It is no secret that positive customer experiences convert into sales. So it really should go without saying that, conversely, poor customer experience leads to lost revenue. Around £234 billion worth of lost value to UK businesses in a typical year, according to research recently commissioned by Magnetic North.
That’s a huge sum and one that is often overlooked by businesses. Our research also showed that almost one in three (31%) of purchases are abandoned at the point of sale simply because the process wasn’t easy enough or the right information wasn’t available.
Surely that should be easy to fix? Especially when the solution to the problem is all about going back to basics. Just take a look at the top three reasons people switch to competitors:
Difficulty finding out how to contact customer service (71%),
Waiting in contact centre queues with no call back option (66%)
Dealing with a contact centre agent who has no knowledge of the customer’s previous interactions (66%).
So, it’s pretty clear what you need to do to increase the value of your contact centre as a strategic, revenue-generating unit within your business. Simple really. Just adjust your customer journey so that customers’ needs are met more effectively.
Except that your legacy technology wasn’t built for the multi-channel world. Your IT department is struggling to integrate disparate systems to give your customer service representatives a 360-degree view of the customer. And your capital expenditure budget simply won’t stretch to a new all-singing all-dancing multi-channel system.
These are all reasons why contact centres are moving to the cloud. If you are looking to join them, you might want to watch our new Call Flow Editor video below. But just to kick things off here are three things you should insist on as standard:
- A drag and drop menu that allows contact centre managers to map out the best possible customer journey using real-time data
- The ability to re-configure your contact centre within minutes to react to changed situations – for example offering customers a virtual place holder when monitored queues get too large
- Provide your customer service agents with a view of all interactions across all channels
If you want to find out more about converting customer experience to revenue, you can download report, ‘Converting customer experience into revenue’.
