Differentiating Your Brand Through Your Contact Centre

Author: Blake Morgan
Originally published on CMSwire.com

When you go to your local grocery store do you notice how many kinds of the same products there are? How about the fact that many cars now look the same? This new shopper reality is called commoditisation. There isn’t much that differentiates today’s products. The only thing that truly makes them seem different is the customer experience around the product. Today’s customers seek experiences that make their lives easier.

Some companies are making customer’s lives easier—for example companies like Uber, Spotify and WhatsApp are completely changing the way consumers interact with products and services. Today’s customers can essentially get any product, any time. As some companies—sprint to meet customer expectations, there will be more pressure on companies that are not delivering innovative products fast and efficiently enough. This is a new customer that has serious expectations for your brand, and there are serious implications for companies that aren’t able to continue to deliver improved customer experiences.

The opportunities for companies to become wildly successful are many. Examples include creating thoughtful customer journeys, organising your operations and product creation around the customer, building thoughtful user experiences, by making life easier on the customer and harder on your company and by meeting customer needs in an unprecedented way. Many companies make the mistake of doing what they’ve always done. This is precisely why the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 has shrunk from sixty one years back in 1958 to what is predicted to be fourteen years by 2026.¹

The Role of the Contact Centre
The contact centre is the place where customers literally make contact with the brand. For many brands it serves as the only opportunity to build a relationship with the customer. Even if the customer only calls one time, that individual phone call serves as an opportunity to shape the perception that the customer has about your brand. That’s a huge opportunity! A customer’s perception of their interaction with your brand is not shaped by one marketing message, but by the many interactions the customer has with your brand. In fact customer service is marketing—helping a customer efficiently at a point of need is an important relationship building opportunity. If you can be there for that individual customer when they need help they will continue to come back and buy more, tell their friends and family. Even with all this knowledge too many companies don’t see their contact centre as a competitive differentiator.

The Business Impact of Customer Churn
Here’s the leadership challenge of the century; CEOs need to look at long-term gains rather than quarterly profits. Focusing on quarterly profits influences senior executives to make knee-jerk reactions rather than thoughtful decisions that will impact the business positively in the long run. If the sales are low one quarter the first thing CEOs do is cut costs—the contact centre is seen as a cost centre, not a revenue generating arm of the business—therefore cuts are often made to the contact centre. Rather than take intelligent risks when a quarter is slow—times when it would pay off to take a risk–executives start laying off employees, using technology to cut costs and keep customers at bay. It’s precisely during these times that leaders need to think long-term.

A long-term bet includes staffing your contact centre appropriately so you can serve customers 24-7. Today’s modern customers expect companies to respond at any time of day. In fact 32 percent of consumers expect a response within 30 minutes through social media channels. Not only that but 57 percent of consumers expect the same response time at night and on weekends as during normal business hours.²

We are operating in a 24-7 world. Companies need to staff accordingly and plan that customers will ask for help outside of the company’s local 9am to 5pm. Customer demand is steadily increasing while patience for incompetent customer experiences is steadily decreasing. By allocating the proper resources to your customer operation you will find your company in a better position to assist customers. By making things easier on the customer and a little harder on your company you will build long-lasting relationships with customers that will not just keep them coming back, but bringing their friends and family along as well.

The Importance of Human Connections and Voice Contact
It costs money to run a contact centre, and a big part of that is staffing—but proper staffing should not be seen as a cost, it should be seen as a lasting investment in the customer experience. With even the best self-service technology, customers should always be able to opt out of self-service and easily reach a person at your company. Are you guilty of rolling out phone tree software that leaves customers literally at the bottom of that “tree”? Imagine a customer shaking that tree waiting indefinitely for a person to emerge and help that customer. Here’s the reason you need thoughtful people on the other side of the phone, and why relying purely on Facebook chatbots won’t cut it. Not every customer has the same problem and there will be variation in your customer requests. A person, not a bot, is best suited to handle extreme variation in customer issues. Another valuable aspect of having staff run your contact centre is the customer insights. The feedback received by the customer service representative could be highly valuable. The feedback can translate into improved products and services. For example perhaps the customer flagged an issue that would later cost the company millions of dollars. Your front-line people are the first to flag issues that could be the demise of the company. Or notified you about an unmet customer need that could make your company millions of dollars. Lastly, your customers are diverse and they have a diverse set of needs—you need to provide a diverse option of channels for these customers to ensure you are meeting individual needs.

¹ https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/innosight-sp-500-new-companies.html

² Baer, Jay. Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016. Web.