Today’s contact centers are under pressure to innovate and evolve faster than ever. As digital transformation takes hold across all industries, businesses must quickly adapt and update their tools for customer engagement to more efficiently grow and expand their operations. And as we’ll discover, regression testing plays a crucial role in this.
At the heart of this rapid evolution are fast-changing expectations for customer experience (CX). As Customer Contact Week reports, 85% of business leaders expect digital CX channels to dominate and proliferate as we look toward 2025. That omnichannel digital experience is increasingly based in the cloud and shaped by conversational AI, leading to additional CX solutions that require ongoing attention and monitoring.
With change as the only constant, how can today’s businesses ensure healthy growth? While every update brings the potential for enhanced CX, each software tweak also risks throwing the entire CX equilibrium off balance. And when CX falls short, business growth can quickly be derailed.
Regardless of industry, companies that want to grow effectively through the pressures of digital change must support their constant evolution through regression testing services.
What Is Regression Testing?
Although the name may signify a backward-looking stance, regression testing is in fact one of the most proactive, forward-thinking tools a business can employ.
In its most basic form, regression testing is designed to analyze the impact of each software update. As code is updated, it’s essential to compare the new state of the system — in this case, the contact center CX — to its previous state. By doing so, you can spot any bugs or defects caused by conflicts between the logic of the new code and the existing system structure.
Regression testing can take many forms, from functional tests to load tests to live CX monitoring. Whatever the shape, the key is that you’re continuously testing your new code against old code to ensure updates aren’t introducing any problems. In this regard, regression testing falls within the larger frameworks of Agile and DevOps methodologies, which involve short, fast development cycles with continuous, automated testing.
Regression Testing in Action
Let’s consider what this looks like. With regression testing, as with other Agile methodologies, it’s important to take a granular view. This type of testing is most effective when conducted on a continuous, ongoing basis. If you wait until a major release to perform regression tests, you undermine the process and make it much more difficult to find the source of any problems that have arisen.
Now, imagine a bank preparing to deploy an update to its IVR system. It’s adding an option to set up credit card payments by phone, and this update requires a new main menu and an entirely new sub-menu for customers to execute the pay-by-phone option. As such, there will be several new nodes at which customers input information, unleashing a plethora of potential new problems.
When this update is deployed, every new potential pathway must be tested against the previous setup to ensure the CX is still intact. That means the team must build a range of test cases that reflect each potential input and customer response to quickly find errors and deploy fixes. From there, the cycle continues, with each additional update calling for further rounds of regression testing.
How Regression Testing Supports Business Growth
Without continuous regression testing, every update puts CX stability at risk. By the time a bug causes CX issues, it may take hours of downtime and digging through code to find the source of the problem. In this sense, regression testing ensures the stability, reliability and quality of software applications and systems, regardless of the specific industry or business use case.
However, what may be less obvious is how regression testing supports the growth objectives of businesses. CX stability is, of course, crucial for business success, but let’s explore a few ways that regression testing services play a critical role in ensuring successful growth.
Enhanced CX and Brand Reputation
We’ve already made the case for regression testing as a set of “guard rails” to keep CX from going off the tracks. Essentially, it ensures that your vision for each CX update comes to fruition.
But, why does this matter for business growth? As important as marketing and sales are for successfully scaling your business, neither is ultimately effective on its own. CX drives brand reputation, and no amount of marketing and sales efforts can overcome a poor reputation in the long run. Regression testing strengthens customer confidence, and that’s the foundation for all successful business growth.
Reduced Downtime and Expenses
Perhaps the most common argument against regression testing is that it adds extra time to the development process. After all, why test what’s already been tested?
This argument overlooks what regression testing saves your company in the long run. These small, iterative tests reduce costly system downtime, which directly limits revenue and damages your brand reputation. Additionally, by “shifting left” and testing earlier and more frequently in the development process, you avoid the much more expensive testing required to track down complex bugs later in the process.
Most regression testing can also be automated, further reducing the resources you must dedicate to the testing process. With fewer resources tied up in testing and bug fixes, your company can devote more resources and efforts toward achieving its growth goals.
Faster Time to Market
Rather than slowing your business down, regression testing accelerates the pace of your development cycles.
Again, it’s important to emphasize that this fits within the larger context of an integrated DevOps approach. With shorter cycles supported by continuous iteration and continuous development, you don’t have to wait for lengthy development cycles to complete before you can test updates to your IVR or other CX systems.
Ultimately, this means your updates, fixes and new releases reach the finish line much faster. This ability to penetrate new markets or innovate more quickly is invaluable, especially when you’re working to grow your business.
Scale Your Business Faster With Cyara
These are just a few of the growth-related benefits of leveraging regression testing services. Effective testing sets your business up for better resource allocation, more efficient change management and more streamlined scaling — all of which are essential for successful growth.
However, regression testing isn’t something you have to do on your own. With Cyara’s automated regression testing services, you can build a full suite of tests up to four times faster than you could alone, and you’ll likely reduce your testing costs anywhere from 50% to 80%.
Our testing processes are designed to cover every aspect of your omnichannel CX, from IVR systems to chatbot applications. With a design-driven approach, you can easily and quickly build and deploy automated regression tests and utilize the subsequent results to promptly visualize results and trends.
Curious why companies rely on Cyara? Reach out to schedule a demo today.
