A Sustainable Approach To Customer Experience
Customer Experience (CX) Is The Driving Force Behind Any Good Business Strategy
It’s both all-encompassing and unique to each individual organisation, and can be summarised as follows: A business’s outcome should not be about what an organisation can do, but about what their customers want.
End-To-End Customer Experience
CX transcends the typical silo management model that many companies still follow. It also goes beyond traditional customer insights measured by companies, like customer service surveys or post-purchase reviews. These insights do play a role, but so do billing structures, tone of voice, point of sales, speed of delivery and even something as innocuous as audio quality on a phone line.
Every aspect that relates to the customer’s interaction with a brand is part of the customer journey.
As such, to be truly comprehensive, a business needs to take a holistic approach to CX.
Measuring CX
The end-to-end customer journey needs to be thoroughly analysed. Fortunately, there are many insights available that can help define how well current operational strategies work.
- Observation:A customer journey progresses through different touch points, with each contributing to the experience. Through insights, observing this journey and identifying these touchpoints can help streamline the customer experience.
- Analysis:A company must then start analysing their own operational structure and identify strengths and weaknesses. This analysis should be far-reaching and cover touchpoints, customer lifecycle, user interface, competition, available infrastructure or resources, and any other aspect of the business model that can impact CX.
- Transformation:This analysis will show an organisation what customers appreciate or dislike about their experience and how processes measure up to expectations. Based on this information, decision makers can implement the right strategic innovations, such as call centre outsourcing, to ensure operational processes are in line with customer expectations.
Transforming CX will create an environment in which operational decisions are governed by customer expectations. This holistic and cross-functional approach to CX will redefine a company structure and increase agility, giving the brand a chance to increase market reach and ensure customers – who are looking for excellent service above all else – remain loyal. The digitisation of the world has made it possible to implement changes almost instantaneously, which is in line with the kind of service customers have become accustomed to.
Customer Experience And Innovation Starts From Within
Decision makers need to acknowledge that a fundamental shift in company culture is required for any changes to have a lasting positive impact on business outcomes.
Put simply, CX must be as much an internal priority as it is an external one. Every agent needs to experience that same satisfactory journey their customers do if an organisation is to truly achieve excellence. This means internal processes need to be put in place that make it possible to deliver excellence at every level of the organisation.
Departments must work together to measure insights, implement solutions and monitor outcomes that benefit CX and boost operational efficiencies.
Failing to do so and solving issues only on an ad hoc basis can result in CX stagnation and loss of expertise as disgruntled agents underperform or leave.
Merchants is a BPO service provider that understands the intricacies of customer management solutions, how these solutions relate to internal processes and workforce management, and how all these elements combined contribute to overall CX. As your business development partner, we can help optimise your processes using tried-and-tested methodologies, backed by years of experience. Together, we will develop unique strategies,that will improve your company’s CX and positively impact your business outcomes.
For more information, feel free to contact us.
Benchmarking data provides industry leaders with essential industry-standardised information on customer experience. This data is the solid foundation required to build a durable customer management strategy and increase your brand’s market penetration and customer retention. Click below to find out more about our benchmarking report.