Customer experience (CX) is more than just icing on the cake—it is a complete recipe for business success. How customers perceive their interactions with a company translates into serious financial implications.
In a recent Dimension Data study, 84% of organizations that focused on improving their CX in 2018 reported an increase in revenue. The study showed that poor CX, on the other hand, had a negative affect on brand and resulted in lost revenue due to unsatisfied customers.
When you know the mistakes to avoid, you can provide an exceptional customer experience that alleviates major roadblocks to further your customers along their journey.
Know these Top 5 mistakes that many companies unwittingly make which lead to a negative CX.
Avoid these common CX slip-ups.
- Not Taking Responsibility
Customer experience is the responsibility of the entire company. When customers are upset, it is because of a perceived failure of a product or customer service, the two biggest ticket items under the company’s control. Companies must take responsibility for CX by being available to customers on every platform their customers are using.
Successful CX means taking responsibility for CX across all customer touchpoints—including phone agents, web portals, and apps—at every stage along the customer journey. That means everyone in the organization must take responsibility for consistently conveying the right message and creating a positive CX.
- Not Maximizing Feedback
Today’s customer feedback is constant. Social media venues like Twitter and Instagram allow customers to broadcast their feelings about CX and directly link to the brand. Failing to use social media feedback as a resource is a huge mistake. In a recent study, customers admitted to using Twitter as the preferred forum to submit complaints, while a full 71% of those Twitter complaints were completely ignored.
Good customer communications management (CCM) practice requires that companies must track the customer across every touch point. Every interaction, including a social media callout, is an imprint on the timeline of the customer journey. When a customer-company interaction goes unanswered, it is a HUGE missed opportunity to provide a positive CX interaction in that customer’s chosen channel and, even more importantly, a lost moment to capitalize on free publicity.
- Lacking the Proper Technology
The digital customer experience requires a human touch to be effective. Most companies are not taking advantage of technologies essential to traditional service centers—personalization, intelligent automation and the ability to connect to the customer along the journey.
To coordinate all aspects of customer experience, companies must leverage the most current technology to implement best practices and simplify the CX. Agile and adaptable cloud-based CCM solutions such as INTOUCH make this technology more affordable than in the past.
The bonus with implementing CCM software is that it can partially or fully automate deeply personalized customer communications. From print-ready documents to email, website, and even mobile app content and purchasing channels, CCM software allows a company to synchronize a consistent and trouble-free experience at every touchpoint along the customer’s journey.
- Using a “One-Size-Fits-All” Approach to Communication
The demand for a personalized omnichannel experience continues to rise. Customers want to be recognized as being unique in their desires, behaviors, and expectations. One study showed that generic advertising made customers “highly annoyed.” 79% of the same group said they are likely to engage with a more personalized offer tied to past behavior. Companies need a modern, flexible, event-driven solution.
Cloud-based CCM platforms aggregate customer data (transactions, demographic information, interactions, etc.) from multiple sources and use the data to personalize interactions across every customer touch point. This integration provides consistency to the customer while facilitating appropriate and sophisticated responses during every interaction.
- Not Prioritizing the Customer Journey
How smooth or fragmented interactions between company and customer are can be the difference between a positive or negative CX. Repetition and miscommunication cause stress and other negative emotions for the customer.
Centralized customer data access, consistency across channels, and personalization at every contact point make the customer feel known and valued (positive emotions). The more a company can eliminate silos of customer engagement; the more likely a company can recognize that customer communications require a single, unified tone, voice and message—consistency that the customer recognizes and enjoys; then the more likely the company will provide a customer experience that not only is positive, but drives profitability through increased brand loyalty, repeat customer visits and higher purchase amounts per transaction.
Topdown is a company on the cutting edge of CCM technology. Read Topdown’s vision for the future of CCM to find out where CX is headed next.
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