Guest Service

There’s much talk online and in the press about how people’s experience during this COVID-19 era will impact a new ‘normal’ customer experience when we finally settle into some stability. It is looking increasingly like life is going to be in this current holding pattern for some time to come.

Is your organization reducing customer experience funding? Are CX leaders and staff members being let go? Is the pandemic being used as an excuse for delivering poor customer experiences? Is your online customer service experience getting better or worse?

No marketing professional wakes up in the morning and says, “Today is the day I’m going to alienate my customers.” Yet we do it every day, by leaning on old marketing techniques that have long outlived their usefulness and ignoring what our customers really care about.

it is widely recognized that customers are willing to pay more for products that come with a great experience and multiple studies confirm CX leaders generate a return that is nearly three times greater than that of the CX laggards.

Organizations can and should adapt today’s customer journey to embrace a service-first mindset. At Sugar, we’ve found it helpful to think about this shift in three phases: initial response, adjusting to the new realities, and planning for the rebound.

The old idea that all customers are created equal and that one-size-fits-all was ripped apart by Peppers and Rogers in their seminal first book The One to One Future1. Since then, product design and product marketing teams have become incredibly creative producing hundreds of different plans or product variations to suit micro-segments, maybe even “one to one”. Along the way, customer support has determined how important it is to treat customers differently, e.g., VIP or high spenders vs. chronic complainers vs. customers who threaten to cancel their contracts or operations.

They say hindsight is 20/20 vision. Looking ahead is where we have a problem. Most major innovations have brought us kicking and screaming into the future. In this article, I will explain that the time has come to bid adieu to yet another outdated concept, that of efficiency.

The generation set to take over in spending power by 2020—millennials—is actually one of the loneliest. Seemingly, this paradox has nothing to do with brands—but empathic brands are distinguishing themselves by becoming facilitators of relationships with their customers.

Today Narrow AI has fast become a great tool to serve many business needs. Delivering better Customer Experience is only one of them. Gartner says: “By 2021, 15% of all customer service interactions will be completely handled by AI, an increase of 400% from 2017”5. Very exciting prospects indeed. But where to start? Below are a few scenarios I think would significantly help out an organization to provide better customer experiences:

Overnight, we lost our regular routines – our daily coffees, date night out, weekly shops, Fridays at the pub with friends and our Sunday at the gym. Lockdown has forced us to change our habits, but is the change temporary or will it be longer lasting?

At this moment in time, how brands interact with their consumers is more critical than ever, but few are investing in doing so.