Why So Many Customer Experiences Are Mediocre at Best
Lisa Morgan, Freelance WriterJanuary 10, 20258 Min Readdesigner491 via Alamy StockSometimes, it may seem that customers are never satisfied. They abuse call center staff, rage online or worse, abandon the brand. Functional gaps within organizations, siloed technology, a lack of accountability, and erroneous assumptions are the main reasons companies don't understand how customers really feel.Not looking at customer journeys holistically means broken journeys. Theres a lot of focus on initial interactions such as initial calls into the contact center, but many times theres a lack of focus on the fulfilling of customers intent, says Jay Patel, SVP and GM, Webex Customer Experience Solutions atCisco. Additionally, a lack of data-driven insights leads to many businesses failing to tailor their services to meet individual customer needs. Disconnected communication channels often lead to inconsistent experiences, as customers may receive varying levels of service depending on the platform they use.Many companies rely on legacy systems that are unable to support the dynamic needs of modern consumers. Additionally, the lack of a unified data strategy hampers a companys ability to gain a holistic view of the customer journey, resulting in fragmented interactions. Similarly, siloed organizations have led to disparate and separate decision making, processes, technology, and more across IT and lines of business. And because call centers are swamped, improving customer experience starts with improving employee experience, Patel says.Related:To deliver exceptional customer experiences, organizations must recognize the direct connection between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. A positive employee experience translates into better customer interactions, says Patel. Striking the right balance between automation and human touch is also critical. While virtual agents can handle routine tasks, customers should always have access to human support when needed. Leveraging data analytics to understand customer preferences and behaviors enables more personalized and effective service. This data can also be used to map customer journeys end-to-end to ensure seamless and consistent experiences across all channels where they are engaged.Additionally, implementing AI should be approached with intention, focusing on enhancing customer service without compromising the personalized, human-centric elements that drive loyalty and trust.Jay Patel, CiscoIts important to have a strategy and roadmap for transforming CX. Over time, itll be important to innovate and adapt -- making this not a one-time activity, says Patel. Continuous measurement and reviews are needed to ensure the organization continues to innovate and improve experiences.Related:Customer Satisfaction Less Important Than Cost?Melissa Copeland, founder and principal at customer experience consultancy Blue Orbit Consulting, says customer experience design should include three different perspectives: the customer, the company, and the employee.From a customer perspective, its helpful to understand what they expect, why they call, and the outcome they anticipate. From a company perspective, consider how to deliver a consistent brand image, drive loyalty and maintain or grow revenue in a manner that improves share of wallet. Then, from an employee perspective, understand how they receive the customer, what they are incented to do and how much support they have.The magic is when all three [perspectives] are knit together in an ecosystem supported by processes and technology that make all these things happen quickly and synchronized, says Copeland. Savvy organizations start with an understanding of the customer and sample personas or profiles. From there, an organization can create desired customer experience and build the systems and processes to deliver that experience. The best experiences are often driven by looking at things from a customer perspective.Related:Customer experience is a choice companies make. For example, have they gone overboard with automation or do they want to make it easy for the customer to reach a human? Is cost more important than customer satisfaction?When a company creates [an experience] based on what is cost effective or easy for the company rather than the customer, we get into a mismatch [of] expectations, language and often outcomes, says Copeland. The other common challenge is [technology implementation]. Often self-service or chatbots [are built], without spending the time and resources to be sure they line up with that desired customer experience.John Rossman, founder and managing partner at strategy and management advisory firm Rossman Partners, says a lack of clear metrics, an absence of accountability, and short-term optimization over long-term loyalty are issues.The Right Things Arent Being MeasuredMany organizations fail to establish insightful, actionable metrics that truly reflect the customer experience. Without clarity on what defines excellence, its nearly impossible to achieve it. Metrics must measure what matters most to customers, not just whats easy to track, says Rossman. Turning these metrics into service level agreements (SLAs) that hold teams accountable for delivering an exceptional customer experience is another gap. SLAs are a commitment to excellence -- a pledge that customers can count on and that serve as a forcing function for accountability and improvement.The real reason, however, lies in prioritizing short-term financial results at the expense of long-term customer loyalty. Organizations often sacrifice sustainable growth, which is built on trust and exceptional experiences, for immediate financial returns.Transforming customer experiences isnt just about reacting to complaints or tweaking processes. Its about creating clarity, aligning teams on a bold vision of customer delight and maintaining velocity in execution, says Rossman. Organizations that prioritize customer loyalty, deeply understand customer pain points and apply resources to fix the root causes are the ones that thrive. This is Amazon's approach.Customer Data Is a MessBrands have a hard time meeting this expectation mostly because they lack a full, detailed understanding of their customers. With data siloed across channels and processes, one functional team might know what the customer is doing on one channel, but not another. The customer might receive what the brand considers an exceptional CX on that one channel, but from the customers perspective it is an uneven experience because it does not consider or reflect the entirety of the customers journey with the brand.