Cut routine enquiries by up to 50% – Spring clean your CX strategy

The days are finally getting longer, and the anticipation of spring is in the air. It’s that time of the year which has us dusting off the winter blues, and for many businesses, the time to clean up their customer contact strategy to deliver the best customer experience ever.

According to Capgemini, 81% of consumers prefer to pay more for better customer experience.

Now doesn’t that make you want to make you want to polish your customer engagement offering? Businesses that strategically allocate resources to strengthen their customer experience focus, stand to gain an edge over the competition, boosting profitability and brand reputation.

Your contact centre is the central point of customer contact through channels of their choice. Contact centres, like the seasons, need to continually change and evolve to deliver on customer expectations, because customer expectations have changed. The once placid customer is now active in driving changes in customer service, and the contact centre.

About 10 years ago, if a customer had experienced unsatisfactory service, on an average, they would tell about 7 people about it. Today that number has now grown to 100s, thanks to social media.

The challenge is clear. Customers want seamless experiences from one channel to another – whether over live chat,  email, self-service or a phone call, and in-channel query resolution is more important than ever. They want to contact you through channels of their choice and expect you to respond as promptly during busy periods as quieter ones.

Omni-channel, the bud that could blossom customer experience into fruitful pickings. However, with customers demanding more channels, more complexity is added in creating channel-routing intelligence.
Recent research by ICIMI suggests that no single KPI has a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than first-call resolution (FCR). And the Service Quality Measurement (SQM) Group found that for every 1% improvement in FCR, you get a 1% improvement in customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, many contact centre agents still aren’t equipped with the right tools to help them achieve challenges set to them.

Reports from Dimension Data reveal that around 40% of contact centres don’t have data analysis tools, despite analytics being voted the top factor to change the shape of the industry in the next five years. And that more than half (57.2%) of contact centres managing email to not have technology solutions in place to maximise efficiency levels. Despite omni-channel being a hot topic for years, only 8.4% of businesses have all contact channels connected.

So why are contact centres not sweeping new strategies into action? Why do they find it difficult to introduce new technology, technologies that integrate with multiple systems that could offer a single view from customers?

Legacy systems and integration issues remain the top challenge affecting CX technology. Another challenge here is being able to secure budget for technology systems. Executives are quick to see the end-game benefits of a customer-centric strategy: more satisfied customers, increased loyalty, a lower cost to serve, and more engaged employees. But they often fail to understand clearly what a superior customer experience is worth and exactly how it will generate value.

Patiently building a business case that shows how technology solutions will meet user needs, and therefore encourage the uptake of digital channels, will help to allay fears of making poor decisions or going down the wrong path.

Visit the resource section of our site for more information, and access to pragmatic calculators to assist in quantifying the economic outcomes of differences in customer experiences.

How will Brexit shape the Customer Experience Economy?

Much like the year of international alarm, feverish preparation, and programming corrections for the Year 2000 (Y2K) bug, 29 March 2019, has many of us questioning what the future might hold.

Reports of relief filled the news media on the dawn on January 2000, when it became apparent that the world’s computer systems didn’t’ send us back to the dark ages. But unlike the variety of different approaches available to solve the Year 2000 problem in legacy systems, the uncertainty of where we’ll be with Brexit next week or next month, has many of us worried. However, one thing is sure; Brexit is creating a tough environment for businesses which thrive on steady commercial conditions and certainty.

As painful or wonderful the Brexit aftermath might turn out to be, there are many lessons to be learned from this historical event. Like customer expectations adopting to advances in technology, Brexit is a powerful reminder that people/customers can and make choices that might surprise you and sometimes themselves; or wishing they had made different decisions.

While times of high-market instability can cause businesses to panic and cut spending on customer engagement initiatives, its time to drive innovation to win, assist and retain customers.

‘Taking back control’

Customer Experience is not a fad, it is expanding in complexity at a rapid pace, and Brexit won’t change that. Pragmatic businesses understand that consistently satisfying customer service is becoming increasingly important as customer expectations are adapting and growing just as rapidly as the channels and technology consumers are now empowered to engage with.

Customers and prospects want businesses to demonstrate that they value and understand them.Executives are quick to see the end-game benefit of a customer-centric strategy: more satisfied customers, increased loyalty, a lower cost to serve, and more engaged employees. But they often fail to understand clearly what a superior customer experience is worth and exactly how it will generate value.

