Customer experience and feedback management are the buzzwords of the decade. The two are not mutually exclusive. A recent Microsoft State of Global Customer Service report says, “90% customers have a more favorable view of brands that give them the opportunity to provide feedback.”
The report claims that continuous feedback is a great way of engaging your customers, as it gives them a voice and furthers opportunities for them to build a stake in your brand. Most of us are already aware of this fact. Yet this Hubspot study reveals that a whopping 42% of companies don't survey their customers or collect feedback. The gap becomes more glaring when viewed in the context of the raging pandemic. As it stands, 2020 has left little room for face-to-face customer interactions – a fundamental step for trust and confidence building.
But we’re living in the digital era. With so many different outreach channels available to companies, why do they fall short on customer feedback?
Real-time feedback and experience management matter more than you would think to your brand success. Let’s explore a typical scenario.
A customer visits your retail outlet looking for a specific brand’s mobile phone. He wants the phone in rose gold colour. At this point, let’s assume he is a strong promoter of your brand. The product is currently out of stock, and your in-store sales representative lets him know that the particular model will be available in two days’ time. The customer leaves his name and mobile number, and your representative guarantees a call when the product is back in stock. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s call this touchpoint #1.
The customer then goes home, logs on to your company’s online store. He sets a notification to alert him when the product is back in stock – just to be 100% sure. This is touchpoint #2.
Now, say the store representative misses alerting the customer when stock becomes available. But, luckily, your website’s programmed alerts do the job; they notify the customer that the mobile phone is back in stock. Unfortunately for the customer, it’s not available in rose gold. Slightly disappointed, the customer places the order for an available colour, on the website. At this point, he is still your promoter, but you’re at risk of losing his confidence.
The product arrives three days later, but in broken condition. The customer calls your helpline. Let’s call this touchpoint #3. After long conversations with your service representatives, he is assured a replacement in another three days. Still, he’s unhappy about many things: the amount of time it took to connect with each representative and walk them through what happened, the further three-day wait for replacement, and the fact that the device arrived broken in the first place. At this point, he is clearly your detractor.
Don’t forget: #1, 2 and 3 are just the touchpoints we’re considering for the purpose of this example. In reality, at a mid-market or enterprise level, there are numerous touchpoints in play between your customer/prospects and your brand. Monitoring these touchpoints closely can tell you when and how you’re at the greatest risk of losing customer confidence and your competitive advantage. In the above example, wouldn’t it have been great if you could have identified the warning signs in real time, and intervened before they escalated, each time?
With the right feedback management technology, you can not only gauge your overall customer experience, but also call out the pitfalls that can lead to – or have already led to – customer dissatisfaction. You can then rectify them in real time, and improve the chances of boosting your NPS.
Dropthought is an invaluable engagement tool that helps you do all this and more. We have been building competitive organizations that thrive on feedback-driven models. Our powerful analytics engine helps you with actionable insights that can add value to your overall customer journey. Our Customer Success team works with you every step of the way, helping you identify key touchpoints and map them into your customer journey.
By integrating Dropthought with your tools, technologies and channels, you can gather both closed and open-ended feedback from multiple channels, compare notes, identify pain points, and make amends – all with just a few clicks! These are critical first steps in building an organization that is truly responsive to customer needs.
Watch out for our next blog on the five cool features that make Dropthought the ideal engagement management tool for mid-market and enterprise segments.
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