Customers deserve better experiences, believes customer experience futurologist Blake Morgan, with Spotify, Amazon and Apple in mind. In her new book More is More she unfolds the way there. The renowned customer service expert Shep Hyken also knows the right direction: “Perform slightly better than average and do so consistently.”

Blake Morgan is only cold one day present in burning Las Vegas when she's requested pegasystems during Pegaworld her vision on customer experience will unfold. She recalls the huge billboard with six half-naked men from Thunder Down Under welcoming travelers to the land of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“All those stimuli everywhere! You can't take a step without new incentives presenting themselves to you. They are for the masses, not the individual. So they don't hit you." Organizations must get more out of the closet, as she already illustrates with her book title. Organizations that provide lasting customer experiences DO MORE, she explains letter by letter.

Driving around uninsured

Her car insurer does not count them among such companies. When she had a child, she bought a bigger car and forgot to report it to the insurer. Without knowing it, she drove around uninsured for a year. Her mistake, but she also sees it as a missed opportunity for the insurer.

Wouldn't it be much nicer if he knew what was going on with the customer? If it makes itself heard at moments that have a major impact on the customer: a divorce, health problem, sick child, car accident, storm damage or with a deceased family member, for example? “The reverse is still the case: most experiences are delivered by customers.”

“And what do we do? We let service employees do machine work and create distance with the customer through the technology we use. While 91 percent of all consumers prefer brands that recognize and remember them and provide relevant recommendations and offers, Accenture research shows.”

From Spotify to Boeing

Will Artificial Intelligence improve this, she wonders. Examples that illustrate this are omnipresent: the playlists that Spotify compiles based on your music preferences, Facebook that tags photos, Gmail that can filter 99,9 percent of the spam out of your mail, Boeing that controls its fleet almost completely automatically: only 7 minutes of each flight is handled by a pilot.

In short, the use of AI can contribute to excellent customer experiences. However, this commitment is subject to preconditions: the desired customer experience must be leading in strategic decisions, must not be hindered by channel management, nor by inaccessible customer data hidden in separate organizational silos.

She also provides operational advice: train employees about the effects of AI, put together a working group that examines which technology is needed and introduce AI to improve processes across all silos with the excellent customer experience as the primary goal .

With favorites such as Spotify, Amazon and Apple in mind, the customer experience futurologist envisions a world in which consumers no longer have to maintain contact with customer contact departments, no longer receive advertising incentives for the masses, the e-mail box and mobile are spared from spam, everything is personalized, all equipment is voice-controlled and the cybersecurity market has grown explosively.

In an era in which the hip-sounding Chief Happiness Officer and Chief Engagement Officer are increasingly being heard, experienced rotten Shep Hyken likes to call himself Chief Amazement Officer. Customers are 'serial switchers', he kicks off. Mainly because of the poor customer service they experience so often. In the States alone, organizations are losing 75 trillion dollars due to lousy service, NewVoiceMedia calculated.

That is 13 trillion more than two years ago. You would suspect that customer service deteriorates more every year. The opposite is true. Standards are improving in almost every industry. The point is, however, that the customer has experienced better elsewhere and therefore expects more from any other organization.

Slightly better than average

Don't be blinded by customer satisfaction scores, he advises. “A grade is a rating, not an emotion. For loyal customers you have to perform slightly better than average. Take a 'rock star' like Amazon as a starting point. That organization always performs well. And if they make a mistake, they correct it immediately and score even better afterwards. They provide a predictable, consistent and good experience. And they always do.”

The CEO of Scandinavia Airlines, Jan Carlzon, already wrote about 'Moments of Truth' in 1983. “You have to manage those moments flawlessly. Customers just expect that. Perform just a little bit better and turn it into Moments of Magic.”

Shep Hyken knows how:

• Make the customer feel welcome, that you appreciate him.
• Provide customer advisors with product knowledge and knowledge of customer history to be able to provide relevant advice.
• Deliver consistent service across all contact channels.
• Limit the response time to every customer request.
• Provide great ease of use and convenient experiences.

Sounds logical? Yet customers experience more often Moments of Misery. The explanation for this: as organizations grow, more and more investments have been made in technology to manage the complexity of connecting with customers. More and more individual applications were introduced. And that increased the distance with the customer. Current technology enables organizations to become more human.

technology trends

There are five technology trends emerging in customer experience:

• Personalization: customers want to experience that you know them. Make that true.
• Social media: whole generations rely on social channels. Ensure rapid response to all communications.
• Self-service: the modern customer wants to be more 'in control'. Make this possible through FAQs, YouTube videos, access to communities, et cetera.
• Artificial Intelligence: use AI for more personalization, tailor-made advice, better service. The service employee also benefits from it. “Will AI kill jobs? No. Did video kill the radio star?”
• Digital and human: ensure the right balance between digital and human service. Continue to find out what the customer likes best in which case.

Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurologist, author of More is More: How The Best Companies Go Farther and Work Harder To Create Knock Your Socks Off Customer Experiences, and host of The Modern Customer Podcast and a weekly YouTube customer experience video series.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, speaker and author of a series of books on customer experience, including the bestseller 'The Amazement Revolution'.

 

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