Customer Experience Matters
Alex Colburn – September 2, 2020
Customer service makes up a large, undervalued gap in business offerings. With the help of technology, companies can create a phenomenal customer experience and reap documented benefits if they pay close attention to the how their customers are interacting with the digital experience.
Customer experience isn’t a new concept, but the way customers react to what companies provide them has more of an impact in todays world than it ever has before. Customers now share their experiences with the world via social media, whether it's good or bad. It's time to make your processes’ seamless and make sure you're adjusting to what customers are demanding.
What customers are saying about customer service
The jury is in and they have returned with stats:
- 73% of people say that customer experience is an important factor in their purchasing decisions. [1]
- 43% of all consumers will pay more for greater convenience.[1]
- 80% of American consumers point to speed, convenience, and knowledgeable employees as important elements of a positive CX experience.[1]
- 1 in 3 customers will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.[1]
An optimized customer experience can lead to real saving of face (and savings in the bank) for companies who invest in technology for the long-term.
The stepping stones to creating big changes in your customer experience start with small, incremental changes and upgrades to your old system. A modern Salesforce implementation or update can be a game changer for many companies.
How technology ties into customer experiences
Maybe it’s not at the front of your mind, but customer experience is at the heart of almost everything we do. With Salesforce in our front pocket, the right development team can help you help bring your customers the experience they want. The organizations that take customer experience seriously are who stand out from the noise and win loyal customers over.
Financial Services use case
A large company in the Financial Services industry approached us with a problem. They had been using Salesforce for a number of years, but things were getting slow because they were still using Salesforce Classic. This led to their CSA’s spending too much time on calls with customers, and the experience that customers were having wasn't optimal anymore. They needed an upgrade.
The client had been working with a competing consulting firm for a few years, but they found themselves wrapped up and around the axle of the hierarchy of the firm's traditional consulting model. Most of their time and money was spent in meetings talking about things that should get done with an uncertain timeline that was moving at a snails pace.
When investing in technology it's important to to know that eventually it's going to go out of date. When technology ages it impacts the business and your customers. When competitors are launching service and products that you could not on your current stack, companies know it is time to upgrade.
Of course you will want this upgrade to happen seamlessly and fast while operations are still running. If the team that you’ve been paying olympic prices for has been giving you JV squad results, where do you go next?
Build more, Talk Less
In order to deliver a positive experience you have to know your customers and what they expect from you.
The client we began working with in the Financial Services industry engaged our team at Digital Mass to deliver a complete view of their customers to their CSA’s and speed up their overall processes. Digital Mass delivered this by updating their internal system from Salesforce classic to Salesforce Lightning and an implementation of Service Cloud.
This engagement was a fresh of breathe air for our client because we weren't booking extra meeting times to burn through billable hours and our developers started making progress right away.
A Better Experience
By updating the client's old system to Lightning and implementing Service Cloud into their Org, it allowed their CSA’s to have a well rounded view of their customers. Not only did this update improve the quality of work-life for their CSA’s who are spending their days in the system, it has cut the call times by 37%. The shorter call times make life easier for their representatives and their customers really appreciate that they don’t have to spend as much time on the phone going over tedious information. We like to call that a win-win-win situation.
In addition to a well-rounded view of the customer, service representatives now have actionable insights from Service Cloud. These insights show the representatives what the next best follow up action is, which has been a direct contributor to internal efficiency.
The first release of updates went live in 2018 but we were only getting started. In 2021, the work continues with DM spearheading the CX Focused augmentation of their Service and Sales Clouds.
Our relationship with this client has continued to evolve and we will continue to partner with their teams to understand and influence their path forward.