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Customer Experience was one of the subjects most talked and written about during 2014, and I expect this to continue in 2015. Many observers and analysts, including me, believe it can be the difference between companies succeeding or going out of business. Yet debate continues to define what customer experience is and how to manage it. Some think the best tools are “voice of the customer” information and systems that enable companies to track and understand customer sentiments and likely actions. Others advocate customer or interaction analytics that provide a complete view of the customer. For others it is all about social media and how it changes the customer relationship, and many diehards still insist customer relationship management (CRM) systems are the key. Indeed, as it is with CRM, ask 100 people what it is and you may get 100 different answers. I go back to basics. For me the customer experience is how customers feel and act during and after any engagement with a company. Of course, there are many ways of interacting these days, whether it is seeing an advertisement, receiving an email, talking to an agent in a call center, having a service engineer visit your house, looking for answers on a company’s website, trying to navigate through IVR menus, using the company’s mobile app or watching a YouTube video. These all impact customers’ perceptions of a company, affect their emotions and drive their reactions. In all, the customer experience is determined by the combination of how employees behave, how well processes work, how complete the information about the customer is and the impacts of diverse types of systems, all of these at any point of engagement throughout the customer life cycle.
I recently shared some lessons I learned about the customer experience during 2014. One is that customers want EPIC (easy, personalized, in-context and consistent) experiences. This provides a starting point for further thought about the technologies that are likely to impact customer engagement most during 2105.
My benchmark research into next-generation customer engagement provided insights into what kinds of systems companies believe will help them improve customer engagement over the next 24 months. The most often mentioned is a collaboration system in which employees can work together on resolving customer issues. This and other research confirms that today almost every business unit within an organization engages with customers; however, not all of them have the skills and access to the right information to resolve issues at the first attempt – something that customers have come to expect. Modern systems with Facebook-like posting capabilities facilitate sharing of information and collaborative effort. Three of the next four most often mentioned – redesign the customer portal, deploy mobile customer service apps and deploy social customer service – support the trend toward self-service, but customers want self-service to be much easier than it has been up to now. Specifically they want websites that go beyond FAQs to become natural-language-based Q&A sessions. They want mobile apps that work in ways they are used to, and if they don’t work, they want to connect immediately to a person who can help them. They want social media to go beyond marketing videos and messages to actually help them resolve their issues. Companies also plan to deploy mobile apps internally to help employees access customer information and systems on their smartphones and tablet so they can help resolve issues without having to wait until they are back at their desks.
From these initial insights I developed a conceptual architecture that I believe is required to deliver EPIC experiences, and I used it in a webinar I gave about the three waves of customer experience. It includes six key technical components, all of which I will be following in 2015:
As I explained in my 2014 lessons learned perspective, managing the customer experience is not easy. It involves almost everyone across the enterprise, multiple processes and multiple systems for communications, business and analytics. To get it right you need to think four dimensions: where each customer is in the customer life cycle (researching, buying, using or seeking support), who in the organization is engaging with the customer, which channel of communication is being used for the engagement, and which product or service the engagement is about. At the same time you must keep track of tens of vendors. This year looks like it will be another challenging one as companies fight to win and keep customers. One thing we know is that the customer experience will be the key differentiator. So please connect with me at @rjsnowvr or on LinkedIn at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/richardjsnow to share your views and keep track of developments.
Regards,
Richard J. Snow
VP & Research Director
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