Subir Bhatnagar: Emotional Dimension to Customer Experience
VOICE OF EXPERTS
Emotional Dimension to Customer Experience
CX initiatives are not just about implementation!
To understand if your CX initiative is hitting the nail, organisations need to analyse the 3 core dimensions of CX: Effectiveness, Ease and Emotion.
Broadly put, here’s what they mean:
- Effectiveness – Customers get value from experience.
- Ease – Customers get value without difficulty.
- Emotion – Customers feel good about the experience.
While this is the popular theory, what drives customer loyalty is Emotion. The underlying emotion defines what a customer feels about the experience.
While CX is a relatively broad term, it encompasses multiple subjects. Many organizations are evolving their CX strategies to enable business innovation and understand customer journeys.
In its most elementary definition, Customer Experience (CX) “is measured in the quality and consistency of customer interactions and the relationship customers have with your brand.”
Customer experiences and Customer lifetime values start with a single interaction and last throughout the customer journey. Each customer interaction, regardless of the channel of the interaction, contributes to the overall customer experience. Higher the Customer Engagement, higher the Customer Lifetime Value. Brands need to put their best foot forward for every customer interaction as it has the potential to help or hurt your brand.
Picture this:
You have a salary account is with a leading Indian Bank. It’s the 1st of the month, your salary is credited to your account and you go to the ATM all excited to withdraw money. You insert your card and there’s the most disconcerted voice that comes out of the ATM, “please enter your PIN”. It’s probably the most robotically cringy voice that you have ever heard.
That very moment you feel like pressing the cancel button and taking your card out without continuing the transaction. Did you ever wonder why? Because suddenly the disconcerted voice brought an end to your happiness quotient.
At the same time, if you call up their telebanking number, the first voice that greets you on the IVR is the most pleasant voice that you’ve ever heard. It’s a blessing to your ears, as opposed to what came out of the ATM. Why? Because the CXO believed that the IVR is the first touchpoint for customer service and the first greeting has to be exemplary. Why is there a huge gap between the voice of the IVR and the voice of the ATM?
Did the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of this leading Indian Bank ever think that CX has to be uniform across all touchpoints and channels of communication with customers? The sweet voice on the IVR and the excruciating experience of the ATM provide a really disjointed experience to your customers. Food for thought?
Please remember, emotions make customers feel good about the experience. Consistency in customer interaction irrespective of the channel makes the customer feel valued.
“Nowadays, as companies come to terms with the requirements of the new consumer, they are increasingly realizing the significance of customer interactions as a critical window of opportunity.”
One of the main challenges that organizations face is how to deliver & measure consistent customer experience. They need to address this challenge without having to be bound within technical limitations. The above example of IVR v/s ATM is a fine example of delivering consistent CX. What are the measures that the bank could have taken to listen to the experience of the customer while delivering customer service? Did they ever think of taking feedback on ATM experience or the IVR experience? If not, how was the bank measuring CX?
Organizations need a window through which they can communicate with their customers, really listen to them, understand them better, find out what it takes to tailor the offers they are most likely to accept and, last but not least, secure their long-term loyalty.
One of the best methods is to have a solution which supports businesses with their interaction with consumers. A solution that can enable conversations between the brand and the customers and help organizations capture:
• Real-time two-way conversations for improved CX
• Build long-term relationships between consumers and the brand
• Deliver context-sensitive messages to measure emotions
• Build actionable insights with real-time analytics and dashboards
Technology plays a significant role in Customer Engagement & Experience. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen that digital disruptions are impacting all industries alike. Organizations are developing their digital strategies to enhance the customer experience to measure & understand customer journeys.
According to Gartner, customer-driven factors such as customer experience, trust, loyalty and retention are the primary ones that support the organization’s business case for deploying Digital Services.
There are different tech platforms that provide deep insights into user experience and contextual analytics. With the increase in smartphone users, some of the largest brands in the world are adopting different strategies to deliver consistent CX. For instance, an Omnichannel platform provides the convenience to customers to interact with the organization through any channel, be it voice, web, SMS, social, email, chat etc., while capturing a 360-degree view of the customer journey at the back end.
“The future of CX will be driven by technology innovations like AI, NeuroScience, Data Science & Analytics.”
Subir Bhatnagar – VP & Global Head – Solutions at AGC Networks Ltd. is an industry veteran with over 30 years of professional experience. Being an Engineer in Electronics, he started his professional journey as a Sales Manager and since then has seen the light of success with organizations like Wipro, Net Proactive Services, Nortel Networks, Avaya, Global Telesystems amongst many others. He is a technology enthusiast and is known for his expertise in transforming organizations for the better.
