By now most businesses know the importance of investing in the customer-centric approach to the customer experience. Recent research from Customer Contact Week, further emphasizes this. Below are five key takeaways you need to know to improve your Customer Experience.
1. Good customer experiences result in true business gains
In fact, studies show that 62% of customers surveyed will consider switching to a competitor after just one or two bad experiences and 52% would switch even if the competitor offered an inferior and/or higher-priced product.
Fortunately, hard work in the customer service front pays off, 91% of customers will share their good experiences with friends or on social media.
2. The best place to start is to improve customer interactions
33% percent of businesses stated their top CX priority is to improve the value of interactions. What steps must be taken to improve interactions? Seventeen percent of companies surveyed say their focusing on optimizing processes and workflow, while 15% are placing a prime emphasis on improving technology.
3. There’s more than one way to approach customer loyalty
The traditional, or “organic” approach is as important as ever. When a business consistently delivers a great, engaging experience, their customers will feel enthusiastic about engaging.
Another method to encourage customer loyalty is a more “deliberate” approach which involves offering specific incentives for loyalty; rewards programs for example.
Organic endeavors drive more permanent, sustainable loyalty than deliberate efforts, but often offer a less tangible value. Therefore, the best solution is to utilize both methods at once. Use deliberate initiatives to encourage repeated engagement, then use those repeated interactions as opportunities to earn loyalty by offering consistently great experiences.
4. Use Artificial Intelligence wisely
74% of customer management professionals believe that artificial intelligence is important and 56% plan to introduce or continue using AI solutions in their contact centers.
These organizations emphasized that AI is used to complement, not replace human agents. 38% of respondents believe that AI is most useful in the self-service realm, so agents can be free to focus on more complex issues.
Other key applications involve automating workflow and predicting customer behavior.
5. AI may change the way we train agents
As technological advances continue to automate many of the basic transactional interactions with customers, the demands and skills for customer service agents will begin to change. Since their time will soon be spent solving more complex or nuanced issues, they will need to develop skills like, critical thinking, meaningful affability, brand and product knowledge, understanding of the customer journey and empathy.
Organizations must emphasize these skill in their hiring process as well as their training programs. They must also provide tools, systems, processes and environments that empower agents to properly engage with customers.