Pegaworld is the annual user conference of software provider Pegasystems. The more than 5000 participants, largely from nearly 800 customer organizations from the business community, government and healthcare, come for knowledge exchange, training and networking. No remarkable innovations for the customer contact business were announced this year, but Pegasystems did launch the Low-Code App Factory.

According to Pega's CEO Alan Trefler, companies are claiming en masse that they work customer-oriented. But in practice they still organize their processes around channels, groups and functions and not around the customer. A second problem is that the applications that companies use are often not organized around journeys, but based on functions and tasks. As a result, customers have to “go from one silo to another”. Trefler therefore introduces the concept of 'microjourney' – a new designation for what used to be a case – and for empathy in customer service.

Alan Trefler, CEO Pegasystems

Channel-independent customer journey

As far as Pega is concerned, companies should bet on channel-independent journeys. Communication via chat and messaging is rapidly increasing within customer service compared to voice interaction. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to predict what 'the' next channel will be. Which messaging service individual users prefer depends in part on region, age and background. This forces organizations to focus even more on end-to-end services instead of developing separate apps for each channel, according to Pega.

the recent takeover of In The Chat by Pegasystems fits into this vision. In The Chat is a digital customer service platform that integrates channels such as messaging, social media, live chat, email, messengers and chatbots, enabling seamless communication with customers. Within Pega Customer Service, users can now communicate with their customers through any messaging app: Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messaging, Apple Business Chat, Google RCS and future channels.

In addition, Pegasystems once again put model-driven application development in the spotlight. Users can now use the Enterprise Low Code Factory building your own applications in the cloud – think of custom CRM solutions. Low-code application development is on the rise – a good example of this is Google DialogFlow, which is used for developing chatbot solutions.

Churn cut in half

VodafoneZiggo was also put on stage during Pegaworld2019. Nicole Verburg (who also gave a keynote during the Pega Benelux Engagement Summit last spring) explained how VodafoneZiggo (four million customers) is fully committed to sales and service personalization. By working with Pega Marketing, the question of which marketing communication should go to which customer and through which channel has been answered and the churn has been halved. Every sales and service employee knows exactly who the customer is and what messages they have received. Employees are presented with suggestions via Next Best Action that have the greatest chance of the customer saying yes to a retention or cross/upsell offer. The new working method was first tested in a special contact center team and was then gradually rolled out.

Digital transformation in practice

Hyper-personalization is a logical consequence of 'digital', as a short keynote by Moshe Pridan (SVP business solutions management at SiriusXM) also showed. Previously, it was a provider of satellite radio, a subscription-based alternative to FM radio that has been in great demand in the US for years. If a subscriber wanted to cancel, customer characteristics (such as number of subscriptions or usage) were not taken into account. When cars were equipped with iPod integration, it seemed that SiriusXM was gone for a while, but the company has instead plunged into the streaming business. That has done them no harm: with 100 million listeners, the market value is now 30 billion dollars. The content SiriusXM offers today – hundreds of (theme) channels – can be purchased across all devices, including your tablet, smartphone, Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Unlike in the early days of SiriusXM, the company now knows who the customer is and what the preferences are, allowing sales and retention offers to be personalized. That is important, because the company has to compete with (in addition to the Swedish Spotify) American providers such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Tidal. In short, a successful digital transformation of what was once a traditional radio station provider.

Text and image: Erik Bouwer

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