practical terms, loyalty shows when customers return after a poor experience, because they believe it’s the exception, not the norm. It shines when existing buyers refer peers, opt into updates, or upgrade without needing a discount.

But for enterprises, this isn’t a soft metric. It’s measurable, in retention rates, customer lifetime value, and referral growth. In fact, increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95% depending on the industry. Loyalty doesn’t just pay off; it compounds.

Now, it matters more than ever. With CX as a key battleground, loyalty becomes a lead indicator of business resilience, and a hedge against rising acquisition costs.

The ROI of Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty used to be a feel-good metric. Now it’s a board-level priority.

Retaining a customer isn’t just cheaper than winning a new one, it’s smarter. The cost of acquisition has spiked over 60% in the last five years, especially across digital channels. Meanwhile, repeat customers spend more, refer faster, and support brands longer, even when things go wrong.

The return is measurable:

• CAC Down, Margins Up: Brands with strong loyalty programs don’t need to outspend rivals on ads. Their customers come back organically. Acquisition costs are up to 7x higher than retention costs, and rising. Loyalty brings those numbers down.
• Predictable Revenue: Returning customers are more consistent. They know the product, trust the brand, and often skip the comparison stage altogether. That makes forecasting easier, pipelines more stable, and marketing spend more efficient.
• Loyalty = Resilience: In downturns, loyal customers stick. They’re more forgiving of glitches and slower to churn. A loyalty strategy isn’t just about growth, it’s about survival when market headwinds hit.
• Better Intelligence: Good loyalty tools are also listening tools. They track not just transactions, but behavior: redemptions, preferences, referrals, and feedback. That kind of data can feed customer journey strategies and help pinpoint why loyalty is rising or falling.
• Cross-Functional Buy-In: Loyalty isn’t a marketing-only game anymore. When programs sync with CRMs and support channels, they empower every team that touches the customer and help break down the silos that usually hurt CX.

What is Customer Loyalty Management?

Loyalty isn’t a byproduct of good service; it’s the result of managing relationships with intent. For enterprises, customer loyalty management is the discipline of designing and maintaining systems that keep the right customers coming back, staying longer, and contributing more value over time.

Loyalty doesn’t come from running rewards programs on cruise control. It starts with clarity; knowing who your most valuable customers are, what keeps them engaged, and how to stand out even when competitors promise more for less.

The best loyalty strategies don’t operate in a silo. They’re part of the broader customer experience engine, connected to feedback, support, product usage, and behavioural cues. Managed well, these strategies turn loyalty into a dynamic input, not just a passive output. It’s not a metric at the end of a funnel, it’s something built and reinforced at every stage of the journey.

Loyalty Management Tools and Platforms

The strongest tools today aren’t just managing point balances or sending birthday emails. They’re helping organizations understand loyalty as a behavior, not a program.

At a basic level, these platforms centralize loyalty data: engagement patterns, redemption activity, repeat purchase signals, and more. But the more advanced systems go further. They apply machine learning to spot early signs of churn, flag disengaged segments, and recommend next-best actions in real time.

What sets the leading loyalty management platforms apart is their ability to fit inside a broader CX tech stack. That means:

• Integrating with CRM to unify customer context
• Connecting to feedback loops for real-time insight
• Embedding in messaging infrastructure like CPaaS to deliver hyper-personalized moments that actually land

Many also support predictive analytics, using behavioral data to calculate loyalty risk scores, tailor rewards dynamically, or prompt human intervention when relationships are at risk.

How to Measure Customer Loyalty

Loyalty isn’t a single number. It’s a pattern, and like most patterns in enterprise CX, it takes a mix of metrics to see the full picture.

Behavioral signals still lead the pack. Metrics like repeat purchase rate, frequency of interaction, average order value, and churn give a direct read on what customers are doing, and where that behavior changes over time.

Behavioural signals often say more than surveys. A customer who slows their spending, skips repeat purchases, or stops logging in is sending a message. Something has shifted, in the experience, the product fit, or the perceived value.

Behaviour tells you what happened. But it won’t tell you why. That’s where customer sentiment comes into play.

Tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) dig beneath the surface, giving teams a clearer sense of how customers actually feel about their experience. When behavioural dips show up, they offer the context needed to act fast, and fix the root cause before it costs more.

For many organizations, this layer is captured across touchpoints with VoC tools, then analyzed over time to correlate sentiment with spend or attrition.

What’s changing now is the rise of emotional loyalty metrics. These tools look beyond direct feedback, using conversational analysis, sentiment trends, and inferred emotional cues to understand attachment, not just satisfaction. It’s especially useful for brands competing on experience, not price.

Taken together, these data points create a more reliable model. Not just who’s loyal today, but who’s likely to stay, spend, and advocate tomorrow.

How to Choose Loyalty Management Software

The wrong loyalty platform won’t break a business, but it will stall progress. What looks slick in a demo can crumble under pressure if it can’t sync with existing systems, surface usable insights, or grow with you.

Enterprise teams evaluating loyalty management software need more than a feature checklist. They need to know how the tool will hold up six months in, with multiple departments relying on it.

Here’s what separates the useful from the disruptive:

True Integration

No platform works in isolation. If loyalty data sits in a separate bucket from customer service, CRM, or analytics tools, there’s a problem.

That means:

• Real-time syncing with CRM systems
• Alignment with VoC platforms
• Integrations with Business intelligence solutions

Most loyalty management platforms also seamlessly connect with CCaaS platforms, conversational analytics tools, and ERP software.

Dashboards That Get Used

Too many platforms surface metrics. Fewer tell you what they mean.

The strongest systems flag what matters: declining engagement from a once-loyal segment, a regional drop in redemption rates, churn triggers hiding in feedback. Ideally, these insights feed into broader customer intelligence tools.

Ask the vendor: When loyalty starts to dip, how will your platform show it, and who will know?

Scalability

Will it handle loyalty across multiple brands? Markets? Languages? Can it adapt to tiered models, emotional loyalty, partner programs?

Look for:

• Configurable logic, not hard-coded structures
• Clean admin interfaces for rule management
• Role-based controls that keep compliance teams comfortable

If it takes a developer to adjust a points rule, it’s not enterprise-ready.

