Marcus Richards
Dealing with a growing business can be frustrating for both the customer and staff. A rapidly growing company often has systems and processes which don’t keep up with the increase in volume of business and customers.
More established and larger companies also often experience similar problems due to old technology, outdated practices and siloed departments. Less than 30% of businesses are highly joined up across departments.
Most organisations have at least some awareness of the frustrations their customers face, but they rarely have the time or resources to take a focused ‘customer’s eye view’ of their business.
Which leads us nicely on to what has to be the number one priority when creating a joined up customer experience:
Put yourself in your customers shoes
When you know how things work because you encounter them every day, it’s often easy to forget how things appear to the uninitiated. You know your services, products and ways of working like the back of your hand, and they might all seem perfectly logical and easy to understand.
Take a step back however, and imagine if you are engaging with your company for the first time. What impression does your customer first receive?
As an organisation, are you friendly, flexible, adaptable and on the customers side? Are your different channels aligned or does your website say one thing and your customer service team say another? Do things disappear into a blackhole somewhere between sales and finance? Are complaints or problems dealt with effectively? Is customer feedback welcomed and encouraged?
Every business has its own issues and being aware of them is the first step to dealing effectively with them.
Envisage the perfect customer experience
Once you know how your company comes across, you need to envision what the ideal customer experience would look like. This would typically involve allowing the customer as much choice as possible in how they contact you, second guessing what they want and providing products and services in the most seamless way possible.
Must have, should have, could have, would have
The gap between your current customer experience and the optimal customer experience is where success lies. However, unsurprisingly both Rome and a seamless customer experience aren’t built in a day.
Break down what must be changed, what should be changed, what could be changed and what would be changed if you had all the budget and time you could ever need.
Tackling a mixture of major (must fix) issues which represent an existential threat to your business and some quick wins and easier fixes is a winning combination to ensure that everyone can see some early progress, whilst the elephant in the room isn’t ignored.
Go multi-channel where you can
The growth in engagement channels has created complexities around how, when and where brands should be interacting with an individual. Yes, there are now more opportunities to capture a customer’s attention, but this brings greater pressure to keep the experience consistent, no matter how a customer is interacting.
Whether it’s speaking to a consultant in a call centre or receiving an engineer on a home visit, each touchpoint must fit into the whole brand journey. If you can’t deliver consistency and quality via all channels, consider focusing on one or two channels first and set the gold standard before extending that out to the rest. Alternatively seek out a good outsourced partner who can manage channels such as telephone and web chat effectively for you. Choosing the right answering service is critical if they are going to enhance not detract from your customer experience.
Joining up the dots
It’s no good having the appearance of slick customer experience, if you don’t have the internal processes to meet the expectations you set. Better to have no web chat rather than have web chat which isn’t responded to half the time and doesn’t tie in with the rest of your customer service
All too often, companies are keeping channels siloed and failing to consider each as part of the wider strategy. Every channel has the potential to impact on the bottom line, but there must be investment across each one to make this positive.
Incentivise staff to own a customer issue
Where your systems aren’t joined up and your channels to customers are siloed, it’s particularly important to ensure your staff are incentivised to own a customer issue and ensure it doesn’t get lost down a crack between two departments.
Harness and use your data
Lastly but by no means least, the key to really delivering a fully joined up experience for customers is by joining up the data within your business and enabling organisation wide data insights to be generated.
Having useful insights that can be mined from the data at each touchpoint are the key to understanding how each customer is interacting with the brand and how they want to be engaged with in future.
A joined-up customer experience shouldn’t be regarded as a nice to have – it’s a must. Customers today expect companies to understand how they are interacting, pull out and make use of relevant data insights being created, and link up each channel to take them through the purchase journey seamlessly. Do it right and the rewards are significant in terms of increased revenue through customer loyalty, referrals and repeat business.
