Call Recording Featured Article

Why do customers pick the companies they want to do business with? Is it because of low prices? Is it because of product reliability? Is it because of the influence of friends and family? For a company struggling to win and keep customers, these are important questions to ask. While all of these things certainly play a part, there is evidence that many companies are missing the most important element: the customer experience.

According to a recent study by analyst group Frost & Sullivan, customer experience will overtake price and product as a key brand differentiator by 2020. American consumers are tired of customer support runarounds, delays and a lack of good results. As companies have cut costs on support, it has gotten harder for customers to have an easy and positive customer experience. And companies are paying the price.

Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) estimates that global businesses lose over $300 billion each year because of a poor customer experience. Lousy or lack-luster service directly results in customer churn and can even tarnish a brand’s relationship. (Imagine a well-crafted and expensive marketing campaign to win customers that is wasted as soon as the customers pick up the phone or engage in a chat with a poorly trained customer support agent.) Does it make sense when slick marketing can be easily undone by lousy customer support?)

Too few companies today even understand the customer experience they are providing. (Multiple studies have shown that companies vastly overstate the quality of customer support they offer.) They may not be keeping their eye on the customer journey (where are the pitfalls?). They may not be tracking important quality metrics. (First-call resolution indicates quality much more than average handle time, for example). They may also have their communications channels poorly integrated, which is becoming a real problem for customers who expect to be able to jump from channel to channel seamlessly.)

“All businesses should aim to provide a unified omnichannel experience across all channels so that the process is seamless, consistent and integrated as customers move through them," said Krishna Baidya, associate director of Digital Transformation, Asia Pacific for Frost & Sullivan.

In order to properly manage the customer experience and deliver a better one, brands need to understand the customer experience by customer, and not just in general way. Obviously, not all customers are the same, or want the same thigs. This means having a grasp of the customer's interaction history and demographics, and looking at the entire journey from the moment the customer initiates contact (via any channel) through to issue resolution.

Well-designed self-service channels are great – they can offload simple questions and queries onto Web site FAQs, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and even more up-to-date communications vehicles such as smart “chat bots.” But while they may be able to handle the bulk of the queries, self-service will never be able to handle the really complex and high-value customer issues. For this reason, live help needs to be available at all times, and it needs to be properly integrated with self-service channels so customers can escalate if they need to without having to explain themselves all over again.

Quality as well as speed – 71 percent of respondents to the Frost & Sullivan survey said “fast” is a top consideration – is unlikely to ever be achieved by cutting back on customer support resources. Key investments in technologies that boost productivity and efficiency, such as workforce optimization, unified desktops and databases and agent training, will be the way toward a better customer experience.