Evolving Customer Care to Customer Love
Volume 1 - Issue 2 ~ January 14, 2022
Welcome to the second edition of the “CIO Two Cents” newsletter from me, Yvette Kanouff, Partner at JC2 Ventures. Read on for what CIOs need to have at the top of their minds as we head into the new year.
The JC2 Ventures team (John J. Chambers, Shannon Pina, John T. Chambers, me, and Pankaj Patel)
Leveraging Technology and the Human Connection to Create Customer Devotion
Customers… we need them, we care about them, but do we love them? We have massive systems set up to support our customers, but many (myself included) still feel frustrated when interacting with companies. The customer support landscape is changing. It is not about solving a problem but nurturing a lifetime relationship that sustains a business.
According to a Forbes study last year, 96% of customers will leave you for bad service, 62% will likely share their bad experiences with others (Salesforce Research), and American Express touts that Americans will pay 17% more to do business with firms with great reputations when it comes to customer service. Yet, endless hold times, lack of real-time customer service engagement, repeat calls, poor follow-up, and lack of unified customer views are plaguing customer satisfaction.
So why are we not pursuing the best customer service more aggressively? What is being done to solve these issues?
The Customer Call Center vs a Customer Love Department
This is the era of enabling AI and ML in the call center, not just to automate the customer interaction (or over-automate, which doesn’t help either), but to help the agent work better and faster! If we empower and enable the agent, the customer will have a better experience. AI is sophisticated enough to learn from the best agents, recognize these issues on future calls, and (1) make intelligent suggestions to inexperienced agents and help solve issues based on pattern recognition; (2) significantly reduce handle time to help increase capacity, lower hold times, etc.; (3) increase customer satisfaction.
As Gustavo Sapoznik, Founder and CEO of AI company ASAPP, which works on Customer Experience, notes “AI can transform the call center agent interaction by arming each agent with the best information based on every historical learning. A call to a company should be an opportunity for a positive touchpoint to build the relationship, rather than an experience of frustration due to poor agent enablement.”
Let’s not forget that people love talking to people. Empathy is critical (another item that AI can help monitor and guide), empowerment of the agent is critical (why ask for a supervisor when AI and automation can help allow the customer to get an answer right away), and the technology is here to begin this journey. Most agents deeply care about customers; when they have the empowerment and tools, their conversation with customers will be far more ‘loving.’
“My 2 cents are to focus on a holistic transformation, and to focus on the customer, not just cost savings. Removing the call-in number from a website, and enabling bots that do not move freely between a person and automation as examples, might help the company, but do the customers love the company with such experiences?”
Journey Mapping
Customer journey mapping is becoming common place. There are great examples of how companies are understanding customer behavior outside of their purchases including the store visits, calls and buying behaviors. Monitor and track all aspects of how to make your customers happier, and do not sell or offer a mismatch of things.
I work with many companies that are taking a new look at journey mapping. Sprinklr is a company focused on customer love – listening to them on social media and responding instantly with extremely relevant advertising and marketing solutions. Sprinklr has transformed research and allows us to see real-time what customers think instead of having to wait for survey results. This has created product lines from L’Oréal to McDonalds.
One last piece of the customer journey is the future journey – it’s critical that we anticipate what customers may need tomorrow, instead of waiting for them to call. How-to videos, offering commonly used accessories to new purchases, and answering common questions and needs are all great proactive ways to love your customers, and make them love purchasing products from you. Even a thank you gift is a great way to bond with a customer after a purchase.
Finally, use your feedback. AI is very good at next-issue prediction, and we can use that technology to learn so much from frustrated customers. Unicorn startup Quantum Metric, for example, is mapping the application journey, and helping companies find new product enhancements based on frequent frustration points.
Love
Even Fred Reichheld, a Partner at Bain & Company who is credited with creating the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in 2003, now talks about “The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers” as a subtitle of his new book. (Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers). Technology can help companies streamline operations and reduce staff, but I believe customer service is changing to enable the creation of deep relationships with customers. It’s time we all moved from the concept of ‘supporting’ a customer to falling in love with them …. Better yet, let’s have them love us!
Moving fast? I've got you covered. Here are the key takaways:
(1)
When it comes to customer service, focus on a holistic transformation, enabled by AI that helps the agent work better and faster.
(2)
Technology can help us streamline and maybe even reduce cost – but the creation of deeper relationships with customers is the future, and that requires a human touch in customer service.
(3)
Identify different journeys your customers may make while interacting with your company to pinpoint exactly what they need, rather than selling or offering them a mismatch of things.
Image of the Moment
According to Semrush, “When asked which technologies most improve customer experience, 34% of sales and marketing leaders believe AI is the biggest game-changer.”
