Customer Contact - How to do it ?

I've recently seen some amazing statistics on just how many people are employed to lead, deliver, strategise, consult on, sell to, or actually implement customer contact, service and experience improvement strategies. There are multi-millions of people doing this globally. With all of these resources and focus, one could reasonably ask why is the overarching customer interaction experience we all go through daily usually so poor ?!

I think it's because the basics have simply been lost, with so many people focussing on the clever stuff, and not the simple stuff.

So below, I list my simple structural view on how I think customers should be treated when they want to get answers / get in touch... (Just look at the bold below if you want the high level). This is based in the main on existing customers needing service, and on the data that the vast majority of customers first go online before trying to contact a company... (If I am a new customer or looking at a new product, then embed the journey into the thing I'm looking at, don't navigate me away from the thing I'm interested in.

So, first let me sign in quickly and easily, then let me navigate to one place called Need Help. This place should be clearly visible and should be the only place in which all of the other places are amalgamated. e.g. Get in Touch, FAQ's, Knowledge Articles, Ask the Community etc should all be this place.

On this page, show me all of my purchases, quotes, enquiries, any previous interaction history with the company, which should actually probably also include all of the Marketing you've sent to me. Let's call it My Stuff for these purposes.

Then let me easily interact with any of My Stuff by making it really easy for me to tell you what I want or need. This could mean that when I hover or click on any of the things in My Stuff, it shows me a handful of high level relevant contact category options (there are always only a few high level ones) which when I click on then moves forward. If there are many reasons for contact then just create a secondary level behind the primary category chosen.

When I've chosen an option by all means show me the relevant self help / knowledge / community articles based on the My stuff thing I've clicked on. But also show me a simple button that says something like 'Contact Us'. Customers want to help themselves first, so they don't need to be pushed down self-help cul-de-sacs as a strategy.

If I do go on to select 'Contact Us', then let me choose the contact channel. Clearly not every customer contact can be viably offered immediate call centre responses, callbacks or web chats, but use logic to ascertain the channels that best fit the contact scenario. If this is obviously a contact about something urgent or high value, then immediate contact options are needed, but if not, then customers all appreciate that non-important things can be asked via webforms or slower response channels.

When the customer contact starts push through all the data into that customer contact journey.

If I've chosen to call, there should be no need for an IVR, as the context and reason for the call is already clear, and for digital contact all the data should flow through here too. Don't navigate me somewhere where I have to repeat anything ! Also take a look at any self-help articles I've looked at before making contact as clearly they haven't worked. Make that a knowledge management close-loop process.

So when an agent answers the phone, webchat etc they will immediately understand the customer enquiry and the context, and should only worry about 2 things; the customer outcome, and the customer experience. The customer 'ease' of getting in touch should already be taken care of, and the agent can't control that anyway.

Next when an agent has spoken to the customer or resolved the issue, a contact summary should be pushed back into My Stuff as a trackable case. This way a customer always has a record, but can also track progress of the issues that are ongoing. If the customer wants to make further contact about this ongoing case, they can easily start the contact journey again from within My Stuff with minimal effort.

Here too, customers should be able to provide immediate feedback on the interaction they've just had within their My Stuff page. This feedback should probably ask 2 things ; How satisfied I am with the outcome, and how I felt. This My Stuff feedback process can be updated by customers at any time, so if they've received an order in the mail, a visit from an engineer or sales rep, just used a product, or don't understand it, they can provide feedback here too. The customer should also be able to decide if they want the feedback to be followed up on. The insight in here should be a goldmine.

Yes I appreciate this is simplistic, and does not suit all situations and sectors, but for me as a customer it works, and I can't think of a simple organisation that actually does all of this. The likes of Amazon, Apple etc are getting there, but certainly don't do all of the above.

So, I think defining the above core strategy, or something similar first, and then supporting it with the right CRM, Digital Designs, Contact Centre, Analytics etc would be the most sensible approach, and that's certainly the way I've always approached these challenges.

So this is an area where the Digital Contact Design should be defined by Customer Service experts, not digital experts, and only when the above foundations are in place should the clever stuff like AI, Chatbots etc be considered.