Welcome to the revolution

Unlike the current political chaos, there are smart tools and calculators to assist those of us tasked with measuring and linking digital customer engagement to business growth. Using these tools will assist in building a business case to fund digital customer engagement, secure buy-in, and build momentum.
Access the purpose-built calculators that prove the direct impact on customer expectations, which go far beyond the traditional ROI. Tap into new opportunities and make sensible savings, investing in technology to drive more sales, promote Customer Experience and build strong foundations for the future.

Enchanting customers to fall for your business

Don’t go breaking their hearts

And just like that, the first month in 2019 is over. January sales are being replaced with cupid arrows, hearts, and messages of love. Whether you love Valentine’s Day or think the hype doesn’t justify the occasion, your customer experience strategy should swoop in and enchant customers to fall for your business every time they interact with you, regardless of channel.

Continuously nurturing relationships with your customers is crucial to growing your business.

Love-hate relationships

Unlike our mixed feelings towards Valentine’s Day, most of us love the convenience of our connected world. However, we appear to have a love-hate relationship when it comes to online service.

According to Baymard, nearly 70% of shoppers will abandon their online shopping carts. Shocking until you realise that many users are window shopping, comparing prices, saving items for later or exploring gift options.

However, Forrester reports that more than 50% of customers will abandon their online shopping cart if they can’t find answers to simple queries and switch to a competitor’s website. Customers become so accustomed to doing most things online, it’s no surprise that Coleman Parkes reports that 75% of us prefer online support above any other channel. However, customers hate struggling to find accurate and consistent answers to their questions.

The silent treatment

Efforts to prevent potential customers from abandoning their e-commerce carts, have had many businesses implement live chat support. A study by Forrester Research found, “Many online consumers want help from a live person while they are shopping online; in fact, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.”

An emarketer.com survey found that 63% were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat. The report goes on to say: “62% reported being more likely to purchase from the site again. A further 38% of respondents said they had made their purchase due to the chat session itself. All these attitudes were even more prevalent among respondents who bought online at least weekly.”

As it turns out, live chat can offer real-time support, while also adding significant benefits to the staff and bottom line of companies. It is however important to consider that live chat poses some challenges. Customers are not bound by normal working hours when looking to make an online purchase or find support. Having live chat available with no-one to answer, might do more harm than good, frustrating customers with time-wasting silence.

Great CX

Multi-channel technology can assist in creating omni-channel customer experiences.

Here are some of the key trends for 2019 that predicts love from customers:

• Consistency across channels is key to a great overall experience. Trust is created when front-line staff, support staff and online channels all over the same consistent answers. Having an integrated knowledge-base across your website, contact centre and social channels is key.
• Ease: If it’s easy to find answers, purchase, get support, customers will return.
• Mobile: We take our smartphones everywhere with us. In a study by Search Engine Watch, 67% of participants said they were more likely to make a purchase when visiting a business’s mobile-friendly site, versus 61% who said they’d most likely leave a site that wasn’t optimised for mobile.
• Personalisation: Make identity an enterprise asset. Identifying customers at every touchpoint will result in a long-term relationship.
• Virtual Agents: 24/7 customer service with a smile. A semblance of personal service, NLP artificial intelligence combined with a graphical representation, can be a powerful additional contact channel (not a replacement for human interaction). Virtual Agents can raise the online customer service effort bar. Always on, ready to offer customers who wish to self-serve answers, an engaging, appropriate, and conversational automated interaction.

Conclusion

In our own lives, we appreciate that we cannot expect close relationships, family relations, or a marriage to survive and flourish if we don’t put time and effort into maintaining it. A business’s relationships with its customers is no different.

The Customer Experience ‘To Don’t’ List for 2019

Part three of ‘three little pigs’

January is finally over. What feels like the longest month of the year – not that it’s really been 2019 that long – has many of us glad that the party season and New Year’s resolution making and breaking over and done with for many months, 5 February, marks another festive celebration. Little pig, little pig let me in … Happy Chinese New Year, the Lunar Year of the Pig! As the last blog in our series about the Customer Experience ‘To Don’t’ list, we hope to shed light on the heart of customer support, the contact centre.

