The galileo moment

Think of a brand, an organ­i­sa­tion, com­mer­cial or pri­vate. Then think of the cus­tomers who col­lec­tive­ly form the val­ue pool – growth and prof­it – for these busi­ness­es.

We visu­alise the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of cus­tomer jour­neys and the infra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port these, and facil­i­tate customer’s desired out­comes as a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between con­sumer and cor­po­ra­tion, indi­vid­ual and enti­ty.

And yet, rather than that tra­di­tion­al mod­el of cus­tomers orbit­ing a busi­ness, mov­ing in and out of its sphere of influ­ence, there is a “Galileo moment” com­ing when it will be recog­nised that the reverse is true. It is the cus­tomer who remains fixed in space and time, and it is com­pa­nies that move in and out of the val­ue orbit of the con­sumer.

This dis­rup­tive aspect to the life of an empow­ered, mobile and increas­ing­ly vocal cus­tomer base demands that today’s chief exec­u­tive and board of direc­tors con­sid­er the expe­ri­ence of cus­tomers at every touch­point to gain insight that turns loy­al cus­tomers in an increas­ing­ly vir­tu­al world into advo­cates, while react­ing quick­ly to new chan­nel evo­lu­tions to retain mar­ket share, and dis­cov­er and nur­ture new sources of rev­enue.

In our recent annu­al World Wide Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Survey[1] , we asked 69,000 par­tic­i­pants in eight coun­tries to rate their most recent cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ence. The result showed an aver­age of only 44.5 per cent were sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with their expe­ri­ence. At the same time, the sur­vey also revealed the per­cent­age of hap­py and loy­al cus­tomers expo­nen­tial­ly increas­es after a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, indi­cat­ing on aver­age a 33 per­cent­age points improve­ment was pos­si­ble in the over­all per­cep­tion of a brand.

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is fun­da­men­tal to the future of con­sumer-cor­po­rate mod­els

Because cus­tomers now decide how they want to inter­act with a com­pa­ny and not the oth­er way around, they expect to have access to infor­ma­tion at any time. 4G-enabled mobile smart devices have changed every­thing. We are “instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion junkies”, says Antho­ny Mac­ci­o­la, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of soft­ware busi­ness KOFAX[2] . “We want com­plaints and issues addressed imme­di­ate­ly.”

Our sur­vey showed clear­ly that Gen X and Gen Y, born after 1965, are lead­ing the adop­tion of online and social media chan­nels through smart-device use, inte­grat­ing them not only into their dai­ly inter­ac­tions with brands and busi­ness­es, but also into their life expec­ta­tions, includ­ing those under­pin­ning cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

Tech­nol­o­gy is essen­tial­ly chang­ing expec­ta­tions, not mere­ly facil­i­tat­ing them. For­rester ana­lyst Thomas Hus­son says: “Cus­tomers have expe­ri­enced a mind shift. Tech­nolo­gies packed into mobile devices enable peo­ple not only to instant­ly con­sume, but also cre­ate and main­tain con­trol in their every­day lives.”[3]

This per­pet­u­ates a chal­lenge for the near-future high­light­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Cus­tomer Man­age­ment Insti­tute in a sur­vey of con­tact cen­tre pro­fes­sion­als. This iden­ti­fied that, while 68 per cent of com­pa­nies think offer­ing mobile cus­tomer ser­vice improves the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, only 25 per cent have a mobile cus­tomer con­tact strat­e­gy in place.

For­rester sur­veyed cus­tomers as part of its study of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence (Forrester’s CXi).[4] The results show how much cus­tomers val­ue an excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and how their future behav­iour is like­ly to be impact­ed by their per­cep­tion of a company’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide a bet­ter over­all cus­tomer expe­ri­ence com­pared to indus­try peers.

As Matt Sims, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent busi­ness devel­op­ment Teleper­for­mance UK and South Africa, explains: “Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is fun­da­men­tal to the future of con­sumer-cor­po­rate mod­els. Today we sup­port 50 per cent of Interbrand’s Best Glob­al Brands 2014[5] . These are busi­ness­es that have put in place strate­gies includ­ing out­sourc­ing in its var­i­ous mod­els that help ensure they are pre­pared for the future and the many poten­tial ben­e­fits an ‘always on’ con­nect­ed cus­tomer land­scape will bring.”

In a world of big data and end­less touch­points, all cus­tomers tru­ly want is an expe­ri­ence with a brand or organ­i­sa­tion that says “we know who you are…” to which the cus­tomer can respond “… and I believe you”. This is the Galileo moment.

1 World Wide Mul­ti­chan­nel CX Sur­vey

2,3 Smarter CX for Smart Device Users

4 The Busi­ness Impact of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence

5 www.teleperformance.com