We all know that the modern-day consumer is connected more than ever before. Gone are the days when the only way to interact with the customer is through face-to-face or telephone interaction.
The contemporary consumer is a busy and highly-mobile creature; constantly on the move and intolerant to any delays, no matter how small. Firing off enquiries about the latest service offering via Facebook Messenger during lunch break or placing an online order between meetings is the new norm.
As a result, charting the traditional customer journey has become increasingly complex, rendering the ‘construction’ of a clear 360° customer profile a more challenging endeavour than ever before.
However difficult, though, this is not an impossible task. This article shall attempt to provide a number of hints as to how an organisation can offset the difficulty of developing an effective customer profile through an efficient and effective support process.
The Omni-Channel Challenge
It is a well-known truth that modern customers do not adopt one single channel whenever they are interacting with a company. Every customer tends to interchange the channels with which they interact with organisations – largely based on what suits them best at any given time. A call-centre agent may have someone calling in about yesterday’s live-chat or this morning’s email. Keeping all these interactions in one centralised information repository will save time for both the organisation and the client, since it will provide a holistic insight and, in the process, improve customer satisfaction. It is also the ideal means through which one can design a more personalised service – one that nurtures greater customer loyalty.
Best-of-Breed vs. Hybrid Solution
Using a best-of-breed customer support solution will allow an organisation to focus on providing both customers as well as support agents with the best service experience possible.
However, given that a customer interacts with various other departments of an organisation (e.g. sales, finance, etc.), several aspects of his interaction history will feature across diverse information silos embedded within different systems in the process (e.g. customer relationship management, financial systems, point-of-sale, etc.)
Using a support system which enables quick and easy integrations with other internal systems will enable an organisation to collate a unified profile of the customer.
Use your Data to Understand What Satisfies your Customer
Every interaction the customer has with your organisation provides important information which can be analysed to better understand the very customer creating it. The question remains; what satisfies each individual customer, given the data provided? What are they really interested in? Have they had a negative experience which can potentially be rectified and somehow be converted into one with a positive outcome?
With real-time monitoring, the information is even more readily and rapidly available. Has a particular visitor been browsing a certain page on the corporate website for a while? Have they come back to look at a particular service offering on more than one occasion? Using this information to initiate communication with the customer will persuade him to take the next step in the buying process while providing a unique and personalised service.
Here at iMovo we specialise in helping companies develop an effective customer support process in order to gain a better understanding of their customers. Drop us an email at info@imovo.com.mt or call us on +356 22488315 to schedule a meeting to understand how.