The 4 Critical Ingredients to a Great Customer Experience

Lots of folks including many I respect, have recently put out new material on imperatives and necessities to the customer experience.  Many tackle strategic and corporate prerequisites which are important, however the tactical customer view is what is really needed and must bridge the gap between this strategic and the tactical, customer-facing view.

So, I have attempted to build my own model and I'd love your feedback on it.  I tossed around a bunch of terms and tried to balance being too specific without being too vague simultaneously.

A great customer experience must be predictable, informative, fulfilling, and trustworthy.  Let me explain.

Predictable:  Predictable to me means that I can anticipate what the agent will say and the agent can anticipate where I am going with my potentially unique request.  Predictable means you can quickly realize whether or not I need to be transferred and respecting my time.  Predictable means an easy transaction, it means I can anticipate how long I may be on hold or whether or not I can handle my needs on line.

Trustworthy:  Trustworthy goes beyond secure data and privacy.  It means that you are benevolent in your interaction and doing what's right for me, regardless of what puts more money in your pocket.  It's genuine.  It's personal without adversity because you looked at my situation as a person and not as how it fits your policy.

Fulfilling:  Fulfilling means closure.  It means I have checked something off my list and it means I just avoided an issue where I may have had to call two weeks from now.  It means complete and at peace with the result.


Informative:  Experiences must be informative.  Informative is mutually beneficial to the customer and the company.  Informative is enjoyable and allows you to think about what to do the next time something happens, whether that is the time to call, the form to retrieve, the information to be prepared with, or the time that something will be on sale or a product that will provide me greater value of my time and money.

I have also included what happens or what the experience is if you only have three of the four.  I'm sure this model will evolve as I get ready to tackle some major consulting engagements here over the next six months, but I have a place to start and would love to learn more from you on how this model can be improved.

Predictability is an under-rated Customer Experience Characteristic

When you consider the various aspects of a customer experience, many elements seem to gravitate to how predictable the experience is to the customer.

Consider the concept of the IVR.  Think of how unpredictable this experience is from company-to-company or for that matter for a given company.  Who hasn't heard, "please listen to this entire message as our options have changed"?  That is probably the only thing you can predict.  The fact that the website, www.gethuman.com even exists tells you how hard the concept is of reaching an agent.

Now take a company like ClickFox.  ClickFox basically shows all the various experiences and navigation paths that a call can take.  While a significant percentage falls into a certain category, the concept of "other" is too large a component as companies have introduced their own complexities on one of many fronts.  ClickFox's value proposition is to show how unpredictable your customer experience is and where the opportunities exist to make that experience more predictable.

If a customer can have a predictable experience where they can manage their own expectations better, they are more likely to have better experiences.  Companies that are more likely to correctly predict why a customer is entering an interaction, regardless of channel,  is more likely to exceed the expectations of the customer.

Predictability of experience is something that the customer (implicitly) wants.  Imagine a customer being able to anticipate what the agent will ask for and in what order.  The call will be expedited which saves time for everyone and costs for you.  Hidden behind that predictable experience is the ability of companies to anticipate the reason for the engagement in the first place, so ask yourself and your company how are you mutually creating a predictable experience.

July - Personal Case Study Follow Up - USAirways vs. AirTran

You may recall in July I posted on my experience with USAirways and with AirTran. Since then my experiences in both cases have been validated.

