Effortless Delight: Taking the Work Out of the Customer Experience

As the development of technology continues to shape customer service expectations, delivering streamlined service isn’t optional—it’s a necessity.

In the customer service world, the struggle between two supposedly competing ideals has generated a large amount of debate—customer delight vs. customer effort. There’s no denying that it’s in your contact centre’s benefit to make your problem solving simple, but does the increased ease of service come at the cost of the “wow” factor of customer support?

Not necessarily.

Technology is growing and connecting consumers together. The customer service world has to adapt to a marketplace that increasingly expects service to be personalized and streamlined.

The Consumers of Today

Research by Harris Interactive showed that the percent of customers who quit doing business with a company due to a bad experience increased from 59 percent in 2007 to 86 percent in 2011.

Better customer loyalty can be a difficult goal to reach—and it’s getting harder by the day. As customers become more empowered by technology and an interconnected Internet-based lifestyle, their expectations for quality service are evolving. With new, consumer-verified service opportunities becoming widely available, your customers have fewer reasons to maintain loyalty to your brand than they ever have before. This makes it essential that your contact centre be aware of how to make the customer service experience pain-free and effortless.

Providing Effortless Service

According to research by CEB, 96 percent of customers who feel that they expend “high” amounts of effort during problem solving are likely to be disloyal.

Clearly, the customer effort required during service plays a big part in their overall perception of your brand. Customer service issues can’t always be resolved quickly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the process as easy for them as possible:

• Are multiple channels available for your customers to select? An omni-channel customer experience is a necessity these days, or at the very least, you must offer the channels that your market prefers to use.
• Can future problems be anticipated to ensure the customer won’t have to call back? Service Quality Management Group found that customers who didn’t get their issue resolved on the first point of contact are 10 times more likely to switch to a competitor.
• Are you communicating with your customers well and making them feel valued? If they don’t feel like a priority, they won’t stick around for long.
• Do you agents have the freedom and flexibility needed to deliver quality service?

The take-away here is that to delight your customers, you’ll need to make sure their experience is low maintenance and optimized for their ease of use.

Don’t focus on how you define great service, focus on how they define great service.

Mapping Their Delight

Taking the effort out of the equation isn’t enough to provide awe-inspiring service, though. To elevate your support from “serviceable” to “delightful”, you’ll need to go a step further.

As with many aspects of your customer service, you can get a better idea of how to proceed by mapping out opportunities to go above and beyond your customer’s expectations. This can be done by leveraging the data in your CRM systems to identify moments where proactive outreach is possible.

Do you have customer data for special calendar occasions like birthdays? Mention it in the conversation!

Has the customer had to call multiple times about a single issue? Acknowledge their frustration and the time they’ve already put in.

Your goal here is to use the data you have available to surprise your customers and deliver service that surpasses their expectations. Every business relationship is built on mutual trust, and acknowledging the individual emotional experience of each customer you connect with is one of the best ways to increase their loyalty.

This requires a skill set beyond typical call centre competence and moves into a realm where soft skills, interpersonal relations, and organizational purpose come into play. “Wow”-level service rarely comes from the bare minimum, or even exemplary service. To create the kind of outreach that drives loyalty, agents must understand their customers, identify their priorities, and deliver support that beats out the customer’s past experiences with other organizations.

Build More Loyal Customers

As customer expectations continue to rise, the burden is on contact centres to meet the challenge. Customers these days don’t have much patience—and may not be willing to give you a second chance. Inform your service with personalized data gathered from your CRM systems, quality training focused on soft skill development, and initiatives that reduce consumer effort. When you’ve optimized your support to both ease the problem solving process and delight your customers, improved customer loyalty and retention aren’t far behind.

Interested in more ways you can reduce customer effort to provide more effective service? Check out our free white paper!