Great Customer Experiences and ROI—Can You Have Both

As the world grows steadily more competitive, it’s hard to fault organizations for wanting to operate as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. But when it comes to managing the customer experience, viewing processes solely through the ROI lens may inhibit customer engagement and derail the customer journey. It can even cost you customers in the long term—particularly if you’re in a market with low barriers to entry.

At the heart of the issue are these simple questions: Are you truly engaging with your customers? Are you giving them the experience they want, or the experience you think they want? And are your process decisions completely based on ROI?  

It’s time to loosen up that Six Sigma belt and take a fresh look at specific actions to help you engage customers and expedite the customer journey.

1. Align your channels with customer needs.

For years, many organizations relied on the least expensive ways to serve their customers. But we’re in the era of digital disruption, and new channels—web, mobile, self-service, chat, and more—have dramatically changed customer expectations and the customer journey itself, especially within certain demographics. There’s no escaping this. If your competitors are easier to contact and do business with, it won’t take customers long to find out—or defect. 

2. Refresh your viewpoint.

Whether you are B2C or B2B, there is a tendency to work strictly from an “inside - out” viewpoint that targets efficiency, internal effectiveness, and productivity. That’s in stark contrast, however, to how customers view and approach sales and service experiences. They care about fundamental things, such as the product or service itself, price, quality, timeliness, and ease of doing business. But they also care about being engaged, treated, and valued as individuals. It’s no longer acceptable to defer responsibility for customer engagement to corporate marketing. As an operations or technology leader, you’re responsible for developing the right processes and systems infrastructure to deliver it. 

 3. Include everyone who impacts the customer experience.

Are you focusing on the customer experience during specific interactions at the point of purchase and/or during customer service transactions? That’s what many companies do first. While that’s a great start, there’s more that hangs in the balance, such as having the ability to get to the root cause of customer experience challenges, analyzing the issues, and taking corrective action.

To be sure, sales and customer service are critical, but in today’s omnichannel world, it’s critical to look beyond those areas and include everyone in the company who interacts with the customer, either directly or indirectly. For example, your customers may interact with staff in procurement, legal, scheduling, training, billing, delivery, renewals, and disposals, as well as with your technicians and partners. These interactions are vital to delivering positive customer experiences and creating long-term relationships.

4. Move from personas to people.

Journey mapping and creating customer personas can be a great way to begin to understand your customer’s perspective. But be careful not to do this in a vacuum. Sitting in a room with a group of smart internal people and using the data you currently collect to project your views and perceptions to personas, and then developing the customer’s perspective can be risky. How do you know the data you are collecting is adequate? Do you understand the holistic customer journey, or just what happens at the transactional touchpoints?

So, how do you understand what your customers really want? You can start by asking them—in a coordinated, thoughtful and systemic way. Too many decisions are made without getting external customer input. They will tell you exactly what they want, and how they want it. You can also study the journey you take your customer on. Then, you can invest your valuable capital (human and financial) in improvements that are meaningful to your customers and beneficial to the bottom line. 

Discover how customer engagement optimization can help you strike the critical balance between customer service and ROI at www.verint.com/customer-engagement.
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