Customer experience is probably the most coveted metric in today’s tumultuous times, when everything we have known about life has been disrupted—both as customers and as corporations.
Yet, surprisingly, customer experience is often mistaken for customer service. The truth is far, far away from this. In fact, Customer Service begins where Customer Experience Fails!
Experience is a series of preordained and orchestrated interactions, a sum total of accumulated engagements over time, which, when they function seamlessly and with clockwork precision, leave the customer with a unique taste of contentment. If this happens, the consumer continues to maintain his status quo with the brand.
Any severance in the designed process may lead to a feeling of disapproval, which in turn may trigger a series of different responses, depending upon the plane of patience from which the customer operates.
Most young consumers, Millennials and Gen Z have low endurance for suboptimal outcomes, and 80% may instantly choose to switch brands after just one poor experience! For older profiles, the numbers switching brands after only one bad experience may be close to 50% – but still, a very steep risk for businesses to lose customers rapidly, stemming from non-delivery of great CX.
It is the iceberg effect of customers who choose to simply quit, not even providing a single word of feedback. Of course, they may speak to friends and family, warning them about dealing with the brand in the future. By the time we get to customer service, it is probably already too late!
The important message for business leaders is not just to assuage the customers who reach out to them seeking resolution and service but, more importantly, to recognize the fact that much greater loss occurs from customers who choose not even to contact them, silently meandering away from the brand!
Service is mandatory and universally pursued—this is a no-brainer. However, the few who focus on building experience truly win the race for the customer by building great experiences and relying less and less on customer service to pick up the threads.
CX is about accumulated experiences over the customer’s lifetime across a myriad of brand journeys, navigating direct and indirect touchpoints, and online and offline interactions over owned and earned digital assets.
The ability to conceive great CX involves wide-ranging subjects, from Customer strategy, Product differentiation, and Brand promises… to Technology tools that provide access to the right data at the right point at the right time. These tools are often enabled with AI/ML intelligence and delivered through customized UX and UI designs. The goal is to make the customer offer “feel” relatable, comfortable, clear & transparent and enable ease of transaction.
In a time when product and operational efficiencies have tapered, CX can be the big competitive advantage for your brand.