Keeping brand promise; paramount to consistent customer experience

Here is a three word history of customer service: Response to Resolution to Experience.

An industry called Customer Interaction Management (CIM) was born when organizations felt the importance of providing a ‘Response’ to make their customers feel special and wanted.

Brands would acknowledge a request or complaint and act accordingly. Customers were simply happy and perhaps content that a large brand acknowledged and wrote back to them.

The industry graduated to demanding a ‘Resolution’ where large service oriented companies worked hard to resolve issues to differentiate their brand from others. An insanely complicated channel of customer interaction, the ‘Contact Centre’ was born, saving billions of dollars for businesses and bringing smiles to customers.

According to Frost and Sullivan, by 2014 there will be 1.3 million people handling pain, my preferred phrase to complain, resolution.

While the CIM industry was still grappling with growing complexities, service paradigm shifted to the super complex reality of today - ‘Experience’. Consumers want to live the ‘Experience’ a brand promises.

And if the experience is anything less than what was promised, each time, wrath is cut loose in an embarrassing public manner. Adding to the melting pot, the most complex interaction channel the industry has dealt with yet; Social Media.

Large consumer facing brands will have to show greater resolve and commitment towards delivering what they promise their consumers in their multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. Typically, when products and services are launched, promises are made via slick advertising and cash is spent on analyzing reach and efficiency of campaigns.

The point of interaction unfortunately is left to the blessings of God. Haven’t we made calls to a bank (or any service organization for that matter), enquired about the latest credit card offer and come across pregnant pauses from the bank rep on the other side?

Brands can’t afford this. They need to set and revisit interaction / service standards and map those with the brand promise, regularly. Marketing heads and CEOs need to be intimately involved in the ‘Moment of Truth’ – the point of interaction between the consumer and their service provider.

If we were to go by Google’s definition of the ‘Zero Moment of Truth’; consumers connect with brands or products after researching them on the net, reading opinions from friends and strangers, blogs and reviews.

Forward looking consumer oriented organizations must incorporate social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, popular blogs as a part of their customer service infrastructure.

Conversations around their brands need to show up automatically in the CIM panels of the staff facing consumers. The ability to listen to consumer conversations, (be it online or offline) and proactively reach out to customers makes social media channels a great avenue to differentiate and create great customer experiences.

According to a Forrester Research study conducted in 2011, 86 percent companies state that customer experience is a top priority for them. This commitment needs to be backed with investments in people, process and technology infrastructure to ensure that brands do not end up over-promising and under-delivering.

The other key aspect of delivering excellent ‘Experience’ is consistency. A consumer must get the same standard of promised service in each geography, wherever she or he travels.

For example her or his option three in the IVR must always be ‘last five credit card transactions’ whether she is in Singapore or Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur.

Ultimately, the right experience can be delivered by institutionalizing the concept of establishing a connection between brand promise and CIM, mapping and tracking it on a continuous basis and allocation of resources to ensure that all these work in unison.

Being a long term evangelist of driving the use to technology to improve customer service, I am excited about the unlimited possibilities of improving consumers’ love for their service providers.

K Balakrishnan, Managing Director and CEO, Servion Global Solutions