Discover who’s driving results in the loyalty management software market here:

Best Practices for Improving Customer Loyalty

Loyalty doesn’t just emerge from a points program or a fun campaign. For enterprises, it’s a byproduct of consistent, intentional experience design, built into service flows, product strategy, data models, and frontline decision-making.

Build Feedback Loops That Actually Close

The fastest way to erode loyalty? Ignoring input – or worse, asking for it and doing nothing.

Instead of measuring feedback volume, measure action: How many product updates were driven by complaints? How often are support teams looped in to resolve themes emerging from surveys? Connect your loyalty program to customer feedback management tools that can drive real changes, not just reporting.

Use Tiering: But Don’t Let It Turn Transactional

Tiered loyalty still has its place, but only when it’s designed with purpose. Value shouldn’t just reflect spend. It should acknowledge engagement in all its forms. Early adopters, advocates, testers, even those who provide consistent feedback – they’re all part of the loyalty equation.

In B2B especially, tiers work best when they reflect mutual success. Think retention milestones, shared KPIs, or collaborative innovation, not just contract size.

Let AI Do More Than Segment

Yes, AI can slice customer cohorts faster. But real value comes when it flags what’s slipping before it shows up in churn.

Modern loyalty management tools increasingly come with predictive features: surfacing customers at risk of disengagement, nudging reps to check in, or adjusting loyalty offers based on sentiment and behavior patterns. Don’t just use AI to automate, use it to alert.

Tie Service Quality to Loyalty Outcomes

When loyalty starts to dip, it’s often not marketing’s fault, it’s a missed service expectation, or a support gap that never got escalated.

Bring loyalty and service metrics closer together. Track whether NPS dips after a long resolution time. Monitor whether loyalty program members get faster assistance, and whether that’s noticed.

Reward the Behavior You Want More Of

Discounts create habits, and not always good ones. If you reward spend alone, you build deal-seekers, not advocates.

Instead, reward the moments that drive growth:

• Referrals
• Feedback submitted
• Community contributions
• Self-service engagement
• Event participation

Loyalty isn’t a transaction, it’s a signal. Recognize the signals that drive real business value.

Localize Where It Matters

For multinational brands, loyalty can’t be global by default. Preferences shift by market, so should campaigns.

Consider:

• Local holiday-based promotions
• Regional tier naming conventions
• Local influencers or ambassadors

Global strategy. Local flavor. That balance keeps loyalty human.

Customer Loyalty Management + Service: The Critical Link

Loyalty doesn’t just live in a dashboard or a rewards app. It’s won or lost in moments that often feel small: a delivery delay, a billing dispute, a misunderstood policy. The way a brand responds in these moments is often more influential than any discount or points tier.

And that makes customer service a cornerstone of customer loyalty management.

When Service Is Seamless, Loyalty Feels Earned

Customers don’t demand flawlessness. But they do expect clarity, speed, and respect when things go wrong. Loyalty isn’t tested during moments of delight, it’s tested when something breaks. Support teams who can see a customer’s history, loyalty status, and previous interactions don’t just fix problems faster. They solve them with more context, more care, and often, more impact.

This is where integration matters:

• CRM systems should surface loyalty data
• CPaaS platforms can enable proactive outreach
• Ticketing systems can reflect VIP status or churn risk

Proactive Service = Preventative Loyalty Loss

The best loyalty moves aren’t reactive. They’re invisible, because the problem was handled before the customer noticed.

For example:

• Flagging shipping delays and sending apologies before the complaint
• Alerting high-value customers when products they love are low in stock
• Following up after negative sentiment is detected in chatbot interactions

This requires orchestration. But the payoff is reduced escalation volume, increased trust, and loyalty built on more than transactions.

Empower Agents Like They’re Brand Ambassadors

Loyalty lives or dies with the agent experience. If the frontline team feels unsupported, overworked, or stuck with legacy tools, they can’t deliver the kind of service that loyalty depends on.

Modern workforce engagement platforms are helping here, giving agents better training, clearer knowledge bases, and visibility into customer journeys. This isn’t just an ops upgrade, it’s a loyalty investment.

Customer Loyalty Management Trends to Watch

Enterprise loyalty strategies evolve with the customer, and the customer continues to change.

Over the past two years, loyalty has shifted from tactical marketing add-on to boardroom-level priority. Why? Because retention has become the fastest route to stable revenue.

Here’s what’s changing right now.

• Loyalty Is Getting Smarter: Rather than shouting about rewards, top brands are building invisible loyalty, systems that work behind the scenes, adjusting experiences based on behavior, purchase history, and product use. The loyalty isn’t in the point balance. It’s in the recognition. AI and predictive analytics are playing a bigger role here, helping teams act on churn signals before the customer ever says a word.
• Emotional Loyalty Takes the Lead: Price cuts don’t build loyalty. They build expectations. Enterprise buyers are shifting from transactional incentives to emotional loyalty strategies, things like exclusive experiences, consistent service, and values-based alignment. In B2B markets, that might look like strategic co-development, VIP access to product roadmaps, or account-based reward systems.
• Loyalty Hardwired Into CX: The strongest loyalty programs don’t operate in isolation. They’re woven into the wider customer experience stack, touching CRM, CPaaS, contact center platforms, and data systems. This allows brands to reward customers in real time, based on meaningful actions, not just spend.
• Consent-First Design: The days of collecting data “because we can” are over. Modern loyalty programs are being rebuilt around trust and transparency. That means clear value exchanges, upfront permissions, and control for the customer. Loyalty is no longer about how much data you can gather, it’s about how responsibly you use what you have.

Customer Loyalty Management Beyond the Transaction

Customer loyalty isn’t a finish line. It’s an ongoing, intentional outcome earned across every interaction, reinforced with every decision, and protected by every system put in place.

For enterprise teams, managing that loyalty means more than launching a rewards program. Managing loyalty well means making it easier for customers to stay than to leave. That’s not about discounts or perks, it’s about designing experiences that feel effortless, relevant, and personal.

