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Are you Customer-Obsessed? Here’s Why You Should Be

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Global Trade Daily

Are you Customer-Obsessed? Here’s Why You Should Be

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 1999 that what matters most to him is providing the best customer experience he can to his consumers. In the same interview, he added “If there’s one thing that Amazon.com is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end to end.”

Decades later, Amazon never wavered from their commitment to customer obsession. In fact, it’s listed first among the company’s leadership principles.

From retail to tech, customer obsession is a foundational mantra that helps businesses excel. Let’s explore why this is the case and how customer obsession can benefit your business.

What is customer obsession?

Customer-obsessed organizations care first and foremost about one thing: constantly optimizing the customer experience (CX). They work continuously to collect feedback, understand consumer needs, and improve every interaction. 

In doing so, businesses deploy a top-to-bottom customer-centric philosophy. From sales and marketing to frontline workers, the goal is to understand what consumers want and deliver on those needs in a way that doesn’t just satisfy customers, but delight them. 

More than a strategy, customer obsession is a business model. By generating trust, commitment and loyalty, organizations can build a sustainable competitive advantage that keeps customers coming back for more.

Why is customer obsession important?

Have you ever wondered just how costly a bad experience actually is?

According to recent research, nearly $4.7 trillion are squandered every year because of poor customer interactions. Furthermore, 74% of consumers say they’re likely to buy based on experience alone.

Bottom line: CX management is make or break. But, with a customer-obsessed mindset, you can steer your organization in the right direction. 

Here are a few ways a customer-obsessed philosophy can help drive better business results:

  • Retention: When consumers feel heard, seen, and valued, they’re more likely to stay with a brand over the long term. This is especially significant given that 71% of consumers switched brands at least once in the past year, often because of poor customer experience.
  • Lifetime value: Decreasing churn allows you to increase customer lifetime value—the total revenue a consumer generates over the duration of the brand relationship. By exceeding expectations and delivering on your promises, you can drive repeat purchases and cross-selling opportunities.
  • Acquisition: Over two-thirds of consumers are likely to recommend a company based on a single interaction. In short, satisfied customers are more willing to become brand advocates and refer others, thus increasing profitability and lowering cost-per-acquisition.
  • Reputation: Word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire. With a strong reputation for positive CX, you can earn more brand exposure, credibility, and organic growth—three assets critical to winning new customers and keeping them for the long haul.

While it’s undeniable that being customer-obsessed is critical to any business, a recent Forrester report found that only 3% of respondents were fully customer obsessed—meaning every department, every team, and every employee was fully dedicated to the customer’s point of view. 

Strategies to build a customer-obsessed organization

Customer obsession is a top-down commitment that requires buy-in across the org chart. It’s not going to happen overnight, but with a few strategic decisions, you’ll be off to the races in no time.

Here are a few valuable ways to build a more customer-obsessed organization.

Impart empathy to your contact center

Imagine calling into a support desk, waiting on hold for hours on end, repeating your issue over and over, and being redirected to the wrong departments. Finally, you’re speaking to the person who can fix your problem—unfortunately, they treat you like your problem doesn’t matter. That’s a bad customer experience. 

In a lot of ways, customer obsession is rooted in just the opposite. To be obsessed with your customer is also to be obsessed with empathy—for their feelings, their situation, and for where they may be in the customer journey. Coaching employees—especially your contact center agents–to flex their emotional intelligence can make a huge difference. Seek to understand customer pain points so that you can develop solutions and experiences that leave a positive impression on your audience.

One way to ensure agents are practicing empathy is to analyze their call transcripts. Some contact center solutions automatically transcribe conversations, allowing supervisors to comb through the content and uncover any points of improvement.

Embrace a customer-first culture

Place the customer at the heart of your company. Every decision, action, and process should be driven by a deep understanding of and commitment to meeting customer needs (and exceeding their expectations). 

Many enterprises are already focusing on this area. Take Cover-More—a global travel insurance company—for example. With over 15 million customers globally, Cover-More knew in 2019 that it would have to place the customer at the heart of everything. When the pandemic hit, the company’s forward-thinking paid off. Having already upgraded its contact center technology and communication stack, the enterprise was well-positioned to offer an omnichannel, seamless customer experience at every opportunity.

Enable continuous feedback loops

Feedback is the bedrock of customer experience management. To be truly customer obsessed, businesses must establish mechanisms and processes to collect insights from consumers at every touchpoint. These can include surveys, reviews, direct interactions—basically anything that synthesizes and gathers information. By analyzing these insights for root causes and customer sentiment, organizations can not only resolve issues more promptly, but optimize decision making based on how those resolutions are received. 

Prioritize data-driven decision making

They say data is the oil of the 21st century, so why not use it to fuel your business’s tenets for customer obsession? Because customer experience is so closely connected to bottom-line performance, any CX decision you make should be based on high-quality data.

