Profiting from Implementation of an Effective CEM Strategy

Customer Experience Management  CEM is a practice as old as the oldest form of service or trade. However the term in itself was only coined this century. If we look back in history even before currency was invented when humans exchanged good and services, back then the concept of satisfying the customer already exist. Same concept as it is now, a customer will not buy a product or a service if they are not happy with it, nor they will barter their goods for another if they are not happy with what they will be getting.

Now a days there are multiple strategies on how to implement a CEM program. Tied to each strategy are multiple methodologies developed through the years of interacting with customers. For each company in a particular industry, sector or niche to implement a CEM program they must know how and where they interact with their customers, hence they should know their customer touch points. Each touch point varies between service and products. Now if we take Telecoms as an example, the touch points are as varied as every thing we interact with that has to do with technology, such as phones, TV, radio, tablets, printed materials, social media but central to that experience is the human customer.  Below is an example of a mobile telecoms touch point also highlighting the customer life cycle

Continuing with a mobile network provider as an example there are various strategies that can be deployed in monitoring customer experiences such as

• Network based monitoring 
• Device based monitoring
• Customer surveys
• Text analytic and web crawlers
• Social media listeners

Each strategy has their own advantages and fit falls. Having said that having an effective CEM program in place will improve customer satisfaction, in a lot of cases will improve revenue and more importantly profitability. In this age of cut-throat competition customer experience as a differentiation factor is very important. Back in 2012 watermark consulting identified that there is a very big gap in profitability between companies with good customer experience management programs compared to those who do not.

If we select various industries  and look at how an effective CEM programs impact their business taking from Forrester Research we will see that for some business sectors the difference  in bottom line is very big for a single company.

The question is what can your company profit from an effective CEM program? When you quantify the impact does it justify the effort and cost of putting a CEM program in the first place? There are several experts on this field and I came to learn that they will converge in Singapore on the first week of October. There is the Customer Experience Management Summit Asia in Oct 2 to 3 organized by IQPC and there is the Customer Experience Management in Telecoms World Summit on October 3 to 4 organized by Symphony Global. If you are now confused,  the two conferences are different in such a way that the Customer Experience Management Summit Asia is very general covering CEM in many industries. While the Customer Experience Management in Telecoms World Summit is very focused on Telecoms.

To be fair I am attending both events in one as a speaker and in the other as a writer in both cases I will be imparting knowledge gained and experience learned from various companies about implementation of various CEM programs.

Customer Experiences when Business is Unusual

The world we are today is highly connected from mobile phones, social media, micro blogging, games, services, etc... Even little children are now so connected that a new segment is being exploited by the gaming industry. This inter-connection is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing for us who gets connected to our friends, even finding new friends on line, being in touch and always available... A curse for those of us needed to ensure that this interconnection is perfect and working all the time., like in the image below showing how we are connected globally:

But that happens when business is not business as usual? How do we ensure that customer experiences are not affected when there are business problems? With so many potential channels customer experience product and service where do we prioritize? How do we handle those?

In the world where we are at every second experience services or products either we acquire, we see, we touch, we interact that builds our impression of who provides them and thus influences our consuming habits. Even at rest or when we sleep we still experience products and services we use. Having said that to companies who provide us with these products and services it is no longer the usual 8 to 5 business operations... It is an unusual 24X7 business. How do we ensure good customer experience consistently all the time?

The key to good customer experiences is consistency on every channel used by the customer. Be that the actual product acquired or service used or the various channels to complain and to gather support when needed. In today's connected world customer experience should be the same whether they use their mobile devices, personal computers, kiosk or service desk. It is important that a consistently good experience is provided in all channels.



Let's take a simple example of buying shoes... say you go and buy  expensive shoes  something like Stuart Weitzman.. and when you get home and found out that the shoes where worn.

 

What will you do? Will you go back and return the shoes? For most of us we would likely complain, and to do that we use the most convenient channel we have at that time. It can be a phone call, a self-service web page, a phone application. What is important to us as customer is the feeling that we are being listened to, that we are not being ignored.  Secondly the experience we had while shopping should be consistent to the service we experience we get on all other channels. The challenge is how can we design that?

In Singapore during Customer Experience Asia, this questions will get some answers for example Vijay Venugopalan of BT is presenting  The rise of connected, multichannel customer: Transforming customer experience in an Era of Business as Unusual.

Improving Customer Experiences starts with Human Resources

Recently I blogged about negative experience at Parking spaces in Oslo, of which Europark immediately responded to waive the parking fine. This shows two things in the way Europark is improving their customer experiences.

• They empower their staff to immediately resolve issues
• They did not fully train their staff to provide good customer experience from the beginning

Steven Khor of ePay will be presenting a concept during the CEM Asia summit in Singapore about moving from customer service to customer experience.

Although I am not aware of what he will be presenting let me use the Europark incident to point out why Customer Experiences starts with the Human Resources we employ. In every service industry the main interface if not the first interface of a customer is possibly human or human related.

Take into account Oslo experience. The parking attendant failed to see that parking ticket was paid and issued a fine which lead to a very unhappy customer. If only the parking attendant was trained to be more vigilant then there will be no unhappy customer. However this exercise also exposed that the customer service organization was able to turn a bad experience to a good one by recognizing the mistakes made and waiving the parking fine.

The human resource we employ can reflect loudly on what expectations our customers perceived and more importantly what experience we give them. For example Four Seasons Hotel has very friendly staff compared to say Hilton Hotel (at least comparing experiences in Singapore). Having said that since the price point is very similar returning guest will flock to Four Seasons first before they consider Hilton. what does the avertising below tells you about customer experiences provided by each hotel's staff?

In the services industry a good customer experience comes from how friendly and accommodating the human resources are. Today I had lunch with a friend who mentioned that his IT company wants to increase revenue and margin so they are planning to take multiple support calls at a time by putting one customer on hold while addressing another customer. Just imagine the nightmare that it will bring to the customer who was put on hold for several minutes.  If I was that customer I will take my business elsewhere.

If you happen to be in Singapore try visiting the IQPC CEM Asia event, there are a lot of things to learn from those who have implemented sucessful CEM programs from various industries...