77 percent of people say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service, according to Forrester Research.
Who cares? Zendesk reports that 95% of dissatisfied customers tell others about their bad experience.
Does a bad experience story even count if it’s not on the Internet? It doesn’t matter; the chances of a dissatisfied customer sharing their story on social media are high. Assume a bad experience will be documented online/on social media.
I haven’t met a senior leader who disagrees with the refrain that “excellent customer service is now a requirement.” But customer experience is so broad you need a focal point to drive measurable improvement.
At Glympse we believe it all starts with the customer journey. McKinsey agrees, reporting: Maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20% but also to lift revenue by up to 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%.
The Customer Service Journey Gets a Facelift
If valuing your customers’ time is the best thing to do, then here’s two simple principles to help you build service journeys that demonstrate respect for their time. These guidelines will help you improve the service/fulfillment leg of the customer journey. This is the time that makes or breaks a customer’s decision to keep doing business with you.
- Empower customers to manage the “customer journey” on their own terms. There’s a plethora of research, best practices and ordained experts designed to help you optimize the customer journey experience. However, all the best practices in the world don’t make a difference if your customer doesn’t feel empowered to take action when there’s a point of failure. And there’s always going to be a point of failure.Customer service is too complex and each customer is too unique for one customer journey to work perfectly in every situation. This is especially true during in-person fulfillment – delivery or service at a person’s home, workplace, or just their current location. Winning brands proactively offer insight, information and tools that give customers better control of their service experiences – so they don’t have to rely on you or wait forever to find out if you’re able to adapt to their new needs.
- Help customers make the most efficient use of their time. While it’s important to understand and connect the complete service journey, inundating customers at the wrong moment can ultimately create more friction and wasted time. Continuous customer engagement is a big trend. That doesn’t mean customers want four automated phone calls, ten emails and twenty-two texts with excessive updates about their order status. They’ve likely heard from you quite frequently during the research and purchase phase of their customer journey. Now they just want to know what to expect, and when, so they can plan their day accordingly. They need to know where to go to verify and check that info (without assistance) and they need to know right away if something on your end changes.
One industry very focused on implementing these principles right now is the cable industry. Glympse SVP David Troll is heading to the SCTE·ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017 this week, where he’ll join a panel of experts to discuss what changes communications service providers can make to the field service journey to improve overall customer satisfaction.
If you’ll be at the show, let’s connect. Schedule a meeting via sales@glympse.com or attend our session:
The Impact of Good Field Service on Customer Satisfaction
October 20, 2017, 12:45 PM – 1:45 PM, Customer Journey Track
Get to know best practices for leveraging location information and tool integration to drive operational efficiency and customer satisfaction throughout the customer journey.
To talk more about how to redesign your customer journey to show customers you value their time, connect with us at sales@glympse.com.
