You know what’s exciting about customer service? Today it acts as a giant fishing net, catching all the fallout of anything that happens with your company on social media. Customer service is the invisible layer around the entire company because of its ability to listen.
It’s not simple. There are many roadblocks to delivering a modern customer experience. The number one customer frustration according to Harvard Business Review is when the customer is asked to repeat themselves. Internal dysfunction, old CRM technologies and the lack of a customer oriented culture all contribute to poor customer experiences.In the old days you could differentiate your product by delivering it cheaper, or maybe faster, but now it’s a different game. It's not just about solving the customer problem quickly and effectively. The reason is customer service is now working with marketing more and more to respond to the customer. That means customer service is in a position to get more comfortable being out there talking to customers like communications or marketing might normally do. It sounds simple right? It's not! Today customer service not only has to be a "smooth operator" behind the scenes, they need to assist or even co-lead engagement when it comes to social media.
In the framework I created below I've unpacked each ring. Customer experience is not easy at any company. But it's worth it! Spend some time thinking of how you can make yours better and you will reap the many benefits of a high functioning culture with a happy customer base.
Ring 6: Your Stakeholders
The external ring of the modern customer experience include your customers, prospects, partners, influencers and the public. These are the people talking about your brand--sometimes without you knowing. They respond to your marketing promotions, they reach out to you for customer service, they shop for your products. Every day these people are comparing you to other options. You must prove your value to these stakeholders every single day. In this group are people who perhaps aren’t your direct customers, but they reach out to you with a question or a comment. They might call you, tweet to you, or reach out to you in your community, or even directly inside your company’s app as they shop for a product on their phone. You are accountable for responding to that person that tried to connect with you. You will be better able to do so if you are looking for them in all the right places. This brings us to the fifth ring the channels.
Ring 5: The Channels
The amount of channels customers seek customer service on will only increase in the next few years. Unfortunately today--as we established from that HBR stat--when customers try and reach out to a company on different channels the customer must repeat themselves at every turn. It feels like completely unique interactions. Companies have limitations in their technology—and many big companies have old CRM systems so outdated they are not longer even useful. Today's CRMs often have highly complicated integration processes when it comes to integrating with social, mobile, etc. Big data—without the right tools is just bad data. It’s like when you call the bank, and the bank tells you that you’ve called the wrong department, but as a service they will contact the agent in the other department who can actually help you—while you’re on hold. It’s still not a good feeling for the customer who has just spent 5 to 10 minutes describing their problem and now they must start over. So you see, today customers are trying to talk to you on Twitter and Facebook...and even since the birth of these channels we've seen many many more such as Snapchat, Weibo, Kik and many more all over the globe. More on that in my podcast interview here with Davy Kestens, CEO of Sparkcentral.
Ring 4: Personalization
In a recent podcast I did with the CMO of Teradata Applications Lisa Arthur, she said personalization has largely failed marketers. Every customer has had the experience of shopping for a product--even buying it--only to be stalked by that product on Facebook and other channels for weeks. Take the example of a shoe. Instead of following the customer with that same shoe, why not advertise them a matching belt or bag? Arthur wonders why our technology doesn’t allow us to be smarter about how we sell stuff to customers online. Personalization is not just for marketers. So much of customer service still depends on customers sifting through lengthy articles, searching through communities or an external knowledge base. Good personalization knows where the customer is and proactively sends that customer messages that make sense in real-time. Eventually we might see this happening on the actual product through sensor technology. But most companies are still years away from that.
Ring 3: CRM
You can talk about CRM without considering the channels those customers are filtering in on. Omni-channel as it stands today is not omni at all. It’s very hard to find and roll out a CRM that will account for every single channel. Most big companies don’t have this functionality. They’re still trying to piecemeal their old technology together with new social media listening and response software, in addition to other apps and technologies. A slow CRM tool is very very undesirable for the customer. A modern CRM should match customer’s information from every single channel and update in real-time. The agent on the back-end can see every move the customer makes as fast as the customer makes it. A good CRM tool will trace the entire customer journey in real-time, as the customer jumps from one channel to the next. The CRM will be updated, and even send out proactive content or messages depending on what step the customer is at. The technology predicts the customer’s next move even preventing further problems for the customer. Remember the best service is no service, and the CRM should assist with that. But today as it stands most CRMs simply don't.
Ring 2: A Collaboration Tool
Your contact center is only as good as its ability to work with other departments. Remember what customers experience as poor service is often a result of internal corporate dysfunction. At big companies departments are run completely separate companies. Today customer service is generally on the frontline of social media. They are listening to all the responses from the marketing assets sent out. They are first to the fire during a crisis. Customer service has eyes and ears on millions of messages about your brand. Collaboration technology allows customer service to quickly engage with other departments. This is in the best interest of the customer in addition to being in the best interest of the company. A good collaboration tool helps the company to be more organized, preventing errors that make the company look disorganized. It also solves customer issues more quickly. If you outsource social listening and engagement, or any other part of the contact center, it can create more layers. Those external agents need to connect with the company’s employees. While outsourcing customer service can be more cost effective it creates more red tape when those agents need to talk to the various internal departments. If you do outsource customer service, you will need to create a powerful knowledge base for your agents--otherwise they are left to just googling your website, just like your customers do.
Ring 1: The Seamless Experience
If the customer is the focal point of your service strategy, you will have considered the experience of the customer at every point along the way. Is your customer journey more of game of hurdles than an escalator ride. Once you identify those hurdles for the customer, you will better be able to remove them. Ask your customers—especially your most loyal customers. If you need to incentive them in a big way to give you feedback, fine. That feedback is worth its weight in gold. With the proliferation of channels it's no easy feat to create a seamless experience for the customer today. However it is the future, so start planning now and you will be glad you did.
So tell me about your customer experience. What are you proud of and what would you change?
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