The benefits of an improved customer experience are clear: less churn and higher profits, satisfied customers, and a happier workforce. But even if you already have a vision of how customers' experiences will improve, how do you get there from where you are now? Read on for a step-by-step guide to developing a technology roadmap for an improved customer experience.
1. Decide what you need to know
You may know all too well that customers' experiences with the contact centre are frustrating them, but what are the root causes? Are the same things happening on the Web site or other channels? The only way to know what issues are bothering customers the most is to listen to what they have to say and perform some analysis.
While discovering top customer issues is a good start, finding out how customers would ideally like to interact with your organization is much better. The customer experience has everything to do with empowering the customer to accomplish tasks quickly – from finding information to ordering products and services. A well-designed discovery process should go beyond the specific technical and process problems hobbling the customer experience to reveal:
- Preferred methods of communication for all audiences
- Whether self-service or assisted service is preferred
- When customers are most likely to want to switch interaction channels to complete a task
- What is frustrating about the product or service, and not just the contact experience
- How customers behave as a result of the service options you provide
2. Make use of a discovery methodology
Using a proven discovery methodology as your starting point – the process of finding out exactly what's not working – can involve surveys, focus groups, Web site analytics and social media monitoring. Chances are that customers are commenting on their experience with your organization every day on Twitter, Facebook and in blogs. Finding and aggregating social media commentary can spot trends and identify issues.
Voice analytics
But perhaps the most effective way of getting to the root of business problems that impact the external customer experience is voice analytics. Voice analytics searches for keywords and key phrases in thousands of recorded calls, revealing patterns and trends in the subject of calls, yielding comprehensive results regarding the exact nature of complaints from external audiences. Voice analytics can, for example, pinpoint what specific process on the Web site is causing frustration and precipitating calls to the contact centre. And once it's in place, voice analytics can also be used to monitor the success of marketing efforts, sales offers, new telephone scripts and more.
To formulate a methodology for the discovery process, you will need to:
- Identify internal and external audiences
- Decide what combination of tools will produce, within budget, the best results for each audience
- Source partners for execution
- Plan a course of inquiry in terms of questions asked, terms searched for, etc.
- Develop a timeline
- Put discovery into action
- Aggregate and sort results, then draw key insights
3. Prioritize and categorize issues
Once you have a good understanding of what customers think of your organization and know where the pain points lie, you then need to prioritize issues, either based on bottom-line impact or public perception. Next, decide which portions of problems are related to technology and which are related to process issues.
When you have separated process from technology, find commonalities among all technology-based customer experience problems. Do several problems point towards the same technology? For example, whether customers are reaching the wrong contact centre department or spending a lot of time on hold, both issues could be traced to poor call routing.
After you've looked for commonalities, put the technology-assisted processes in order of importance. Your list could look something like this:
- Poor call routing sends to wrong department, resulting in transfers or call-backs
- No awareness of online offer at point-of-sale
- Poor online user interface results in high abandon rates or low sales conversions
- Inconsistent processes across multiple access channels
- Customer-requested functionality that you don't offer
- Customers not being able to complete a task online
4. List what you have
When you have prioritized what specifically needs addressing, it's time to settle on the most effective, efficient technology solution to solve the problem. You might be surprised to know that equipment currently in use – even for other processes – often forms part of the solution.
For example, a Canadian municipality recently tapped the existing capabilities of their Microsoft Exchange® server to handle unified messaging, thereby eliminating the need to purchase an expensive voicemail solution for their new private branch exchange (PBX) system. In addition to saving money, it helped the municipality make the move to unified communications.
5. Step back, think integration
When you have completed lists of current equipment and processes that need attention, step back and look at the bigger picture: the choices you make to solve issues should also propel your overall communications technology strategy. For instance, can the same tools that allow contact centre staff to access in-house expertise more quickly also play a role across the organization?
If you are not familiar with the full range of technologies that are available to solve your issues, including the unified communications tools that could simultaneously improve customer experience and boost productivity, consider enlisting the services of a communications process expert. You might find there are several ways to address problems, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and each able to leverage existing infrastructure to a different degree. Some solutions will further the goals of your overall strategy, and some simply solve the problem at hand.
6. Develop a plan for adoption
The final step in developing your customer experience technology roadmap is planning the rollout. For this last step, all the usual project management rules apply, whether you are running pilot programs or implementing full solutions: develop timelines, integrate the solution, schedule training and minimize disruption.
Of the steps involved, the one that many organizations struggle with is gaining adoption. On technology solutions that require training, users do not always receive adequate instruction ahead of implementation. And when new and legacy systems exist in parallel, users are tempted to revert to what is familiar.
To ensure full, rapid adoption, you should ideally do the following:
- Create advocates by means of a successful pilot program
- Build anticipation by selling the solution via intranet, internal newsletters, etc.
- Train users before new systems go live
- If possible, remove the temptation to use the old system
- Provide live support
A technology upgrade can play a big role in improving the customer experience, helping you to keep customers longer and produce higher levels of satisfaction amongst customers and employees alike. To find out more about you can develop a technology roadmap for an improved customer experience, contact your Bell representative or click here to have a representative contact you.