September 2, 2014
We’ve entered a new era where the traditional predictors of growth — productivity and efficiency — no longer suffice. Today, customers hold the cards, driving the sales process and how they interact with your brand. If companies truly want to accelerate their business growth, they need to know their customers as people, not transactions, before they can drive deeper engagement.
84% of companies believe that customer engagement will overtake productivity as the primary driver of growth. This means that companies must make the most of the “moments” that occur between the organization and its customers.
Regardless of the channel (email, phone, website, social media), a customer must walk away from any encounter with your company with a better impression than they had before. Positive customer moments drive repeat business. Poor customer moments, at best, drive customers to switch to your competitors; or at worst, lead them to broadcast their dissatisfaction via the social media megaphone.
In order to avoid this, companies have to be “customer-obsessed” of focused specifically on the digital experience your customers have with your brand. The first wave of customer service and CRM technology focused on automating customers and providing a single view of customers — in some ways reducing them to transactions. But the new wave of customer experience and digital disruption has pushed the process full circle, to the point where technology must now enable a personal, direct connection.
But switching from a transaction-based culture to a customer-obsessed one is no easy task. The best way to change is to pinpoint where you’re falling short. Here are a several signs that your company is mired in a transaction-based mentality:
- You think your customer service department owns the customer relationship. In reality, no one department “owns” the customer. Organizations need to reorganize around the idea that all employees share ownership of a series of customer moments. With each customer interaction, or moment, customers are forming an opinion about your brand, and companies need to capitalize on those moments to create satisfaction and further engagement.
