On Becoming the American Pharaoh of Customer Experience
We’re days away from one of America’s most beloved springtime traditions, the Kentucky Derby, and many would say this season’s thoroughbred crop has a near-impossible act to follow. You see, last year, American Pharaoh accomplished horse racing’s Triple Crown—a clean sweep of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes—a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in nearly forty years. That colt was a true champion, conquering every challenge when it mattered, and creating a genuine cultural sensation in the process. Will another horse rise to the occasion this year, or will it be a good long time before we see his kind again?
If you’re tasked with delivering the greatest possible customer experience for your organization, there’s a “triple crown” you should be aspiring to every moment of every workday. It boils down to these key achievements:
- Gain complete visibility.
- Optimize your processes.
- Earn their loyalty.
To some extent, given voice of the customer technology now available to the marketplace, each of these represents less of a goal and more of a decision to be made. Do you have what it takes to make it?
Gain a View and Understanding of Customer Needs
Firstly, you can’t measure what you can’t see. Observe which activities lead to more satisfied customers, and which are having trouble. Learn why customers become frustrated, which customers engage via different channels (and why), which trends emerge from their feedback, which agents handle different types of complaints better than others, and so on. Identify which types of customers are at risk to churn. Know what they’re thinking not merely from surveys, but also from social media posts, IVR data (e.g. likely causes of containment vs. seeking a live agent), speech and text analytics, etc.
Optimize Customer Experience Process
Secondly, you need to apply those insights to the effective improvement of CX processes. Your agents will likely step up their game simply by virtue of knowing customer service has become a priority, and that they’re being monitored—the so-called “Hawthorne effect”—but a combination of smart protocols and helpful technology will deliver your CX program to the winner’s circle. Establish an alert system to signal customers who are likely to walk away, and make personnel accountable to reaching out and earning that person’s business. If specific aspects of the experience are giving customers grief, change them. When feedback surveys indicate unhappy customers, proactively reach out to them (on a macro or individual level), demonstrate their input matters, and re-poll them to ensure the relationship is sound. Engage with them via the medium they prefer. Routinely measure how effective your CX efforts are, on an agent-to-agent level, using whichever KPIs you value most. Close the loop, using a wider array of means than ever available before.
Increase Customer Loyalty
Finally, once you’ve taken the wins for visibility and effective processes, it’s a clear shot to winning customer loyalty—and the accolades can take many forms. Tout higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. Tout higher net promoter score (NPS®). Increase first contact resolution (FCR). Profit from the continued business of your customers, many of whom would’ve fled to a competitor by now had you not known what they were thinking and stepped up when needed. Happier customers beget happier call agents, and a healthy bottom line boosts morale across the board.
As we prepare for this racing season, hoping to see a new champion break out of the gate and into history, the time couldn’t be better to transform your customer experience program into an American Pharaoh for the ages. If you’re jockeying for position in your customer’s heart, learn how you can deliver that “triple crown” today.