What Exactly is a Good Customer Experience?

The following was transcribed from a recent interview on The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstr?m podcast.?

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The state of customer experience is continually changing, as brands increasingly compete based on the experience they can deliver to their customers across channels, and across the customer journey. The winners in this race gain new customers through reputation and word of mouth, retain existing customers through loyalty and increased customer lifetime, and those who struggle to keep up can sometimes face an ever-widening gap in experience maturity.

Genesys, a leading provider of customer experience and call center technology platforms, recently released its State of CX 2023 report, and today I’m going to discuss some of the most striking findings with one of its contributors.

To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Ginger Conlon, Thought Leadership Director and Customer Experience Advocate at Genesys.

[Greg Kihlstrom] We're going to talk a lot about all of that. So we're going to address three points of the many great ones that the Genesys State of CX 2023 report touches on. So we're going to start by defining what good CX is from the perspective of the consumers surveyed for the report. So, according to the consumers, the top three responses for what good CX is were, first, “fast response,” with about 55 percent. Second was “first interaction resolution,” with about 51 percent responding. And the third was “professionalism and friendliness,” at about 40 percent. So the first two of those, to me, speak to the need for speed and quick resolutions. How do you interpret those results?

I whole-heartedly agree with that. Customers want the companies that they do business with to respect their time and understand their needs, as well as have the information on hand and the ability to resolve their issues and answer their questions quickly and completely. And we like to call that, basically, empathy, right? Consumers are looking for empathy. They're looking for organizations to put themselves in their customer’s shoes.

So channel adoption is one way that businesses can improve and keep up with changing consumer preferences, because they're always evolving. What did you see in the report about how businesses are evolving in their adoption of new or maybe additional channels for customer support and service?

So I'll start on the consumer side. Consumers are increasing their use of all digital channels, and organizations, they're doing their very best to try and keep pace. So along with your standards, you know, voice, e-mail, chatbots and the like, consumers can conduct their service interactions, even on virtual home assistants, with more than 10 percent of consumers actually having done that last year. And on the other side, CX leaders are developing strategies for engaging their consumers in the metaverse, right? So it's really, kind of, everything that you can imagine.?

On the other hand, what we're seeing is satisfaction isn't as high as it could be. Although consumers are saying in general that customer service has improved, if you dig down at the channel level, satisfaction has dropped in nearly every channel except for voice. So organizations have a huge opportunity to win over customers by improving that channel performance.

So what are some other ways that businesses can improve their CX in some of those areas that are top of mind to consumers. What are some of the things they can focus on?

Well, one thing is experience orchestration. And what I mean by that is, yes, you need to focus on channel performance, but don't do that in a vacuum, you know, just one channel, just one channel, just one channel. Look at it across the full journey. So you're improving an end-to-end experience, making them more relevant and more seamless for the consumer. Now, one of the challenges that CX leaders called out in the report, that they have in delivering these end-to-end connected experiences, is lack of carry-over of context from one channel to the next. So what these CX leaders need to do, really, is build bridges using connected technology and data.

So let's talk now about the impact of poor customer experience, or poor customer service, which can have a dramatic impact on customer retention and churn. According to the survey and the report, one in 10 consumers would switch a provider or company after just one negative service interaction. And nearly 80 percent total would switch if experiencing up to five. So how can businesses mitigate some of the impacts of this? Surely no business or the people within them is perfect. But with consumers that have the ability to switch so easily and to choose from so many options, what can a business do to set themselves apart when something goes wrong?

Well, when you get the basics right, most of the time people are far more likely to be forgiving when something goes wrong. Companies are looking to surprise and delight. They're looking to do all these big things, and, yes, we want to do that experience orchestration and get that full end-to-end journey happening for consumers, to make the whole experience even that much better. But you have to dial it back and make sure that the basics underneath are there before you start piling on and doing all of the other things. And so, to get the basics right, CX leaders can use data from customer interactions to see what's working and what isn't. And that data can come from speech and text analytics, journey analytics, customer behaviors. And then, if you have real-time data and journey optimization technologies, you can optimize in the moment. So you're fixing the situation not only for that customer having that issue at that moment but for all the customers that come after that one.?

So having a CX platform that enables you to connect data across channels, to get insights to your agents when they need them and to map and assess that full customer journey, that will help ensure that any changes that you make are positive from end to end. And I’d just tell a quick story on that. One company that one of my colleagues spoke with was saying that they were trying to improve their call duration, like, reduce call duration in the contact center. And so they did a couple of things, and that helped, but what happened in the meantime was this was a telecommunications Internet company. They wound up increasing their truck rolls for service technicians to go to people's homes, which is way more expensive than phone calls, where they could have handled something, you know, over the phone, or share a screen, or what have you. And so, because they didn't look at that end-to-end journey and considering what would happen when they made this one change, they wound up costing themselves a lot of money. Fortunately, they caught it pretty quickly and dialed it back. But it just shows that you need to think holistically.

How important is this cross-channel or omni-channel component when thinking about poorer customer experiences? So, is it possible some of these companies, like the one you just mentioned, are investing a lot in maybe one or two channels, but their customers are on several and channel-switching, to boot?

Well, you definitely want to prioritize that sweet spot of what works for your customers and what works for your company. That said, you want to be where your customers are as much as you can. So, now, taking a look at the results of the state of CX, only 13 percent of organizations say they're delivering that true omni-channel experience, where channels, data and systems are connected. This is a journey that companies are going to be on for quite some time. So, like I said, it's great to be multi-channel and be where your customers are, but if those channels are siloed, it can make for that poor experience like we just talked about.