Whether the goal is improving retention, boosting lifetime value, or gaining a clearer view of customer behaviour, the right strategy starts with the right tools, and the right insights.

CX Today offers a range of resources to help enterprise teams build loyalty systems that actually move the needle:

• Explore the Marketplace: Compare top loyalty management vendors with features tailored for growth, data integration, and security at scale.
• Join the Community: Learn how CX and marketing leaders across industries are evolving loyalty strategies in the CX Community.
• Track What’s Changing: Follow new developments in AI-powered loyalty, cross-channel experience design, and customer journey intelligence with research reports.

See how loyalty fits into the broader CX ecosystem. Visit our Ultimate CX Guide for a practical deep dive into the people, platforms, and processes driving customer-led growth.

They’ve long served as a shorthand for efficiency. But as AI reshapes the way service is delivered, these metrics are starting to look outdated.

When you strip away everything surrounding a customer service interaction, what it really boils down to is whether or not the customer gets their issue resolved. That’s what people really care about.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s in person, by phone, by email, or by chatbot – resolution is key.

This point was raised by Adrian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer at Zendesk, in a recent interview with CX Today.

“A successful outcome for our customers is just having their issues resolved. That’s why we’re evolving our pricing from seats to resolutions,” he said.

In fact, Zendesk Insights from July 2025 shared that 48% of CX leaders identified adopting outcome-based or flexible pricing aligned with successful resolutions as a high priority for 2026.

The shift from companies like Zendesk to outcome-based rather than activity-based measures is becoming a key talking point across the CX landscape.

In the modern contact center environment where AI agents can respond instantly, never tire, and provide seemingly infinite capacity, metrics like ‘time to first response’ and ‘average handle time’ start to lose their edge.

As McDermott puts it:

“Time to first response is effectively zero since customers expect near instant resolution. Average handle time? Who cares, because it’s basically free to have AI talk to your user as long as they’re enjoying it.”

From Metrics to Resolution

While McDermott’s comments could be misconstrued as championing AI replacing humans, he is quick to point out that the rise of automation doesn’t mean human agents are going away; it means that their roles are being redefined.

With AI handling Tier 1 and much of Tier 2 interactions, frontline teams are freed to focus on higher-value work, such as escalations, VIP cases, or interactions that require more understanding and empathy.

“Automation does drive escalation,” McDermott explains.

“Despite automation you’re going to see contacts where people become frustrated or just want to talk to a human. That makes omnichannel integration incredibly important.”

For enterprise leaders, this means rebalancing performance management.

Yes, metrics like average handle time and after-call work still matter for human-powered interactions. But at an aggregate level, success is increasingly about the speed and quality of resolutions – whether driven by automation, agents, or a combination of both.

Why Unification Matters

This shift towards outcomes also shines a spotlight on another enterprise challenge: tool sprawl.

Many contact centers still rely on separate systems for email, chat, voice, and ticketing – a setup that breeds inefficiency and disjointed experiences, as McDermott explains:

“If I’m using a different tool for email than I am for voice, it becomes jarringly obvious to the customer. It’s a high-friction interaction.”

This is where unified platforms enter the conversation.

Rather than orchestrating workflows across multiple systems, unification offers a single environment where channels, analytics, and AI are embedded end-to-end.

The result is smoother customer journeys and a far simpler experience for agents.

“Modern platforms shouldn’t take weeks and $10,000 just to change an IVR message,” McDermott adds.

“With a single omnichannel implementation, you can envelope agents and supervisors in one workspace, put your customer vision into the software, and create a unified view across every channel.”

Zendesk Resolution Platform

Zendesk’s approach to this unification can be seen through its Zendesk for Contact Center platform, which was launched back in March with 30+ new capabilities.

With AI built-in, Zendesk Contact Center removes the gaps between channels, agents, and systems, so every contact gets resolved faster across any channel.

From an agent perspective, this means lower training times, greater consistency, and fewer silos.

For supervisors, it means comprehensive dashboards, real-time sentiment tracking, and the ability to adapt workflows on the fly.

“You’re no longer just moving humans around queues,” McDermott explains

“You’re dynamically creating knowledge, adding automations, and driving consistent outcomes.”

The platform is also designed to scale quickly.

McDermott highlights how Zendesk helped a global fast-food chain go live in under a week, while cosmetics retailer Lush achieved a 60% AI-driven resolution rate – freeing agents to focus on deeper engagement.

“Eighty-five percent of our customers report positive ROI from implementing AI tools,” he said.

Preparing for the AI Future

Of course, unification alone isn’t enough. The role of AI in service delivery is evolving rapidly, and enterprises face growing pressure from boards and customers to keep pace.

McDermott sympathizes with contact center leaders having to navigate the influx of AI-powered solutions, claiming that they often “feel like they’re on the front line of AI pressure.

“The fear of change is real – but the cost of inaction is even higher.”

While it can be tempting to bide your time during a period of so many changes, McDermott warns that companies that choose this path risk being left behind.

Zendesk is looking to support those organizations that are unsure about AI implementation by positioning its AI strategy as a continuum.

The process starts with generative search for customers, progresses to agent co-pilots that summarize conversations or recommend next actions, and eventually extends to full automation of routine interactions.

“High-value interactions only represent about 25% of contact center volume,” McDermott explains.

“Nearly half are failures, where something breaks and the customer calls in. AI can take on that burden, leaving humans to deliver more meaningful engagement.”

As enterprises evaluate their next moves, one thing is clear: customer service is moving beyond old benchmarks.

The future is about outcomes, resolution, and unified platforms that empower both AI and humans to do their best work.

“Every brand must choose how to use the benefits of automation. But most recognize that a greater level of personal support is critical,” McDermott concludes.

The customer service agent of the future will move away from the day-to-day handling of mundane, basic queries. With the help of AI, agents will instead be deployed as empathetic problem solvers who deliver real resolutions.

You can learn more about Zendesk’s approach to AI in the contact center by reading this article.

You can also peruse the company’s full suite of solutions and services by visiting the website today.

However, over the last 15 years, messages from friends and family have slowly slipped off the channel and onto WhatsApp, Messenger, and other social media platforms.

