Top 7 Overlooked Areas of CX and How You Can Fix Them
Almost all brands operating in today’s hyper competitive marketplace are aware of the importance of customer experience. As per Gartner’s findings, CX drives over two-thirds of loyalty, even more than brand and price combined. But while brands are trying different tactics to keep their customers happy, often undertaking costly technology upgrades, most are unable to see any tangible business results. Did you know that as per Forrester’s US 2022 Customer Experience Index, CX quality has worsened for 19 percent of brands in 2022? Why are many brands failing at CX despite knowing how important it is?
The key problem is a mismatch between how the customer experiences a brand and what the brand thinks needs to be fixed. Brings sometimes try to add some small benefits, say a discount, or fix a particular touchpoint and expect customers to stay loyal. But such siloed focus at best bring some short-term gains, nothing beyond. This is because brands fail to see the bigger picture – they fail to understand what their customers actually need. A brand’s individual touchpoints may perform well and yet the overall CX can be poor. They need to focus not on creating exceptional experiences, but on simple experiences that will make their customers’ journeys easier. For customers, what really matters is how their entire purchase experience is. Are they happy with it? This is what ultimately defines how loyal they will stay to your brand.
At a Glance — What Mistakes Are Companies Making?
- Not realizing that CX is àbout how customers feel about the experiences you provide
- Trying to solve problems around individual pain points and not looking at it from the context of the customer’s journey
- Focusing too much on the interaction quality – while interactions are important, recent research suggests that they do not add to loyalty beyond a certain point. It is the product experience that counts.
7 Most Commonly Overlooked Areas of Customer Journey That Actually Matter the Most
A lot of brands want to believe they are customer-focused. They want to create experiences that “delight” their customers. But they still continue to see lower satisfaction scores associated with customer service. Thing is, a lot of times they do not realize that CX is ultimately about reducing their customers’ efforts and not about dazzling customers. To achieve this, you need to ask yourself some basic questions:
Are we able to help customers free up their time?
Companies need to be mindful of their customers’ time. A lot of the times customers reject a brand simply because it takes a long time to get an issue resolved. Whether it’s updating an address, registering a service-related complaint, submitting a form, or simply onboarding, customers have to go through great lengths to get a simple job done. Sometimes, they try to call customer service only to be passed from one rep to the other, or are put on hold indefinitely. At other times they have to switch from one channel to another after trying to resolve a problem unsuccessfully.
Nothing frustrates customers more than a waste of their precious time.
What’s the Fix?
- Efficient Self-Service Options: Automated self-service is quickly becoming a key differentiator in reducing customer efforts. Most customers now prefer a self-service option over human contact for routine services. However, they sometimes find web self-service options difficult to use. So you should ideally add FAQ sections, share screen shots, audios, and video messages to guide customers wherever possible. Also include escalation options in case customers want to speak to an agent.
- Move Processes to Digital: In this time and age, your customers should not have to travel distances and stand in queues to submit proofs, forms, etc. personally. Moving to digital and enabling them to accomplish these tasks from the comfort of their homes solves this problem.
- Minimize Steps to Complete Something: Customers often resent having to fill up lengthy registration forms to sign up for something. Simplifying the registration and onboarding process creates a smooth experience which your customers will appreciate.
- Reduce the Need to Repeat Personal Info: Nothing irritates customers more than having to repeat their personal information or why they are calling a business again and again to a new agent. You need to empower your agents with tools that help them identify customers no matter which channel they are reaching out from and help them quickly. They should be able to seamlessly transfer the call to an expert who would already have the knowledge of why the customer is calling from the get go and drive conversations accordingly.
- Share Proactive Updates: Your customers shouldn’t have to waste their time reaching out to your brand to find out where their shipment is at. Providing timely updates goes a long way.
Are we able to provide a consistent customer experience across channels?
Customers nowadays interact with companies over a number of touchpoints, from SMS, email, voice, social media, in-person, and so on. As per Salesforce, at least 75 percent customers look forward to having a consistent experience across multiple channels and can easily dump brands if they don’t get that. Companies often do try to be present on multiple channels, but are unable to create a consistent channel experience for their customers. This leads customers to spend a lot of time bouncing between channels, for example from voice to email and messenger. Each channel has its nuances so taking those into consideration while crafting a consistent experience helps.
What’s the Fix?
- Integrate All Channels: Use a platform that integrates and supports all your communication channels so your customers can be served quickly no matter which channel they are using.
- Set Realistic Expectations: You need to set the right expectations by clearly stating your customer service hours and designated ways to contact your business for each kind of query. If you know it’s difficult to solve a problem on a particular channel, communicate that to customers beforehand. Also, clearly state times when you are not available and set realistic timeframes for a query resolution.
- Have Agents Reply to Queries Across Every Channel: Be aware that your customers can send in queries via any channel so its important that your agents are ready to answer these queries irrespective of the channel. It’s important to provide timely and personalized responses instead of set replies. That’s what wins the trust of your customers. Also, these agents can guide customers toward the channel that best suits their needs.
- Deliver Consistent Messaging: While different platforms look different, the crux of your messaging, your underlying message and unique value proposition should be the same.
Are we able to provide a consistent customer experience across channels?