One of the best ways to collect customer analytics is through a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform. CCaaS tools automatically synthesize cross-channel insights, allowing agents to take real-time actions to improve customer satisfaction.

Personalize the customer journey

Behind every consumer is an individual. Knowing this, customer-obsessed businesses aim to personalize CX by leveraging analytics. They use data to customize interactions, recommendations, and more, thereby adding a personal touch to every interaction. 

CCaaS tools are great in this regard, as they can help you gather data as customers move along their buyer’s journey. This allows you to map their progress through every interaction, ensuring a seamless experience across each channel. 

Author Bio

Robyn Rawlings is a successful marketing leader with over 20 years of experience in enterprise software and software-as-a-service (SaaS). She is currently Director of Integrated Campaigns and Content Marketing at Webex by Cisco, a leader in cloud calling, collaboration, and customer experience solutions.

 

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Education, Global Trade Daily

Customer Effort Score: What it is and How to Use it

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Broadly speaking, a customer effort score measures how easy or difficult it is for a customer to resolve a given issue with a company’s customer service team.

Have you ever waited your turn to speak to a customer service representative, only to be transferred to another agent? Have you ever waited on hold so long you that you hung up? Have you ever yelled “Agent” at a voice automation system until you were hoarse? You’re not alone.

Poor customer experiences like that are much more common than you might realize. In fact, bad customer interactions are putting over $4.7 trillion in sales at risk every single year.

The good news is there are simple strategies to improve how you interact with your customers. By calculating your Customer Effort Score (CES), you can assess how easy (or difficult) you’re making it for your customers and work toward improving your customer experience.

What is a Customer Effort Score?

HubSpot defines Customer Effort Score as a single-item service metric that measures how much work it takes for someone to get what they want from a business. In other words, it’s a reflection of how much effort a customer has to expend when interacting with your company.

The idea is simple: The more effort required to reach a certain outcome (such as making a purchase or resolving an issue), the more frustrating the customer experience. By contrast, a low-effort interaction makes for a better, smoother experience that casts your brand in a positive light.

Researchers from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) first introduced the concept of a Customer Effort Score in 2010. According to their study, reducing effort is far more effective at increasing customer loyalty than trying to wow consumers with over-the-top service: “All customers really want is a simple, quick solution to their problem.” 

The only issue? Many times, customer service does the exact opposite. Whether it be because of long wait times, having to repeat oneself, or jumping through hoops, customers are four times more likely to leave a service interaction disloyal than loyal. 

That’s where CES comes into play. Tracking CES allows you to identify pain points in the customer experience, isolate troublesome channels, and make immediate and long-term improvements. 

Better yet, Gartner says that reducing customer effort also allows you to:

  • Increase repurchase rates
  • Improve customer loyalty
  • Lower service costs
  • Reduce employee turnover

Creating a CES survey

The first step in measuring your Customer Effort Score is designing a CES survey—a short questionnaire that asks current customers to rate the amount of effort involved in a recent interaction. Questions normally ask respondents to choose a rating on a scale that best represents their experience.

 Here are some examples of questions you might include on a survey:

  1. On a scale of 1-10, how easy was it for you to resolve your issue?
  2. How much effort did you have to put in to find an answer to your question?
  3. How easy was it to navigate our website and obtain the information you were looking for?

Typically, businesses send CES surveys at particular moments in the customer journey. These moments almost always come after the customer has taken a certain action, such as:

  • A customer support interaction like a phone call, chat, or email thread.
  • A transaction such as a completed purchase, downloaded white paper, or subscription sign up.
  • A website or mobile app interaction (this one is especially useful, as it helps you measure your interface’s ease of use and functionality).

Recency is important when it comes to gathering feedback. It’s best to immediately follow up an interaction with a questionnaire on the channel where it took place. This makes it easy for customers to fill out the survey without having to jump through additional hoops.

Calculating your score

Once your respondents have completed the survey, it’s time to analyze the results and calculate your company’s average Customer Effort Score. Don’t worry—you don’t have to be a math whiz to figure it out. 

Here’s the basic formula: Sum of all CES scores ÷ the total number of responses = average CES.

So, what does a good CES look like? It depends. Your survey’s parameters will influence how that score is weighted, but generally speaking, the higher the number, the better. 

Let’s say you’ve asked 100 respondents to rate interactions on a scale of 1-10, and the sum of all scores is 880. That’d give you an average CES of 8.8.Not too shabby!

How to use (and improve) your CES

Keep in mind that there’s no industry standard you have to live up to—only your own scores matter. 

If you find that your CES is teetering on the lower end of the spectrum, that just means you have work to do. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to improve CES and reduce customer effort. Let’s take a look at two of the most impactful methods:

1. Automate tasks with customer self-service 

Customer self-service options are growing in popularity, especially among younger demographics. In fact,  66% of Millennials prefer self-service options for completing simple requests. People are using these alternative solutions more frequently today than just three years ago , so it’s increasingly important to offer these functionalities to your consumers.

