Last week I informed you about the rise of the mobile customer experience and the trend of phone contact as a channel of last resort. This week I am moving away from our favorite device to customer experience trends that appear across all channels: measuring customer experienceand personalizing & differentiating through analytics
Measuring the customer experience Companies are becoming more and more open about their efforts to improve the customer experience. Think about website visits, service calls and even your average in-store experience, where you often get the question to provide feedback, rate offered services and sometimes even queries for improvement suggestions.
The Net Promoter Score is still the most popular metric to measure customer experience. However, as its popularity grows, the validity of the scores is likely to decrease. As NPS is merely a representation of intention, actual recommendation behavior tends to be much lower. How many companies you actually recommend to others? Exactly: not a whole lot. Now think about the number of companies that ask you NPS questions, do your answers reflect your behavior?
From the moment you start your career as a Customer Service consultant, there is no turning back: you will inevitably take a different perspective towards all service experiences you encounter professionally, as well as personally. When I notice something new or different in my customer service experiences, I cross check these with competitors and service organizations in different industries. This way I keep track of the maturity of Dutch service organizations and spot new trends!
In the coming weeks I will post a number of the, in my opinion, most interesting customer experience trends; kicking off this series with “the rise of the mobile customer experience and the decreasing importance of the phone as a service channel”.
The rise of the mobile customer experience Retailers are constantly seeking new opportunities to connect with their customers and to provide them superior customer experiences. The use of mobile internet is (still) growing significantly. In the Netherlands, for instance, the volume of mobile data usage increased 21% in the last 6 months, while the more traditional mobile services such as sms are becoming less popular (-16%). Not surprisingly, retailers are keen on launching mobile websites and mobile apps. While initially mobile sites and applications might have been seen as just another sales channel, they offer opportunities for the entire customer journey from orientation, to purchasing and to after sales.
It appears to be challenging for retailers though to keep customers engaged via mobile apps. Features are frequently limited to shopping carts, store locator functionalities and viewing loyalty points. Mobile apps should offer the customer something extra, which should be relevant and fun, to continuously keep customers engaged. Think about offering customers a personalized reward when they’ve checked in 10 times, or in-store, location based mobile offers. The Neiman Marcus store in the US conducted a test letting customers communicate and interact directly with sales assistants via their mobile app. If a customer had downloaded the application and he or she walks into a Neiman Marcus store, sensors that interact with his or her mobile devices will kick into action. When that happens, alerts will be sent to the customer that let him or her know where in the store a preferred sales assistant might be working at that given moment in time. These are the fun elements that keep customers engaged!
Being relevant to customers and offering relevant products and services is becoming an imperative for organizations to get ahead of the competition. But creating experiences that meet consumers’ needs and desires is easier said than done, especially when vision and execution are two sides of different coins.
Vision is the willingness and desire to identify the most valuable customers and offer them what is desired. Execution requires organizations to understand consumers as individuals with unique preferences and interests. This knowledge is a prerequisite to send the ‘right message’ to the ‘right customer’ through the ‘right channel’ at the ‘right time’. So what does it take to be relevant to your customers?
Once upon a time, when the shift from a product towards a service and experience oriented economy was made, inevitably customer service became more important. With the rise of new channels, even more ways of interaction have been demanded and created. By offering toll free numbers or @customerservice handles, organizations are trying to please the customers’ ever increasing demand of 24/7 contact and interaction. But are they doing the right thing?
From Channel to Touch points Customers are giving businesses a hard time. They are not only talking back via multiple channels, even worse, they are talking when nothing has been asked and expect a timely, personal and correct response. The average consumer does not think in channels or “moments of truth”, but wants interaction with (a representative of) a company at any time. Forrester outlines this in their “touchpoints-model”; this model links and mixes diverse ‘old’ channels such as TV, stores and websites to new interactions via apps or social media in different stages of being a customer. Every phase knows its own touch points.
The challenge for companies is to adapt and optimize their way of working around this new customer behavior on all interactions and touch points, to make each contact with the organization relevant to the customers. And that is easier said than done. Recent study by SAP shows that although organizations state they should use social tools for customer service, they don’t put the money where their mouth is: over 75% of surveyed organizations have invested less than 50K USD in social customer service.
We are living in a hyperconnected world. In an era where consumers are making their networked lives more robust. They are connecting in more than one way and on multiple devices, consuming more content, and doing it all on the go. Regardless of age, they are ‘always on’ and in contact with others, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
As the world is changing rapidly, organizations need to stay in the game by investing in digital capabilities. During the Emerce E-day 2012 Accenture had the opportunity to give an exclusive virtual session on the emerging ‘Always on’ trend and how organizations can become Social Enterprises in order to win the hearts and wallets of today’s consumers.
