1 in 3 customers will leave a brand, even one they love, after just one bad experience, according to PwC, while 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions, proving the importance of customer experience.
This is no surprise, as customer experience is increasingly becoming a differentiator when it comes to choosing a service or organization to purchase from. And the Coronavirus pandemic has meant that organizations have had to re-think how they continue to provide outstanding service to their customers.
In-person interactions have diminished, while online interactions and conversations over the phone have skyrocketed, leaving organizations to rethink their business models in order to provide the best experience.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to reconsider how you handle customer interactions and customer experience. This will likely mean reviewing your processes and your digital infrastructure. Here are four ways to ensure your customer experience meets the ever-escalating expectations of the modern customer.
COVID-19 has proven that it’s more important than ever to digitize your services. Social distancing precautions and periods of lockdown meant that aspects of everyday life, from retail to banking to entertainment needed to be provided digitally as in-person interactions simply weren’t an option.
80% of companies believe that their core business model should be digitized to remain economically viable, reports McKinsey. Most companies are making the move to digital anyway, COVID will just have emphazised the need to provide services as well as in-person.
One Bizagi customer ensured that their customers’ needs were met during the lockdown and social distancing period initiated by COVID by tailoring their existing ways of working to the new reality. This financial services provider’s primary channel of engagement with many of their traditional low-income customers was face-to-face through an extensive branch network. With these branches closed, they had to create an alternative means of communicating with customers, bearing in mind that some may not have had access to computers for online banking.
Processes supporting critical services, such as funeral claims, were quickly repackaged for fulfillment via mobile apps and WhatsApp, which ensured familiarity and accessibility for the customers. The organization was able to redesign, build and deploy these processes within weeks to ensure that the most vulnerable customers were being looked after.
While it’s invaluable to have the option of digital interactions over in-person, physical interactions won’t disappear completely. You need to provide options for your customers, and give them the ability to carry out different parts of their journey through different methods.
For example, someone may browse for retail products on a mobile app, then visit the website days later to make a purchase, and opt for a click and collect pick up in-store. If they had problems with that item down the line, an omnichannel customer support approach can bring up information about their past interactions with the brand, from purchases to interactions with online chatbots. Adobe recently found that companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy a 10% year-on-year growth, a 10% increase in average order value, and a 25% increase in close rates.
In order to have this overview of all your channels, you need to take a centralized approach to your business and have a connected view of systems to aid collaboration and visibility. A process automation platform can provide a centralized way of doing business by connecting your legacy systems and newer applications, as well as your people and devices, so you can share information on a global scale. This helps to contextualize customer information so you can react to each customer’s unique situation and capitalize on critical moments in the customer journey.
Not only will this help with customer experience but also employee experience. As remote working turns from a trend to the norm and offices expand overseas, it’s imperative that all employees are connected in order to ensure productivity. A single point of access through a centralized system allows processes to be completed no matter where your colleagues are based.
One vital aspect of customer experience is customer service. 54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service in 2020 compared to one year ago, according to Microsoft, so it’s more than important than ever to get those (often one-off) interactions right.
You can automate processes such as claims and complaints management to ensure quick and accurate solution of the customer’s issue. Bizagi customer, Seguros Universal used digital process automation to define and deliver tasks within their claims process as part of their car insurance offering. As a result, Universal doubled the number of claims processed, but only had to hire one additional employee.
“The three main benefits that Bizagi has brought us are control, traceability and continuous improvement that positively impacts the quality of customer service,” said Jose Antonio Fuentes, Executive VP of Partners. Automation has helped deliver repaired vehicles back to customers quicker and more efficiently, delighting customers, and contributing to a 45% increase in revenue for the insurer.
Orchestrating and automating your processes brings order and efficiency to your organization. But introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) on top of your processes has the potential to introduce further benefits. Machine learning and AI is increasingly being used to predict customer behavior based on data previously captured during customer interactions, which can help deliver new services and improve customer experiences.
“In the next normal, companies will need to be more proactive and nimbler as well as able to anticipate customer expectations and needs,” reported McKinsey. “Now is the time for executives to invest in the data, technology, and systems required to deliver exceptional experiences. Organizations able to understand customers better, and do it faster, are likely to be the next customer-experience leaders.”
The predictive abilities of AI are proving useful following COVID-19. The technology can help match demand and supply by examining data to ensure that manufacturers are not over or under-producing based on changes to external demand. Similarly, it can enhance the customer experience by recommending items based on previous purchases, or recommending changes to the online shopping experience to retailers based on the way that customers browse their websites. It can even help with risk management. For example, in banking, machine learning can identify fraudulent purchases, allowing banks to immediately block transactions and alert customers, saving both provider and customer time, money and stress.
If you’d like to learn more about how Bizagi’s digital business platform can help to enhance your customer experience, download our ebook, Make Your Breakthrough in Customer Engagement.
