Guest Blog: Don’t Waste My Precious Time
This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Dan Rood, writes about the precious commodity of time and why we must use the latest technologies to help customers save time and have amazing customer experiences. I think a great self-service option is key for everyone. – Shep Hyken
Anyone who’s had to suffer the never-ending chore of navigating a phone tree will tell you that the experience is unpleasant — often made even worse by that disembodied voice repeating “your call is important to us” while your precious time ticks away. In case you think the horror is confined to voice interactions, don’t forget the sense of dread you feel when clicking through 13 webpages on your smartphone while your data charges rack up just to reach the appropriate contact button.
It’s no wonder that customers want to do more by themselves, saving them valuable time, money and effort. Three-quarters of U.S. adults surveyed expect to get an answer via self-service. Whether filling out an application for a loan or troubleshooting a technical problem, self-service functionality gives users more control and faster results. But not every company offers self-service options to its customers, which brings us back to more time-consuming and often irritating means of contact.
Time is the one thing nobody seems to have enough of in today’s world, and it’s infuriating to customers when you waste theirs.
Forrester Research reports that 73 percent of customers surveyed last year say the most important thing a company can do to provide good service is value their time. Common customer frustrations include having to repeatedly explain a problem to multiple people and the inability to find a quick answer to a simple question.
So, what can be done to address the problem? Forrester predicts that in 2017 “a new wave of technologies that remake industries and customer experience will begin to emerge.” These include:
Engagement technologies for digital experiences harmonized across all points in the customer journey.
Insight technologies that deliver personalization and predictive analytics.
Supporting technologies that will drive new levels of speed and efficiency.
That perfectly describes an omnichannel customer experience platform. While such a collection of engagement tools and capabilities may be new to some industries, they’re already well-established and advancing rapidly in the customer experience space.
It’s understood in our digital age that customers want to interact with vendors and service providers the same way they do with friends and colleagues—through conversations that originate and stretch across multiple channels (email, chat, web and social media). Think about it — consumers already manage all of their communication through one device. Omnichannel enables businesses to manage all types of customer experiences through one place, too. It provides for mutually aware channels in which context is shared throughout customer journeys. Properly implemented, omnichannel platforms guarantee that customers receive an individualized experience that considers their preferences and history and doesn’t require them to explain their problem more than once.
So why isn’t efficient and personalized customer experience the norm? The fact is that our technology innovation cycle has outpaced many companies. Customer experience technology is evolving to match changing customer behaviors, but legacy on-premise IT systems — with their long deployment and upgrade cycles and high capital costs — can’t be adapted quickly enough to integrate this new functionality.
Modern omnichannel platforms must use the power of the cloud.
Cloud platforms let organizations modernize customer contact operations quickly, without expensive and time-consuming hardware and software installation. They offer the following advantages:
Cloud applications allow for unlimited scale and accommodate state-of-the-art security.
Software updates are automatic and transparent.
Standardized web services and APIs for federating silos of data and connecting applications ease integration.
Cloud deployments are global by nature, freeing organizations to deploy resources for business growth.
Pay-as-you-go models curb operating expenses and eliminate the need for large up-front capital outlays.
The cloud also facilitates next-generation time-saving technology — the use of predictive analytics to further streamline customer interactions. The benefits of offering promotions based on known customer preferences are striking. For example, “According to a MyBuys study of more than 100 top internet retailers, recommending products in the shopping cart based on a user’s purchasing or browsing behavior resulted in a 915 percent increase in conversion rate.” Such personalization saves time and increases loyalty. Half of customers surveyed by Forrester rate personalized recommendations as the feature they would most like companies to offer.
Valuable predictive mechanisms extend beyond the retail sector and can be applied to omnichannel customer experience platforms for any enterprise. But they require systems that can “sift through massive sets of data to identify patterns and signals that can predict future behavior.” Such data-driven capabilities can only be delivered effectively via the cloud.
The lesson to companies is clear. Customer time is a precious commodity and respecting it in the modern age requires embracing the technologies that save it.
Dan Rood is the Senior Director, Product and Content Marketing at Genesys. He is passionate about creating memorable user experiences, resulting in tools that are valuable to businesses globally.
For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.
Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: Six Ways Listening Improves The Customer Experience
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