The latest insights showing gains in customer satisfaction through machine learning tied to natural language processing in customer service chatbots powered by artificial intelligence are now available in a new white paper that outlines the twelve steps for CX AI innovation.
Don’t you love it when you see something like that advertised on LinkedIn or coming over your Twitter feed? I think I see something like that at least three or four times every week. It can be tantalizing to grab that white paper and dig into these latest insights powered by sexy buzz words. Alternatively, it can be just as exciting to attend industry events and listen to the inspiring keynotes from the likes of Shep Hyken, Adam Toporek, Annette Franz, and all the other leaders in customer service strategies. After all, we’re all looking for increases in customer satisfaction, and sometimes it feels like the big-swing for big gains is the best approach. But don’t get me wrong, these are great speaker/strategists with amazing track records. I’m just suggesting we take care of the low hanging fruit before we look at broader strategies.
However, sometimes (in fact, most of the time) it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. Moreover, those little things are quite often the difference between merely satisfied customers and delighted customers. Delighted customers, that’s what we’re really after.
So let’s take a look at some examples of the little things that can make or break the difference between customer satisfaction and customer delight.
Remember Your Caller
With modern cloud-based IVR platforms, it’s relatively easy to connect your IVR to your CRM with a simple API connection and retain your caller’s status as you pass the call from automation to an agent. Also, don’t forget to store their caller ID so that authenticating them on their next call is rapid and delightful.
Account Status
Now that you remember your callers make it easy for them to check on their account balance, payment dates, balance on gift cards, available credit, recurring payments, and more. For even more customer delight, enable these status checks via text messaging.
Rewards Programs
With the recent hacking of a national retailer’s rewards program, people what to be able to quickly check on the amount and expiration date of their rewards codes and cards. A simple text-to-check number would be frictionless and delightful.
Meter Reading by Text
One of the more frustrating things, when you’re moving, is waiting on hold so that you can give a utility meter reading to a live agent. There are so many other things you’d rather be doing. For new customers, there’s nothing more delightful than a text line for sending in your move-in and move-out meter readings. Get those new customers delighted from the start.
Push Account Updates
Your customers what to know about anything important, especially before they discover it on their own. Broadcasting text and voice alerts for things like insufficient funds, credit limit changes, or any other event are essential. They may not necessarily be pleased with the news, but they’ll appreciate the level of service.
Service Alerts by Text
Recently, we experience a severe windstorm where I live, and power was out for a few hours. So, of course, the power company’s website was overwhelmed with mobile users trying to get a repair status. Sending customers text alerts confirming the outage is known, when a crew was assigned, and when a repair is expected might not make it less cold, but at least I would have been pleased with the service.
Customer Delight Survey
NPS (net promoter score) and customer satisfaction surveys can provide valuable data. However, we like to focus on delighted customers, and we want to gauge customer delight. So at the end of a call or text, ask them, “Was our service delightful?” Please don’t give them a range of 1 to 10, because that’s just like everyone else. Let them know you’re different by wanting to gauge if they were delighted or not. Because for you, nothing matters more.
These are just a few examples of how automating the little mundane things can delight your customers, while improving the operational efficiency of your customer service department. This the core of our LeanCS philosophy, and how adopting a customer-first strategy improves efficiency, reduces costs, and ultimately delights customers. Also, our Managed CPaaS, the Compass Automation Platform, is the ideal tool for non-programmers to build and deploy each of these automatons and more.