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Firms fail to manage the Customer Experience
18/07/08
A new white
paper published by Verint Consulting and based on international
research by Ventana Research concludes that, while organisations
agree that the quality of the customer experience they deliver has a
direct impact on customer loyalty, advocacy and spend, most do a
poor job of measuring and managing it. Wholly dependent upon
subjective feedback from agents and customers, they are unable to
interpret how the experience they deliver impacts subsequent
customer behaviour – such as their likelihood to spend more, remain
loyal or provide advocacy.
Key research
findings include:
* 81 percent
of organisations agree that the customer experience impacts loyalty
and advocacy; 73 percent concur that it impacts satisfaction and
spend.
* Less than
one third of organisations use analytics to understand what is
happening in customer interactions; most rely on subjective,
irregular and delayed feedback from agents and customers.
* Less than
two thirds have documented processes to govern the customer
experience they deliver; and less than a third have processes for
handling multi-channel interactions.
Verint
Consulting's Director Helen Murray comments, "Customer satisfaction
has proved over time to be a poor indicator of a customer's true
feelings or intentions. Nevertheless, in the absence of a viable
alternative, organisations have dutifully persevered with it,
investing time, energy and resource to improve their scores. They
have done so despite the fact that they can make no reliable
correlation between those scores, their customers' subsequent
behaviour and their own business performance."
Not only are
organisations failing to adequately measure the customer experience
they deliver, they are also displaying an inability to manage it.
More than one third lack documented processes to govern telephone
calls.
The figure
rises to 65 percent and 66 percent for web and IVR-based self
service respectively, and only 28 percent have documented processes
for handling a single interaction across multiple channels.
"The
meaningful analysis of customer experience data can not
realistically be achieved by organisations serving large customer
bases without the use of technology to automate the process," says
Murray. "Those companies that are adopting newly emerging speech,
data and customer feedback analytics technologies and processes to
analyse and understand the customer experience, however, are making
significant progress in correlating that analysis with subsequent
customer behaviour."
According to
the research, 61 percent are making a correlation between customer
experience analysis and customer loyalty, 56 percent with levels of
complaints, 43 percent with customer life time value and 39 percent
with customer advocacy. Twenty percent of organisations have
already deployed such specialised analytics or business intelligence
tools, and 42 percent reported they will consider doing so in the
next year.
"True customer
experience management depends upon the ability to analyse the
customer interaction and correlate that analysis with customers'
subsequent behaviour," adds Murray. "In this way, we can identify
those behaviours that have the greatest positive impact on customers
and, therefore, on business value."
Richard Snow,
Vice President and Research Director, Ventana Research, agrees,
stating, "Companies need to understand customer behaviour better.
To do so, they need to get more from their customer related data,
including a more reliable view of the individuals they're doing
business with."
Verint
Consulting's white paper advocates five steps towards effective
customer experience management:
* Use analysis
of the customer experience, correlated with subsequent customer
behaviour, to identify those interaction characteristics that have
the most positive impact on customers.
* Apply this
understanding to design and document interaction handling procedures
that reinforce positive customer outcomes.
* Reinforce
these processes through effective training, competency-based
eLearning and ongoing quality management, creating a measurable link
between quality scores and bottom line results that the organisation
can embrace and monitor.
* Move towards
organisation-wide customer centricity by using customer experience
analysis to direct strategy in multiple business areas, including
product design, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, billing and
after sales support.
* Continue to
solicit customer feedback but do so in real time, using its findings
to prompt immediate customer-focused action and share the analysis
with all business departments whose activities impact the customer
experience.
"For several
years now, the customer management industry has expressed a desire
to 'put the contact centre at the heart of the enterprise.' This is
a laudable endeavour but one that, surely, misses the point. If our
organisations are to thrive, it is customers themselves who must
occupy this space," concludes Murray. "This report makes it clear
that the ability to analyse interactions at every customer touch
point and via every channel makes this goal achievable."
Nick Gibson, editor
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