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Your Entire Company Is A Contact Center

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Why is it that in the moments that matter most we spend the least amount of resources and effort to take care of our customers? It’s this lack of self-awareness that will be the demise of the world’s biggest companies. The bigger the company gets, the harder it seems to be to create one experience for all customers. However shouldn’t it be easier for bigger companies to create compelling customer experiences because they have more resources to do so? In theory bigger companies should be providing more compelling customer experiences, however sometimes it seems the bigger and more well-resourced the company, the worse the customer experience. And here's the idea I'd like you to take away from this article: customer experience is shaped by your entire company. Customer experience does not sit in the contact center.

The truth is your entire company is a contact center. The contact center is the place where your customers literally "make contact" with your brand. But how many other places do your customers make contact with your brand? Many. And when they do, what is the customer’s experience? That experience is shaped by many roles within the company including the CEO, the recruiter, the accountant, the trainer, the operations manager, the janitor, and the intern. The challenge for brands is that brands are often not aware of the perception customers have of their brand. Do you know what customers think about your in-store retail environment? How about the way your service is delivered? There is much more that affects a customer’s experience of your brand other than customer service. Do your employees feel like crap at work? That effects the customer experience.

To touch on the major components of a powerful customer experience, I created a D.O.M.O.R.E. framework. This isn’t simply customer service. Customer experience does not equal customer service.

Customer service is where you put out fires.

Customer experience is generated much earlier than when things go awry after the sale. D.O.M.O.R.E. means: design something special, offer a strong employee experience, modernize with technology, obsess over the customer, reward responsibility and accountability and embrace innovation and disruption. Customer experience is shaped much earlier on than a customer’s interaction with your contact center. Your entire company touches the customer. Your entire company impacts the customer experience. Your entire company is a contact center. Unfortunately most brands don’t have this attitude about customer experience. There is a lack of self-awareness about the status of their customer relationships – and even if the brand knows the relationships are in trouble the brand doesn’t know how to fix it. Executives can start by spending more time in the contact center where they will find out what customers think about their products and services. This is a starkly different attitude than the current one.

Many brands try to create distance between themselves the brand and their customers.  Self-help technology is put in place to deal with customers. But how successful have these customer technologies been? Arguably not very successful. If these technologies made customers’ lives easier and better customers wouldn’t mind talking to a phone tree (also known as an IVR). But most customers loathe self-help technology. Customers need self-help books after an experience with self-help technology.

I encourage executives to learn more about their customer experience by spending time in the contact center. Like I said earlier, customer experience does not sit in the contact center, but it's a good place to start. The contact center will shed light on the many ways your entire company can improve customer experience, often outside of the contact center.

Blake Morgan is a keynote speaker, cx futurist and author of More Is More. Sign up for her weekly newsletter here.