The rise of digital technology has brought about an explosion of customer touchpoints. It used to be that if a customer wanted to do their banking, they had to go into a branch, but that’s definitely no longer the case. Now customers have their choice of online banking, app banking, banking through a messenger service, calling a contact center, engaging with their bank on social media or going into the branch. That’s a LOT of different touchpoints, and most of them are powered by tech.
At the same time, companies have integrated technology solutions behind the scenes to improve speed, accuracy and efficiency. If you were to go behind the scenes of pretty much any experience, you’re guaranteed to see a mix of people, processes and technology fueling experiences. The role of technology is only set to grow as applications for things like artificial intelligence become more commonplace. This means that CX professionals need to help their organizations keep the heart and soul of experiences, even as touchpoints and the spaghetti wire behind those touchpoints continues to evolve.
This is easier said than done, but there are several practical approaches that CX professionals can use.
1. Establish your experience principlesA customer promise and experience principles can help foster consistency for experiences throughout the journey, regardless of which touchpoint a customer engages with. Episode 69, explored both the customer promise and experience principles. Essentially, a customer promise is a clear definition of what customers can expect and also how teams should deliver experiences. It’s a high-level statement, or a Northstar of what experiences should ideally look like.
The promise can be backed up with more granular or prescriptive experience principles, which outline the “how-to” details behind the promise. An example of an experience principle would be “each customer will walk away from their experience with us knowing we value their business” or “we commit to providing a safe and respectful environment for customers”. These statements are applicable to nearly any touchpoint, and they speak to outcomes or results, so while the approach might be slightly different for a safe and respectful environment in a store vs. online, the way that the customer feels after that interaction should be the same.
Experience principles can be a helpful framework for teams to evaluate experiences, reality-check the journey across touchpoints and assess the relationship between customer experience and technology. If an experience isn’t yielding outcomes that are consistent with the promise, that’s a red flag.
2. Test the user experienceThis may sound obvious, but in their haste to launch a new system or platform, it can be tempting for teams to skip the step of testing and refining the user experience. Resist this temptation at all costs. Before any experience is launched into the customer journey, it should be vetted and tested, ideally against experience principles and some sort of customer impact scorecard. An experience should be refined until it receives a passing grade and only then, “released in the wild”. Once an experience is live in the customer journey, the monitoring shouldn’t stop. It’s important to keep tabs on how customers are responding and to keep refining things.
There is a lot of emphasis on user experience testing for customer-facing experiences, but the same customer impact assessment, user interface testing and refinement should happen for the technology innovations that support teams behind the scenes. If an organization wouldn’t launch some horribly clunky experience into the customer journey, why would it launch this into the employee journey? Technology should enable teams to deliver on the customer promise and the brand purpose, not hinder them.
Ensuring that customer-facing and behind the scenes tech enablers are user-friendly will go a long way to maintaining great customer experience, especially as customer experience and technology become more deeply intertwined. For more details on UX and how this differs from CX, be sure to check out episode 56.
3. Make in-person experiences extra specialAs consumers and businesses become more reliant on technology, brands need to be prepared with GREAT experiences when they do happen in person. Customers are increasingly opting for self-help channels before picking up the phone or walking into a store or branch. As a result, human interactions are fewer and farther between. As these moments become more rare, they also become more precious.
Brands would be wise to make these moments memorable and make them count. If technology enables teams to have a little more capacity, let them use that time to deepen customer relationships or deliver a special wow moment. CX professionals need to help business leaders rethink in any point of human interaction as an opportunity to connect with customers. These can no longer be transactional moments, they need to become loyalty-building moments.
CX leaders should go back to their customer journey map, identify any interactions that still happen in-person or specific moments of truth and figure out how to maximize the impact of personal touch. Again, if a team has established a customer promise or experience principles, make sure that these specific moments are an absolute home run in terms of delivering on the CX goals. As long as the basics of the customer journey are sorted, then these moments have the power to pay major dividends in terms of customer loyalty and advocacy.
Want to keep learning about CX?If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.
Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX strategy, voice of customer and culture change) or get in touch via email.
Episode Transcript Read full transcriptWelcome to Decoding the Customer, a podcast about customer experience and how to realize customer-centric change in today’s dynamic business world. I’m Julia Ahlfeldt, certified customer experience professional, business advisor, and host of this program. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you’re new to the show, welcome.
If you’re a returning listener, thanks and it’s great to have you back. This episode is part of my CX Mini Masterclass series here on Decoding the Customer. These weekly episodes are published each Thursday and designed to be punchy, bite-size overviews of key customer experience concepts and ideas for how you can help your organization thrive through customer centricity. Whether you’re new to the field of customer experience, are preparing for the CCXP exam, or are a seasoned professional looking to brush up on a few basics, this series will help you improve your knowledge, skills, and performance to stand out as a CX professional.
And, an added note to those who are already CCXPs, the Customer Experience Professionals Association is now recognizing CX Podcasts listening towards certification renewal credits. So be sure to jot down which episodes you’ve listened to so that you can submit this towards your continuing education requirements. This is episode 84, the second episode for May 2020. Today’s topic comes directly from a listener request, something I’m hoping to do more of in future CX Mini Masterclasses.
This listener wanted to know about how we can ensure that Customer Experience is protected, even as we move to more reliance on technology. And I suppose that we can look at reliance on technology through two lenses. The first is growing consumer reliance on technology and the undeniable fact that many of us default to our smartphones before anything else. And the second, being business reliance on technology, whether that’s behind the scenes automation, the use of chatbots, or something else.