Contact centres are the backbone to happy and satisfied customers. However, today’s contact centre is a complex environment that can lead to excessive agent training needs, increased levels of agent frustration and thus attrition, increased average call handling times and, worst of all, customer frustration, waiting for agents to resolve their issue.

Like bacon and eggs

If contact centre agents aren’t equipped with the right tools to help them achieve these challenges set to them, they will become frustrated and less engaged – a growing concern for organisations as it affects both brand perception and revenue.

For sales and support channels to work synergistically – to seamlessly deliver a on a brand’s promise to each customer segment – the contact centre customer service platform in turn, needs to deliver on a consistent experience at every customer interaction.

Feast your eyes on how digital service channels can assist contact centres to address these four challenging customer service expectations.

1. Credibility

A centralised and shared knowledge management solution will ensure that the same information is given to customers across all contact channels, helping to improve satisfaction rates. Clearly sign-posted on a home and contact page, this will enable customers to find answers to their own questions. An extended knowledge-base into a brand’s contact centre will ensure that agents give customers consistent, accurate and timely answers to their questions. This will help to reduce agent-training times and increase conversions, whilst improving the overall customer experience.

2. Reliability

Providing an opportunity for those customers with more complex enquiries to be seamlessly escalated to one-on-one dialogue with a contact centre agent, saves them the frustrating experience of having to call the contact centre and wait on hold for minutes at a time. These live chat sessions can be automatically triggered to help reduce abandonment rates.

3. Intimacy

Offering the same level of customer service and extending the FAQ knowledge-base onto mobile or social media sites, can help to meet customer’s expectations for instant, 24/7 customer service. Investment in the right online customer service technology can provide a cost-effective service across whichever channels customers choose to contact a company.

4. Focus

Customer complaints and feedback provide vital insight into areas for improvement. Offering customers and staff on the frontline dealing with customer complaints a mechanism to suggest improvement, and regularly analysing this information, enables organisations to optimise their service offering, helping towards meeting regulatory guidelines. Responding and acting on feedback lets customers and team members know that their opinions are valued.

Delivering exceptional customer experience in the contact centre is vital to retain customers, reduce costs and increase sales to live happily ever after. For more thought leadership, insights and proven business cases (to far exceed surviving just by the hair on one’s chinny chin chin) visit the resource page on our website or request a demo of our award-winning customer support software.

The Contact Centre ‘To Don’t’ List for 2019

Part two of ‘three little pigs’

How are you doing in the 2019 New Year’s resolution department? A study by Strava, that analysed more than 31.5 million online global activities in January 2018, revealed 12 January to be the date when most of us will have given up on our annual New Year’s resolutions. Although the Chinese zodiac states that people born in ‘The year of the pig’ have great concentration: once they set a goal, they will devote all their energy to achieving it. This sounds a little huff and puff as a mere 8 percent of us achieve our New Year’s goals.

And the same can be said about businesses in the process of planning their customer experience strategy. Excited about the outcome that an enhanced CX will have on their organisation’s bottom line, businesses invest in siloed ‘straw stalks’ of technologies/channels because a house, regardless of its construction material, built quickly and cheaply fulfils the same purpose? Do they know what happened to the first little piggy?

The big bad wolves that devour CX engagement

Often teams within organisations are so busy, that they just want to fill the gaps, convinced that they hear their customers and understand what they need. When businesses invest in new technology or channels without having a clear strategy of what each digital enhancement can or can’t deliver, they have about the same chance of delivering exceptional customer experience as a straw-house against a hurricane.

In 2019, the customer matters more than ever before. The world has changed, and so customers have the power, not the sellers. Customer perception is fragile and able to change with each interaction. Constantly maintaining a strong customer experience in our digitally connected world is a challenge, however this Customer Experience ‘To Don’t’ list aims to reveal a bit more ‘third pig’ CX strategy.

Don’t choose a number:

When choosing a metric to score your customer experience and establish a target for it, the metric must be meaningful to the specific customer touchpoint you’re wanting to analyse. The metric needs to be relevant for your particular industry.

Don’t stop measuring:

Whichever customer metric you choose – the all ubiquitous Net Promoter Score (NPS), the traditional customer satisfaction CSAT, or a more recent invention Customer Effort Score (CES) – it’s worth nothing without analysing the customer feedback you’re collecting. Analysed across multiple touchpoints across the customer journey will show where improvements should be made, which channels perform well and also help identify the rate and reasons for customer churn.