USAirways did response to my complaint:
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Dear Mr. Corrigan:
Although Customer Relations is unable to process refunds, as a courtesy we have submitted your request for a refund to our Refund Department. Due to the circumstances you have described, as a one time courtesy I have authorized a refund of your move up fee. Please allow up to 30 days for posting back to the original form of payment.
Please direct all future inquiries on the status of your refund to the Refund Department. Customer Relations is unable to confirm the status of a refund inquiry as this department cannot view the system the Refund Department uses.
To check the status of a refund, contact our Refund Department via our website www.usairways.com/contact. Click on the Refund Inquiry link. Proceed to the Check Refund Status link. On following screen input your13 digit ticket number 0372355996569.
Your comments and concerns regarding the agents at the airport not being able to issue the refund immediately have been documented and will be forwarded to the Senior Management Team.
Thank you for choosing US Airways.
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So, let's look at this. Given my situation, a unique situation, I am given a homogeneous form letter. That makes me feel really special. Second, "one time courtesy" really burns me up. What they are telling me is that if I go stand-by again and then I end up on my original flight, that I will be charged regardless. Third, they make me feel like an idiot because I directed my inquiry TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY TOLD ME TO WHEN I CALLED. Total lack of coodination, command, control, and consistency is what this form letter revealed to me.

Let's move to my positive experience.

Same situation with AirTran. The beauty about my frequent trips to Atlanta is that I have developed quite a bit of precision in my time from office to gate. When I discovered after finishing some work early one time that I could make an earlier flight with about 5 minutes to spare, I decided to take my chances and go.

When I arrived at the gate, there was no stand-by fee and because I was so appreciative of the gate agent, he actually bumped me up to first class. I don't know if he did this because he saw how much I fly AirTran, or because he liked the way I treated him with respect, but the bottom line is that (1) he was empowered to do it, (2) he had the resources (available seats) to make my experience better, and (3) guess what? it didn't cost AirTran anything.

In short, I was on first class with USAirways, and felt like I was treated like a coach-class commodity, and with AirTran, I was in coach and was treated like I was the most important person boarding the flight.

I would love to hear your stories about USAirways and AirTran to see if you've had similar experiences. I would also appreciate you forwarding this story to others that fly and in particular these airlines. It will really increase the power of social media and I will track hits to see how much impact a negative and positive experience can have when discussed together.

I will run similar experiments with just negative and positive experiences separately as well.

If you want to think like your customers, get on the same side of your brain as they are

If you view the Customer Equity Management Blog, they have an interesting slide that shows the difference between CRM and CEM (Customer Equity Management). It got me to thinking about where companies are failing in terms of thinking like their customer.

Many know that the left side of your brain is analytical and the right side of your brain is creative. It is important to translate that concept to customer experience, because if you do not move to the same side as your customer (the right), they will eventually move to your side (the left).

The Left Side of the Brain in Business Speak:

I want to model past transactions that allows me to determine the Net Present Value of each customer so I can plug in concrete values into P&L models that I know. I want to reduce costs by migrating my customer to self-service and make my call centers as efficient as possible. I want to increase the value of each customer to my company.


The Right Side of the Brain in Customer Speak:

I want to invest in valuable experiences that make me feel better about who I am. If I can find a company that can do this consistently, I will appreciate it and they will have my loyalty. I act based on what I believe. I want to have a low-effort, no-hassle relationship. I expect company's to offer value to me....both tangible and intangible.


If companies are unable to get this customer view with their products, policies, processes, and people, then customers will shift to their Left Brain:

I don't want to spend my money on something that feels like a transaction that has led to past disappointments and inconsistencies. I have concrete evidence and know it will happen again, it's just when, not if. I do not want to have to put in un-necessary effort. It's probably not as bad as I am making it sound, but my eyes and ears are open for a better value.

www.customeranalyticsconsulting.com

The Indian Call Center

In my last corporate role, I asked my team to identify some test accounts and to send them exclusively to India and to also send some accounts exclusively to our call center in Canada.

When we ran this test, we saw that the Purchase Volume for those that went exclusively to Canada jumped by approximately $48/month. Conversely, the accounts that went exclusively to India went down by $24/month.

Without further context, these numbers may not seem valuable. However, clearly you could see an impact on customer experience and the behavior of the customer when they were not forced or were forced to deal with a certain environment.

This also changes the equation in terms of the cost per hour of outsourcing and "opportunity cost" must be added to the outsourcing equation so be sure to test for this prior to entering any BPO environment that directly touches the customer.