Take AI-powered chatbots, for example. Often, chatbots can answer common support questions and handle basic requests faster and more efficiently than human agents. This frees up your contact center agents to focus on more complex issues, reduces wait times, and eliminates unnecessary effort.

2. Deliver an omnichannel experience

Taking an omnichannel approach to customer service means offering consumers a seamless, cohesive, and uniform experience across all possible touchpoints. 

Today’s customers want to transition from one channel to another without skipping a beat or having to repeat themselves. With a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution, you can meet these expectations and offer a truly connected customer journey. As one comprehensive tool for customer experience management, a CCaaS platform enables agents to interact with consumers from any channel, all in one easy-to-use desktop view.

Enabling a low-effort customer experience

 Establishing low-effort customer experiences helps simplify the buyer’s journey. By offering new, existing, and prospective customers a path of least resistance for issue resolution, business leaders can significantly minimize effort, foster loyalty, and deliver more positive interactions. 

Of course, calculating CES is only half the battle. To truly understand and reap the benefits of a low-effort experience, organizations will need to get creative with how they optimize their customer experience strategy. Whether it be through self-service tools or omnichannel contact center solutions, technology is undoubtedly at the center of the equation.

Reilly Nolan, Content Marketing Manager, Webex by Cisco, a leader in cloud calling, collaboration, and customer experience solutions.

 

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

5 Traits Today’s Leaders Need to Revolutionize Their Management Style

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The rapid rate of change and innovation brought about by the digital age is putting many large corporations in peril as they realize they are in an “adapt-or-die” era.

But for a business to change, its leadership must be willing to change as well, and that doesn’t always happen, says Oleg Konovalov (www.olegkonovalov.com), a global thought leader and consultant who has worked with Fortune 500 companies and is the author of the new book Leaderology.

“Old strategies and approaches are not sufficient anymore,” Konovalov says. “Unfortunately, we are stuck in the Dark Ages of management, in which we fall back on the old ways of leading people, rooted in the patterns, metrics and expectations of the past. We are in desperate need of a management revolution.”

Put simply, he says, a leader’s hesitation to learn and adapt to new realities kills any chance of spotting opportunities and being innovative.

“We have memories of such giants as Kodak and Borders,” Konovalov says. “Both used to be on the Fortune 500 list, but passed away because they were stuck in the old paradigm of thinking. A dogmatic way of thinking and acting won’t get anyone far in business.”

Konovolav says over the years he has learned numerous lessons about what separates extraordinary leaders from the ordinary. Here are just five of the traits true leaders possess:

They are involved with their teams. Managers who just monitor from afar what employees are doing tend to think they are good leaders as long as everything seems to be going well. “This is wrong,” Konovalov says. “Are you giving input to the team? Are you present when things are going well or only if things go poorly? The amount of effort and energy the leader puts into the work defines the actual role and status of the leader.”

They are a coach and receptive learner at the same time. “This is a good combination because, on the one hand, you help people to grow by sharing your expertise,” Konovolav says. “On the other hand, not learning from other people is equal to ignoring them.” In the best scenario, he says, there will be experts on the team from whom the leader and everyone else can learn.

They understand leadership is not a dictatorship. People in leadership positions possess power and influence, but they should use that power to serve people, Konovalov says. “If you do that, you’ll be paid back threefold with respect, support and loyalty,” he says. “Make your leadership worth following. Be an example by working for others, rather than acting like you’re king of the mountain in a kids’ game.”

They over-deliver on promises. When true leaders pledge to do something, they are able to calculate the risk and understand the effort needed to achieve what they have said they will do. “Real leaders know they will be judged against actual deeds and fulfilled promises,” Konovalov says. “Unfulfilled promises work against them and people who counted on them will leave. Promising too much is for incompetent leaders.”

They know that winners breed winners. It’s a leader’s duty to help people feel like winners even in small achievements, and to convince them of their ability to succeed despite past failure, Konovalov says. “People trained to win will win,” he says. “People trained to fail will fail.”

“The modern leader needs to combine meticulous planning with flexibility,” Konovalov says. “The wrong decisions and actions can lead to the whole organization losing sight of customer needs as well as quality, harming the long-term sustainability of the organization.

“Making the right decision means thinking of more than the company. It means considering the values and needs of customers and employees as well.”

________________________________________________________

Oleg Konovalov (www.olegkonovalov.com) is a thought leader, author, business educator and consultant with over 25 years of experience operating businesses and consulting Fortune 500 companies internationally. His latest book is Leaderology. His other books are Corporate Superpower, Organisational Anatomy and Hidden Russia. Konovalov received his doctoral degree from the Durham University Business School. He is a visiting lecturer at a number of business schools, a Forbes contributor and high in demand speaker at major conferences around the world.