In a bind, mobile operators experienced a sharp decline in use, and – like a Saharan road – traffic only trickled across their vast network infrastructures.

Their solution? Marketing application-to-person (A2P) messaging to businesses – and it worked.

The growth of the US SMS marketing market exemplifies this – as the following graphic from Grand View Research showcases.

Such growth comes as brands realize several benefits of using automated SMS messages in their customer communication strategies.

As one Mitto report found, businesses that take a “mature omnichannel approach” that includes SMS have achieved the following results:

•   2x more likely to respond to customers in real-time or in less than an hour
•   3x more likely to report extreme revenue growth over the past year
•   4x more likely to deepen customer loyalty

Of course, not all enterprises have achieved these results, and limited omnichannel maturity is one likely reason. Another blocker to wider success, however, lies in the complexities of how these messages travel from a business to their end-use recipient. Things get pretty complex out there in the wild world of A2P connectivity.

Undelivered Messages: A Bigger Problem Than You Think

While optimized SMS routing is being executed every single second across the globe, there remain  several reasons a business’s messages could fail to funnel into customers’ phones.

Perhaps the SMS platform being utilized doesn’t provide features like invalid phone number resolution? Or, maybe a customer’s number is not allowed by its network to receive SMS (for any reason). Many businesses will be aware of such issues.

Yet, problems relating to the vast ecosystem of carrier connectivity sometimes go unnoticed – and these issues can be critical. The use of multiple aggregators and lower-quality routes in particular regions will, in turn, offer lower delivery and engagement rates.

After all, as these messages go through intermediaries, communications take longer as they hop between multiple networks – with dropouts along the way.

Those issues often slip through the cracks, and – even when the SMS provider does spot the problem – it takes longer to resolve due to the levels between the provider and intermediary.

Of course, outages will sometimes occur across any network. Nevertheless, enterprises can enhance delivery rates by working with a provider offering direct connections with trusted partner carriers.

Moreover, ensuring reliable message delivery can enhance the customer experience and streamline operations.

Look for a Provider That Establishes Direct Connections with MNOs.

Selecting an SMS API provider that lists how many direct, in-country connections and exclusivities they have with globally managed network operators (MNOs) is critical to mitigating the risk of delays and dropouts.

After all, direct connections guarantee the shortest path to the mobile user. That means that content typically makes its way to customers in only one-to-three seconds: the shortest possible delay.

Moreover, direct connections often come at a lower cost, with no risk of manipulation along the chain of delivery. Indeed, the connection is always available, except ‌in the unlikely event of a mobile network being down.

Diving deeper, Luca Sacanna, Head of Carrier Operations at Mitto, said: “In addition to ensuring the fastest delivery, another benefit of using a direct connection is that you are not risking that your content or sender ID gets changed during the delivery process.”

Simply put, a business can ensure that messages reach the mobile network that’s supposed to receive them. Sacanna further explained:

“Very importantly, if no intermediaries are involved, no bad actors can benefit from the inflation of SMS traffic. This means there is no risk that some fraudster will hack into a business’ portal or app to try to stimulate artificial SMS traffic.”

What Else Should Businesses Look Out for?

It’s critical to check that the SMS provider works with more than one carrier in the business’s cornerstone regions. That will ensure the company can continue to operate in each essential region, even when an error or outage occurs.

Some SMS providers go further and work directly with MNOs connecting to their networks – for ongoing route testing and quality feedback – to ensure the proper delivery of A2P communications.

Consider Mitto. In addition to its increasing list of direct connections across the world, its routing platform includes monitoring tools that utilize AI to proactively analyze the delivery of its messages across A2P routes in real-time.

In monitoring its direct connections, Mitto can assess the optimum A2P routes and present the best path for every single message sent through its platform..

As such, it enhances the full A2P messaging experience, maintains service integrity, and ensures cost efficiency. But that’s not all…

Mitto: A Trusted A2P SMS Messaging Provider

As A2P SMS messaging gains momentum, it’s fast becoming the default channel for marketing communications, customer authentication, and circulating notifications.

Leveraging its direct connection partnerships in more than 100 countries, Mitto constantly monitors its traffic to highlight any pattern that could potentially be related to artificial traffic – a growing issue for high-volume SMS senders. From there, the vendor reports the issue to customers for immediate and proactive remedy.

Moreover, Sacanna noted:

“We also give our customers the possibility to choose which countries should/shouldn’t be enabled on our platform for their traffic, restricting even more any space to frauds.”

As such, Mitto enables optimum delivery rates while keeping networks free from potential issues. Its content filtering feature also helps here, monitoring peak SMS message rates against expected levels, message type, and content length.

With such features, Mitto protects brands and their customers from essentially any potential pitfalls along the SMS journey…

The result? Businesses enjoy greater security while leveraging better overall communication strategies that deliver increased revenues.

Eager to learn more? Book a consultation with the Mitto team and upgrade your SMS strategy.

Instead, most communications will likely be from businesses.

Why? Because people now use WhatsApp, Messenger, and social media as their predominant personal communication channels.

Mobile operators experienced a sharp decline in network traffic when this trend started. So, they asked: what can we do with our already huge network infrastructure? 

Eventually, they marketed the channel to enterprises for application-to-person (A2P) messaging – and had significant success.

After all, open rates are much higher on SMS than email. Moreover, the channel has an enormous reach, so businesses can contact customers even when they’re on holiday and have their data roaming switched off. 

Yet, go back to your phone. You may also notice that one or two messages are from fraudsters impersonating businesses – and that’s where the vulnerabilities of SMS begin. 

Consumer SMS Vulnerabilities You Need to Be Aware Of

Many of us mock phishing scams for being so easy to spot, and lots of the “Prince of Nigeria” types of attacks still trickle into our inboxes.  

Digital natives can spot these in a heartbeat. But, other times, it’s more tricky. For instance, the fraudster may follow up the phishing message with a deep-faked voice call to further convince the customer. 

However, even without these additional touches, batch SMS phishing sprees may wield results for attackers, and – unfortunately – such sprees are not difficult or expensive to run, either. 

Consider the market prices to send traffic from the US to the UK. It costs around £700 to send 50,000 SMS messages via official routes. 

