The Journey from Customer Service to Customer Experience
The journey from Customer service to Customer experience Lot has been written about customer service over the years. A large number of businesses have traditionally also thought themselves to be insulated from this aspect of business since it one could argue that it is most applicable to customer facing businesses and service companies. While this thought process has evolved and now even product companies focus on customer service and specifically after sales service, most businesses in the Middle East still look at customer service in its traditional sense. Interaction with customers is centered around fulfilling their need when they initiate contact. What is important to note though is that the customers are changing, their expectations and behavior has changed significantly over the last decade. They are making buying decisions not only on the basis of whatis delivered in terms of a product or service but, also on howit is delivered. Let’s take the example of a car dealership, the customer touchpoints are the following:
Website
Mobile app
Phone
Sales center agent
Service center agent
Service support
Now a dealership may score high on each of these when looked in isolation, it might still give a poor customer experience. It is critical to start mapping out customer interactions as a journey and not as interactions at individual touch-points. Let’s look at the touch-points in the above dealership and their relative effectiveness in customer satisfaction, to arrive an overall customer satisfaction:
As can be seen while the agents performed exceptionally on an individual basis the other elements drove the satisfaction down. The journey matters! The customer experience leaders at McKinsey and Co have come up with a three-step process to redesign the customer experience journey in order to positively impact satisfaction and therefore impact the organizational effectiveness: Step 1: Observe –There is merit in taking a back seat and observing what the customer experiences when they interact with your company. Step 2: Shape –Map out all touch points and see how they are shaped, examine if realigning the touchpoints can improve efficiency in the interactions. Step 3: Perform –After a clear customer journey is mapped out, start making the changes, driving them from the top and leading to a technological, cultural and process change across the company. How we, at Falak can we help you engage your customers in order to create greater value for them:
We can help map out your customer journey
Thereafter we can help collect important data to understand behavior
Once the data is collected, we can analyze and create dashboards for real time intervention
We can realign your touchpoints to create a more fulfilling experience
We can facilitate higher levels of customer engagement
We can redefine processes and bring about cultural change
We can manage the change and make your organization more customer friendly
Finally, we can digitize your customer experience journey