Businesses unsure about how to deliver a quality Customer Experience
Organisations recognise the importance of the customer experience, actually taking steps to improve it is proving more difficult.
New research from Sabio suggests that even though the majority of organisations see the ‘Customer Experience’ as a priority for their business, many are still unsure about what actions to take to improve the overall experience for their customers. Following an independent research programme conducted recently, it was identified that 58 per cent of respondents acknowledged the importance of a positive customer experience for their business, with 20 per cent of respondents citing this issue as a ‘critical factor’, a ‘key objective’ or ‘paramount’.
The research programme looked into the growing focus that organisations are placing on self-service, and the increasing importance of the contact centre within the wider organisation. Sabio found that despite the enthusiastic support for improving the customer experience as a business goal, only a small number of respondents felt they were able to demonstrate a clear link between a quality customer experience and increased revenues. Only ten per cent of those surveyed had concentrated on training their contact centre agents to improve the customer experience, while only a few of these were actively using Workforce Optimisation tools and techniques to support this activity.
“We all seem to be good at talking about the ‘Customer Experience’, but still need to do a lot more if customers are to take us seriously. Our survey of course acknowledged that the customer experience has to be balanced with internal factors such as cost, efficiency gains and delivering against contact centre targets. However, given the solutions and processes that are now available, its important for organisations to seize the opportunity during 2008 and really start to take the ‘Customer Experience’ seriously,” commented Sabio Director Adam Faulkner.
The research found that 44 per cent of organisations were already using a wide variety of approaches to monitor their customers’ experience, from paper-based, phone and online surveys through to more traditional mystery shopper, customer forum and complaints monitoring approaches. When asked how they were already working to improve the customer experience, respondents mentioned agent development through training, side-by-side training with supervisors, and monitoring call quality and discussing results with agents.
“We believe there are a number of different steps that organisations can take to help improve their overall customer experience, ranging from basic HR techniques such as holding on to your best agents and rewarding extra agent skills such as multi-channel capabilities, to more advanced technology solutions such as streamlined agent desktops, integrated routing of all transaction types, and integrating your web offering into your contact centre operation,” added Adam Faulkner. “However, if organisations are looking for a quick win to support their customer experience activities during the first quarter of 2008, they should investigate how an integrated Workforce Optimisation (WFO) approach can quickly start to deliver benefits.
“Our research has shown that while some organisations are already using WFO techniques to improve the customer experience, very few have yet grasped just how quickly a more tightly-integrated WFO approach can lead to significant performance improvement,” he continued. “At Sabio we’re finding that the latest generation of feedback technology, using short, context-sensitive dynamic surveys to capture information from customers across a range of channels, can dramatically cut the cost of feedback collection. It can also capture and analyse customer feedback and the context in which it was provided in real time that businesses can action immediately. By adding customer feedback capabilities to their Workforce Optimisation (WFO) solution within the contact centre, organisations can compare and contrast their current internal key performance indicators with real and unbiased customer satisfaction ratings.”
Sabio’s Customer Feedback Research is part of an ongoing market engagement programme conducted for Sabio by Clarify. The research was conducted during 2007, and involved senior level discussions with contact centre management in over 50 different UK organisations.
