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Customer effort matters.
Today’s consumers want their lives to be as easy as possible. Think Uber, Grubhub, Amazon Prime and the endless number of apps designed to let you order anything you want, direct to your door, with a click of a button. These on-demand services prove that a convenient and effortless customer experience is both possible and expected by customers everywhere.
Download our eBook How To Deliver An Effortless Customer Experience in the 21st Century
Illustrating The Effortless Client Experience
The following illustration demonstrates the necessity of creating effortless experiences.
The New Stereo System: Take 1
Imagine this scenario:
It’s Amazon Prime Day and you’re thrilled to have snagged the limited-edition wireless streaming stereo system you’ve had your eye on. When it arrives, you open the box and see… a whole load of parts. There’s also a 126-page user guide that raises your blood pressure every time you turn a page, but you manage to set it up… after about an hour.
What’s wrong with your new device?
Unfortunately, no matter what you do, the Bluetooth functionality isn’t working. You therefore do the following:
- hunt for the customer service number in the user guide to see if they can help
- wait on hold for 22 minutes, and then
- have the Tier-1 support agent walk you through a series of steps that you’ve just finished trying yourself based on the troubleshooting instructions.
High effort customer experience = Dissatisfied customer & returned product
After 30 minutes of back-and-forth, you need to get to an appointment. On the way, you leave your new purchase at the nearest Amazon drop-off location. Limited edition or not, it’s just not worth the effort.
The New Stereo System: Take 2
Now imagine this scenario:
When your brand-new stereo system arrives, you open the box and find a DVD with a visual step-by-step guide to setting it up. It’s so easy that you get it up and running in five minutes flat.
However, the Bluetooth functionality isn’t working. You call the customer service number printed clearly on the DVD cover, and your IVR-directed call is picked up by Tier 1 support in less than two minutes.
Easy as pie to fix: an effortless customer experience
The agent uses remote visual assistance to view your system through your iPhone camera. He immediately diagnoses the problem and walks you through fixing the issue, using crystal-clear arrows to show you exactly what to do.
Less than 20 minutes after the box arrived, you have your shoes off and are lying on your sofa as the strains of Puccini fill your home.
Low effort customer experience creates satisfied customers
You’re satisfied with your purchase – not only because the product met your needs but also because the company provided you with a truly effortless customer experience.
3 Reasons Why Your Should Strive for an Effortless Customer Experience
Businesses hoping to compete in this modern marketplace need to adapt their customer-facing strategies to ensure every interaction is as quick and seamless as possible. This will also result in lower Customer Effort Scores (CES).
Cut costs with an effortless customer service experience
An effortless customer service study found even more dramatic results, reporting that moving from providing a high-effort customer experience to a low-effort one cuts costs by 37%. It also increases the likelihood of increased purchases; 94% of customers with an effortless customer experience intend to repurchase, as compared to 4% of those who experience high-effort interactions.
By identifying inefficiencies that place unnecessary demands on the customer, businesses can make the improvements required to enhance processes, in order to provide an effortless customer experience.
Some examples of high-effort interactions include:
- Repeat contacts: when agents achieve First Contact Resolution (FCR), it means that they properly addressed the customer’s needs the first time they contacted the enterprise. This contributes towards effortless client experiences by eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second contact to seek resolution.
- Wasted customer time: make sure customers never have to repeat themselves or sit idle during extended wait times. Intelligent routing is also key, as nothing is worse than waiting for a supervisor and then finding yourself talking to the wrong department.
- Shoddy self-service: call deflection to self-service ensures customers receive the answers they are seeking in the most efficient manner, while reducing the number of inbound calls routed to human agents.
- Robotic service: no one likes to feel like they’re just a number or receive “generic” service. Asking a customer to briefly describe their issue at the start of an interaction can help gauge the nature and urgency of the problem. This allows the contact center to tailor its service appropriately, creating effortless experiences.
- Complicated instructions: customers should be able to resolve the issue as quickly and painlessly as possible, without exerting unnecessary mental effort on complicated choices.
- Being reactive, not proactive: anticipating a problem before it becomes a crisis is the key to happier customers, low effort customer experiences and reduced contact center volumes.
Bottom line: companies must find ways to improve customer-facing contact center processes in order to provide an effortless customer experience.
Increase Loyalty with an Effortless Client Experience
Another reason organizations should strive to deliver experiences defined by low effort, according to Gartner, is that effort is the driver with the strongest tie to customer loyalty. In fact, 96% of customers who experience a high-effort interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have an effortless customer experience.
In a recently published eBook, we take a deep dive into how businesses can provide effortless customer service in order to boost loyalty. The eBook offers a wide range of tactics, tools and technologies that can streamline the customer journey and eliminate processes that waste time or create duplicate work.
Effortless Customer Service Experience Boosts Revenue
It also explores a number of CX improvement tactics that don’t tell the full story, including the mistaken assumptions that customer satisfaction can be equated with loyalty and that over delivering always leads to ROI. In addition, we’ve highlighted examples of companies that are successfully delivering effortless customer experience and reaping the rewards for their endeavors.
