Our team spent some time this week attending GetFeedback’s CX Impact Summit 2021, looking for new ideas we could bring to our customers to help them drive the future of customer service and the customer experience. The conference covered quite a few themes on new expectations, digital disruption and more. The following are a few of the themes they covered that we’d like to share with you:
- Customer Experience is more important than ever in this post-COVID era. Companies had to pivot during the pandemic to offer very customer-friendly services like the ability to buy online and pickup in store (BOPIS), curbside service, and more. In addition, many consumers still have a high level of everyday stress and need their experience with your product, service and location to be seamless. Essentially, everyone has reduced tolerance for marginal service or for companies that don’t care about customer experience.
- If you haven’t taken a close look at the customer journey through your organization, you need to do so. Especially if you’re using surveys, transactional surveys at touch points during the interaction (for example, while the customer is searching on your website, or while they are in the implementation phase of a product purchase) is more important than a survey for customer experience at the end of the transaction.
- When it comes to surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been a gold standard in CX for many, but this is not being mentioned as much anymore. CX benefits from a holistic exploration.
- If “omnichannel” was a buzzword before, it’s an expectation now. For example, if you were talking to an agent on Chat and then later placed a ticket or called their support line, all your support concerns should be in one place to give the company a holistic picture of your CX. For retailers with brick and mortar locations, buying from any channel (online, in-store, etc) and returning via any channel is also becoming a requirement. One of our clients, XY Retail, built their platform for retailers with this in mind.
- Another important omnichannel strategy component is to not rely on channels that few customers use. For example, the use of phones is declining- important for your IVR and survey strategy.
- Consider CX in terms of customer lifetime value. CX metrics should be added into CRM to get more meaningful and actionable insights. For example, the lifetime value of a grocery customer is over $30K so a focus on customer retention is essential. For example, Instacart might replace or refund a missing or spoiled item without too many questions or inconvenient requirements for proof.
- Inclusivity is always a good strategy for improving the customer experience for everyone. “Cancel culture” can magnify CX issues. The negative attention can result in even your most loyal customers taking a break from your goods and services. They will wait to see if you can appropriately recover. Services like InclusiCheck can help you review your internal and external messaging for authenticity and inclusivity. Similarly, responding to negative reviews authentically is advised to ameliorate issues and retain more customers. This should be a key component of your local digital marketing strategy.
These are components that we have regularly integrated into overarching CX strategies for companies in all industries, implementing the changes gradually so companies can improve in their highest-value or lowest-rated areas then leverage those learnings and best practices to improve CX across channels and departments. To learn more about our holistic approach to CX and how these strategies can work for your business, contact us today.