If just one percent takes the bait and follows the troublesome link, that’s 500 people in danger of being scammed in one fell swoop. 

Moreover, as reports of massive data breaches continue to surge worldwide, these phishing attempts will only increase. 

Yet, phishing is only one potential SMS vulnerability. There are many others, including SMS malware. 

In this example, an attacker attaches malicious software to the target’s phone, which may send and receive text messages without knowledge or consent. The attacker may then send phishing messages to your contacts or access personal information stories on the device.  

Another couple of common SMS vulnerabilities include:

• SMS Flooding – When an attacker sends you a batch of messages – one after another – often aiming to hide a malicious message within the flood. Sometimes, the objective is to instead disrupt your service or – more simply – just irritate you. 
• SMS Interceptions – When an attacker intercepts your message as it travels between the device and the network. From there, they might modify the message or redirect it to their device or server for fraud.

While some of these attacks will evade the enterprise’s authority, there are many more vulnerabilities that businesses must keep their eyes on and guard against. 

Enterprise SMS Vulnerabilities You Need to Be Aware Of

In 2021, the Mobile Economic Forum published the third edition of its Business SMS Fraud Framework, isolating further cases of fraud impacting consumers, mobile operators, and service providers.  

Some cases also relate to the enterprise, with SMS interceptions (as introduced above) a particularly troublesome example. 

For instance, an attacker may intercept an SMS message – typically containing sensitive data like a one-time password (OTP) or a two-factor authentication (2FA) message – while the user is roaming.

That interception could enable the malicious third party to access the user’s accounts – with some scammers able to access their bank account details and authorize payments without consent.

However, the framework also puts forward other examples of more niche SMS vulnerabilities that are difficult to spot.

The two fraudulent practices below are excellent examples, with the second highlighting the dangers of “inside jobs” caused by an enterprise’s network partner:

• Enterprise Identity Theft –  When an attacker sends customers scam SMS messages that include the enterprise’s credentials, like sender IDs – i.e., shortened business names. Two prominent CPaaS players got in trouble last year for selling the tech that makes this possible in Australia without the proper checks. 
• Message Trashing – When the messaging provider deletes a message before it reaches the operator and – therefore – customers. They may then send a fake delivery receipt to conceal the fraud while lowering the average cost of message delivery.

These two examples exemplify the importance of working with a trusted SMS provider like HORISEN. 

Yet, other vendors will also claim that they offer a robust, reliable platform. As such, businesses must know how to spot the trusted players amongst the pretenders. 

Picking a Partner to Navigate the Sea of SMS Vulnerabilities

The trusted SMS messaging vendor and CPaaS enabler HORISEN, meets the highest security standards, boasting the following features:

• GDPR compliance
• Data is hosted in a HORISEN cloud environment in Switzerland
• Servers are collocated in bank-certified data centers
• State-of-the-art layered security measures applied to protect the platform
• Redundant DDoS Protection on ISPs level (to receive only cleaned IP traffic)
• Connections are restricted by IP address, with only trusted IPs allowed
• VPN connectivity available on request
• IPSec and TLS connections for customers as a security best practice

Yet, the vendor also guides its clients by providing expert advice to secure the foundations for their SMS strategies to flourish. 

Exemplifying this, HORISEN – which received recognition in the 2024 CX Marketplace for CPaaS – offered seven best practices to CX Today for ensuring businesses leverage a secure SMS messaging platform: 

1. Prioritize security as the foundation of the system.
2. Utilize state-of-the-art security measures in bank-certified data centers.
3. Implement strict access control with trusted IP addresses and VPN options.
4. Ensure high availability with a 99.999% uptime policy and auto-rebinding.
5. Maintain vigilant monitoring and swift resolution with the help of a dedicated support team.
6. Establish an incident management protocol for prompt response and transparency.
7. Adhere to industry standards like ISO 27001:2022, GDPR, OWASP, and NIST for robust security and compliance.

Such advice is golden across all industries. Consider telecommunications as a sector especially vulnerable to these risks. Failing to invest in robust messaging technology may render them vulnerable to cyber threats, potentially endangering both their users’ safety and the integrity of their operations.

To dive deeper into the weeds on each of the seven points, read HORISEN’s latest blog: Safeguarding the Integrity of Communication

Eager to learn more about how HORISEN can help bolster your enterprise communications strategy? Visit: www.horisen.com

RCS Branded Message is one part of BT’s suite of Rich Communications products, serving as the starting point in the journey to a full RCS solution with rich features like conversational based media and imagery sharing.  

“RCS Branded Message is basically a slimmed down version of traditional RCS, allowing brands to seamlessly move their customer engagement from SMS to a more feature-rich alternative,” says Catherine Maguire, Product Manager – Richer Messaging at BT.  

RCS Branded Message effectively requires no operational change from brands – they can keep doing what they’re doing with their existing messaging and reap the benefits of richer engagement, while BT take care of everything in the background.  

Sounds too good to be true? Let’s have a look at the details. 

Looking Ahead from Traditional SMS

While SMS has rightfully earned its status as a tried-and-true brand communications method, digital evolution continues to reveal its limitations. In fact, SMS offers nothing more than black and white text with a link, which doesn’t cater to current customer expectations.  

“With the BT Smart Messaging Team, SMS has always been the core of our suite of omnichannel communications solutions,” Maguire shares. “But as the market progresses, we can’t help but notice the great opportunity outside of this channel, and the way RCS can address this.”  

RCS Branded Message allows brands the chance to enhance their SMS communication features for RCS-enabled devices, of which there are over 20 million in the UK market alone. 

“RCS Branded Message works by uplifting existing SMS traffic brands might already send, and anything that doesn’t work on RCS will automatically fall back to SMS as usual,” Maguire assures. 

RCS Branded Message: Taking Customer Messaging to the Next Level

How exactly does RCS Branded Message help upgrade brands’ traditional messaging experience? Let’s break it down. 

