Customer experience meets your Contact page before any others

Whatever stage of digital maturity your company has reached, your customer service team will find itself facing a major challenge, namely the customer experience. It is not only frustrating for the customer, but also for the business to deal with customer queries, knowing that incoming calls cost the business on average EUR 5-12. However, a contact qualified by a digital channel generally costs half that.

Dealing with millions of calls and even more digital interactions means a significant investment for a customer service department. Faced with this observation, you have probably implemented digital solutions like a Chat line, call back or email on your Contact page, which allows customers to obtain a response with complete autonomy or to contact you using a different communication channel. Despite these innovations, many customers continue to use the telephone to get in touch with you. How can you break down the silos between the telephone and digital channels?

A paradox inherent in customer relationship management

Faced with the challenge of improving the customer experience, we observed several paradoxes at the heart of customer service teams:

From the customer experience perspective, it is often easier for a customer to identify themselves over the phone using a customer or file number rather than a login ID and password, which they frequently forget, in order to access a digital channel.

Customer service Helpdesk numbers are often difficult to find on digital channels, whereas they are readily found using search engines, mailings and emails. Customers waste time finding a way of getting in touch and run the risk of calling a number which cannot answer their question.

Customers are not necessarily keen on using the telephone (tedious qualification by the voice response unit, expensive premium rate calling and lengthy wait times) but they choose this channel because it offers immediacy of response and they are used to it. People always tend to use what is familiar rather than what is new to them.

The customer experience: use the Contact page as a catalyst

Instead of trying to conceal the number of your customer service department, you should instead create a "Contact"

button, not only on your Contact page but visible across all your digital channels.

By removing all the other available access methods, you will be able to centralise all your incoming information requests. The customer journey becomes much simpler and you reduce the flow of incoming calls.

By supplying a central button, you can promote digital alternatives before publishing a number for use by the customer when needed. This allows you to offer the right channel to the right customer according to their need and at the right stage in their journey. A simpler customer service for an improved customer experience.