[W]hile breaking down siloes is a great starting point, many brands fail to prioritize data quality. To truly understand a customer, all incoming data must be cleansed, normalized, enriched, and precisely matched so that brands can accurately distinguish one customer from another, and even understand a customer in the dynamics of various relationships, such as in the context of a household or business, says John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer at strategy and management advisory firm Redpoint Global. It is impossible to deliver a real-time, personalized experience when the company is still trying to figure out which customer is visiting the website, dialing the call center, engaging with a chatbot, etc.John Nash, Redpoint GlobalOrganizations should have unified customer profiles and make those profiles available and accessible across the enterprise. A unified profile should ingest customer data from all possible sources, continuously perform data quality processes as data is ingested, and apply advanced identity resolution functionality to accurately distinguish one customer from another.Watch Out for Confirmation BiasDennis Lenard, CEO at Creative Navy UX Agency, says hes observed that confirmation bias can undermine the creation of truly exceptional customer experiences. Many subpar experiences persist not because teams lack skills or resources but because theyre unknowingly trapped in patterns of organizational blindness. This happens when the very structures creating the problems prevent teams from identifying and addressing those issues objectively. Cognitive dissonance often compounds the issue, as individuals struggle to reconcile conflicting information that challenges their existing beliefs or assumptions.One of the biggest challenges Ive observed is how flawed thinking can skew the problem-solving process. For instance, teams often claim they are validating solutions internally. However, this approach is inherently flawed, says Lenard. Based on how learning processes and logical reasoning work, we can only invalidate assumptions through testing and experimentation. Confirmation bias makes it tempting to interpret any evidence as supporting a hypothesis, even when it doesnt.Joe Crawford, global head of technology at AI-fueled customer intelligence solutions provider Glassbox, agrees.Too often, companies assume they know what customers want and then pour their resources into those ideas. [W]hen you consider all the sources that suggest customers think CX has gotten worse in recent years, it highlights an obvious misunderstanding between what customers want versus what organizations think customers want.Customer Experience Is Everyones JobToya Del Valle, chief customer officer at workforce agility platform Cornerstone OnDemand, says poor customer experiences are caused misalignment across business functions and customer expectations.When customer perspectives are not incorporated into all business processes, it heightens the risk of a substandard experience substantially. To ensure customer satisfaction, customer success goals must be reflected across the entire company, not just those directly engaging with customers, says Del Valle.For example, if chief customer officers partner with HR, they can introduce shared metrics that tie employee engagement to customer satisfaction and find a rhythm to engage employees with training, support and metric tracking against this shared goal. That said, all business leaders must drive experience within their organizations.Ultimately, delivering exceptional customer experiences should be a company-wide priority driven by executive leadership. However, if a unified company-wide focus is not yet achievable, it is crucial to ensure strong collaboration between marketing, IT, and customer success teams, says Glassboxs Crawford. [M]arketing and customer success teams are on the ground thinking of new ways to reach current and prospective customers daily [but], IT has the clearest view into online behavior, [such as] what areas of a website customers are interacting with, points of customer friction, and the data behind the behavior.Bottom LineCustomer experiences continue to suffer because organizations arent prioritizing, measuring, or doing the right things. With all the internal and technological disconnects, coupled with the need to deliver omnichannel experiences the way customers want them, its a difficult problem to solve.The worst part about it is that companies dont understand their customers well enough to design the right kind of experiences in the first place. Moreover, delivering a great customer experience is a moving target and therefore a journey, not an event. Its also everyones responsibility. And ultimately, companies need to run their operations with a customer-first mentality.About the AuthorLisa MorganFreelance WriterLisa Morgan is a freelance writer who covers business and IT strategy and emergingtechnology for InformationWeek. She has contributed articles, reports, and other types of content to many technology, business, and mainstream publications and sites including tech pubs, The Washington Post and The Economist Intelligence Unit. Frequent areas of coverage include AI, analytics, cloud, cybersecurity, mobility, software development, and emerging cultural issues affecting the C-suite.See more from Lisa MorganNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports
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