Customer Experience Myths That Need to be Busted
I was recently rewarded with the opportunity to attend Gartner’s Annual Conference in Israel, which highlighted key topics in cloud, mobility, social, and customer engagement. What really stood out to me was a particular discussion regarding customer engagement as the next generation of customer services by Michael Maoz. What particularly stood out to me was a specific segment in Michael’s presentation, which I found will be of great use to you when developing or strengthening your business.
Companies are always working on ways to improve the customer experience of their clients. Despite this, most of the service processes spend less than ten percent of their cycle time on steps that add value. This happens because of poor customer experience design, which is based on many myths that are prevalent in the companies regarding consumer experience.
Let’s take a look at the four myths of customer experience that Michael presented:
1. End-to-End Customer Experience is Owned by Customer Service
This is a common belief among most of companies, that if users are subjected to customer service executives who have good customer service skills, they can control the whole user experience. However, this is not true and people follow this strategy only to find later that they had good people working for them, but their business design was bad. It is important for companies to design the whole process of user experience in a way which reduces the effort made by the consumers to reach its end. Making clients repeat tasks at different stages, making them wait after every stage, are some of the most common mistakes which companies make. However, companies strongly believe that by placing delightful customer service executives, they can get reduce the problems of clients and improve the user experience, this is not true.
2. Customers Can Easily Work Through Different Channels
In present times, customers don’t use the same device to do all their work. Gone are the days when clients had only phones or computers to approach their objectives. Today with the advent of different types of communication devices clients can make contact through any medium, like voice, text or both. Therefore, it has become imperative for the companies to understand that clients should get the same quality of user experience, no matter what device they are using. A great user experience design, which was designed for computer users, can prove to be very bad experience for smartphone users, as there is huge difference in the viewing screens size of both the devices. Companies need to consider these facts before they finalize their user experience design. Integration of popular devices is a must to create effective communication channel with the clients.
3. Customer Loyalty and Profitability is Driven by Fact-Based Program
Poor customer experience is like a hole, in a bucket filled with water. It is true that marketing brings new customers in the business. However, they stay with the company only if they get good service. If the clients are not getting good service, they would leave the company like water leaves the bucket with a hole. Sometimes companies think that their marketing and sales department can handle the resentment among the consumers created due to bad service. This is a big mistake as in present competitive environment consumers can easily jump between several companies without losing much in the process. If companies give better services to the consumers, they share their experiences with friends and colleague and this can result in generating more business for the companies.
4. There is Effective Coordination in Customer Service
The problem with this myth is that, as the complete process of user experience is divided into threads and the managers or supervisors have accountability to limited portion of that process, they only see that part. However, the consumers have to go through complete process and this is confusing for many during some stages of the process. As the managers are looking at their specific processes, it all seems easy and fast, but in reality it involves plenty of waiting time and choosing right options for the consumers. Therefore, when designing the user experience, companies should look at the complete process through which client would be going and this would lead companies towards designing more user-friendly and efficient processes. It’s important for the companies to look at the complete journey, which customers have to take before reaching their end.
Improved customer experience is the shortest way to satisfy the customers. Creating satisfied customers is the best and most effective marketing strategy that any business can follow. However, it is important for the companies to get rid of the myths mentioned above, before they plan to improve their user experience.