Because building up a customer loyalty - now volatile - costs 5 times less than acquiring a new one, companies have realized the importance of changing and animating the relationship with their customers. While (usually!) they master their outbound contact process via loyalty programs and calculated sollicitations, the sensitive time is still the moment when the customer decides to contact them by himself ... From his/her past experiences and before even making contact, he/she fears the path and obstacles to get through to get his/her answer, often with the fear that he/she will be neither listened nor valued.
The most common difficulties
Let's put ourselves in the place of the service consumer to understand his pain points by analyzing moments of current difficulties, generating both customer dissatisfaction and unnecessary costs for the company:
Painfulness of the path in silo
Description of the situation: The client tries to find his answer by himself, on the website or via a mail. In case of failure, he will contact by telephone (or via a digital channel) the customer service of the company and will be greeted by an IVR to requalify his need, then by a call as if no action had been made beforehand .
Impact on the quality of the customer experience: The customer repeats the actions twice since neither the context of its navigation nor that of its search via the said mail has been tracked by the company.
Impact on the cost of treatment: The counselor who does not have access to the context of the client must take the time to (re) qualify the need for the latter with a longer average contact time than necessary.
Painfulness to find the telephone numbers
Description of the situation: The customer wants a phone contact to reassure himself but he may have difficulty finding the right phone number, too often masked by the company: what seems like a bad idea, see our white paper: 6 Tips to Reduce Inbound Calls?
Impact on the quality of the customer experience: The customer feels that the company does not want to talk to him.
Impact on the cost of treatment: The customer calling the first number he finds may reach the wrong service and generate an avoidable internal transfer.
Phenomenon of the telephone line
Description of the situation: The customer has found the number, he calls and arrives on the famous IVR ("type 1 for" .... "Type 2 for" ....) ... After several steps always too long to listen to the options offered by a robot, dials the number on his dialer giving access to the next step and puts the phone on his ear to listen to the next step .... He arrives at a call, "crosses his fingers" and wonders: How long will it take? Are they going to be reassuring? Will I be transferred to another service to finally start at 0? Will they give me the answer I'm waiting for and avoid a new call? ...
Impact on the quality of the customer experience: The customer goes through an irritating and long process.
Impact on the cost of treatment: The annoyed customer could have dialed any number to pass the IVR step and that could generate an internal transfer.
Painfulness while waiting for an answer
Description of the situation: The client does not necessarily want to call the company, so he/she makes his/her request via another channel (e-mail, form, mail, social networks, chat ...) but not receiving an answer within the expected time, he/she eventually contacts them by phone.
Impact on the quality of the customer experience: The customer is irritated by the wait and the fact of having to do the process a second time.
Impact on the cost of treatment: The company must manage 2 contacts instead of 1.
Painfulness of the closed service
Description of the situation: The customer calls the company and after a less or more long navigation on the IVR, ends up hearing a deceptive message asking him/her to call back later.
Impact on the quality of the customer experience: The customer is annoyed to have followed all the steps requested by the company unnecessarily ... The person feels he has lost his time and will be forced to call back.
Impact on the cost of treatment: The company could take advantage of this opportunity to turn this contact into an asynchronous flow that can be processed in a more favorable period.
This non-exhaustive list shows the client's inability to find, autonomously, his/her response in a complex organizational labyrinth where the solutions used overlap; to end up getting lost between the different channels, themselves in silos.
The current tools and processes therefore offer a service that responds primarily to the company's problems, thus making it possible to manage flow management and team management, and not to simplify (or even make it more pleasant) customer contact, which is then imposed painful courses.
The opportunities of a smart contact platform
What is it possible to put into place to optimize this process and this client-side organization while meeting the current challenges of digital transformation of companies and respecting budgets that are not unlimited?
Consideration should be given to a new and complementary solution, capable of both breaking up the silos from a customer point of view, and managing the flows in place. This solution will have to be adaptable, thus respecting the singular needs of the customers and the imperatives of the company by:
Not asking for special efforts or changing habits to access them;
Being accessible from all contact channels (voice, digital and offline);
Guiding the customer through the labyrinth of available information;
Promoting the autonomous path while offering access to contact channels adapted as needed so that the client makes the choice that suits him/her (depending on the waiting time or emergency of the need ...);
Informing the adviser of the journey made by the client before calling (his/her identity, the origin of the contact and therefore possibly the need ...);
Automatically adapting to the context of the customer and the company (language, service opening, availability, route according to profile)
An omnichannel solution of this type can "re-enchant" the customer experience while easing the sollicitations of the contact center and therefore the associated costs ... This is the whole principle of Visual IVR that relies on digital solutions and existing telephones to build an accessible, simple journey with intelligence.