• Brand Logo: According to McKinsey, 75% of consumers say that brand awareness influences their purchasing decisions. This demonstrates that consumers prefer purchasing from brands they trust, making brand identity a crucial asset.
  “RCS Branded Message incorporates brand logos and identity into messaging, which helps increase brand recognition and loyalty,” Maguire notes. 
• Read Receipts: Unlike in SMS, brands can utilise read receipts in RCS Branded Message to confirm message delivery, which in turn can help assess consumer engagement and tailor follow-up strategies accordingly. “This ultimately enhances customer engagement and drives more meaningful interactions. It also helps optimise targeted campaigns.” 
• Brand Verification: With the blue tick symbol widely recognised as a symbol of authenticity among consumers, it’s becoming increasingly indispensable for brands.
  “By enabling brands to be ‘vetted’ with a similar verification symbol, RCS Branded Message increases trust, reduces the risk of fraud, and ensures a positive user experience,” Maguire says. 
• Information Pages: RCS Branded Message also enhances brand awareness and credibility through dedicated brand information pages. 

“Delivering easy-to-access informative content is a powerful tool for building brand identity, reputation, and loyalty among consumers.” 

• URL Previews: Let us not forget URL previews – another asset of RCS Branded Message that has been demonstrated to increase click-through rates.
  “URL previews entice recipients to explore linked content and drive traffic to the brand’s website or specific landing pages,” Maguire explains. 

So… How Can You Bring This to Life?

One of the very best parts about BT’s RCS Branded Message solution is that it requires virtually zero technical expertise, integration, or effort from the brand’s side.  

“All that brands need to do is get in touch with us, and we’ll do all the heavy lifting for them as their CPaaS provider, making sure their SMS traffic is optimally leveraged to RCS Branded Message and that it’s performing at its peak, ” Maguire concludes. 

To learn more about RCS Branded Message, contact the BT Smart Messaging Team at smart.messaging@bt.com or visit here. 

However, the only way to ensure you’re living up to consumer expectations is to learn from crucial interactions and constantly evolve. This is where conversation intelligence comes in. Conversational intelligence solutions empower businesses to understand their customers and their journeys better, create powerful self-service experiences, and augment agents.

Here are some reasons your business should consider investing in conversation intelligence software in 2024.

1.    Conversation Intelligence Delivers Deeper Insights

Contact centers are brimming with valuable data. Your contact center software can provide insights into everything from employee performance to the steps involved in a successful customer journey. However, many contact centers struggle to turn this data into actionable insights.

Conversation Intelligence software allows businesses to dive deeper into interactions, going beyond basic contact center metrics like average handling time.

The right solutions can monitor interactions on any channel, from voice to video and messaging apps, providing a holistic view of the customer journey. These tools can identify which activities improve customer sentiment, which leads to customer churn, and what businesses need to do to ensure growth.

Some CRM and CCaaS vendors even offer access to conversation intelligence tools that use bots to deliver real-time insights and coaching to contact center agents. This means companies can constantly and proactively improve the level of service they provide.

2.    Improved Quality Assurance and Compliance

Conversation intelligence tools don’t just provide businesses with insights into opportunities for growth. They can also help to mitigate risks and problems within the workplace. For instance, a conversation intelligence tool built into a contact center can automate the quality assurance process, monitoring and evaluating agent conversations instantly.

This ensures companies can keep track of issues with conversations that could harm their reputation or cause customer churn. Automated QA solutions can help to guide training initiatives, and provide supervisors and managers with insights into their top performers.

Additionally, these tools can also help to support contact center compliance. They can detect risks by identifying the information shared during a call or conversation. This can help to mitigate threats in the contact center, and protect companies from legal issues and fines.

3.    Reduced Customer Service Costs

Increasingly, companies are discovering that the contact center is more than just a “cost center”; it’s crucial to ensuring the long-term profitability of the business. However, though the ROI of customer experience is becoming clearer, companies still need to ensure they’re using their resources efficiently. This is particularly true in a difficult economic environment.

Conversation intelligence tools can help organizations to reduce costs in various ways. First, they can offer insights into which sales, marketing and customer service strategies drive the best results, optimizing how companies use their resources.

Secondly, conversational intelligence tools can create bots and assistants that drive more effective self-service experiences. Deflecting customer interactions from traditional channels to AI-powered platforms can reduce the number of team members business leaders need to invest in.

4.    Conversation Intelligence Improves Productivity

Another way conversation intelligence can help to reduce business costs and improve contact center performance, is by enhancing employee productivity.

Conversation intelligence software can provide employees with the insights they need to deliver more personalized and powerful experiences to customers in seconds. This eliminates the need to search through various apps and databases during customer conversations.

Conversation intelligence tools used to create self-service solutions can reduce the number of tasks employees need to handle each day. They can also give employees real-time support and coaching, using historical data to deliver next-best-action insights.

Moreover, these solutions liberate employees from repetitive and mundane tasks, like taking notes about a discussion or summarizing a call. This ensures agents can focus on the tasks that matter most, like delighting customers.

5.    Greater Customer Satisfaction

The biggest benefit of conversation intelligence software is improving customer experiences. First, the right technology provides companies with the insights they need into the customer journey and the preferences of their buyers. This helps business leaders create comprehensive strategies for customer satisfaction and retention.

Conversational intelligence can pave the way for creating innovative, generative AI bots that deliver highly personalized and branded self-service experiences. Some solutions can even be built into IVR systems, ensuring customers are routed to the right agent quickly.

These tools can also offer valuable insights into customer and employee sentiment, helping companies pinpoint gaps in their customer service strategy. The result is happier customers, higher customer lifetime value, and increased profits.

6.    Conversation Intelligence Can Increase Revenue

Speaking of increased profits, conversation intelligence tools can offer companies an excellent opportunity to boost revenue. Not only does it empower organizations to deliver more personalized experiences and increase customer lifetime value, but it can also help enhance conversions.

Conversational intelligence tools can help pinpoint the best times to present upselling or cross-selling offers to customers based on their sentiment and position in the buyer journey. The right tools can even be used to build proactive bots to reach customers with personalized offers.

Conversation intelligence technology also empowers businesses to implement more effective customer retention and loyalty strategies. It can help companies identify their top advocates and determine what causes loyal customers to churn.

