3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

In the rush to determine just what goes into a customer experience, it isn't always considered just what a customer experience is not. That's a strange perspective to take, but one that will likely ultimately provide some powerful answers. Customer Think recently had a look at that particular point, and came up with some very unexpected answers as to what isn't customer experience.

First, customer experience is not marketing. This isn't to say that marketing isn't part of the customer experience, but it is not only marketing. Customer experience is a continuum, a whole line of points of contact with the business. From the marketing to the after-sales experience to the first warranty claim, should it ever happen, that's all a part of customer experience.

Second, it's also not new. The customer experience has been around ever since there were customers buying things. But the thing about this is that we're finally starting to realize just what it is. We're starting to see the value of caring for the customer at every point in the customer's contact with a business, and so we're starting to quantify and codify just what that means. With that, we can start applying universal and locally-specific principles to put the most into that customer experience, and get the most out of it as well.

Third, it's not a trend. Trends are more short-term in nature, and sometimes only last so long. Customer experience cannot be a trend because of its longevity so far, and likely will not be revealed as a trend later because it likely will not fade away. The new discovery of customer experience's importance may make it seem like a trend, like everyone hopping aboard a whole new bandwagon, but it's been around so long that it can't be a trend.

Fourth, it's not strictly digital, nor strictly social. Both social and digital are part of the customer experience, of course, but remember that customer experience is every part of the business that comes in contact with the customer.  Even businesses strictly online aren't just digital here; when the customer receives product, that's part of the customer experience, and should be considered accordingly.

Fifth, it's not the only answer to all questions. It's a broad, overarching framework, rather, that contains the answers to all questions. Customer experience is basically the box that all the answers come in. There are still issues of regulation and of basic management, but all of these things are basically part of customer experience, in some fashion, because these make contact with the customer.

In the end, the big thing to remember is that customer experience is not just a part of the organization. It is the entire, start-to-finish interaction between the customer and the business, and in a lot of ways, it does not really finish. Neglecting any one part of this massive framework will make the whole that much more weak, and may well be sufficient to keep customers out of the business altogether. It's too big to be a trend, and it's been around too long to be some new management fad. Treating it like either of these does a huge disservice to the business as a whole, and may well damage it in the long term.

Keeping these points of customer experience in mind, meanwhile, will offer businesses the best chance at success, and a lot of happy customers returning to do more business with a company later.