Why you can't improve customer experience with customer service.

We’re constantly surprised by organisations who rely on contact centre data to represent ‘customer service’ and expect that data to be representative of customer experience. 

Some organisations don’t understand that customer service and customer experience are two different things, and that understanding how your customers feel about your organisation requires richer data than telephony systems and voice or IVR surveys can provide. In addition, a recent Call Centre Benchmarking Report from Dimension Data shows:

• Landlines are now the 4th channel of choice for GenY consumers. GenX aren’t far behind.
• Today’s’ customers are comfortable with self-help and self-service channels.
• Organisations have many new customer channels , but struggle to aggregate feedback from these channels in a way that is useful and actionable.

This same report found information sharing between business units is getting worse  with 71% of in-house operations not sharing, or being unable to share, voice of customer intelligence with other  business units.
So how do you ensure your organisation is focused on customer experience and not just customer service?

1. Understand what you need to achieve. It sounds simple, yet many organisations invest in Voice of Customer ‘point’ solutions without understanding why, and end up collecting data that doesn’t build competitive advantage through Customer Experience.

2. Get C-Suit support. Well executed VoC strategies and programmes can transform EBIT performance, market share and organisational culture if they have strong and active sponsorship.

3. Get the right technology behind you. Invest in a multi-channel Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) platform that uses specific customer relationship data AND interaction data to invite participation in feedback.  Timely and personalised invitations are more likely to convert to feedback because they show you know your customer and that your request for feedback is specific and sincere.

4. Join the feedback ‘dots’.  Use your EFM platform dashboards to link customer data and feedback,  delivering real-time trending, analysis, themes and actionable insights that are transparent across all channels, departments, and stakeholders.

5. Share data – from the frontline up to C-Suite.  Simultaneously surface insights in an organised framework to managers and business leaders to promote collaboration and target resources at the business improvement priorities that best influence customer experience and deliver the strongest ROI.

6. Don’t rely on Customer Service to Deliver Customer Experience. Telephony only survey programmes are increasingly limiting. Post interaction SMS and Email survey  invitations not only deliver faster, higher quality verbatim but are generally lower cost AND have higher conversion rates. Data collected via telephony solutions is often score based and provides little opportunity for customers to expand on their feedback. Voice files are useful for call monitoring purposes - but they don’t integrate in real time into an organisation wide view.

For more information:
• Voice of Customer Enterprise Platform
• Customer Surveys and Webforms
• Feedback Management

Touchpoint Group is a leading provider of Voice of Customer, Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) solutions and Digital Engagement software in Australasia. Visit www.outsideinvoc.com or  www.touchpointgroup.com.