Easy does it

When I started writing this post a few weeks ago, we were living in a drastically different world than we are today. Then, a customer’s biggest concern might have been finding the lowest price on streaming services, or the best value on a new car loan. Today that’s all changed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new reality, and people and companies are really struggling out there. Customer service inquiries are up 20% across the board and more than 100% in some industries. Inquiry wait times have spiked to hours, even weeks, depending on the channel. Companies are trying to stay afloat as they face employee illness, distributed and disrupted workforces, network connectivity issues, broken processes, and disconnected systems. And everyone is on edge, not just customers, but employees as well.

I’ve been speaking with a lot of our clients over the past few weeks about what they need to do to keep their businesses running while addressing customer and employee concerns. The as-a-Service principles I’ve been talking about (being client-centric, easy to engage, offering frictionless interactions, and being accountable for your customer experiences end to end) are more important now than ever, because they will not only help you address your customers’ immediate needs, but will support your business operations post-crisis.

Easy to engage

First, it’s important to help your customers get what they need quickly. Organizations must provide a quick, intuitive, and efficient customer experience from the first interaction to the last. You want to make things as easy and painless as you can for customers, and your employees too.

Think about Google. Their home page is a refreshing example of what it means to be easy to engage. When you go to Google.com you’re there for one reason – to search. The home page is almost all white space. There may be great data collection processes, web scraping, and powerful algorithms working behind the scenes, but you’re not thinking about that – you just want to find what you’re looking for as quickly as possible. With simplicity and focus, Google has dramatically enhanced the search experience. It’s even become a verb.

But now, easy isn’t just a preference. It’s a necessity. Recently, the State Government of Bavaria in Germany partnered with our partner T-Systems to develop an online version of a once slow and manual economic aid application process. The new app, developed in just five days, is fast and intuitive, and helps freelancers, trades people, farmers, and small and medium businesses get critical funding quickly. Applicants can enter their data online, which allows administrators to review and approve claims far more quickly. Payment orders for successful applicants are then automatically forwarded to the relevant administrative staff before a payment notification is generated and received via email. This is a great example of how understanding a critical need – making it easier to engage – and delivering on that need quickly can have a real impact.

Making easy a reality

Making it easy for customers to engage with you has never been more important. Nobody has the time or patience for transactions to be hard. Things are hard enough these days. And most likely, when customers do reach out it’s because they want something essential.

Becoming an easy-to-engage organization starts with putting your customer at the center of every experience and focusing on the entire customer journey. It’s about consolidating and analyzing customer data so people and systems have a macro view of customers and can better service them – from understanding preferences and purchasing history to resolving real-time issues. And it’s about creating intuitive customer experiences and breaking down internal and external barriers to streamline complex processes and deliver on the outcomes you want to achieve.

If all that seems overwhelming right now, and you don’t know where to begin, start small. Address your most critical customer or employee problem to get a quick return on your investment. Are you drowning in email queries? Help your customer service team keep up. Are you overwhelmed with customers disputing a charge? Streamline your process. Are your remote employees struggling to get their jobs done from home? Uncover hidden inefficiencies that hinder performance. These solutions are designed to be easy and show a quick return on your investment.

In my next post I will talk about the importance of being “frictionless,” the third pillar to becoming an as-a-Service company.

Until then, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane – and take it easy.