INTRODUCTION
Top 3 reasons why companies fail to deliver exceptional customer experiences – 1) Some companies try to cut costs of not having a call centre where customers can talk to humans which or course reduces costs but costs even more in customer satisfaction meaning customers are susceptible to moving to competitors. 2) Contrary to beliefs, a company doesn’t have to be 100% perfect all the time but when at fault, acknowledge it, fix it and customers will love you for it. 3) Only rewarding new customers can send existing customers elsewhere especially when teaser ‘introductory’ offer rates disappear.
During my 15 year investigation on how to deliver exceptional customer experience, I have been fortunate to see the good and the blatantly bad.
From my experience, what I have discovered is that many organisations believe that they are customer centric. They believe deep down that what they deliver is exceptional and that the customers they have are happy. However, when you look at it from the customers point of view the story is very different. In a recent HBR article, 85% of CEO believed they were customer centric, then they are the same questions to their customers, the response was below 10%.
So why is it that companies believe they are customer focused when in fact they are not? Well it stems from the foundations of education. Many business schools rightfully focus on Accountancy Based Costings, with a strong emphasis on reducing costs to maximise profit.
The problem with this strategic thinking is that there is no element of customer loyalty factored into the equation. When working of the most cost effective way to run a business, they often do not regard customer experience and word of mouth referrals and hence the true economic factors into the most cost effective way to do business is not fully realised. So what are the three top mistakes I see organisations do that really hurt the customers experience:
1. They try to do everything on the cheap. For example, most of the time, when you call a company, they have a voice recognition software or IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Most times it is so darn hard to get to someone. This creates frustration on behalf of the customer and does not deliver on the customer experience. The Spoken 2015 Call Center Report surveyed 727 call center users, 47% female and 53% male, all living in the United States. The issues that impacted on customer experience was:
· Inefficient IVRs driving negative experiences The key driver of a negative call center experience, with 77% of respondents ranking it first or second, was having to repeat responses in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
· Lack of Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) drives negative experiences A second driver of negative experiences, with 53% ranking it first or second, was having to repeat information already given to the IVR to the agent. http://blog.spoken.com/customer-experience/
2. Trying to get an error corrected. Some organisations try so hard to be perfect, but from my experience, being perfect does not always create customer loyalty. What does create customer loyalty is by making mistakes but having the ability to correct them. Apple, for example, have realised that when their products go sour, it is better both economically and customer experience wise just to replace the item at the store, rather than have it shipped to a costly support centre. Lets learn from Apple and give each employee the power and autonomy to act on what is best for the customer and keep their customers keep coming back.
3. Rewarding new customers instead of loyal ones - the biggest industry that resonates with this right now is the financial industry. You may know what I mean when your insurance premiums go up 100% when it is time for renewal. The thinking behind it is that you will be too busy to notice and it will be done automatically. How behind the times they are now! We all know of someone spending time unregistering himself or herself as a customer only then to “sign” up as a new one for a discounted price.
The good news is that newly appointed Australian CEO for RBS Ross McEwan has seen this gap and is looking to rectify the difference. I suspect one of the reason’s why is not only to clear up that reputation of banks but it won’t help not to have un-profitable price-sensitive customers.
“We need to change our behaviour at every level to reflect this simple truth. To move from stability to renewal, we need to first address and then clean up every aspect of how we treat customers.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/rbs-priority-customers-ross-mcewan
Natwest is another example now that they have stopped with enticing new customers with ‘teaser’ rates for credit cards and also recently TSB with their Current Plus Account campaign.
Final point: If companies can avoid these three mistakes, then they stand a good chance in delivering great customer experiences. The key question is then why do businesses make these mistakes? The answer is that their customer experience program is simply something that has been put into place because everyone is doing it, rather than they are really wanting to make change or they simply don’t realize the importance of implementing customer experience – it’s just a nice thing to do. The way you can tell is by seeing where the customer experience director/manager lies within the company organisation. Those who have the manager reporting directly under the CEO are the successful ones but those who have the customer experience manager reporting under a 3 tier marketing manager are often the ones that don’t truly understand the importance of the "customer experience." - Dominic Kitchin.