Recently, a colleague of mine at Sabio pointed me in the direction of an interesting article that was published in the Daily Telegraph entitled ‘Why Aren’t We Being Served?’.

The feature – which was the cover story in the UK-based publication’s weekend magazine edition – was focused on the latest Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) from the Institute of Customer Service – which painted a bleak picture for UK businesses.

The UKCSI is based on an online survey of over 15,000 consumers, who are representative of the UK adult population by region, age and gender. The most recent survey, published in January, comprises 59,250 customer experiences collected during the past 9 months.

Across the board, consumer happiness was shown to have declined year-over-year. From banking to utilities to services, not a single sector was spared from the downward trend.

It didn’t make for great reading.

According to the survey – which you can find here – customer satisfaction (C-Sat) in each of the 13 sectors covered was lower than a year ago. C-Sat dropped 0.9% in banks and building societies while it fell 2.9% for services. But the real eye-opener was the abysmal 69.5 out of 100 satisfaction score for utilities – an entire industry failing to meet customer expectations.

So, what’s behind this steady erosion of the customer experience?

After having a think about it – and through speaking with some of our experts internally here at Sabio – I believe there are likely several factors at play.

The Lingering Pandemic Effect

The COVID pandemic disrupted standard operating procedures and forced rapid digital transformation for many businesses – and things haven’t quite been the same since.

Employees are burned out from staffing shortages, supply chains are still recovering and organisations are still adapting to hybrid and remote work. Customer satisfaction may be a casualty of this operational turmoil.

Economic Turbulence

High inflation, rising interest rates, and fears associated with recession make for stressed-out customers and stressed-out employees. Financial pressures and economic uncertainty breed irritability and impatience on both sides of the service interaction. Customers have less tolerance for hiccups, and employees are more error-prone when distracted by money worries.

Digital Disruption

The rapid rise of digital channels, automation, and self-service processes has been a bit of a double-edged sword for organisations – particularly those with no real plan.

While digital channels improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, poor execution can alienate customers, particularly those who crave the “human touch” – or at least some form of it – during their interaction with a brand. Overdoing automation, or automating in the wrong places, and making self-service too complex is also a recipe for frustration. Indeed, this is evidenced in the recent survey, with 35% of customers saying positive use of technology by an organisation has led them to use that organisation again – but nearly half (a whopping 45%) say poor use of technology has made them stop using an organisation altogether.

But what can organisations do to reverse this negative trend? There are a few key focus areas:

• Redouble employee engagement and training. Your staff are your front-line diplomats representing your brand. Make sure they feel valued, knowledgeable, and empowered to deliver stand-out service.
• Optimise digital channels and self-service capabilities. Make interactions simpler and more intuitive. Really think about it and have a plan to strike the right balance between automation and human assistance options.
• Embrace tools and partners to improve quality monitoring, insights analysis, and real-time responsiveness. Things like voice of the customer analytics, workforce engagement management, and intelligent knowledge management systems.
• Make customer experience a true organisation-wide priority. Elevate CX to the C-suite and the boardroom. Connect customer metrics to business goals and strategic initiatives.

Thoroughly Understand Your Customer

This is where specialists like ourselves at Sabio Group can be invaluable.

We work with major brands to analyse processes, optimise resources, implement leading technologies, and design amazing end-to-end customer journeys.

Our capabilities span consulting, systems integration, training, and managed services across voice, digital, and AI disciplines. Whether it’s upgrading contact centre infrastructure, delivering workforce optimisation tools, or innovating with conversational AI and intelligent virtual assistants, Sabio helps companies see the bigger picture and execute a cohesive CX vision.

It all starts with thoroughly understanding customer needs through data analysis and journey mapping before then providing solutions and guidance that balances human and automated assistance. This not only empowers and motivates our customers’ workforce but also tears down internal silos to deliver consistent, high-quality experiences across all touchpoints.

In this challenging environment, standing out with superior service and building a reputation for customer advocacy is more important than ever. Organisations that leverage the latest thinking and technology to truly put the customer first will secure competitive advantage and reap more than just satisfaction – they’ll earn customer loyalty that drives sustainable business growth, moving the customer satisfaction dial from a negative to a positive.

About the Author

Joe O’Brien is Global Corporate Communications Manager at Sabio Group.

About Sabio

Sabio Group is a global digital customer experience (CX) transformation specialist with major operations in the UK (England and Scotland), Spain, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and India.

The Group, which includes ‘makepositive’, delivers solutions and services that seamlessly combine digital and human interactions to support exceptional customer experiences.

Through its own technology, and that of world-class technology leaders such as Avaya, Genesys, Verint, Twilio, Google, Amazon and Salesforce, Sabio helps organisations optimise their customer journeys by making better decisions across their multiple contact channels.

The Group works with major brands worldwide, including Aegon, AXA Assistance, Bankia, BBVA, BGL, Caixabank, DHL, loveholidays, Marks & Spencer, Rentokil, Essent, GovTech, HomeServe, Sainsbury’s Argos, Telefónica, Think Money and Transcom Worldwide.

