It is one thing to talk about customer experience though and another to excel at it. As someone who is known to be a tad obsessed with CX, I’ve been fortunate to learn a thing or two in my career about not only what outstanding customer experience looks like but how to bring that vision to life.
In recent times, that has included working with one of Australia’s leading department store chains to transform their customer experience and while I’m not able to reveal its name, I’m more than happy to share aspects of our journey together to help other organisations achieve their own CX goals.
Given the millions of web pages dedicated to the CX conversation, it is fair to say that thousands of people have already shared their thoughts on this subject. Countless words. Lengthy definitions. Complex insights. I prefer to keep things simple, as evidenced by what I told our retail client when we first sat down to discuss working together.
“Customer experience is all about setting expectations and delivering on them.”
On this occasion, the client wanted our help to reinvent the way their contact centres engaged with their customers. They were not as close with their current service delivery approach and team as they wanted to be and, in turn, had lost touch with being close to their customers.
And this is where we do things differently in our search for CX excellence.
Source: Infographic: The new rules of customer experience (pwc.com.au)
One of the key things we have done for our clients is to help them understand how failing to meet expectations impacts CX. An example? Online orders for the latest gadgets were flooding in. Customers were excited. There was a genuine buzz around the brand - right up until that the product didn’t come out on time. Cue a horde of upset and angry customers inundating the contact centre.
Quality customer experience helps brands deliver value and that comes when customers feel valued and achieve the right resolution when issues arise. That did not happen on this occasion and we held up a mirror to our client and explained how they had set an expectation and failed to deliver on it. Crucially, we also went a step further and helped the client address why the product had not come out on time.
A commitment to customers typically involves a complex line of people and a myriad of contributing factors. In this instance, there were suppliers, logistics teams and a range of delivery options (eg: couriers, parcel pick-up, drop shippers) and we helped identify where the breakdown had occurred and provided recommendations to close the gap between expectations and what is being delivered.
By providing clients with real insights into why customers are contacting them, we help them understand the root cause of any issues or problems they are facing, which is critical to designing outstanding CX.
Our client knew things had to change. Customers wanted more low-effort channels. Agents were spending far too long on calls. Their contact centre featured complex pathways but lacked real-time insights. It was an environment designed for poor CX – but we changed that.
We completed an in-depth analysis of key call drivers and workforce management processes. We undertook a benchmarking exercise to understand what other large Australian retailers were doing in this space. We then used people, process and technology to reimagine the future of customer experience for our client. Here is what our findings helped us achieve:
The results speak for themselves - AHT has been slashed by almost 50%, online self-service rates have soared to 92% and 94% of calls are now directed to the right department in the right store.