The following is a guest blog written by Monique Bozeman, Director of Product Marketing at Virtual Hold. To learn more about their solutions visit their website at www.virtualhold.com.
To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.
Though customer experience continues to be a top priority and competitive differentiator for businesses, customer satisfaction has been on the decline for the last four years, according to a 2015 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report. In a similar vein, research in 2014 by American Express, a company often cited for their excellent service, found roughly thirty percent surveyed say organizations usually miss their expectations. Only five percent say companies exceed them.
As consumers, we know this. Though we’ve made strides with automation and today have the convenience of channel choice, all we have to do is think of our own recent experiences. We can quickly conjure up an arduous, long journey — scenarios of waiting on hold, inappropriate timing of offers, and repeat calling to get the right person on the phone. And then we have to start from the beginning with yet another uninformed agent, if we weren’t disconnected upon transfer. These journeys require great customer effort and result in frustration and a loss of valuable time — and likely customers and revenue opportunity.
Though we have more paths to purchase and service than ever before, contact centers, the hub for most customer interaction, continue to struggle to provide continuity of service across these channels. Increased customer mobility, and the growth of newer touchpoints such as the mobile channel, smart apps and Internet of Things (IoT) devices only add to the struggle.
But, let us envision a world where channel hopping doesn’t occur because of dead ends, but by choice based on preference, ease and availability. Your customers take quick trips to resolution rather than long journeys. They are in the driver’s seat, deciding when to start, or continue engagement, or perhaps react to an organization’s outreach. And they decide how, combining channels of their choosing to focus on the outcomes they need, whether it be returning a defective product, inquiring about a triple play deal or responding to a lower mortgage rate offer.
Customers engage at their pace and across channels they choose, spanning time to reach their outcome. The organization captures these key interaction moments, connects the waypoints, and analyzes and triggers the next right action. Business analysts and customer experience experts can create a blueprint of the customer experience flow, the quick trip toward outcome, with the ability to automatically adapt engagement and manage the customer outcome, without an over dependence on an IT department.
At the Idea Lab in Seattle at Customer Response Summit Seattle, Virtual Hold Technology (VHT) will show this world. We’ll discuss callback options that can be initiated over multiple channels and devices, and that save time and have dramatic impact on key operational and loyalty metrics. And will show how customer outcome management enables organizations to tie the silos together, capture context, and identify opportunities to navigate effortless customer experiences and desired outcomes.
