7 Min
You have saved quite some bucks cutting all your miscellaneous through last year. You go to your bank for purchasing a FD scheme. The investment desk refers you to cash counter, while cash encounter refers you to the deposit counter. You keep moving from one counter to other but no one advises you on best policy as per your budget. You finally sit down in the waiting lobby where a senior citizen asks you to surf through internet and take best guess possible. He departs with words, “It is how this place works.”
Well now let us reflect upon the best moments you have had at the bank- NONE!
A wise guess even states that it was your last visit to the bank as you changed yours.
Bad customer experience is thus the make or mar factor for your business. It might be possible that you are doing the best you can to meet the demand but owing to a shortage in your supply chain, efforts backfire. It is thus the first lesson of business to always emphasize on experience delivered. The next lesson though is the estimation of your delivery capacity and either expand the business accordingly or learn to pass on that extra piece of pie.
Great customer experience isn’t a topic of debate but a survival kit to attain and keep. There are innumerable examples of hoe brands came in the market, gained a quick height, and vanished faster. It is all because they either didn’t pay attention to building a concrete foundation or thought of riding too far with insufficient CX backing.
Truly laudable customer experience is a two-way street. While the organization cares for quality and price, customers too spread positive words employing public appreciation and genuine feedback. Taking an extra step makes your members feel valued.
Table of Contents
Santa’s secret on CX
- Show your customers that you care, extend some vouchers, take feedback, give out merchandise, host community interaction, and be humble.
- Value and motivate your employees as well. Good employee experience can contribute wonders by motivating them.
Root cause of bad customer experience
“I am the king” perception
It is true that world of commerce has far ago moved from “supply creates its demand.”- Say’s Law; to ‘Consumer is the king’. However, when customers assume extreme authority stating their superiority, they no longer leave space for respect and servitude on agent’s parts.
Agent attitudes
Agents deal with multiple customers all posing problems. This might lead them to negativities and absenteeism. They might get rude and irritated while hearing the problems. The environment of a contact center is always chaotic affecting agent’s mental focus.
Under delivery
Agents are sometimes unable to meet customer’s expectations. Under delivering not only increases FCR, but it also reduces CX and CSAT. Customers have to reach out to service portals multiple times and complex solutions or incomplete information leads to bad customer experience.
Absence of soft skills
Human assistance is considered as a benchmark to train automated assistance. The use of NLP tries to make the accuracy and tone of AI and smart bots close to humans thereby making them possess soft skills. If agents lack empathy, they would be no different than a bot merely finding and distributing solutions over calm interactions.
Improve bad customer experience with Knowledge management
With knowledge management, it is easy to get a hold of the required measures. Feedback and analytics throw light on customers’ reactions on service level and assistance quality. Knowledge management not only makes it feasible to distribute correct and complete knowledge, but it also acts as bridge between CRM and agents. Providing access to information over any platform, at any time, gives both consumers and contact centers leverage against poor experience.
72% of US online customers like to discover answers through the Internet, as opposed to getting the telephone or send an email.
Agents have to create tickets from the query raised. An AI-based knowledge base picks the keywords and starts searching for all relevant information available across various platforms. Google-like elastic search result reads within the documents and media to reach down exact knowledge required to be conveyed to caller.
With self service platforms, chatbots are deployed to do the same as against agents. Only, visitor types in complaint and from results popping up choose the best fit as a solution. In case the solution gets too complicated, it is directed to AR resolution where an expert from contact center reached out to visitors. Access for remote sharing of screen is exchanged and accepted between the two. Through live camera, caller shows current position of device/product needing servicing. With clear symbols and audio-video guidance, a conversation follows closely assisting customers till problem is resolved.
A good knowledge management system builds a community of users. The parties to the knowledge base of an organization are the end-users externally and agents internally. Building a community for them to rate and discuss the knowledge improves the quality of knowledge base. Analytics and feedback management is that part of knowledge management that throws light on customers’ expectations, market situations, demand-supply pattern drifts, and strategic formulation required for surviving it all. Once successful, it fetches great customer experience scores for organizations delivering maximum satisfaction to customers.
The data above speaks of parts played by various service and marketing-oriented tactics. The part played by customer experience prevails. Technology has expanded the average digital age globally while it has reduced the distance we carry amid us. Connecting to any part of world and procuring any piece of information is a cakewalk now. Only winner factor one can carry is speedier delivery. Your customers are no longer your private assets, which is why you must reach out to them with apt solutions before your competitors do.
Use case
Deltek, a global provider of enterprise software, used a customer-facing knowledge management solution to make information about their company easier to locate for their 20,000-strong user base. By providing a self-service portal along with an online customer service community forum, Deltek increased user activity on their online forums, improved online customer satisfaction by 2 points (to a total rating of 93.4%), and reduced case resolution time by 20%. Benefits delivered (converting bad to good customer experience)
Conclusion
A good customer experience is thus pivotal for strong business foundation. When your customers are satisfied, they are open to unfiltered communication getting you in touch with ground realities of your efforts. With great knowledge base; connectivity, communication, content all contribute to building blocks for good customer experience.
To know the metrics you need to work on for better CX, click here to calculate your organizational health with our ROI calculator.
