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Top 5 Customer Experience Trends of 2013

by Lauren Ziskie, Customer Engagement Officer, Dialogue Marketing Inc. - March 25, 2013

Top 5 Customer Experience Trends of 2013

1. The Rise of Text Analytics

It has always been the job of contact centers to interpret what customers are saying back to the rest of the organization. In 2012, we realized this was a much harder task now that customer service professionals are handling 10 or more communication channels (phone, e-mail, chat, online communities, surveys, video, photo, review sites, wikis, social posts), with 4 different forms of data (voice, text, photo, video), and with 10 times the amount of conversations due to the collaborative web 2.0 environment.

The focus in 2013 is figuring out an efficient way to capture the “voice of the customer”, but still keep a unified perspective. This means our industry will have to decipher all of the channels to figure out what customers are saying about their experiences with the brand. The challenge is some of the most insightful customer data comes from unstructured content like calls into the contact center, social media conversations, and chat sessions. That’s where text analytics is going to play a huge factor in 2013. This year we will start seeing new text analytic systems being deployed that can convert 100% of phone calls and videos into text. The text analytics tool will then assess those conversations against all other text based customer conversations to help trend conversations into real-time actionable insights.



2. Leveraging Big Data to Predict Consumer Behavior and Trends

We are living in the Information Age where enormous amounts of data are being created, published, and stored every second. According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, “There were 5 exabytes of information created by the entire world between the dawn of civilization and 2003. Now that same amount is created every two days.”

Over the years, businesses have done a good job collecting data from their customers and storing it in CRM systems. The challenge and/or opportunity for contact centers in 2013 is to learn how to use these enormous customer databases, along with other forms of consumer data that’s available such as: web behavior data, customer satisfaction data, business outcome data, competitive data, social interaction data, financial data, demographic data, psychographic data, and technographic data to predict consumer behavior and ultimately improve the customer experience.

Micah Solomon, the author of High-tech, High touch Customer Service describes the concept of anticipatory customer service where companies predict customer needs and proactively address them. Anticipating a customer’s needs gives customer service an opportunity to provide a WOW experience or fix problem before they amplify.

This is where predictive analytics comes in. Predictive analytics is a technology that uses predictive modeling to find the probability or likelihood that a future event will take place such as placing an order or recommending a friend. In order to predict consumer behavior, one must have lots of historical customer data (which all contact centers store). In 2013 contact centers will start using predictive analytics to predict the best agent to route a contact to, the right time to reach a customer, the right channel to use, and the right offer or messaging to present. The end result will be a decrease in lead acquisition cost, increase in customer loyalty and retention, and increased agent contacts and conversions.



3. Creating a Digital Concierge Experience

There was a time when companies told customers how and when they could contact them. Now thanks to web 2.0 communication channels, customers are “calling” the shots. Our on-the-go society has placed significant importance on “fast and personalized service” when evaluating their customer experience. Customers are refusing to wait on hold or hassle with an IVR to receive customer support. Instead, they are turning to self-service solutions such as social networks, mobile apps, or “how to” videos on YouTube to get answers quickly. In 2013, customers are expecting customer care teams to have digital communication options. If a customer tweets your brand a service related question, they will expect a response in 30 seconds. This means your organization better have the right social media or video customer service solution in place to provide a digital concierge-like experience. Every tweet, post, or blog should be noted and stored in a CRM system so that organizations know that @Daily123 is really Sally, and Sally is a Diamond member. She called us yesterday and tweeted us today about her order that is late. This will help organizations have a 360 degree view of the customer and provide for a great customer experience.

4. Introducing Customer Engagement Centers – a focus on loyalty not C-SAT

In today’s “reputation economy” C-SAT has become a metric of the past and customer loyalty has become the new focus. The reason? Today, it’s no longer enough to just satisfy a customer. Satisfaction means mediocre. No one remembers or shares their mediocre experience they had with customer service. Instead, the new focus for customer service teams is to make sure the customer is WOWed with each engagement. WOW means surpassing expectations, and positively changing the way the customer perceives the brand. At the end of the day, these WOW experiences with customer service become memorable and story-worthy. Stories are powerful today because they end up being shared with hundreds of peers on social networking sites, and are deemed more credible and trustworthy in comparison to traditional advertising.

In 2013, in order to deliver off the charts, remarkable, WOW customer service it will be critical for contact centers to start empowering customer service reps. In addition to empowerment, there will need to be a greater investment in agent training and coaching in the coming year. Metrics will also have to change. Average handle time and other productivity metrics used today don’t necessarily always translate into the best customer experience, and definitely won’t create loyal customers for life. Frankly speaking, that’s why customer service has always been viewed as a cost center, and not a value creation center. It’s not about “the contact” it’s about “the engagement” CSRs have with customers. The real metric to be measured in 2013 is average lifetime value (aka customer loyalty).



5. A Focus on Optimizing the Multi-Device Experience

In today’s device driven world, smartphones and tablets have penetrated American culture, creating a digital lifestyle in which we’ve come accustomed. People walk with their heads buried in their devices and have figured out how to text, post, tweet, search, and respond to email, all without ever looking up. This mobile revolution has consumers placing high demands on customer service to evolve their support models so they can resolve their issues on the go, via their mobile or tablet device, and in between text messages.

To succeed with smartphone customers, you need to focus on the customer experience. Every moment of hold time, hunt and search time, or IVR frustration will put their loyalty to the test. Smartphone customers expect on-demand access to phone, web, apps, social media and video. In 2013, we will see the consumer affairs industry start to develop customer service specific mobile and tablet apps that give customers every opportunity to get help or help themselves. Also customer service professionals should be thinking about ways optimize the multi-device experience for customers by allowing smartphone apps to interact with tablet apps because typically these devices don’t stray far from each other and are getting use simultaneously by consumers.

To sum it all up, in 2013 it’s absolutely critical your customer service team has a strategic focus on the customer experience or else you will be at risk of losing customers to competitors, brand reputation damage online, or incurring high customer acquisition costs that eat into profits.

Written by Lauren Ziskie (lziskie@dialogue-marketing.com), Customer Engagement Officer at Dialogue Marketing Inc., an award-winning BPO and customer engagement center that helps companies of all sizes and across a wide range of industries acquire, support, and retain customers via multiple communication channels. To learn more or ask a question, follow Dialogue Marketing on Twitter (@DialogueMkting) or call 800-523-5867

 
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