Eglė Kišūnienė, Chief Customer Service Officer at Edenred Finance
Many companies share a traditional approach that customer service is a matter of the customer service department and they forget that customer satisfaction is considered an indicator of future business projections. It is the customer satisfaction indicators rather than current financial results that may reveal how successful your business will be in the future.
In the modern and extremely competitive market customers have more choices than ever before and a much better understanding of their own or their business needs. Customer experience is determined by a wide range of components. Lengthy waiting time, limited communication channels and technical barriers will lead to customer dissatisfaction and their loss in the long run.
Long-term, sustainable relationships with customers, which become the basis of a successful business, help companies to create customer centricity or business positioning where all the company’s decisions are made, strategies are chosen and daily operations are focused on the customer.
Customer satisfaction must become a universal indicator of company’s performance
Nearly every business claims that they aim to create customer’s experience and that the customer is at the core of entire picture. However, if you look deeper into the processes of organisations, you will clearly see that in order to achieve their goals they are more focussed on the achievements of individual departments, company functions, while the customer is left aside. Quite often departments aim at their goals through indicators that may have nothing to do with the customer experience.
A survey conducted a few years ago revealed that only 1 out of 26 dissatisfied customers give feedback on their unmet expectations, and 91% of unsatisfied customers who have not shared their experience simply discontinue with the company’s services. Naturally, the companies where customer satisfaction is a performance indicator in more than a single customer service department are much better prepared to actively solve problems that might otherwise remain unnoticed.
Let’s look at it from the customer’s perspective. In the eyes of the customer the entire company, starting with internal processes and ending with external positioning, is one team. Even if one believes that department A has no interaction with department B, a customer who is disappointed in one aspect of the service is likely to significantly change their opinion not only about the service, but about the service provider as well.
Sustainable corporate relationship and internal cooperation is the basis helping to ensure that employees, regardless of the department, will be motivated to strive for high-quality customer experience. This involves, especially in larger organisations, common channels and programs enabling to maintain a dialogue among professionals in different fields. For example, the American giant HubSpot has implemented a “Voice of the Customer” program, in which the sales team regularly shares customer feedback with the whole organisation.
The staff behaviour directly depends on their assessment criteria, therefore customer satisfaction must become a universal indicator of the company’s performance. This is the only way to achieve the maximum employee engagement in creating a better customer experience.
Best experience is ensured through other than customer service
One of the indicators that enables one to measure the strengths and weaknesses of services provided is the impact score. It helps to identify the main areas most frequently mentioned by customers in their reviews and determine what is the key driver for overall satisfaction. By focusing on areas with higher impact scores, companies can effectively set the course for improvement, while also deciding as to which departments’ employees should be encouraged to devote more attention to customer experience. It is important that the collected data and direct customer feedback are widely shared.
By conducting customer satisfaction surveys every six months at Edenred Finance, member of the Edenred Group, we examine all areas where the customer experience is built. The latest survey revealed that the highest customer satisfaction is ensured by the smooth and simple implementation of daily processes and operations and the successful start of cooperation. These indicators are accompanied by the company’s communication and customer service.
A clear and simple process and a possibility to independently perform daily operations is no less important than direct customer service and communication with company representatives – this can be easily seen on the customer side. A possibility to comfortably use the system and deal with day-to-day issues can significantly affect a customer’s overall attitude towards service, even if they have never communicated with a customer service staff. One may say that customers who never needed any customer service assistance are provided with best experience.
What are the future expectations?
The customer’s expectation to receive simple, integral and tailored service has become self-evident. There are opinions that investments in new platforms and digital tools are the key to an excellent customer experience, but in majority of cases a secret of success lies in much more simple things.
A successful customer-oriented approach starts with knowing your customers. Customer surveys and feedback forms are a perfect tool, however, the real knowledge comes with the process of building a long-term relationship. By understanding their roles in this journey, each department will ensure the hygiene of the customer experience and the maintenance of sustainable relationships.
The company’s approach to sustainable development, the employer’s solid stance and reputation are the components that gain more and more weight for the customer over time and inevitably depend on the processes taking place within the company as a whole. Improvement of customer experience can therefore be predicted to be even more complex in the future, requiring the coordination of actions and efforts of all departments.