Customer Experience Management – A Thin Line between Success and Failure

Customer experience management is considered to be the Holy Grail that every organization is seeking to improve upon. With complex demands and continuous changes, organizations are being pressured to come up with new strategies that can create more impact and generate maximum customer satisfaction. Customer’s mindset keeps on changing as and when new trends come along, and organizations have to be updated with these trends to ensure that they are familiar with the changes so that they can provide the best of services to their customers. Here’s an article which sheds light on the latest trends and strategies that are required to ensure that the organization is always on top of the game.

Let’s begin with having a detailed view of what are the latest trends that are shaping – Customer Experience Management

1. Customer Ecosystem – Redefining Boundaries through Technology

Technology is playing a prominent role in distinguishing services that are vital to many organizations’ business models. Through the use of technology, brands have started expanding their service levels in an attempt to connect more widely with customers throughout their journey. Brands are trying to move outside of their usual comfort zones. For example, Amazon, one of the top e-commerce platforms in the world, recently ventured into the food industry through Amazon Go. This move has made Amazon stand out amongst its competitors and has proved to be a major success. Now, with Amazon venturing into different fields has enabled it to better engage with customers to deliver value and remain competitive for years to come.

2. Employees Transforming into Customer Engagement Agents

There’s always a concern from the customer end as to why they should be at the mercy of disconnected enterprise systems, and employees with specialized skill sets? The search for the answer ends here. With the latest advances in the field of artificial intelligence and robotic automation, the stringent lines between service agents, salespersons, marketers, the front and back office will be completely eroded. This will result in immediate customer satisfaction, as all customer-facing employees will be able to service, sell and attend to the customer needs at the particular moment. Apart from this, back-office employees will concentrate more on delivering outcomes for customers. Finally, the organization will move along with the customer, instead of the customer having to move across various departments in the organization.

3. Ensuring CX and AI go hand-in-hand

The rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence) has started, and a recent study conducted by BRP Consulting discovered that in the next three years, there would be a 45% increase in the use of AI by retailers. The reason behind this steep rise is that it will help in improving the customer experience. Another report stated that by 2020, 85% of customer interactions would be handled by machines, and the global economy will double by 2035 because of AI. This is a sign that, customer service and satisfaction will gradually grow thanks to the immense ability of AI.

4. New regulations will raise CX (Customer Experience) stakes

Introducing new rules and regulations into the way businesses are conducted will only raise the bar towards improving customer satisfaction. The European Union (EU) is all set to introduce a new bill called GDPR – (General Data Protection Regulation), which will empower its citizens with the right to ask businesses to delete their personal information. So, deleting personal information means, losing important data, and losing data means losing potential customers. What is the best way to stop this from happening? It’s by not giving customers a reason to request deletion of their data in the first place.

Businesses shouldn’t have unnecessary, irrelevant and untimely touch points with regards to the customers. The customers at all times should be in the comfort zone on how brands interact with them and the way they resolve their issues. If businesses can successfully resolve all issues, the data stays, or else it’s a major loss to the enterprise. With the EU witnessing the effect of GDPR, others will also follow suit. This particular regulation will force businesses to put even greater emphasis on customer experience.

5. Customer Empathy results in Customer Personalization

Everything starting from emotional, motivational, behavioral, situational and environmental factors affects customer’s mood. These factors play an important role in the progress of the business, as they affect the customer’s decision-making abilities. So, companies are collecting new data signals in real time from digital inputs, to increase their ability to understand the customers to a whole new level. With the help of digital insights and AI, businesses will have the potential to provide the best possible services to their customers, and in return, they can increase and measure customer experience and satisfaction.

6. Robotic Assistants for Everyone

The best way to increase customer experience is through the implementation of robotic software – (chatbots, robotic automation tools). Today, these applications are a common sight across sales, services and marketing desktops where robotic assistance is used to eliminate the mundane tasks that slow companies down. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we see robots interacting with each other to execute tasks. Like witnessing Siri and Alexa interacting with bots to resolve customer issues. This in return will help in improving employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

Now that we have clear-cut knowledge on the latest trends that are driving the industry now it’s time to look at the strategies which are crucial to ensure that the organization catches up with the above-mentioned trends.

1. Create a Clear Customer Experience Vision

Every organization’s success depends on the percentage of customer experience achieved. For an organization to provide great customer service and to receive positive results from customer experiences, it should have a clear customer-focused vision in place. The organization should develop a set of principles which are to be followed across every level (team members and various areas) to reach their goal.

2. Understand your Customers Holistically

The organization will come across various customers throughout its lifecycle, and every experience is a unique one. So, the main role of the organization is to ensure it evaluates the customers based on their experience and allot unique services to them, in order to maintain the same level of customer satisfaction. One has to understand the customer needs and wants in a holistic manner so that they can understand the different situations the customers face. In order to become more customer-centric, the customer support team has to recognize the customers and understand them better.

3. Connecting Emotionally with Customers

The saying “it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”? best suits the situation in this context. Getting attached to customers with an emotional touch-point is always a positive sign that results in retaining the customer in the longer run. Basically, customer experience is heavily based on emotion because; emotion is what shapes the customer’s attitude that drives decisions. According to a recent Harvard Business Study titled – ‘The New Science of Customer Emotions,’ states emotionally engaged customers are:

• Three times more likely recommend the product or service
• Three times more likely to re-purchase
• Less likely to shop at other places (44%)
• Much less price sensitive – ( 33% Would prefer other services if given more discounts)

4. Stress upon Real-time Customer Feedback

Every organization provides customer experience, but the ultimate goal is to provide excellent customer service. How does an organization ensure that they have delivered such service? This can be measured by capturing customer feedback in real time. To gain feedback in real time, organizations can make inbound calls and send emails. Gaining access to insightful customer feedback is the best possible way. As various customers provide different feedback, the organization has to carefully note down the gaps in the service provided and bridge them based on the feedback they receive.

5. Consider regular Employee Feedback

Most organizations prefer to have an annual survey process conducted through which they can capture the overall feedback of their team and understand as to how engaged they are in business process to deliver exceptional service. If this survey lasts for a month, what about the rest of the 11 months in an annual year? This is where continuous employee feedback will play an important role, where employees share ideas on how to improve customer experience. Employees must be provided with a closed environment to share their ideas, and the management should regularly ensure that they provide their views on the ideas shared.

Conclusion

The core agenda of any organization is to ensure that they retain loyal customers by providing valuable services. As customers are becoming more and more empowered today, their expectations are also skyrocketing. Businesses have to ensure that they implement strategies to increase their customer service level and meet their expectations. Invensis is one such global and trained expert, which helps in developing strategies that are effective and yield positive results across various industries like; Energy and Utilities, Healthcare, Education, Chemical and Manufacturing, and many more.