Every customer journey has a final destination - so why do we go round and round?
Despite the hype around data and technology, most companies still do not use them correctly and the result is tedious customer journeys that frustrate employees and customers.
Gil Shagiv suggests a change of perception
Gil responded
31/08/2022
Wednesday, August 31, 2022, 12:56 p.m. Updated: Tuesday, September 06, 2022, 2:15 p.m.
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The group of marketing people in Israel (Photo: Unsplash, Yaron Other)
In recent years we have witnessed a perceptual change in the worlds of service, when "service quality" is replaced by the concept of "customer experience".
The customer experience consists of "customer journeys", which start from the moment the customer even thought about us, through the interactions with us, until the end of the event.
This change apparently indicates that companies are moving to manage business processes from the customer's point of view.
Why apparently?
Because sometimes we, the marketing people, focus on the jar and not what's inside, and out of enthusiasm for the concept and the technology we forget to check if the customer even wants to go on a journey with us.
When the customer wants as little contact as possible with the service provider, if at all, then the "customer journey" becomes a "Via Dolorosa", and this should be avoided.
Shortening the customer journey through technological means
There are places in life where customers don't want to be at all, these are "cases" that need to be taken care of and put behind them, for example periodic car maintenance, a technician's visit, increasing the credit limit, paying bills.
The customers would like to save the bureaucracy and get what they need easily and quickly, when all the technical processes - identification, filling in details, etc. - will be done for them even before their daily routine is interrupted, so that the interaction with them will be accurate and above all short.
And it is entirely possible, there are those who will do the dirty work in their place.
They are called data and technology.
Data and technology enable service providers to provide customers with a clean and elegant experience, if used wisely.
Unfortunately, in most companies this still does not happen, and the result is multi-step customer journeys that do not improve customer satisfaction, but the opposite.
An email that Maznik pushes in the application, from there to WhatsApp, a service representative who intervenes in the middle and so on, not necessarily in synchronization - is this really what the customers want?
The effort index
In recent years, the index representing the quality of the customer experience is the Customer Effort Score, which represents the amount of effort a customer has to invest to complete the action.
On websites, for example, customers will choose to stay on websites that load quickly, no more than 1.5 seconds per page, and not because of a beautiful design or a cool feature.
The customers want it easy and short.
Companies that provide a good customer experience measure how easy it was for as many customers as possible to find what they wanted and continue their daily routine without interruption.
This can be achieved through proper use of data and technology.
As mentioned, almost every company today has mountains of behavioral information about its customers, Big Data that indicates their needs and desires, and if they don't have it, they can buy it.
Unfortunately, most companies do not make smart use of this information beyond "Hello Yossi" at the top of the invoice or the quarterly report. Using artificial intelligence will allow companies to understand the needs of current and future customers, and predict when they will need a certain service in order to offer it at the right time.
From customer journey to company journey
Developing such internal processes, even before contacting customers, will allow customers to get what they need easily and quickly.
If you want, you can call it the "company journey", which will allow the customer to only confirm with one click and not fill out the entire form, for example, and avoid the need to talk to a representative.
And if a customer has already reached a human representative, the representative should have the tools to finish handling the customer in the same conversation, quickly and in a satisfactory manner.
This requires a fundamental change of perception throughout the organization, so that every employee and manager will strive to make it as easy as possible for the customer in the arena for which he is responsible and shorten his stay at that point, and will even be measured for it.
As a large chain of dental clinics said a few years ago, "do more so that you come less".
Shorter processes, more suitable products, accessible and simple self-services that provide the customer with what he needs, and if there is no choice - a human service representative who knows how to provide a complete answer and does not transfer the customer between centers.
Beyond the obvious benefits for the customer, shortening customer journeys is a worthwhile, if not necessary, strategy for companies.
Along with improving customer loyalty and reducing abandonment, the amount of incoming calls is small and they are shorter and more purposeful.
And here is a bottom line that every manager would be happy to sign - higher satisfaction and loyalty, alongside higher efficiency and profitability, undoubtedly a Win-Win Situation.
Gil Shagiv is VP of Marketing and Digital at AIG
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