Unlock the Power of Conversation Intelligence

Conversation intelligence tools do much more than simply give businesses access to more valuable data. The right solutions can help organizations unlock valuable growth opportunities, improve employee productivity, and increase customer satisfaction.

As AI technology continues to evolve, becoming more advanced and intuitive, now could be the perfect time for businesses to start exploring the benefits of conversational intelligence.

Having once modified language into leetspeak and later textspeak, SMS messaging has gone from the palms of teens in the 90s, who were lucky enough to have a Nokia 2010, to a lucrative enterprise-level marketing tool.   

Still, it continues to shape communication in the modern world.   

The History of SMS Messaging

The Past   

SMS began its journey in 1992 after the first text, “Merry Christmas,” was sent between two young developers. A year later, Nokia implemented a revolutionary new feature to indicate an incoming message that caught the attention of a Finnish news provider who started offering free news headlines via SMS. 

By the early to mid-2000s, SMS was a mass media. Ambitious advertisers convened in London for the first mobile advertising conference hosted by the Wireless Marketing Association, and pioneering companies like HORISEN developed the very first SMS trading solution. 

With technical obstacles out of the way, mobile phone sales soared, marketers cashed in on a new 24/7 captive audience, and SMS messaging quickly became the number one solution in direct marketing.  

The Present 

Today, 23 billion SMS messages are sent worldwide each day – that’s 270,000 every second. With its ability to be ubiquitous across mobile devices and not data-dependent, SMS messaging has become the most widely used form of communication in 2023. 

Recognizing this, brands around the world are leveraging SMS messaging to increase ROI and enhance customer experience.  

For instance, in 2020, US retailers Giant Eagle used SMS to allow customers to schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments and receive updates on requirements by state. In just three weeks, Giant Eagle generated 96,000 subscribers, with a 40 percent SMS response rate. 

Peace Out Skincare also saw tremendous results by integrating SMS into its marketing strategy. From August to October 2020, SMS accounted for 18-34 percent of the company’s monthly sales or $150,000 in revenue. The brand allows customers to opt-in to receive SMS offers via their homepage, with a 15 percent discount for new members.   

Thanks to its accessibility, reach, and precision SMS messaging can be used to target audiences anywhere, almost instantly. According to Gartner, open and response rates for SMS are as high as 98 percent. With email, it’s as little as six percent.  

Not only is SMS marketing more effective, but consumers prefer it. Statistics from G2 show that 83 percent of consumers like to receive appointment reminders via text, but only 20% of businesses do so.   

In this new light, amidst chaotic email inboxes and jarring pop-up ads, SMS marketing is proving to be a profitable, non-intrusive, helpful form of advertising.  

HORISEN set itself up well to excel in this new reality, turning to pure messaging technology software development and becoming a vendor-neutral company that offers an easy-to-use solution that plugs into virtually any enterprise environment.  

The Future  

Moving forward, more brands will seek to capitalize on SMS messaging and the close relationship between consumers and their phones. But companies shouldn’t rely on messaging mass information across each channel; personalization is key.  

Experts from our CX Market Guide for CX strategy recognize that customers expect their favorite brands to use the information they collect to deliver hyper-personalized, proactive experiences. Global CX Consultant Christopher Brookes writes: 

“Proactivity means investigating and orientating the organisation to better support future implications of today’s customer choices. This requires data integrity and appreciation of the lifetime value of customers.”

In customer service, SMS is likely the vessel to make this possible.  

Meanwhile, the future of SMS marketing is far from over. With the rise of RCS, or ‘Rich Communication Service’ A2P, or ‘Application to Person’ methods, companies can integrate SMS messaging with their CRM system and send messages with stunning visual effects and branding.  

SMS for the Win

Few companies could predict the impact SMS messaging would have in 2001 and its meteoric rise since, except HORISEN.  

Stepping onto the SMS scene in 2001, HORISEN has spent more than 20 years developing a variety of feature-rich, sales-driven, and easy-to-use messaging technology solutions.  

Its CEO, Fabrizio Salanitri, says, “Behind every successful business lies a powerful idea. Since 2001, we have expertly developed messaging technology solutions to enable messaging companies to start and run their businesses.”  

Perhaps it is this profound foresight, ambition, and understanding of people that has won HORISEN the ‘Best SMS Platform Provider ─ Wholesale Solution’ at the CC-Global Awards for seven years running.  

Mitto, a leader in omnichannel communications, offers solutions that help companies bridge the gaps between their disconnected tools for sales, marketing, and customer service. The provider has proven just how important omnichannel communications are in today’s world.  

In one study, Mitto even found companies investing in omnichannel experiences were four times more likely to report large numbers of loyal customers, and three times more likely to report significant revenue increases. Driven by this knowledge, Mitto is constantly improving and expanding its platform, ensuring every business can unlock the power of flexible, open, and omnichannel interactions. 

Let’s look at some of the core components of Mitto’s solution. 

Mitto Conversations: A Single Unified Ecosystem for Communications 

 Mitto Conversations provides a single dashboard environment designed to help businesses manage all their messaging-based interactions. 

According to YouGov, 77% of customers say they’re more likely to buy from a company if they can interact with them via messaging apps. Additionally, 83% of customers actively browse for and buy items through message-based conversations with brands.  

Mitto Conversations allows businesses to take advantage of the growing power of messaging for customer service, marketing, and conversational commerce. The all-in-one platform connects tools like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with SMS, Viber, and a host of other tools. Using the straightforward application, businesses can help their agents deliver personalized, consistent experiences throughout the customer journey. 

“Today’s consumers are interacting with brands via more channels than ever. Businesses may struggle to keep up. Mitto Conversations solves this problem by allowing organizations to manage interactions across all avenues in one place. This makes it easier for them to deliver memorable experiences and provide top-shelf support.”  – Sandro Stupar, Product Director at Mitto 

Mitto Conversations is a simple platform, with no coding knowledge required, and features a host of customization options, from automated workflows to AI chatbots. Plus, it comes with labels to help add context to conversations, collaboration tools, and 24/7 customer support.

