by Richard Lynch, on Sep 15, 2017 11:42:17 AM
More and more of today’s business transactions require customer involvement in the product or service. Customers now print and scan their own airline and movie tickets, perform banking transactions, and order just about anything online. The result is more touch points with the customer, an increase in self-service options, and a heavier reliance on peer ratings.
Bottom line: It is imperative to give customers a great and effortless experience.
Similar to how companies apply rigor in their lean/six sigma work, here are some tools for ensuring a great customer experience.
Great experiences earn loyalty, and loyalty means more revenue and growth. The opposite is also true. Bad customer experiences lead to negative ratings, which directly impact profitability. For example, in healthcare, poor experience ratings can impact reimbursements or in retail and hospitality industries, it can mean lost sales.
A lot is at stake.
What is the Customer Experience?
Any interaction between a customer and the business whereby the customer has an opportunity to form (or change) an impression about the company is called a Moment-of-Truth (MoT). Combined, these MoTs form the customer experience, or Cx for short.
Companies often ignore these MoTs as they design products and services, build websites, and operate channels of business. It's often an error of omission: the ideal experience is not defined or communicated across organization silos. Businesses must first identify and address the key customer concerns to engineer a favorable Cx. One way to do this is by using an empathy diagram, shown here, which expresses concerns such as what the customer says, sees, thinks, and hears as they interact with a business process.
Making the Cx explicit in capabilities, business processes, training, procedures, systems, portals, and apps requires the same rigor as companies apply in their operation efficiency programs, especially when growth is a key strategic driver.
5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
- Know your customer personas.
- Who are your key personas?
- What are their demographics, demeanor, goals and challenges?
- What can you do to help them achieve their goals?
- Map their touch points and MoTs with the business.
- Where does the Customer Journey begin, where does it end? Is there a consistent, repeatable path every time?
- Where do customers form an impression of you?
- What do they hear, see, think and feel as they interact with you? Which are key MoTs?
- Where do you collect feedback? How do you know the Cx is positive for the user?
- Understand capabilities needed to orchestrate an ideal customer experience.
- What is the value dimension? Are you more affordable, cater to unique segments, or offer a low constituent effort?
- How do you want customers to experience you: value pricing, fit to their life style, or be dependable and have more innovative approaches to make things easy?
- What is the Cx strategy? Lower price/self-service optimization? Tailored intimacy? Or intuitive navigation, better shopping tools, and proactive guidance?
- What capabilities do you need to make the experience real? For example, a company may need the ability to “influence buyers as they interact with website” or the ability to “describe services based on customer segments.”
- Evaluate if systems and processes are designed to deliver the desired experience.
- Are apps and online channels designed with the persona in mind?
- Are apps and portals available where and when the customer wants them?
- Are next steps intuitive?
- Design projects to develop capabilities and address customer pain points.
- Do your projects consider the Cx strategy? Is it in the process design?
- Do you document and train all those who deliver parts of the MoT?
Recognizing customer pain points and where they occur is the critical first step. But that's not enough. The ideal experience must be defined in enough detail to allow business functions to design an effortless experience and when done consistently over time, will improve brand, reputation, and the bottom line.
Still Interested? Schedule a demo below to learn more about how WorkFit can help create the desired customer experience and hard wire that experience into your organization.
