Channel options are growing, and the entire consumer engagement environment is becoming complex.
While the shift in engagement preferences is happening across generations, it’s being led by Millennials, who are demanding and omnichannel. Delivering exceptional customer experiences to them has fast become a top priority for businesses and 2019 will be no different. The question then becomes – how can businesses continue to provide service experiences that are unified, consistent and compelling?
We recommend three key approaches to get there:
1. Unified Customer Experience
Every year a new channel is added and the systems are not necessarily able to cope with the integration of communication across these different channels, thus leading to silos between marketing, sales and support, and creating operational inefficiencies. While companies are working towards structuring their systems to gain a single view of the consumer, they miss a key point: how to provide a single view of the brand to the consumer.
The objective is to combine the inside-out view of the customer relationship that many companies have effectively embedded (what the brand knows) with a more outside-in perspective (what the customer is thinking, doing and saying). This is a true actionable 360-degree customer-centric view.
2. Better Omnichannel Engagement
With the rise of multi-channel and multi-device interactions, an omni-channel strategy is a growing tactic that every business should consider adopting. But with the onset of digital transformation, this has only gotten harder. As customers switch between digital channels, they expect an experience that’s continuous and consistent. The goal is to ensure every customer interaction is optimised, personalised and, above all, delightful with all channels drawing on the same knowledge base and customer profiles. This means:
- making each interaction painless and productive for both the customer and the advisor
- letting customers interact with you when, where, and how they want
connecting the dots of each interaction to understand the journey across channels - directing customers toward a destination using insight-producing analytics
3. Proactive Support
As new channels emerge, customers expect that the servicing brand will provide proactive information through all channels of communication, eliminating the need for them to reach the brand and initiate a contact. For example, in the case of flight delays, the airline can provide status updates through apps, social-media pages, website, voice call, etc.
Proactive service relies on customer context, channel, and device information and predictive intelligence frameworks to manage communications. Being proactive is not just limited to the servicing part of the business, but can also be a huge success in sales scenarios, by proactively reaching out to consumers when they are looking at information on the website and offering services through live chat or chatbots.
If you’re reading this, there must be a lot of questions on your mind – how to cover every single customer interaction? What is the best approach to improving customer experience in a customer-focused organization? More importantly – how to build a CX strategy that propels your current and future customer experience success?
Our webinar in partnership with Forrester can get you all these answers and several more straight from the experts – register your interest here!
About the Author
Nanditha Vijayaraghavan, Segment Marketer | Content Creator | CX Empath.