Earlier this year Accenture published the results of their 3rd annual global survey of energy consumers titled, Actionable Insights for the New Energy Consumer. This report provides energy organizations a detailed perspective into the current drivers influencing the shift in consumer needs and behaviors.
“The energy consumer landscape is constantly shifting with smart technologies, new products and services and challenging economic realities.” — Greg Guthridge, Global Managing Director Accenture Retail and Business Services for Utilities
It’s been dismal and quiet on my blog lately – the silence is a consequence of making those big decisions in life. Mine was a big one – after 12 fun filled years in the Netherlands I have transferred back to my home country, Canada. A new chapter in my life starts back in Canada and my Accenture blog follows me there but with a bit of a new twist. I am still ‘Little Miss Customer Service’ but I have added a new dimension to my focus called ‘Energy’.
I grew up in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. It’s a fine place to grow up and a fine place to live again. We have it all here in BC – after 12 years in Netherlands I can see with clarity how much we take it all for granted (only because we do not know any better). Let’s take energy. I never thought much about my water, gas or electricity bill when I lived here. It was a necessity that was needed and it was at a price that was affordable (if not downright cheap). Then I moved to Amsterdam where it continued to be a necessity but the price was noticeable (and thus not cheap). For the first time in my life I started thinking about conservation of energy. Turning off those lights when leaving the room and just washing those dishes by hand rather than run a half empty dishwasher.
If you have been following the recent blog posts on Blogpodium, you must have noticed there is a major theme which we keep writing about : the Digital Transformation. As the world is changing rapidly, organizations need to stay in the game by investing in digital capabilities. But because many organizations find it difficult to predict the expected business returns for digital investments this results in little investments and a lack of innovation.
However, digital is more than a hype. It is radically changing the traditional ways organizations interact with their customers. The average customer no longer uses social media only to connect with friends or to share details about their lives. Now customers are willing to interact with organizations via social media, and expecting organizations to be out there too! Therefore the question is no longer how fast things are moving, but the question is: are you moving fast enough?
5 key digital trends Accenture believes 5 key digital trends shape the digital transformation agenda of our clients, and can be identified in the global marketplace:
Increasing amounts of devices being connected to online channels
The Next Web Conference, held in Amsterdam later this week, is set to make one thing very clear: to remain competitive organizations need a robust and flexible business model to support the rapid and radically changing digital revolution. Up until now the digital revolution has been mainly about information. Customers have had increasing levels of access to static and dynamic information which allows them to take on more control and create new expectations inthe interactionwith organizations.
At Accenture we believe the future of the digital revolution will be about the interaction. Organizations will be challenged to design and deliver personalized interactions between themselves and their (potential) customers. Customers demand that suppliers understand their needs and they expect a tailored experience. Therefore organizations need to take an active step to make use of the available data and continue to enrich the customer profile with new data obtained during the interactions or via external sources. In addition organizations also need to take note of the customers increasing willingness to interact with their peers through social platforms. Enabling these peer to peer interactions is vital to create brand awareness and market penetration of organizations products and services.
The thing about passion is that it is catchy…the energy it gives rubs off onto others. A colleague of mine had a recent ‘service experience’ and wanted to share it with me and I would like to share it with all of you. I would like to introduce you to Lucinde Klop (@Lucinde_K ) – another passionate customer service consultant from Accenture – and this is her service experience.
Selecting a new health insurance plan has been on my ‘to do list’ for a couple of weeks. I was not looking forward to this task, as I was expecting my only choice was between marginal differences in monthly payments and reimbursements. However, when I finally got to it, I was highly surprised! Not only could I choose from monthly payment options, but I could also choose between various levels of service defined per insurance package.
Marjolijn: Hoi Rob, Dank voor je berichtje, het gaat inderdaad niet altijd zoals je van te voren hoopt. Maar des te mooier als je er met vallen en opstaan...Read the full comment
Last week I informed you about the rise of the mobile customer experience and the trend of phone contact as a channel of last resort. This week I am moving away from our favorite device to customer experience trends that appear across all channels: measuring customer experience and personalizing & differentiating through analytics
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Once upon a time, when the shift from a product towards a service and experience oriented economy was made, inevitably customer service became more important. With the rise of new channels, even more ways of interaction have been demanded and created. By offering toll free numbers or @customerservice handles, organizations are trying to please the customers’ ever increasing demand of 24/7 contact and interaction. But are they doing the right thing?
It’s been dismal and quiet on my blog lately – the silence is a consequence of making those big decisions in life. Mine was a big one –
