Johannesburg, 29 Aug 2016
Customer experience management is not a trend. It's also not something that only affects those in customer service or in a call centre.
Customer experience management is a very real and very valuable consideration for every business, and one that can affect the bottom line. But, according to Jed Hewson, co-founder of 1Stream, you can't change or improve customer experience until you can measure it.
Going back to basics
There is certainly a move within businesses towards gathering, analysing and understanding data, and rightly so. It is this deeper level of insight that, if translated and incorporated into the overall strategy, can give clear direction for an organisation. But, it can only be effective if you first measure the right things; only then will a business be able to successfully implement change and improve the customer experience.
For example, in the context of a contact centre, receiving a customer rating for each call might seem like a useful start. But, even once these ratings have been obtained, how can any changes be implemented without knowing the "why" behind the scores? These ratings also don't tell the whole story as they are only gathered from completed interactions, but an essential consideration is a comparison between calls being answered and calls being abandoned. This underpins the stats that are then gathered from the completed calls.
Implementing an effective business intelligence (BI) tool is the building block on which customer experience management can be based. With rich, relevant data, the right questions can be asked and the right answers assessed. This brings a business closer to being able to implement change and ensure a positive customer experience.
Connecting the dots
Too often, a contact centre will implement various incoming channels through disparate systems. While these systems may offer reporting and measuring capabilities, these will be different across the different systems. However, true measurability, and therefore the ability to make informed operational changes to improve customer experience, can only be achieved through a level of consistency.
What this means in the context of a call centre is that all channels (eg, voice, e-mail and social media) need to be viewed and measured by the same system. Having isolated measurements and different reports from disparate systems makes relevant comparisons or analysis near impossible.
The most beneficial strategy for business owners and contact centre managers, who deal with this challenge daily, is to make use of a system that can incorporate all channels and offer a holistic and consistent overview of both productivity and quality that directly translate into customer experience.
The reality for businesses operating in the customer-centric market is that stats for stats sake are not enough. Having access to relevant, valuable and accurate data and then using this to inform and improve business operations should be at the top of an organisation's priority list.
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