Walk a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes, Where Does It Take You?

Taking the time to test your customer’s experience will refine your focus and significantly improve your understanding of their experience of your service.

Analysts agree customer service is the new competitive frontier, and there is a significant reward for getting it right! Research confirms that organisations who meet customer expectations improve profitability and customer retention.

Just a 5% growth in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95% (Bain & Co)

Disruptive business models are challenging established business. To survive, organisations need to respond to market change and meet evolving customer expectations.

In our Age of the Customer webinar, it was exciting to hear that 29% of delegates believe that they are more than 85% aligned with their customer channel needs. The remaining 71%, however, felt they were less than 50% aligned or were not sure.

Adjustments are required, therefore, to improve the affinity with customer needs to provide a better service. But achieving this while also driving operational efficiency and cost savings (the #1 priority for contact centres, as seen in our recent report) is challenging.

During the webinar the significant majority (70%) of delegates reported that they did not have an end-to-end customer journey.

A bad system will beat a good person every time (Demming)

To confirm the urgent reality Contact Centre Managers will need to provide the business case for multichannel expansion and the implementation of a universal queue.

So what then is the business case?
First you deliver improved operational productivity. Jonathan Rapley, Netcall Client Manager, has seen the difference and the results include:

• Reduced average handling time while supporting increasing first contact resolution
• Boosted productivity (savings of 15% and more)
• Reduced training time ensures agents are ‘up-to-speed’ more quickly

Companies that choose these routes and engage their agents also benefit from reduced agent churn, from improved morale and job satisfaction!

And secondly it is the “experience effect”. Richard Farrell, Netcall Chief Technical Officer, discussed research that shows top performers are 30% more likely to align agent activities and omnichannel processes with customer needs (Aberdeen). Making it easy for customers will bring them back. In fact, 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that same company again. (CEB)

Competitive market conditions and demanding customers mean acquisition is increasingly expensive, yet retained customers spend more.

Clearly there are two benefits from transforming your customer experience into one that meets your customer needs. Productivity and revenue, both will impact your organisation’s bottom line and overall success.