What's your Customer Experience Strategy
Posted by: Tim Vanlint @ 5/10/2011 1:17:46 PM
There’s a lot of talk these days around customer effort.
We’re told that customers have come to expect good service, so good service is expected as normal; exceptional service now requires to be classified as 'good service'. That’s great, but what's next on the horizon?
Well, I think it’s customer effort. Think about petrol stations for a minute. With a large portion of the Australian market covered by the two supermarket co-branded outlets, the prices are comparable and the product itself is pretty universal. So how do you choose where to buy your petrol? I’ll bet that most of the time you just go to the same place, because it’s convenient to your lifestyle. In other words, you go where it’s easy. Maybe it’s on the right side of the road in the morning, or it’s open late, or it has 25 bowsers so you’re never left waiting. If there’s a particularly good special, you might be prepared to wait in a queue for a while, but otherwise you want to get in make your purchase and get out. It’s one of the necessary evils of motoring. I’m yet to meet someone who gets excited at the thought of going to buy petrol!
I’m also yet to meet someone who gets excited at finding a phone number in the white pages, or calling up a contact centre, or searching though the FAQs on a web site. Possibly there are people who get some excitement out of using a smartphone app to make contact with their health fund, but I’m pretty sure that is a novelty that will wear out. Seriously, wouldn’t it be great if your telco knew you wanted to change to a cheaper plan and just did it for you without you even having to ask? They’d save you money without you even needing to ask them to.
So what kind of contact centre do you have? One that forces your customers to drive all over town and then make them wait in a queue? Or one that people find really easy to drive into and get the service they need?
Now’s the time to start putting effort into reducing your customer’s effort.
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