Customer satisfaction is what differentiates you from your competition.

I catch myself saying this pretty often to my colleagues and to my readers. Customer satisfaction, has gained a lot of importance in the last few years. Customers have begun to expect a lot more from companies and brands than just a trouble-free purchase. With plenty of companies sprouting every other minute, customer loyalty is a hard win. Organizations have to constantly work to ensure that customer satisfaction trumps company profits. Every single time.

Not convinced yet? Let’s look at a few numbers and stats.

• By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key differentiator between brands.
• One happy customer can equal as many as 9 referrals for your business.
• Great customer experience can lift revenue by up to 15%.
• Maximizing customer experience can lower the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%.
• 74% of consumers have spent more due to good customer service.
• 86% of buyers would pay more for a better customer experience.
• 56% of global consumers say they have higher expectations for customer service now than they had just one year ago.

Source: www.garyefox.com

Source:https://marketoonist.com/

Everyone is a Customer Support Unicorn

Back in the days, organizations had separate teams for customer service that helped answer customer questions. But we still have support teams to run the show even today. What’s changed? Employees are encouraged to become customer engagement agents. Customer support agents are encouraged to sell or market products in a way that doesn’t sound promotional. Roles of people from different functions are diverging; everyone within an organization is becoming aware of the importance of customer experience to brand health. Companies are also adopting advanced customer support tactics such as implementing omnichannel support or identifying and solving customer issues even before they become pressing problems.

What Cannot be Measured, Cannot be Managed

Now that you know the importance of customer satisfaction, your next course of action is to put a plan together on how to incorporate it into your support strategy. And to do that, you need to identify and measure a few key customer support metrics. From our experience as a customer support software company, here are four key metrics that we think you should measure.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

That’s a no-brainer. If you are measuring customer success then the first place to start would be the CSAT score. It is necessary to measure this metric so that you can identify what’s lagging and how you can fix it. When you fix this in the product or service, it will result in happy customer. And when customers are happy, they share their positive experience with other people. This builds trust in your prospects because 92% of prospects trust recommendations from other customers. Another important benefit is lower churn. With every 5% increase in retention your profitability goes up by 25-95%.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One other closely related metric that you need to include when measuring customer experience is the net promoter score or NPS. This is usually confused with the CSAT score. While CSAT is only about customer satisfaction ratings, the NPS is a combination of customer ratings and free-form customer feedback. You are essentially asking your customers whether or not they will take the time to share positive reviews about your business. This feedback comes in through surveys that you take after a customer interaction. Since this is a free-form feedback, customers have the space to detail their experience or expectations from your business. Using this information you can build a better product experience and customer interaction.

When creating a survey, you need to create a strong survey program that will effectively gather the required information or feedback from your customer. Sometimes, all it takes is one question.

Churn

Most of the decision-makers in an organization will argue that churn is the most important metric, particularly if you are a SaaS company. Though there are many ways to calculate churn, it is essentially the percentage of customers who turn away from doing business with you. Nearly 86% of companies are focused on acquiring new customers. But in truth, the cost of acquiring a new customer is greater than the cost of retaining an existing customer. Churn rate helps you identify how much effort you need to put into retention and gives you insights on how you can improve your customers’ experiences.

How to Consistently Maintain 98% CSAT

Make your customers the focus of your interactions. Provide quick resolution. Follow up and close the loop on conversations with customers. Use a good helpdesk software. These are things that you already know and might have implemented them in your support processes. Here are four out of the box ideas that you can use to up your customer satisfaction score and consistently stay at it.

Avoid excessive use of canned responses

Though this might be easy to improve first response time for your agents, it does not work in favor of customer satisfaction. Your customers know when they receive a canned response no matter how personalized you make them. Use them sensibly.

Quick responses vs quick quality responses

Common wisdom has it that it’s necessary to respond to customer queries as quickly as you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to shoot for the moon. If the stress is on quicker responses, your agents might succumb to the pressure of responding quickly but the quality of their support will take a hit. Always remember that it’s quality before speed.

Automate processes with care

Automation takes a whole lot of load off your agents. Manual repeat processes like ticket allocation, auto response, can work wonders for teams that focus on time management. But automation has its pitfalls as well. You need to take the time to scrutinize every process that you automate so that customer tickets do not end up with the wrong support agent or team.

Be proactive

If you were a customer, what would your next question about a specific issue be? This is what is commonly known as forward resolving where you anticipate what the customers’ next question will be. And then you proactively offer it as a solution even before it is asked. This adds an element of pleasant surprise to the customer’s interaction and has a positive impact on their experience.

In Closing

The ideas that I have mentioned are not limited. You can get as creative as you can to come up with ideas that will help you consistently wow your customers and in turn, help you maintain a good customer satisfaction score. If you have done something out of the box and has worked well for you, share them as comments here.

Happy supporting!

About the Author

Monica Maria is the Content Marketing Manager at Freshworks. She has a profound knowledge on the ticketing system and its functioning which makes her voice about it often. When she is not charting out content strategies, you can find her reading Sci-fi, doodling, or taking photographs. You can
connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.