Now, on the other side, a couple of fun/ not fun stats, if you'll see what I mean when I say them, 20 percent of consumers globally say that having to repeat themselves to different agents makes them want to scream. And 11 percent say they'd stop doing business with a company altogether because of it. So that's voice, but the same applies in digital channels, right? If a customer spent time using a chatbot to resolve an issue; it doesn't work out; and then they have to explain that whole issue and the whole chatbot experience to an agent, yeah, they're going to want to scream.

I count myself as one of those people, for what it's worth. So, in this focus group of one, I can say 100 percent of respondents agree. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's multichannel/ omni-channel – you know, not every brand is quite ready for omni-channel necessarily, but their customers are on many. There's also, just in general, the rising expectations, because, you know, consumers aren't just consumers of one type of product or service. There are consumers of all types. And so, you know, the easy example is Amazon next-day shipping, right? So Amazon does it, and now the expectation, no matter where you buy something, who you buy it from, small, medium, large business, your expectation is “I'm going to have this on my door tomorrow.” So how do businesses keep up with these rising customer expectations? And how does a business set itself up to keep up with continual improvement, even if they feel like they're a leader today?

That is a great question, and just to go back for a second to what you said about those rising expectations, I just ordered something not from Amazon, and it was going to take a week to get it. And I was like, “A whole week?” And then I stopped and thought, “Wow, are you spoiled or what?” And this is what we're dealing with, and it's interesting because Forrester, they do their annual customer experience rankings, and they have found, over the past couple of years, that

even these companies that are the tops, consistently excel in delivering outstanding customer experiences, consumers are like, “Yeah?” Because they're so used to some of these top experiences from some organizations, it really makes it challenging for others. And so one solution is that agile composable technology. Because, you know, cloud-based technologies that are part of a robust ecosystem will allow organizations to respond to changes in customer expectations but also market changes, competitor moves and even new technologies.?

And if you look at findings from the State of Customer Experience, half of Cx leaders say that the biggest benefits of Cloud CX are better access to data across channels and the ability to add new channels, capabilities and features faster. And so that's on the technology side, again, that agile composable cloud technology, but on the other side, I'll go back to get the basics right, and then anything that you do to surprise and delight your customers will be truly surprising and truly delightful, instead of potentially backfiring because of some basic interaction that went awry like a dropped call.

We've talked about some of the good stuff, some of the challenges here. I want to end on a positive note here, though. So, according to the report, and you referred to this earlier as well, it sounds like service is improving overall. You know, 73 percent of consumers surveyed for the report say they've experienced mostly good service in the past year, and 65 percent say they feel customer service is getting better. This is a great number to see, of course, for any of us in the customer experience, customer service fields, and particularly with so much change in recent years, whether that's the pandemic or staffing shortages and things like that. What do you think is contributing most to this increase in improved customer experience? Is it competition, like we talked about with Amazon?? Is it improved access to customer data and technology? What are some of the things driving this growth, from your perspective?

I think definitely that improved access to data; also, and really along with that, is that there's more personalization happening. So consumers want personalized experiences. In fact, the study found that 80 percent of consumers globally will buy more from companies that personalize their experiences consistently. And similarly, a little bit less than 80 percent said that they would buy more often, and recommend, and all those markers that you want to see.

And when I talk about personalization, I'm not talking about marketing messages. As much as we all love those personalized marketing messages, they're actually at the bottom of the list in State of CX. What consumers are looking for, 62 percent say that they want to receive services that they need in the channel of their choice, and they want to be connected straight away with the agent who can best help them. Now, CX technologies and AI can help enable this. Solutions like next-best actions and predictive routing make consumers feel listened to and understood. And like I said before, they're looking for those empathetic customer experiences, and this is one way to deliver that.

Genesys works with a lot of leaders, leading companies, category leaders in customer experience. Where are these category leaders in CX focusing their efforts to try to stay one step ahead? You know, to the point of the rising customer expectations, as well as the rising competition, how are they focusing efforts to try to stay one step ahead and continue to drive greater CX?

Well, this is going to sound very familiar to what we've been talking about. Seventy-one percent of CX leaders surveyed in the State of CX say that implementing a customer experience platform that integrates systems is a top technology priority for 2023. And that includes communications platforms, workforce productivity solutions, CRM systems, ERP software, as well as digital and voice channels. And then half of those CX leaders said that they're planning to connect data and technology to deliver that omni-channel experience that we've been talking about.

About the Guest

Ginger Conlon is Thought Leadership Director at Genesys. She is an award-winning editorial leader who has covered CX and marketing for the majority of her career, Ginger Conlon is currently thought leadership director at Genesys and co-host of its Tech Talks in 20 podcast. Additionally, she serves on the Environmental Defense Fund’s Digital Advisory Council. In her prior roles as chief editor of Direct Marketing News, 1to1, and CRM magazines, she set the editorial vision and strategy, which led to increased readership, reader engagement, and revenue. She’s a sought-after speaker and has been cited on several lists of notable industry insiders to follow on social media. Ginger received a DMCNY Silver Apple lifetime achievement award for her contributions to the marketing industry.

About the Host, Greg Kihlstr?m

Greg Kihlstrom is a best selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur and host of The Agile Brand podcast . He has worked with some of the world’s leading organizations on customer experience , employee experience, and digital transformation initiatives, both before and after selling his award-winning digital experience agency, Carousel30, in 2017.? Currently, he is Principal and Chief Strategist at GK5A . He has worked with some of the world’s top brands, including AOL, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, GEICO, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota and VMware. He currently serves on the University of Richmond’s Customer Experience Advisory Board, was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation’s National Innovation Committee, and served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board.? Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, and holds a certification in Business Agility from ICP-BAF.?