Mitto Campaigns: Text Message Marketing 

Another tool in the Mitto portfolio designed to leverage the benefits of messaging for customer interactions is Campaigns. This simple tool allows brands to build, implement, and manage immersive SMS marketing campaigns effortlessly.  

All organizations need to do to get started is add a list of customers to the platform and begin crafting their messages. Mitto Campaigns supports rich dynamic content, segmentation, and scheduling tools. Plus, it has powerful analytical and reporting features to help businesses glean valuable insights.  

Used together with Mitto Conversations, Campaigns allows organizations to develop a fully comprehensive strategy for sales, service, and marketing, all for the digital world. Users can manage contacts and customer information with powerful profiles, and even create templates for service notifications, alerts, reminders, and special offers.  

Mitto Integrations: Bringing the Landscape Together 

Mitto’s intuitive solutions for omnichannel, message-based conversations provide businesses with a host of amazing benefits. The toolkits are easy to use and powerful, with a variety of customization and automation options built in to improve business workflows. 

Integrations are available for: 

• Marketing tools: Integrations with solutions like the Salesforce Marketing Cloud help businesses to streamline marketing campaigns and track metrics in one convenient place. Companies can even extend their customer reach by leveraging insights from Salesforce to create automated, and personalized engaging SMS campaigns.  
• E-commerce platforms: Mitto also empowers companies to align their e-commerce platforms and tools with their messaging strategy. In 2023, Mitto announced a fantastic native integration for Shopify, one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms. Mitto’s integration with Shopify can help businesses reduce cart abandonment rates and increase sales. Mitto’s research showed 73% of customers are likely to return to an abandoned cart after receiving a personalized message from a company.  
• CRMs: Ideal for bringing personalization into the customer service, sales, and marketing strategy, Mitto’s CRM integrations make it easy to track and leverage customer data. Integrations with tools like HubSpot allow businesses to build more valuable marketing campaigns based around customer segment information and key purchasing behavior details.  

Companies can also integrate with robust automation tools, like Microsoft Power Automate, to streamline and enhance workflows, and security solutions like Auth0. The brand is constantly expanding its portfolio of native integrations, with solutions from leading vendors like IBM, Zoho, WordPress, and many others.  

If the above solutions aren’t the right fit for your business, Mitto also offers a fully customizable API, ready to plug into any technology stack. This ensures companies can build the perfect omnichannel solution for their business needs, without compromise.  

Mitto: A Powerful Solution for Omnichannel CX 

Focusing on the ever-growing world of message-based service, Mitto offers solutions designed to connect companies with their target audience.  

Their powerful toolkit helps organizations take advantage of innovative ways to reach their audience. Mitto combines social media solutions like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, with convenient tools like SMS, WhatsApp, and voice.  

Mitto’s products help businesses to enhance the customer experience through every stage of the buying journey. Whether you’re investing in a new conversational commerce strategy, upgrading your marketing campaigns with SMS, or simply looking for new ways to offer convenient customer support, Mitto has everything today’s brands need.  

What’s more, the company’s open and flexible approach to integrations means businesses can finally bring all of their communication tools together in one convenient landscape. Not only does this improve the consistency of the experience brands can give their customers, but it also leads to greater visibility into the customer journey, and improved satisfaction rates.  

Proactive customer communications, conversational analytics, and agent experience are just some of those at the core of conversations that CX leaders have every day.

Of course, generative AI may tickle each of these. Nonetheless, we wanted to scratch below the surface of the flashy headlines and learn how various technologies can make a tangible difference to CX today (pun intended!).

As such, we got in touch with some of the tech providers pioneering various subsets of CX, from enterprise collaborations to conversational AI.

These providers – each a winner at our annual CX Awards – put forward their sharpest minds to engage with us, dissecting some of those most significant trends touching the CX space.

In doing so, we put together a treasure troth of conversations, which include many golden peals of insights that will allow CX captains to steer their teams in the best possible direction.

Yes, welcome to our CX Trends 2023 series. Here is a sneak peek of some sessions you won’t want to miss.

Trends Videos to Watch Out for

Here is a taster of the CX Trends videos available now!

1. Designing and Delivering a Proactive Customer Service Strategy

Now for the elephant in the room… ChatGPT. Yes, there is a lot of generative AI information out there. However, it’s tricky to read between the lines.

Nevertheless, it’s challenging to get right. Indeed, 2022 Gartner research suggested that flawed proactive outreach programs do more harm than good.

Thankfully, Jono Luk, Vice President of Product Management at Webex, joined us to share tips and tricks to avoid all the possible pitfalls of building such a strategy.

Want to watch the session? Check it out here: Designing and Delivering a Proactive Customer Service Strategy.

2. How AI Assistance Can Help Your Business’s CX Proposition

The conversational AI space is awash with vendors all vying to automate more customer conversations and – in doing so – pushing innovation forward at a record speed.

As such, these tech providers are thinking in new ways – beyond the relative basics of parroting responses to frequently asked questions – and opening up new possibilities for customer assistance.

Rob LoCascio, CEO and Founder of LivePerson, walks us through some of these while providing more insight into where the industry is heading and how customers, agents, and businesses will benefit.

Want to watch the session? Check it out here: How AI Assistance Can Help Your Business’s CX Proposition.

3. Utilizing AI and ChatGPT In the Contact Center

Now for the elephant in the room… ChatGPT. Yes, there is a lot of generative AI information out there at the moment. However, it’s tricky to read between the lines.

How should I prepare? What are the guardrails I need to put in place? What practical applications can I implement right now?

Brónagh Crowley, VP of Sales at Ultimate, helps us navigate all these tough-to-answer questions and more, sharing the same insights she gives her contact center customers.

Want to watch the session? Check it out here: Utilizing AI and ChatGPT In the Contact Center.

Where Can I Watch?

To wade through our complete collection of CX Trend videos, click here!

With each participating tech provider walking away with a 2023 CX Award, our specialist speakers sure know a thing or two about specific subsets of customer experience.

And we have tailored our CX Trends series to cross many of these subsets, so the videos meet the diverse interests of everybody within the space.

So, what are you still reading for?! Check out our videos, capture new insights, and foray further into the vast world of customer experience.