CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DEMYSTIFIED|6 SURE WAYS TO MANAGE CX|

The biggest rating that matters to any startup or fortune company is Customer Experience. Any domain starting from the service industry, hospitality or healthcare if the customer experience is not doing well then you are dealing with severe dissatisfied customers to handle which snowballs into account issues or even business performance issues. Your client satisfaction survey score or VOC determines what work your several departments should be prioritizing. More customer orientation also ensures brilliant reputation, consistent business, growth, and the best differentiator to beat the competition.

However, sometimes the revenue targets can lead you astray in setting goals that may not be favorable to your clients. Recently when I visited one of the best hospitals in the city, I was shocked at how the patients were being treated and the delayed decision making. The worst was handed out to me when they were making a simple issue into major surgeries and even scary complications. Medical science today is one of the biggest businesses and a scary place to step in…Senior doctors of the hospitals have several foreign qualifications to impress and are well compensated, however, their sad story of thriving in the role depends on how much they can milk the patient. Unfortunately in the name of professionalism customer experience in this domain is slowly becoming a nightmare.

Quick profits and revenue growth has inspired many businesses to cut corners, compromise quality, beat the competition, and become obsessed about success defined in terms of revenue alone…and eventually drown customer experience. Today Customer experience is more mechanical and sometimes a manipulated score.

It is god’s grace that even in this age of cutthroat competition, some true professionals and ethical organizations are giving their best to their clients, and delighting them in every field. Hopefully, they would soon outnumber and outshine the ones who are not focused on the customer’s wellbeing. A big digital marketing budget is not driving them, what drives them is every single user experience irrespective of how much it fuels the business. It is time such saviour knights in organizations are rewarded in the boardrooms and are role models for others in the same domain.

There are many benefits of customer experience management, such as increased loyalty & engagement and positive word-of-mouth marketing. Work on developing an active customer experience management program in your company to proactively improve the customer experience at every step along the customer journey. You can also use a lifecycle in terms of products -employee CX orientations, used case scenario upgrades, big data analysis, and integrating all your functions to speak the same language to yield on this metric.

6 Ways you can re-visit your Customer Experience norms are:

1. Know Your Customers -We’ve talked about this countless times – if you don’t know your customers, how will you know what they need, and how your service can support them. Whether in healthcare -tech -hospitality…this area is critical even to understand your relevance and your target audience…rather than implementing a mass strategy. Again this needs to be part of a system to ensure every time you are dealing with a client the most important aspects are documented for you to refer to. Recently in my hospital visit, I was given medication that caused allergies, this again is a lack of information. This ideally should be available if it is my regular healthcare place. Every time I call my premium bank service provider they ask several questions before they provide a solution…apart from authentication can this interaction be better with information already collected. The same applies to the mobile service providers.
2. Workout your Ideal Customer Experience Strategy -Before creating a customer experience strategy, we talked about what makes a great customer experience. Find out your ideal experience – how you would ideally want the customer to feel when he interacts with your brand. Once you’ve decided on your version of the best customer experience, focus your efforts on delivering your intended experience. This could be your holy grail in how you make the customer feel and perceive you.
3. Develop a Customer Experience Management Program and use Omnichannel -Customer Experience Management (CEM) is the art of controlling, tracking, and designing customer interactions at all touchpoints to meet or exceed customer demands. Instead of adopting a multi-channel approach, go omnichannel and allow your customers to interact with you and be serviced via any channel. It eliminates disjointed systems and interaction silos between various departments.
4. Let Your Customers Help Themselves with Self Service -Modern customers don’t want you to help them – ideally, they would want to help themselves. Today, most of the companies offering web or mobile self-service reported an increase in site traffic and reduced phone inquiries. Post resources, books, and FAQs on your website to help customers service themselves and look for solutions to their problems. Because think about it, what would you rather do – wait in line for an agent to answer your query, or browse a forum to look for the answer?
5. Use Innovation to Raise the Bar & Engage on Social Media-Look at the customer experience of Apple, Disney, and Tesla – what are they doing differently? They use innovation in their approach to customer experience to connect with their customers and stand out from the rest. Innovative solutions are not only authentic and effective, but they are cost-efficient as well. As the next step of innovation using social media to interact with your clients. If they follow you or engage with you, they likely like what you have to offer or what you choose to stand for. Use this to build relationships and build a long-term support plan, rather than bombarding with new schemes every time you get them. Some brands go out of their way to engage their users in amusing ways. NASA’s Curiosity Rover has its social media handle with millions of followers. This could even be an opportunity to reward them with your pilot products or services.
6. Optimize efficiency with Tech & Focus on Customer-Centric Culture-To truly gain a competitive edge in the world of customer experience, it is important to improve your client interaction performance. Segment your customers with the help of analytics, IVR, and call routing data and focus on overall business KPIs and performance metrics. Empower and invest in your manpower to give them a holistic view of all customer interactions, facilitate smart customer interactions and improve productivity. Don’t strive to create only a single team to manage the customer experience in your organization, strive to make customer experience advocates out of all your employees by CX culture.

What is your Customer Experience Quotient? Are you aware of why they are loyal or not? Do you want to focus on revenue growth or Customer delight growth? Are you worried about your NPS when the survey is rolled out, or is the homework done? What’s your relevance to your customer? Do share with us how work on your CX?