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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
