Customer Experience Group

SIMPLICIty – Customer experience management Your customers are talking, are you listening?

The Challenge

What is the difference between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Experience? A customer may be "satisfied" with your product or service but the overall "experience" is what keeps them coming back (or turns them away).  In any given customer life cycle (see figure below) there are “moments of truth” where your product must perform.

At the point of Sale expectations are set, everywhere else expectations are met (if you are doing it right).  At the Customer Experience Group we call this area “Service Utilization”.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  I have a question for you – think about your company’s product/service – how do you measure these points of service utilization where your customer has purchased your product and now takes it home or to the office to begin using it?  Furthermore, if you are measuring it, how do you know what is acceptable and what requires intervention before the customer is fed up and returns the product or ceases to use it?  Most customers will not take the time to tell you they are unsatisfied, they will just quit you.

As an example, we have found that in the wireless industry the customer's first use of a product or service is critical to their ongoing experience.  If the product is too complicated to setup or use, chances are those bad experiences will add up to a disconnection of service.  In fact, we have found that when customers do not show active use with the product in the first few days, they are many times more likely to churn. 

Our Approach

So, how does a company become first class at Customer Experience Management?  The approach involves 4 dimensions.

1. Process – Your process should be customer centric, simple, repeatable, and department handoffs should be eliminated or streamlined.
   
   
2. Organization – Someone must “own” the customer experience end to end and have the authority to make decisions that cross department silos.
   
   
3. People – You must have the right people in the right place.  That means the right instinct, skills, and behavior.
   
   
4. Systems – Your systems should be well integrated with your process.  Work should flow efficiently from the customer to the people in the process.  Actionable reporting and escalation should occur inside the customer “moments of truth”.

The Payoff

Applying discipline and standardized best practices to implement the desired customer experience may be in contrast to the “normal” way of doing things. It may even require organizational re-alignment and specialized training. However, this approach allows a company to build rich relationships with their customers. There is also a financial payoff to the company via:

• Reduced churn (customers quitting your product or company)
• Increased usage and revenue for your products and services
• Reduced customer complaints and thereby the expenses associated with correction
• Reduced customer wait times and the pain associated with reporting problems

Please Contact us to set up a diagnostic for your company.