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Insights: Hi Yves, thanks for joining us. Let’s start with the term itself: we used to talk about customer service and now we use customer experience. What’s the difference?

YS: Customer service represents one key element of an end-to-end customer experience. It plays a key role in the customer experience when customers, users, citizens, employees and business partners are interacting with an organization. It goes without saying that it has a great impact on behaviour. For instance, 85 percent of customers whose problems are dealt with quickly intend to continue dealing with the same organization. 

Customer experience is much more than just service: It’s about stimulating loyalty. It is the complete exposure and interaction a customer may have with an organization - from research to purchase, delivery, support – and the subsequent value perceived. The ultimate goal is to create a unique experience that extends seamlessly from one interaction channel to another. The reward is better customer retention or improved citizen engagement for the public and not-for-profit sectors.

Insights: Can you give us an example or two of good customer experiences? 

YS: Sure. Let’s take an example from the public sector. A user quickly finds a public institution’s Web site through an Internet search. She wants to subscribe to a service and follows the steps to register but she hesitates because she is unsure. The Web application anticipates that the user is about to abandon and a pop-up window appears, offering immediate support via telephone or an Internet chat session. The system provides the customer service representative (CSR) with some contextual information that cuts down on the number of questions to be asked. The CSR then uses co-browsing to help the user to fill out and submit an electronic form.

In a private sector example, let’s say that a customer is shopping online. Because the user interface is intuitive, he is able to quickly fill his shopping basket, pay and confirm the order, which arrives within a matter of days. However, one item is not to his satisfaction and he goes to a retail location to return it. The clerk finds the order on the system and quickly processes the return, completing the loop in a unified experience. 

Insights: You mentioned a unified experience. What exactly do you mean by that?  

YS: Depending on the circumstances, some users may favour a certain communication channel at one time in dealing with an organization, then switch to another. A unified experience means that regardless of the communication channel or touch points offered, the level of detail and service remain the same.

Good user interface, multiple communication channels, business processes, systems integration, a single knowledge base and properly trained customer facing resources are all important aspects of delivering a unified customer experience.

Insights: Retention plays a large role in cost savings. To what extent does an improved customer experience impact the bottom line?

YS: In Frederick Reicheld’s book The Loyalty Effect, he states that a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates will yield a 25 to 100 percent increase in profits. Winning new customers is getting tougher, so it is more important than ever to build loyalty and retain the customers you have.

Insights: What are the top ways that the customer experience is being improved today?

YS: The customer experience is being improved in many ways. But it’s important to remember that approach and priorities will differ from one organization to another. An assessment will uncover the greatest pain points and indicate solutions that will deliver the quickest results. It is crucial to define a strategy that is well aligned with business objectives.

But to answer your question, one typical quick win involves enhancing Web site usability. Less than intuitive navigation might explain low conversion numbers on the Web site or high call volumes at the call centre. Another great improvement involves the aggregation and provisioning of customer information to CSRs. No one likes to call up and re-explain things or wait while a representative starts up a new system to look for information. Aggregated provisioning provides key information from disparate systems in one user interface.  

What is upstream of these and many other tactics is strategy, and both strategy and tactics are predicated on measurement. Organizations need to find the key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure performance on a continuous basis. That will help to reveal and fix the root causes of customer dissatisfaction.

Insights:  How do you see the customer experience evolving in the future?

YS: Strategically, I think that the customer experience is going to continue to make inroads with upper management. In future, it won’t be as much about saving money as about positioning against competitors. But for a lot of organizations, taking the customer experience seriously will require a paradigm shift.

Today there is a lot of movement in the Web sphere because it provides good and often faster returns. One thing I see in the future is facilitating customer service by increasing visibility on the Web site. Let’s say that a user is online but feels the need to communicate with a contact centre. If the CSR can see that the user reached the second step but not the third, it provides context to solve the problem more quickly.

The goal is to make customers autonomous. Co-browsing is an example that I used earlier. This allows a CSR to see what the user sees on the screen. They can then teach the user how to complete a transaction or other function – and the next time the customer will know exactly how to do it, eliminating the need for repeated support. Another way to empower the customer is to follow up by sending an email containing all the different steps in the process, or a short video demonstrating how it’s done.

Insights: If you could leave us with one thought about the customer experience, what would that be?

YS: Let’s try three. The first concerns measurement. You can get to a point where you think that your strategy is perfect. But then things aren’t going to remain as they are. You need to adjust, you need new indicators. It’s important to use the right KPIs, because you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Find the right tools to measure. Use Web analytics. Use speech analytics, the science of applying keyword analysis to thousands of recorded conversations. Find the root causes of dissatisfaction. Ask your customers or users. Pose the question: have you been able to find what you are looking for?

Second is about structuring your organization. Change things so that you can act promptly to resolve issues that impact user satisfaction. You will need a firm commitment from management in order to drive great results.

Third, harmonize customer experience across the various interaction channels and touch points. Your business processes must be designed with customer service in mind. You can’t change everything at once: assess, create a strategy, establish priorities and build out your tactical plan. And measure all the way along.

Get started on improving your organization’s customer experience

Bell experts can help your organization at any stage along the road to an improved customer experience: establishing measurement indicators, analytics implementation and analysis, as well as recommending and creating process and technological improvements.

Want to learn more? Contact your Bell representative or have a Bell representative contact you.

Yves Sabourin is Associate Director of Marketing for Web Solutions and Contact Centres with Bell. He has more than 25 years’ experience in the IT sector, taking an active role in developing new solutions and holding positions in project management, consulting, sales and marketing.