Few contact centers and businesses have yet to map their customer journeys. When done correctly, this approach is without a doubt the most efficient of all customer experience techniques.
However, once you get past this milestone, you might wonder what has changed on the client side. After all this effort to eliminate friction, all the solutions and technologies you implemented within your contact center to increase speed, fluidity, and responsiveness, did all of this really help improve customer satisfaction?
The majority of customer journeys are written from the organization's perspective. They define what the contact center agents should do and say to customers and prospects, as well as the communication channels they should use.
In this utopian scenario, the customer responds favorably to relational and promotional stimuli, scripts... anything that should increase his average basket and purchase frequencies, as well as the good old RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) value. And, of course, he is so happy that he gives the agent who advised him the best possible rating using a fantastic tool and a competitive CRM.
However, from an objective point, you will immediately see that the targeted customer journey is nothing more than a rebranded version of its forefather, the customer relationship strategy. It's even been referred to as a "CX washing.
In other words, to be really effective as a contact center, your customer journey must be constructed from your clients' perspectives, which is a whole distinct journey made up of unanticipated occurrences, incidents, and disappointments that are not usually stated in complaints or satisfaction surveys but are severe enough to affect your organization. And your contact center can become effective in the following four steps:
1. An objective view of customer feedback
Consumer feedback is fascinating and useful. But it only represents the opinions of those who submitted the information (phone complaints, satisfaction surveys, social networks). This number does not represent all of your customers and it puts things in perspective. The best approach to complete the picture is to observe and collect unsolicited data and the most important information about your customers.
2. Your consumers are interacting with your business because they want something.
Customers do business with you because they have a personal objective to complete not because they want to chat to your agents or learn about other services you provide. Better yet, most of the time they don't chose to contact you and are doing so to obtain something, such as changing the terms of their contract, obtaining information, or changing a delivery date. Client journeys should help you better understand how you can assist them in reaching their objectives. The reality is frequently extremely different from what you had anticipated...you know, that utopian customer journey.
3. The true NPS (Net Promoter Score)
The transactional NPS (Net Promoter Score) that you proudly display to demonstrate the impact of your efforts on satisfaction is simply the tree that masks the forest of all the micro hassles and annoyances that characterize the road before reaching the objective. Obtaining a favorable rating from a client for a basic encounter simply helps your internal aims of appraising the personnel in touch. Sure, agents can check all the boxes, provide answers quickly and correctly, and follow the script exactly, but did they address the customer's problem? Only the end-to-end journey matters, the one that recounts what happens at all phases and at all touchpoints. And the NPS connected with this process is the sole genuine indicator of your customer's satisfaction.
4. Communicate in the customer's language and make your promise a reality.
Another advantage of the customer journey is that it allows workers who would not normally interact to communicate in the same language: that of the client.
Indeed, a successful mapping should stimulate collaboration and the creation of a shared knowledge base that is based on what consumers and agents think, feel, and say at each stage. To be sure, the practice can be challenging at times since it demands going outside of the comfort zone, but it pays off and is sometimes highly lucrative for contact centers.
Steve Bederman is president and CEO of NobelBiz.