Customers nowadays interact with companies over a number of touchpoints, from SMS, email, voice, social media, in-person, and so on. As per Salesforce, at least 75 percent customers look forward to having a consistent experience across multiple channels and can easily dump brands if they don’t get that. Companies often do try to be present on multiple channels, but are unable to create a consistent channel experience for their customers. This leads customers to spend a lot of time bouncing between channels, for example from voice to email and messenger. Each channel has its nuances so taking those into consideration while crafting a consistent experience helps.
What’s the Fix?
- Integrate All Channels: Use a platform that integrates and supports all your communication channels so your customers can be served quickly no matter which channel they are using.
- Set Realistic Expectations: You need to set the right expectations by clearly stating your customer service hours and designated ways to contact your business for each kind of query. If you know it’s difficult to solve a problem on a particular channel, communicate that to customers beforehand. Also, clearly state times when you are not available and set realistic timeframes for a query resolution.
- Have Agents Reply to Queries Across Every Channel: Be aware that your customers can send in queries via any channel so its important that your agents are ready to answer these queries irrespective of the channel. It’s important to provide timely and personalized responses instead of set replies. That’s what wins the trust of your customers. Also, these agents can guide customers toward the channel that best suits their needs.
- Deliver Consistent Messaging: While different platforms look different, the crux of your messaging, your underlying message and unique value proposition should be the same.
Is the customer having a smooth experience on mobile? Are we prioritizing mobile-first conversations?
You might have a wonderful website and all the necessary customer communication tools but still score low on customer satisfaction. The culprit could be your mobile interface. Most of your customers today live on their mobiles, and are likely to engage with all your digital touchpoints from their small screen. Many brands that prioritize the user experience on laptops and not mobile struggle to serve their customers well on the small screen. The website, designed for laptops, oftens looks cluttered on the small screen and can be a huge turn off for customers. You need to redesign your brand experience for mobile and make it easy for customers to complete tasks with minimum friction on their mobile phones in an omnichannel environment.
What’s the Fix?
- Have a mobile-first design: Develop minimal text with vertical creative formats that are easy for website visitors to see on a small screen.
- Optimize images so they load quickly: Use smaller-size images, use the correct file format, implement the lazy loading technique, and optimize image delivery. Simplify navigation by using easy-to-see headers, limiting the number of steps taken to complete tasks on your app, provide easy access in the form of buttons, and so on.
- Create mobile-friendly emails: Use short subject lines and body copy. Keep your preheader text short and make sure to leave open spaces around the CTA. Make sure to use smaller images and optimize each image for eh mobile.
- Create a simple, painless onboarding flow: Have a simple sign-up process by keeping required fields to a minimum. Give customers the option of logging in using their existing email addresses, or with their Facebook or Twitter accounts, rather than asking them to create separate user names.
Are We Actually Listening to Our Customers?
CX teams often spend a lot of time analyzing their campaign performance and other metrics in a bid to find out ways to improve their customer service but miss out on actually listening to what their customers have to say. This makes it difficult for them to understand the root cause of many of their customers’ problems.
What’s the Fix?
- Engage in social listening: See what your customers are posting about their experience with your brand on social media and act on it.
- Collect Zero-Party data: Zero-party data essentially means information shared by your customers willingly on your owned channels like SMS, email, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. Ask customers about their preferences by collecting information via quizzes, social media polls, post-purchase surveys, contests, and more. It will help you take a personalized approach to all your marketing activities and ensure your customers find actual value in them.
Are we over-engaging with our customers?
While it’s great to stay connected with your customers, there is such a thing as over engagement and it can be incredibly frustrating for customers. Too many emails, SMSs, or push notifications can irk customers who are already overburdened with a deluge of messages from numerous brands vying for their attention. Sometimes, brands continue to send emails even after customers opt out, or keep requesting their customers not to opt out even when they clearly want to. This is a huge irritant for customers and is best avoided.
What’s the Fix?
- Always Engage Mindfully With Customers: Always provide your customers an easy path to opt out of receiving messages from your brand.
Are we sharing detailed purchase-related information to keep customers informed at all times?
Oftentimes customers are left wondering what happened to their product after their order was confirmed. Not knowing leaves customers with feelings of uncertainty and they might become more cautious during their next purchase. Keeping them updated at all times is essential in helping them believe they made the right choice.
What’s the Fix?
- Share Timely Alerts: Keep customers informed at every stage of their journey, from order and payment confirmation, shipment tracking, announcing delays, and so on.
Why Customer Journey Orchestration is Needed to
Get Your CX Right
While the above-mentioned areas need a serious consideration, what is needed is a look at the bigger picture. Your customers judge your brand through end-to-end experiences, and not via individual touchpoints. Your touchpoints may be performing well individually but your overall experience may still be poor. What you really need is to understand your customer’s varied needs at each stage of their journey. You need to understand when to send an upsell offer and also when to withhold it. This can be achieved via customer journey orchestration, which requires all touchpoint owners, i.e., different internal teams (marketing, data, engineering, and customer support teams), to be aligned so they can clearly see which stage of the customer journey they are at and serve them accordingly.
What is also needed is the right platform that will help you orchestrate the cross-channel journey. If you want to learn more about the perfect tool that can help you master omnichannel communication, talk to us today!