CX – the holistic approach to getting it right

When it comes to customer experience, you need to make a good impression at every point of contact. Get it wrong and your customers may go elsewhere. Consider these statistics from a recent Deloitte Digital survey: 60% of respondents said they “would likely abandon their favourite brand after a bad customer service interaction”, while 66% would be unlikely to repurchase from a favourite brand “if they received no solution after a complaint”.

When you factor in the rule-of-thumb statistic that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, it’s clear that customer experience (or lack thereof) can have a significant impact on your bottom line. So if you want to keep your customers, you need to consistently provide the experience they expect from your brand – including via each of your contact centre channels.

This can pose a challenge, though, for companies that have grown their channels somewhat organically – perhaps starting with just voice and gradually branching out into e-mail, social media, WhatsApp, chatbots and more. “Businesses want to meet customer expectations by communicating on multiple channels, but are they providing consistent service across each of these platforms? That’s a key question they should be asking themselves,” says 1Stream’s co-founder Bruce von Maltitz.

And while there are plenty of feature-rich contact centre solutions available to help businesses manage their channels, these systems may not always take the holistic approach needed – or provide the functionality required – to create an optimal omnichannel customer experience.

“Customer experience management is about looking at the bigger picture,” says Von Maltitz. “You need to be able to see the whole customer journey, from the first touch point (whether that’s a phone call, e-mail or WhatsApp) to the last, to ensure it’s consistent. But if you have different systems, each with their own reporting, and they don’t ‘speak’ to each other, you’re not going to get that big picture view.”

With an integrated system, on the other hand, information from all channels (including phone, e-mail and chat) and data repositories (including CRM and ticketing systems) is available in one place. And with immediate access to customer details and contact history, agents can offer better customer support, resolve issues effectively and follow up where necessary.

“To effectively manage customer experience, businesses must consolidate their information and communication channels in one place,” says Von Maltitz. “Which is why it’s important that they partner with a provider that understands their requirements and can provide the integrated and customised solutions they need.”