We all know there are moments of truth in the customer journey that define a customer relationship. Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group, defines a moment of truth as “a time when the vendor has to ‘show up’ or ‘come through’ for the customer or risk disappointment.” Unfortunately, your apps – rather than your team – may dictate what happens at the moment of truth. And timing is a big reason.
Timing is everything at the moment of truth. When you’re not responsive to the customer, they’re delayed is getting value and that creates retention risks. Now think about how many of your customer processes still rely on e-mail and spreadsheets. Why do you still have them? Probably because your apps don’t connect to each other, or not the way you want them to. So, your response to customers in these moments of truth are dependent on slow, error-prone manual processes.
To illustrate, let’s look at a common moment of truth: the transition from prospect to paying customer. Once an opportunity is won by sales, the order data in the sales application can be used to select the right implementation template in the project management application and populate it with critical data. The same is true for the support application. When implementation is completed, configuration data from project management can be used to create an onboarding call to action in the customer success application.
Without connecting your apps, the sales team emails the services team with the customer order which then must be manually entered into project management. The email also goes to the support team to setup organization and contacts in the support application. This can create delays and project setup errors. It is not uncommon to have 10-30% of go-lives run behind schedule.
If your apps are connected, you solve the problem. And when your apps are working together, so are your teams. Workflow between apps means connecting all your process, making customer data available across all your departments, and notifying the right individuals of changes in customer status. It is all about timing and making sure everyone can respond to a moment of truth for each customer.
To be responsive at the moment of truth, your apps need to work together. Your apps ensure customer engagement happens in the right sequence, in a timely manner, and with highest quality. It’s all about timing. Within seconds of accepting a customer order, your services, support, and customer success teams can respond and deliver at the customer’s moment of truth.
