“All our operators are busy; please hold for the next available agent.” Does it sound familiar? These words are sometimes just the beginning of a long and frustrating experience. Sometimes it leads to other painful comments such as “Please hold while I check with my supervisor,” or “I’ll transfer you to that department.” And too often, after transferring you may be asked for information that you already provided.
We have all experienced disjointed customer experiences, whether they have been on the phone, in person, or online. They involve extra steps, handoffs, and transitions that take too long, require too much effort, and result in frustration.
Because of the negative impact such experiences can have on an organization’s brand and reputation, it’s clear that creating seamless experiences for customers is more important than ever, which is why we consider this topic to be one of the themes driving the evolution of CX.
What do we mean by seamless experiences?
Seamless experiences occur when an organization makes everything as easy, efficient, and relevant as possible for their customers. This includes minimizing the steps necessary to do business, so the customer journey is a unified experience aligned with the expectations of the customer.
Every organization has valid business reasons why handoffs and transitions occur. However, customers want to accomplish tasks and get answers to their questions as quickly and easily as possible. They aren’t concerned with the internal operations that make that happen. To meet today’s rising expectations, organizations must put themselves in the shoes of the customer to make their experiences as seamless as possible regardless of how they interact with the organization. Customers seek a consistent experience whether they buy online and return in the store, browse online and purchase through a contact, or research online, but call to resolve an issue.
Accomplishing this requires a clear vision of the ideal customer journey, engaged employees who are committed to delivering it, and the tools and processes to listen, monitor, measure, and understand every detail of the entire customer experience.
It is necessary to follow some steps to design seamless customers experiences:
- Understanding the customer journey
- Envisioning the ideal journey
- Developing a culture focused on ease
- Capturing signals to make seamless experiences a reality
Where should CX leaders get started?
You may have sensed the irony in this article – creating a seamless, easy experience isn’t easy at all! Regardless of all the complexity involved in mapping, envisioning, and monitoring the customer journey, there are some logical steps to get started.
Review your customer profiles. Delivering seamless experiences starts with developing rich profiles that give you a complete understanding of your customers and entire segments of your customer base.
Determine what seamless means to your customers. Conduct a journey mapping exercise, and then think from the outside in to envision the experience from the customers’ perspective.
Identify stages of the customer journey that are too complex. Look for ways to begin reducing steps and handoffs to make it more seamless.
Develop a set of statements or principles focused on customer ease. Use these as a North Star vision within your organization.
Evaluate how your organization monitors the actions and feedback of your customers. Consider a review of emerging CX technology to provide better line of sight to customer activity.
Learn more about the steps to design seamless customer experiences in our next article.
