In a recent Microsoft survey, 68% of 18-34-year-old consumers said they stopped doing business with a brand due to a single poor customer service experience. 52% of respondents said they had hung up on a customer service call before they ever got through to an agent.
There’s never been a more important time for organizations to reach new levels of customer experience success.
Technology and Social Media is empowering consumers like never before. They have vastly expanding choices and access to information around the world, anytime, anywhere. They can now make informed choices between competing brands, as information is literally at the tips of their fingers.
Achieve success with the help of customer experience technology that makes it easier for you to offer the experience that your customers rave about.
“So where are you now and how far will you go to offer the best customer experience?”
Customer experience stage 1 – the boiler room
To save as much money as possible on communications you bought cheap mobile phones with unlimited calls and texts. When customers return a call, the person answering takes 5 minutes to work out exactly who it is and why they called in the first place.
“You might save money on call costs but the boiler room mentality could be costing you dearly”
Customer experience stage 2 – got a phone system
Organizations on Stage 2 have put a phone system in place. People can answer the phone, transfer calls and customers can leave a voicemail when you’re not around, or the lines are busy. But even when calls are answered, the caller might need to be transferred to someone else, and it still takes time for the agent to get their details together so they can help them. 25% of millennials listed “making a customer service call”, as being in their top 3 worst things to have to do.
“Are your communications millennial-friendly?”
Customer experience stage 3 – got a CRM
Adding a CRM solution to your organization’s infrastructure means you climb up to Stage 3. Now when someone calls, the agent can quickly find the caller and see the history of interactions. A considerable improvement on Stage 2. At least callers stand a chance of having their call resolved by the agent who answers, and if not then at least they are much more likely to be transferred to the right person.
“Time to integrate your communications with your CRM?”
Customer experience stage 4 – reporting & dashboards are here
Moving up to Stage 4 means you started to get serious about the quality of the customer experience you provide. What gets measured gets managed, so a comprehensive call reporting solution allows you to measure your KPIs and lets you know how well you’re doing when it comes to interacting with your customers.
“Are you measuring your service levels?”
Customer experience stage 5 – add voice recording for compliance & quality management
Stepping up to Stage 5 is a combination of technology and processes. Adding voice recording provides you with regulatory body compliance, as well as management and training of staff responses. Of course, the technology isn’t enough on its own—you must implement the processes to include the training and management on an ongoing basis.
“Compliance — are you protecting your business and your customers?”
Customer experience stage 6 – adding contact center management & methodologies
You go ahead and introduce contact center technology and methodologies to your organization. Contacts from customers undergo call and skills routing, and more in-depth reporting and analytics allows you to employ sophisticated techniques to improve customer services and responses.
“Do you route callers to the right people every time?”
Customer experience stage 7 – omni channel contact center
Stage 7 is the omni-channel customer experience solution across all your business teams—your customers are in seventh heaven.
Customers can self-serve via AI and automated systems, contact you via any of their preferred channels—email, social, web chat, calls—and they’re instantly served by someone who knows who they are and their history with your company. All your systems “talk” to each other the instant initial contact is made.
Customers feel safe knowing all their interactions are correctly recorded and stored securely. No matter who they get through to, via whatever channel, the agent can deal with them quickly, efficiently and with helpful pleasure on their first interaction.
“You get a gold star for maximizing the customer experience with omni channel”
Find out more about how to improve customer experience here: iPECS Contact Center
