1. The Call Center is Viewed as Consumer Experience (CX)
Please don’t misunderstand. There is tremendous opportunity in mining the data from the call center to learn what consumers are saying and to drive improvements. That’s a great start to CX, but it’s not CX.
Consumer Experience is the perception of every interaction your consumers have with your company.
Having proper alignment with strategy, marketing, sales, product and service as well as looking at the consumers’ entire journey through the omni-channel is critical.
“Consumers don’t strive to have a great experience when they call for help; what they really want is a problem free experience in the first place”
2. Mediocre Leadership Commitment / Alignment
As parents, we are constantly reminded it’s not what you say, but its what you do. I have worked with organizations of various sizes and I’m still amazed reading the mission/vision of companies. Organizations say the consumer/customer is at the center of everything they do. However, when you talk to senior leaders and even CEO’s the consumer/customer is rarely discussed or “in the room” during meetings. Organizations that have Consumer Experience “figured out” have a commitment from the CEO and the senior leadership team that is ongoing, not just the “theme of the year.”
Dedicated Leader / team – Everyone ultimately owns the Experience. However, you need a leader that can be the focal point to bring your consumers to life for the organization to focus on the alignment of marketing, sales, product and service to drive growth, retention, innovation and sustainability.
3. The Organizations Really Doesn’t Understand your Consumer
What do you know about your consumers? What are their attitudes and behaviors about the industry you’re in? Towards your products, services, sales people and company overall? Consumers expect you to:
- Recognize them
- Be relevant to them
- Make it easy
- Anticipate their needs
- Give them a voice
Based on the consumer lifecycle, what are those critical moments of time when a consumer will love you or leave you?
Do you have a Voice of Consumer (VOC)? If you are having individual meetings with consumers or letting your sales team or care managers share stories that’s helpful but not insightful. You need a cross-representation of your consumers’ feedback to gain insight. When you start focusing on VOC, you will know what your top 3-4 drivers are to improve the experience. This is where the alignment with strategy, marketing, sales, product and service come to life and where real innovation happens to improve the experience together.
4. Poor Employee Engagement
Does your organization measure employee engagement? If not, why not? It’s hard to achieve unparalleled Consumer Experience without Employee Engagement. Your employees are the key to any business’s overall success. Everyone has to understand what the brand promise is to your consumers and be held accountable to deliver it.
5. Bad Data & Processes
This is where the rubber meets the road. Everyone wants to have a successful way to measure each interaction the consumer has with your company through a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. However, you just can’t put a tool on top of bad data. As the saying goes, “garbage in is garbage out.” I have found this is VERY hard for organizations to get their head around (why investing in data architecture is so important). Once you get your data architected correctly and cleaned up, the hard work continues.
Now you have to focus on the processes to ensure you are making it “easy” for the consumer to do business with you and for the processes to be followed. This will ensure that when you finally make the investment in your CRM and have put the proper team in place to sustain it, you have set yourself up for success.
This is where the fun begins. You can now start mining the data and focusing on the analytics. There are no short cuts here. If you want to have unparalleled consumer experience then you have to invest in data, processes and analytics.
6. Not Acting on Consumer Insights
If you have a CRM, VOC and you’re still struggling with loyalty and retention this should be a huge red flag for you. Are you mining the insights you have? Do you know what the top drivers are to improve the experience? If you do, then what are you doing bout it? Consumers will only be patient for so long… If you are surveying them and getting their insights from multiple channels but not improving the experience, they will simply go somewhere else the first opportunity they have.