I’ve found myself in several conversations lately about what it’s going to take to be a customer experience leader in 2020.
Of course, every brand might approach customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability using different tactical approaches, systems and processes. But when it comes to CX, there are three critical strategies that every leading brand shares. I’d like to focus on them here.
- Own Mistakes and Anticipate Issues and Questions
The surest way to become a CX leader is to build trust with customers and establish a deeply ingrained reputation for trustworthiness. Here are few examples of what I mean.
Track your most common customer questions and requests for support. Develop helpful answers and, instead of waiting for your customers to contact your customer care team, proactively initiate communications to the customers most likely to have those questions. Even if it’s as simple as sending out FAQ’s with your inbound customer care contact number, you will be making it clear to your customers that you get it, that you care about them, and that you’re ready to help.
Never hide issues or mistakes, hoping that some customers just won’t notice. If an issue will impact a customer’s experience in any way, don’t wait for them to tell you about it. Initiate the first contact, fess up, and tell them exactly how you’re going to make it right.
- Learn your customer’s channel preferences and meet them where they are
Channel preferences can vary greatly by industry and by customer demographic. So how much do you know about how your customers are reaching out to their preferred brands (whether they’re in your industry or not)? The tricky part is, a growing number of your customers are equally fluent across multiple channels and want the flexibility to switch between channels. But when they switch, they want their communications with you to remain seamless. If you’re forcing customers to re-explain themselves, their purchase and their question as they switch between channels, you’re sending the message that you don’t remember who they, and you don’t care that you’ve created an inconvenience for them.
- It will never work without a talented team on your customer service front lines
Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s imagine that one of your customers calls into your inbound customer care platform. They’re frustrated. Why? Because they’ve just spent the past fifteen minutes on your website, trying to find an answer to a product question. They never did find it. (And, of course, in this day and age of instant gratification, those 15 minutes were as good as a lifetime that they’ve now wasted.) The longer their fruitless search dragged on, the more they started to wonder if your competitor would have made it all easier. They dial your customer care line. Your agent greets them and asks how they can help. And the customer blurts out, “Well, I hope you can help me because I’m really frustrated with the way you’ve organized your website.”
Will your agent response by saying, “I’m so sorry to hear that but I bet I can help! Could you describe what’s going on and I’ll get you the information you need.” Or, will they respond by saying, “Name please?” You know it happens. But you can’t afford to have anything like that happen. Not anymore. Not ever.
At Skybridge Americas, we specialize in delivering customer-centric, completely human, AI-powered customer care. If you’re looking for a better way to be CX leader in 2020, please reach out. We would love to learn about your business objectives so we can help you meet them.
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
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