So today, I’m going to look at three ways to maintain integrity and consistency of your Customer Experience when that Customer Experience is delivered by a mix of humans and technology. If you’re interested in some practical actions that you can take to ensure great experiences, even as the Consumer World becomes more digitized and automated, then stay tuned. As always, if you’re out and about while listening to this, and hear something that you’d like to remember later, don’t worry about writing it down. You can find an overview of the key concepts that we’ve covered today in the show notes for this episode, which are on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com.
The rise of digital technology has brought about an explosion of customer touchpoints. It used to be that if you wanted to do your banking, you had to go into a branch, but that is definitely no longer the case. Now, customers have their choice of online banking, app banking, banking through a messenger service, calling a contact center, engaging with their bank on social media, or going into that good old branch. That’s a lot of different touch points.
And you’ll notice that most of them are powered by tech. At the same time, companies have integrated technology solutions behind the scenes to improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency. If you were to lift up the hood or go behind the scenes of pretty much any experience, you’re guaranteed to see a mix of people, processes, and technology fueling those experiences. And the role of technology is only set to grow as applications for things like artificial intelligence become more commonplace.
So what does this mean for the CX professionals out there? In the simplest terms, it means they need to help their organizations keep the heart and soul of experiences, even as touch points and the spaghetti wire behind those touch points continues to evolve. So today, I’m going to share three ways that you can do this. The first is by establishing experience principles and implementing these across the customer journey so you can create some consistency for experiences, regardless of which touch point the customer engages with.
In episode 69, I explored the customer promise and experience principles. If you’re curious about this topic, I’d encourage you to go back and check out that episode in its entirety. But essentially, a customer promise is a clear definition of what customers can expect and also how teams should deliver experiences. It’s a high level statement, kind of like a Northstar, of what experiences should ideally look like.
It can be backed up with more granular or prescriptive experience principles, which outline the sort of how-to details behind the promise. An experience principle would be something like, each customer will walk away from their experience with us, knowing we value their business. Or something akin to, we commit to providing a safe and respectful environment for customers. These statements are applicable to nearly any touchpoint, and they speak to outcomes or results.
So while the approach might be slightly different if you were looking to create a safe and respectful environment in a store versus online, the way that the customer feels after that interaction should be the same. Experience principles can be a helpful framework for teams to evaluate experiences and reality check the journey across touchpoints. If one of your experiences isn’t yielding the outcomes that are consistent with your objectives, then it’s time to tweak things. As more experiences shift into the digital realm, this is one way to protect customer experience integrity.
My next strategy for protecting customer experience integrity may sound obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how many organizations don’t do it. And that’s test and refine the user experience. Episode 56 explored the definition of user experience, or UX, and how this differs from CX. There’s a whole world of talented UX specialists out there whose professional purpose is to help organizations test and improve experiences.
I’d go so far as to say that most of them specialize in digital experiences. Before any experience is launched into the customer journey, it should be vetted and tested, ideally against experience principles and some sort of customer impact scorecard. It should be refined until it receives a passing grade, and only then released into the wild, so to speak. Even once an experience is live and in the customer journey, the monitoring doesn’t stop.
It’s important to keep tabs on how customers are responding and keep refining things. There’s a lot of emphasis on user experience testing for customer facing experiences, and we all understand why. But I think the same customer impact assessment, user interface testing and refinement, should happen for technology that supports teams behind the scenes. You wouldn’t launch some horribly clunky experience into the customer journey, so why would you launch it into the employee journey?
Technology should enable teams to deliver on the customer promise and the brand promise, not hinder them. Ensuring that your customer facing and behind the scenes tech enablers are user friendly will go a long way to maintaining customer experience, even as tech becomes a larger and larger piece of the puzzle. My third and final tip for how to protect customer experience integrity even as we become more reliant on technology is to be extra prepared with great experiences when they do happen in person. We know that customers are shifting more and more of their activity into the digital realm.
That’s no surprise for anyone. They’re seeking self help channels before picking up the phone or walking into a branch or store. That means those in-person interactions are fewer and farther between. They’re a little more rare, which makes them that much more precious.
Make these moments memorable and make them count. If technology enables teams to have a little more capacity, let them use that time to deepen customer relationships or deliver a special wow moment. We need to rethink in-person experiences as an opportunity to connect with our customers. These can no longer be transactional moments.
They need to become loyalty building moments. I’d suggest that teams go back to their journey map, identify any interactions that happen in person or specific moments of truth, and figure out how to maximize the impact of personal touch. Again, if your team has established a customer promise or experience principles, make sure that these specific moments are an absolute home run in terms of delivering on your customer experience goals. You won’t regret it.
And as long as you’ve got the basics of the customer journey are sorted, then these moments have the power to pay major dividends in terms of customer loyalty and advocacy. I hope I’ve answered this listener question about ensuring customer experience is protected even as we move to more reliance on technology. I’d love to do more shows inspired by listener questions. So if you have one, please send it through.
And if you’re looking for help keeping the heart and soul in your brand’s customer experience, please get in touch. I’d be happy to explore how I can help. You can reach me via email, tweet, or LinkedIn message. My handle is at Julia Ahlfeldt and my full contact details are also listed on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com.
I hope that you’re enjoying the show. Please share with others who might be interested or head on over to iTunes and rate the podcast. This helps others find the show. I’ll be back next week with another episode.
See you then.
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