Don’t invest in technology just for the sake of adding another channel:

Many industry buzzwords like AI, bots, physital and omni-channel set to create more headlines in 2019, are causing uncertainty about job losses and the impact it will have on customer experience.

Multiple contact channels that don’t feed into the same knowledge-base can derail CX. Consistency and continuity across engagement channels should support customer service delivery. Having a well implemented customer service strategy with a centralised knowledge-base at its core, is key to meeting the following challenges facing companies wanting to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

When choosing a technology vendor, consider these important questions:
Does the vendor have an integrated platform, or a loose collection of components? Does the vendor own all the products or are they a patchwork of unrelated pieces? Can you choose what you need from the product portfolio? Can you add other components later? How well do they integrate with your CRM and can they scale up? What kind of experience does the vendor have?

Don’t give up:

Just like January 1st is just a day in the calendar, the CX strategy can be reset for a fresh start. Go back to the beginning and revisit the rewards of making changes to it.

Ask questions such as; Why the business needs to make a change? Is the goal concrete and measurable? What is the plan? What support system is in place while working towards a change? How will victories be incentivised?

Bringing home the bacon in 2019

To improve the customer engagement/experience and keep consumers loyal, businesses must place more importance on understanding the relationship between support interactions, channels, and the changing tides of consumer behaviour. This will be key in choosing the right technology to support their strategy.
In the last of our blog series we will disclose specific actions for customer support, as the role of customer service and the contact centre is all too often still largely underestimated in the bottom-line of businesses and the overall customer experience journey.

Customer Experience ‘To Don’t’ List for 2019

Part one of ‘three little pigs’

After all the Christmas and New Year’s deliciously over indulgent celebratory feasts, in contrary, the political, economic and environmental headlines of 2018 have left many of us with a bad taste in the mouth.

Each New Year we love to look back at the events from the previous year, to learn from it and to predict and prepare for what we hope will be a better year, or not? The pessimists among us might think 2019 is already off to a rocky start because, as of yet, there is no Brexit deal in place, although apparently (like every year) some scientist predicts Armageddon, this time on 1 February – by means of a giant asteroid heading towards earth – which could wipe out humanity, so in the great scheme of things, does it really matter?

While most of us will not heed the silly and weird predictions for 2019, some past year observations, turned into current strategic predictions. Gartner got this one right: In a study from four years ago, Gartner predicted that by 2019 more than 50% of organisations will invest more money into the customer experience. Today’s numbers indicate that even more organisations are making CX a priority. In fact, today 89% of companies believe they compete primarily based on customer experience, but while 80% of companies trust they deliver “super experiences,” only 8% of customers agree.

Go out and seek fortune

2019 sees the 12th and last position in the Chinese Zodiac, the pig, symbolising a compassionate, generous and sympathetic character. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the loyalty of retail customers in 2018. Year on year, to reap short-term gains, giants in the retail sector engage in price wars. A risk, as once some of the big names had bled margins dry, they had no resources left to improve on vital CX efforts. The number of retailer foreclosure headlines in 2018 echo why price cuts can’t compete with the long-term gains of offering a more sophisticated customer experience to create loyalty and repeat custom.

And while most industries understand that customer experience can deliver big gains, with advances in technology driving consumer expectations, many businesses will throw in the towel trying to differentiate based on CX, believing it to be too complex to achieve. Not having a clear strategy will render them unsure about integrating technology with human support, the cost implications or savings it might incur, and the impact it might have on job descriptions and staff numbers. These companies are not truly convinced that a competitor, that really focused on the customer experience, could be the blow that brings their house down.

Strong solid bricks, straw or sticks

CX is not just about firing messages at people, it’s about the story of how they interact, in every way, on and off-line, through every touch-point with a brand. Old tale morals, that hard work and ingenuity are the key to succeed, are still relevant today. CX initiative is no longer optional in today’s competitive business landscape, it’s vital to cement customer loyalty.

Consumers expect exceptional, frictionless experiences and support when they need it throughout the customer journey. They don’t just accept being able to self-serve answers, they expect to be able to contact a business at a time convenient to them, through a channel of their choice, accessible from any device, anywhere on the planet.

