20 quick wins to enhance your customer experience

Customer experience (CX) will remain the biggest differentiator in business in 2016. The good news is that there are many quick wins to make your customers' experience "juicier" and more satisfying than ever before. Some of them are so simple and obvious you'll be kicking yourself you're not doing them already! 

1. Ask customers for feedback, listen to it and action it.
2. Thank customers for feedback.  Show that you respect your customers' time and don't take it for granted.
3. Apologise for “stuff-ups” – sorry is one of the most powerful words in the English language.
4. Respond to complaints quickly. When a customer is angry, bear in mind that if they don’t get a quick response to their complaint via one channel, they’ll hop to the next channel, and the next and the next, creating multiple contacts for what could have otherwise been a single interaction.
5. Avoid jargon and use “plain English” in your customer communications.
6. Treat your customers as human beings and individuals. If you call your health insurer asking if treatment of a life-threatening illness is covered, and their response is, "Can I have your policy number please?", it's time to switch insurers!
7. Give your frontline access to a knowledge management system to they can provide efficient customer service and resolve inquiries at first point of contact.
8. Learn best practices from your peers – get involved in industry associations and attend roundtables. Identify the best quality LinkedIn groups where you can share insights and get some friendly advice.
9. Offer your customers round-the-clock service by cost-effectively routing calls to an outsourcer after-hours and on weekends and holidays. Look for a reputable after-hours contact centre with experience in your industry or category - Matchboard is the fastest and easiest way to find an outsourcing provider that matches all your criteria.
10. Include bilingual skills in your recruitment strategy – Australia, the UK and US are multicultural melting pots; for example, around 30% of people in Sydney and Melbourne speak a language other than English at home. Needless to say customer experience is better if you are engaging with a customer in their native language...why are so many companies missing the boat?
11. Upskill your sales & service teams to manage customer conversations via web chat and social media. Don't expect a competent call centre agent to be able to switch to written/digital channels without training.
12. Conduct an annual health check of your contact centre by engaging an independent consultant for 2-3 weeks.
13. Manage your workforce efficiently with workforce management software, and avoid long customer service delays.
14. Plan for the unplanned: have a Business Continuity Plan in place to minimise impact to customers in case of a disaster, such as a fire, pandemic or bomb scare.
15. Make sure your employees are engaged, as frontline employee engagement directly correlates to customer engagement.
16. Don’t be afraid to change third party suppliers if their performance is negatively impacting your customer experience.
17. Show call centre wait times on your website to set customer expectations and offer alternatives for faster service - whether that's web chat or self-service.
18. Regularly review your IVR menus and update to optimise the customer experience. And if you need a fresh pair of eyes or don’t have the internal resources for it, source an expert IVR design consultant.
19. Make your on-hold announcements engaging and timely. Don’t send callers to sleep with automaton messages.
20. Embrace the power of personalised videos to bring to life boring bills, statements, onboarding or email campaigns.

#CXquickwins 

This article was first posted on matchboard.com.au. Matchboard is a free online sourcing tool for sales, service and back office - enter your needs and get matched with suppliers to help.