Humanizing the Customer Experience

Today, brands can be so focused on their digital transformations and their omnichannel presence that they forget about the key driving force behind customer experience: their employees.

Technology won’t win you the CX iron throne, your employees will. So to beat the competition, brands must humanize the customer journey and empower employees to deliver exceptional experiences.

DIGITAL TOUCHPOINTS DON’T DRIVE CUSTOMER LOYALTY

One of the most common challenges brands have is knowing what’s really important to their customers. This can lead companies to spend time, money and energy on improving touchpoints that don’t really matter to the customer, and as a result, don’t drive loyalty or generate ROI.

An example of this is the common misconception that winning at digital means winning period. That’s simply not the case. In 2022, the reality is customers?expect?companies to have digital touchpoints. It’s table stakes. If your brand is doing digital poorly, it can cause you to lose customers; but, doing digital well won’t make your customers stay.

Which begs the question, what?will?make customers stay?

HIGH QUALITY OF SERVICE DRIVES CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Customer service is one of the top drivers of customer loyalty. When it comes to customer service, customers care that:

• Customer service reps and frontline employees answer all of their questions;
• Brands resolve their problems quickly;
• Employees have the authority to solve problems without escalating to a manager.

But customers don’t feel like they’re getting enough of those three things today. And to make things worse, increasingly popular digital touchpoints like chatbots actually reduce the likelihood that the customer will be able to resolve their problem on first contact.

The CEO of 24.7 AI shared some research on the ability that different channels have to resolve customer problems:

• Voice assistants - 5%
• Messaging - 40%
• Chatbots/IVR - 50%
• Website - 80%
• Phone - 100%
• Chat -100%

When your support channels don’t have a 100% ability to resolve a customer’s problem, you’re forcing them to use another channel. Issue remediation can drag on and customers may become detractors as a result.

So what can brands do?

DON’T FORCE CUSTOMERS INTO DIGITAL SELF-SERVE

What’s interesting about the support channel stats above is that both phone and chat - which have a 100% ability to solve customers’ problems - are human led.

Forrester’s advice is to stop forcing customers into digital self-serve. Instead:

• Hire skilled employees;
• Provide regular, ongoing training to identify knowledge gaps; and,
• Let technology be what helps empower or coach the employee, not what replaces them.

Alaska Airlines is a great example of a brand that empowers its employees to deliver great experiences and resolve customer problems in a timely fashion. The airline found that its process-heavy customer service framework was preventing employees from having empathy. So the brand evolved its customer service framework and now empowers employees to break script/process when they believe it’s the right thing to do for the customer.

The airline also has an employee empowerment toolkit app, that employees can reference when they are trying to resolve situations on the fly in the field. Customers have been so receptive to the empathy Alaska Airlines employees show and their ability to resolve problems, that they are constantly sharing stories about their experiences on social media.

THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT ALSO DRIVES CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Another key driver of customer loyalty is the physical environment. And when it comes to the physical environment, the employee’s role in the customer's experience has the biggest impact on loyalty. Customers care that:

• Employees provide a welcoming environment;
• Employees answer all of their questions;
• It’s easy to find an employee; and,
• They didn’t have to wait too long to talk to an employee.

How do brands know whether their employees are doing this consistently across all of their physical locations?

COMBINE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK & OPERATIONAL DATA TO IMPROVE THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Using only customer feedback to know whether you are delivering a good experience in the physical environment provides limited insights. Some of the key drivers of the physical environment mentioned above relate to operational and customer service standards, which can’t be measured using customer feedback alone.

Operational measurement performed through?mystery shopping?can tell you whether employees are following your customer service standards such as welcoming customers, thanking them for their business, etc. Combining your customer feedback with mystery shopping data will tell you if employees are following your standards and whether those standards meet customer expectations. Knowing this will help you identify key pain points along the customer journey.

Though radical digital innovation generally creates better brand presence and accessibility, it won't win you customers for life. Learn what really matters to your customers - and focus on winning in these areas. Customer service and the physical environment - two of the biggest drivers of loyalty - require humanized experiences. To win the CX iron throne, go back to the basics: take the time to train your employees and empower them to provide exceptional experiences for your customers.

#CUSTOMEREXPERIENCE #CUSTOMERSERVICE #CUSTOMERJOURNEY