Therefore, there is no place for silos within business, legacy systems and legacy attitudes which hurt the customer experience and prevents growth. Businesses must re-assemble their CX house, realising that the potential of taking the time to invest in strong ‘materials’ such as customer support software to address the challenge of delivering truly exceptional CX whilst empowering their employees to contribute to customer lifetime value.

2019 to don’t list

Most of us will make New Year’s resolutions this year, and according to science, most of us won’t see it through. Change is hard. It’s like wanting to do something especially when you are told NOT to.
A little reverse psychology might trick the brain, #brainwave, a ‘to don’t’ list to help businesses looking to adapt to change and embrace customer experience which we will reveal next week. (Apparently that’s when most resolutions fail.)

Should Christmas be cancelled? Retail revolution or CX nightmare?

It would be wrong to think that it’s just the serial bargain hunters, ‘retail therapy’ enthusiasts, or Wizzard fans who “wish it could be Christmas every day”. With UK consumers set to spend more this Christmas than any other country within the EU, the competition among retailers, has us listening to songs that everyone knows, but that should never be heard repeatedly in public places, as early as October!

But it’s a long drag from October to Christmas Day so it’s difficult to maintain a consumer buying fever in the twelve days weeks of Christmas. Enter Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Although many headlines state that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become unpopular, spending figures during this period, proves it a myth. Bah humbugs will have to accept that the concept of the season of discounted shopping isn’t going away soon.

Apart from an increase in consumer spending, not a lot is reported on the effect this trend has on both customer experience and ultimately the retail industry’s bottom line. Naturally, gratuitous spending delights retailers, however as margins become wafer thin, some retailers won’t survive, especially when conversion rates slow down, with customers only browsing particularly online, in readiness for the Black Friday bonanza.

Joanna Causon, Chief Executive at the UK Institute for Customer Service says, “Retailers are grappling with uncertain consumer demand and a fundamental shift in customer behaviour which has forced a rethink in the economics of serving large numbers of customers across multiple channels.”

Naughty or nice

Britain is now the biggest online shopping nation in the developed world, with almost two thirds of adults using the internet to buy goods or services, according to IMRG, a body which represents the UK’s online retailers. The first half of 2018 alone, saw online retail accounting for more than 20% of retail sales, growing at ten times the rate of store sales.

But with everyone flocking to purchase online, not all retailers are able to cope with the number of visitors to their websites, which will leave some customers – looking for an online bargain – frustrated. Customers are still expecting instant, 24/7 customer service across multiple channels, and pressures on contact centres will increase in the lead up to Christmas. While online sales figures might seem like a dream, LCP logistics consultancy reports that e-tailers are expected to be lumbered with £2.5bn worth of unwanted presents being returned after the Christmas period, which could be a customer support nightmare!

Making a list

Happy customers put businesses on the ‘nice’ list, equal repeat custom, and have them sharing their experience with friends, colleagues and family. Emulating great customer experience is however a long road for those who have neglected their customers for years.

Although the numbers of consumer engagement with digital technology are growing daily – and some retailers are adopting a multichannel model – overall customer satisfaction in the UK is 0.3 points lower than July 2017. The UKCSI says, “Although this downward movement is relatively slight, it is the first time since January 2015 that two consecutive UKCSI surveys show a decline in overall satisfaction. We are seeing a trend of divergence between the highest performing organisations and the rest, coupled with a growing body of evidence indicating that achieving consistently superior levels of customer satisfaction is a crucial enabler of sustainable financial results.” This should be of concern not just retailers but all businesses, no matter their industry.

Checking it twice

As the online world of retail expands into our physical shopping habits – driven by our desire to access information on products and services and to compare prices – retailers will need to adapt to keep customers engaged with instant access to the information through search, FAQs and across social platforms too.

Whether a business operates online, offline, or both, the most important thing should be the customer, and the experience delivered to them to ensure the financial results associated with customer satisfaction.

Even brands that are boycotting the Christmas shopping phenomenon, promising to deliver year-round value to customers, must still adhere to the oldest brand values: Good, informative customer service and a multi-channel strategy that supports this. If not, ending up on the ‘naughty’ list will surely impact the future of the business.

Businesses developing their customer service strategy might want to visit the resources section on our website where we can offer insight into:

1. Increasing customer satisfaction & loyalty levels
2. Reducing customer contact – improving first contact resolution
3. Offering a consistent multi-channel customer service
4. Improving operational and service cost efficiency