In many cases, customer-driven strategies are not translating into increased customer satisfaction. A study of 342 companies found that while 80% of companies thought their customer service experience was “superior”, just 8% of their customers agreed. How should companies drive the customer experience?
Marketing: Capture the tastes and standards of every targeted market segments; circulate this knowledge within the company; and tailor consumer communications.
Service operations: Align processes, skills, and practices to every touch point – present-patterns surveys are useful for tracking high-volume touch points, such as call centres.
Product development: Observe how customers use products and services. Do existing products frustrate them and why? Does customer behaviour run counter to the company’s expectations? What needs haven’t been identified?
Information technology: Collect, analyse, and distribute CEM data, integrate the information with that generated by CRM, and monitor progress. Disseminate data appropriate for internal audiences: line managers need less detail than analysts.
Human resources: Put together a communications and training strategy that conveys the economic rationale for CEM. Address how it will alter work and decision-making processes. Study front-line employees’ individual capabilities, work processes, and attitudes. For performance management, reassess links between customer experience and compensation.
Account teams: Move from annual surveys to detailed touch-point analysis – translate present patterns of customer experience and issues identified in recent transactions into action plans that are shared with customers.
Companies tend to know a lot about their customers’ buying habits, incomes, and other target market characteristics, but little about the actual customer experience. To drive the customer experience, find out more about your customers’ thoughts, emotions, states of mind and the way they interact with products, services, and brands.
Action Point
Sources:
Macdonald, E.K., Wilson,H.N. and Konuş, U. (2012) Better Customer Insight - in Real Time. Harvard Business Review, September; Meyer, C. and Schwager, A. (2007) Understanding Customer Experience, Harvard Business Review, February; Rigby, D. K., Reichheld, F. F. and Schefter, P. (2002) Avoid the Four Perils of CRM, Harvard Business Review, February.