The Disconnects in Customer Experiences

In today's business climate, customers rule. They not only know what they want and need but have access to the information necessary to make good purchasing decisions. Therefore, savvy companies have turned to customer experience as the new differentiator.

Everything your business does or says determines what that experience looks like, and helps determine whether or not people will purchase your products or services. The first step to successful differentiation lies in understanding and believing that your employees are the most important part of that experience. The experience must be built first with your employees, across every department that touch customers and clients, from customer service, to the customer call center, to sales staff, to marketing.

Unfortunately, there are lots of disconnects preventing most companies from creating consistently great customer experiences. The evidence speaks loud and clear and nearly everyone knows what a bad customer experience feels like. I experienced one yesterday when called by the Boston Globe, which I receive by subscription on Sunday's only.

About every month or two, my account representative calls me to sell me something I don't want, and is clueless that I am on the "Do Not Call List" and have for the past two years been telling the representative that I don't want to be called. I have made it clear that Monday through Saturday I read several newspapers, including the Globe, online. Yet they keep calling. They aren't the only company disconnected from my wants and needs.

Every day I get e-mails from companies with whom I might or might not have once bought something. What I purchased or if I purchased from then doesn't seem to matter. Nearly every message is irrelevant to my purchasing history. I end up blocking them. And forget calling most customer service and sales departments to get information on something I saw online or in an ad. They don't have a clue.

It's frustrating. We know that most CEOs understand that delivering a great customer experience across the customer lifecycle results in happier customers, stronger brand identities, and loyalty that can be seen in revenues. They also know that companies that fail to implement practices to improve customer experiences make a lot of mistakes that turn off customers and choke off revenue. So, why don't companies recognize where those mistakes happen, why they happen and then fix the disconnects?

We read research and change management, marketing and communications consultants such as I tell them over and over that the disconnects exist because of departmental silos; a failure to consistently communicate the same information across all channels; and, most important, the capability and inability to share data across those same channels that is gathered by the right technology and that captures and analyzes data both during inbound and outbound marketing.

Instead, what we usually see is that the customer call center and service departments have one set of data, often using CRM, while sales and marketing gathers a completely different set using surveys and focus groups. None of the data is tied together; therefore, analysis is inaccurate and incomplete, leaving sales and marketing relying on mass communications that serves mostly to annoy customers, while inbound callers are left talking to clueless representatives who know little to nothing about messaging coming out of sales and marketing.

Let's get smart. Every time a company interacts with a customer—whether it’s a marketing, sales, or service interaction—there is an exchange of knowledge. The quality of this exchange impacts the customer experience. A white paper published by Portrait Software International Limited US, Boston, shares great advice to fix the disconnects. Here in brief is what they say:

• Actively manage the customer experience, with clear metrics for success. Give the responsibility to a senior manager with cross-departmental powers.
• Use technology and train staff to capture measured information aimed at understanding the needs and preferences of each customer.
• Use predictive analytics to generate meaningful segments that predict behavior.
• Test different treatment strategies using control groups.
• Break down the silos and unite all channels.

With knowledge in hand, the data can now be applied to sales and marketing strategies, tactics and messaging by controlling these six customer experience drivers:

• Treatment: What you do with this knowledge.
• Product: Targeting the right customers for each new offer.
• Staff: Giving staff the power and responsibility for doing the right things from
  setting performance expectations and measuring results to better understanding the customer needs to sending consistent, compelling messages across all channels.

By successfully implementing these fixes and removing the disconnects, customers benefit by receiving offers for only the products & services they care about; they will be surprised and delighted, hence open to new ideas; and we will reduce attrition rates and defections, drive down the cost of great customer service, and improve sales and marketing campaign effectiveness.

If you are a business management consultant, get an edge by introducing this kind of change management to your clients. If you work for a company that struggles to get customer experience right, let this be a starting point for your change management. Either way, you will be a hero or a heroine.

For More Information: Check out Seth Godin's post entitled The first law of mass media. Here is a taste: "Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter."

Disclaimer: Although I have discussed these strategies for several years and included many of them in my most recent book, as a full disclaimer I share that Portrait Software is a client. I purposely did not mention their products to avoid a conflict of interest.