Ten Customer Experience Facts to Remember
The customer experience (CX) is changing, and the use of digital services is rising astronomically. As a result of this changing experience, businesses must position themselves to offer customers an outstanding CX or risk losing their businesses. To offer your customers the best experience, keep these points in mind:
- Increasingly, a customer’s interaction with a business occurs via digital media. Text, web chat, and social media are the growing interaction channels.
- Social media usage is on the rise. Even people over 65 years old report that 10 percent of their communications is via social channels.
- Dimension Data’s 2017 “Global Customer Experience Benchmarking” study reports that the use of mobile applications for CX has grown to become a top three choice for everyone under the age of 55.
- Even with digital channel use exploding, phone-based support remains crucial. Dimension Data reports for people over 35 years old, the phone remains the most preferred communications channel for support.
- Age isn’t the only predictor of how a customer will use digital communications channels. Make sure that your sales and marketing materials and messages include visual depictions of consumers of all ages. A tech-savvy baby boomer is more likely to take advantage of mobile applications than a low-tech millennial.
- The magic ingredient in building a path to success in the digital future is establishment of a digital plan. Transforming CX is a company-wide responsibility, not just a contact center function.
- As companies proceed down the path of digital transformation, they’re also building a framework to incorporate emerging technologies into the experience they offer to their customers.
- The availability of digital alternatives has changed both the types and the difficulty of questions being asked by customers when they call a contact center and speak to an agent. Agents and supervisors need to be equipped with even better tools than in the past.
- Scheduling and monitoring complexity is multiplied with the addition of email, web chat, text messaging, and so on. Managers with a spreadsheet can no longer be expected to do an adequate job juggling multi-skilled agents when a contact center is handling omni-channel interactions.
- The combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) and CX is ultimately about improving both self- and assisted service. Customers increasingly want to self-serve, and IoT increases the ability of companies to provide improved, personalized self-service.
This was an excerpt from Customer Experience For Dummies, 2nd Edition, written by industry analyst Sheila McGee-Smith. The book takes a deep look into how digital transformation is reshaping the way customers interact with businesses, and what businesses can do to take advantage of the new tools available to them.
