Customer Experience exemplifies a company. Alongside your product or service, it is your defining characteristic.
Why? Customer Experience encapsulates everything from which opinions of you are formed.
Get it right and you’re on to a winner.
Prospects become clients. Clients become brand advocates. Brand advocates generate more sales.
But what about when Customer Experience goes wrong?
According to a study conducted by Inc.com
On average, we tell ten times more people about a negative experience than a positive one.
Inc.com
In other words, you need a lot of happy, smiling faces to outweigh a single negative experience.
Couple this with the fact it costs 25 times more to acquire a new customer than keep one; and we can safely conclude that quality experience matters.
Best Practice In Practice
So how do we actually go about standardising Best Practice Customer Experience?
The past 12 months have brought numerous challenges to the fore, not least a seismic shift toward managing teams remotely.
Whilst many managers had previously held regional territories, with direct reports dotted across the country, the transition enforced as a result of Covid-19 has made it even harder for businesses to gain an accurate insight into customer interactions.
What was previously a manageable workaround has suddenly had it’s pitfalls starkly exposed.
Without visibility into the Customer Experience, we’re left to question whether or not teams are employing a best practice approach.
Those that have managed to negate the impact of the shift were, by and large, already prepared for remote consistency; able to call upon on a robust customer process and a scalable model for success.
Yet for those without visibility into their Customer Experience, knowing for sure whether each opportunity is handled appropriately becomes impossible.
Best Practice Customer Experience is born from accountability, structure and constant reflection for improvements.
You need to be giving your customers a consistent, quality experience no matter their circumstances.
So how can we ensure Best Practice? Is our Customer Experience standardised and exemplary across the board?
These 3 tips will help you answer these questions and enable your business to employ a Best Practice Customer Experience.
1 – Align Every Team & Every One
Let’s make one thing clear, every department impacts upon Customer Experience.
But do they do so in a unified manner?
Is messaging consistent from top of the funnel marketing, through sales and on to customer service after the transaction is complete?
The journey to becoming a customer begins long before any human interaction with an organisation.
Whether through a referral, marketing campaign or driving past a store, our potential clients know us long before we know them.
Figures vary but an extensive study conducted by Sirius Decisions reported
67% of the sales decision is made before a face-to-face interaction.
SIRIUS DECISIONS
This is why aligning the entire experience is invaluable.
For organisations that aren’t as focused on customer retention, with purchases usually being a one off, unifying pre and post sale Customer Experience teams is a must if you want to stay competitive.
By aligning these teams and processes, companies can build a customer-centric culture, improve retention and increase revenue.
If the process is not coordinated and planned out, there is no way your Best Practice can be a constant presence throughout.
As highlighted above, it’s just as, if not more important to ensure that existing customers succeed as it is to acquire new customers.
Therefore, a Best Practice Customer Experience plan should encompass the whole journey.
Once everyone is on the same page, consistency thrives and Best Practice becomes second nature.
2 – Be Proactive
For some businesses, Customer Experience efforts tend to focus on fire fighting, reacting to client problems as and when they arise.
By contrast, the most effective Customer Experience functions focus on driving change proactively, thereby preventing the problems from surfacing in the first place.
Historically, many customer focussed professionals have struggled to convince senior leaders of the benefits of proactive Customer Experience efforts.
And yet in a world where experience is now valued more than price or product; securing buy in across the organisation is vital.
As a group, Millennials are willing to spend the most, an additional 21%, for a great Customer Experience.
AMERICAN EXPRESS CUSTOMER SERVCE BAROMETER
By aligning departments from across the business, combining their customer personas and journeys, you can portray the impact a positive customer experience can have on increasing conversions and driving average customer value.
Encouraging feedback, both from internal employees and externals customers promotes the concept of proactivity.
Identify and implement the process that works most effectively at generating a positive Customer Experience.
It’s certainly in our collective interest to invest in excellence rather than sit idle and wait for the inevitable.
3 – Embrace Digital
Embrace the technology available to you!
Gone are the days where outdated, inconsistent spreadsheets were deemed an adequate tool for facilitating Best Practice Customer Experience.
The best multi-channel Customer Experiences are those that offer customers a seamless transition between channels.
Harnessing the power of software to align, integrate and optimise your customer journey will allow you to set yourself apart from the competition.
Equally important to remember though is that modernising doesn’t mean losing the personal touch.
People like to engage with people.
Technology shouldn’t remove that, but instead ensure that when the human interactions occur, everyone is providing a consistent, quality experience.
A Process Management solution can help identify broken processes and increase accountability through a consistent approach to each and every interaction.
No missed deadlines, no database inconsistencies, no chasing for information.
The end result? A better Customer Experience.
All together you become more effective, more efficient and more profitable.
Intrigued to learn more? Check out our Insights Hub to keep your business at the cutting edge.
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- March 23rd, 2021