Key Ingredients for CX Success
With customer expectations at an all-time high, investing in the customer experience is no longer a nice to have but a need to have. Despite the majority of businesses making CX their primary focus, many of them don’t know where to begin.
Here, we look at the five key ingredients for providing an unforgettable experience for your customers.
1. Empathy
Simply interacting with customers on a transactional basis is not enough if you wish to stand out from the crowd. Developing real emotional connections in order to truly understand your customer’s needs is key If you really want to ‘wow’ your customers. Less than half of consumers believe that the employees they interact with genuinely understand their needs
In order to cut costs and keep up with changing technology, many businesses have begun to lean toward chatbots and Artificial intelligence (AI). While these tools can be very useful and free up a lot of time for agents, almost 60% of consumers feel that the crucial human element is now missing when it comes to customer experience.
Research conducted by Fortune found that 42% of CEOs vowed to prioritize demonstrating empathy in customer interactions.
2. Omnichannel communication
When it comes to interacting with agents, customers want choice. Research by Vonage found that the number one driver of customers developing emotional connections to a brand is the ability to contact the company through any channel of their choosing.
Offering up full omnichannel support (phone, email, webchat, etc) allows customers to move seamlessly from one channel to the next without having to repeat themselves several times. Having the ability to move from one channel to the next while remaining in contact with a support agent is very important to the majority of customers.
Integrating all of your systems ensures that agents are armed with all the information they need when dealing with customer queries, resulting in issues being handled as swiftly as possible.
3. Closed-loop feedback
Closed-loop feedback refers to the follow-up companies give to customer feedback, which helps build loyalty and trust.
Having an effective Case Management system in place is key to closing the loop and providing a superior customer experience. Acting on real-time negative feedback allows you to turn a poor experience into a great one and turn unhappy customers into your biggest fans.
Bringing social channels into your case management system can make an enormous difference with over half of the world’s population currently using social media. 56% of customers stated a company’s response to a review changed their perspective on the business.
4. Personalisation
Offering up the same ‘one size fits all’ service to all your customers, more often than not, is not enough to ‘wow’ your customers and prevent them from taking their business elsewhere. Customers want to be made feel like they are more than just a number and that their loyalty is truly appreciated by the business.
59% of customers declared that tailoring interactions based on previous engagement is crucial to winning their business. One way businesses can do this is by integrating all systems such as your contact centre platform, CRM systems and any ticketing system. Creating a single view of your customers and their journeys will provide context to agents and will allow them to tailor future interactions with customers.
5. Employee experience
One key element of the customer experience that is often overlooked is the employee experience (EX). Despite acknowledging the importance of EX, only a mere 10% of companies have integrated an EX strategy into their business strategy and actively use technology to transform this experience.
There is an undeniable link between EX and CX. Companies that actively engage their employees have reported customer loyalty rates 233% higher than companies with disengaged employees. On top of that, almost 90% of revenue growth leaders found that improving the employee experience led directly to an improved experience for their customers.
If you want to nail the customer experience, add these 5 key ingredients to your CX shopping list!
