CEM is a strategy that focuses the operations and processes of a business around the needs of the individual customer across multiple channel interaction with a company’s product, brand or service throughout the customer’s lifecycle.
Customer experience management is about gaining in depth knowledge about your customers by extracting insight from the multiple channels and touch-points. An efficient way of achieving this is by analyzing the huge customer data available on social media channels and extracting important data from it.
A company’s ability to deliver a positive customer experience can result in increased share of wallet and repeat business. In addition to this, a company will increase brand preference through the differentiated customer experience offered, therefore, improving loyalty that leads to creating brand advocates.
Create Loyalty & Advocacy
- Point of need – identifying potential customer support or engagement opportunities through social media listening and monitoring suite
- Satisfaction levels – nothing is more important to customers than respect. Once you have identified an unsatisfied customer you need to find solutions or connect them to the appropriate resource to allow them to get taken care of.
- Loyalty – If you focus on the individual customer every time, you will build that loyalty and trust, ensure you are using some type of CRM that enables your reps to connect with that individual customer on a personal level.
- Advocate – if you treat them well and answer them on their terms, repeat business will happen and they will become your brand ambassadors.
Loyalty is now driven by a business’s interaction with its customer when &where the customer chooses to interact.
The challenge: The connected customer
The way people communicate has completely changed in the past couple of years.
- More than 2 billion people are using social media across 100 million channels
- More than 85% of online purchases are driven by online ratings and reviews
- There are more than 175 million internet enabled smartphones in the US alone
- More than 30% of Americans have dropped their landline service in favor of smart phones
B2C is now C2B – Customers are now in the driver’s seat
Business’s no longer control every message that represents their company because customers are able to publicly rate, review, refer and advocate for your business. Every customer is connected to each other in at least one social media platform. The paradigm shift should empower business to grow through comprehension of data & connectivity.
The Solution: Listen, Learn and Share
Social media is a public conversation indexed on the web. It provides unparalleled level of customer, competitive and market data. In addition to, the potential to increase revenue through offering differentiated customer service.
Social media allows businesses to:
- Connect immediately with customers in conversations
- Curate customer perception and differentiate from its competitors
- Monitor and analyze actual customer data
- Identify market and customer trends
- Build vocal customer advocates and increase loyalty
So why does any of this matter to traditional call center needs? Because if you don’t have a strategy you need to get one, and you can start here:-
- Create customer profilesYou need to know your customers and because of the connected customer challenge, as well as, the number of customers you have. The solution is creating profiles that guide you to understand your customers’ journey at every brand touch point across the various channels. In addition, to the traditional structured model of collecting data, you have to include social media when constructing your customer profiles.
- Personalize your messagesWith the full knowledge about your customers, you now need to personalize your interactions. Just remember that customers want to engage you when and where they want to, still to that unwritten rule and you will deliver a differentiated customer experience. Addressing the customer by name shows them you are paying attention to them.
- Remain relevantRelevance means providing the appropriate solution to the customer. Each customer is at a different lifecycle, some are starting making consideration, and others are in the purchasing stage while others are in post-purchase stage. Staying relevant by giving the right response at the right time and place ensures you offer satisfactory customer experiences.Echoing Gartner author of “The Rising Force of Social Networking”, Refusing to communicate with customers via social media is as harmful as ignoring emails or phone calls. Manage your customers’ experiences where they are and how they want it. Customer is truly the KING!
