Moments of truth are essentially opportunities to engage with the customer but what happens when the customer experience is a bad one?
Negative moments of truth can be painful, revealing serious flaws in the business offering. They can also generate insight into how the business is failing to meet customer expectations. Is the business mis-selling products? Do some departments drop the ball and treat customers unfairly? Have there been miscommunications or unclear messaging? Access this insight fast enough and it becomes possible to spot wider trends in complaints before they snowball and spill out over social media, significantly damaging the reputation of the business.
For service-based industries, moments of truth are most important when the customer complains and is seeking resolution or redress.
Research suggests that up to 70 percent of customers defect after a poor experience, making it vital that these moments are addressed to reassure the customer and prevent a breach of regulatory compliance.
Customer Retention
How the business handles a negative moment of truth will determine its ability to not just keep but win future custom. Delivering a swift resolution that accurately deals with the issue will allay customer concerns and provide added reassurance. If the customer doesn’t receive that acknowledgement within an acceptable timeframe, their loyalty is lost.
Intelligent automation can play a key role in both the effectiveness of the initial interaction and the wider analysis and review process. Speed of resolution is a key factor for the customer in determining success. An automated system can help increase resolution times at the first point of contact by up to 90%; having a significant impact on both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
To achieve this speed and efficiency the business needs a robust solution. Using the automation offered by workflow management systems can both control and speed up processes. It can give staff all the support they need to resolve the customer’s query during that initial interaction. This first point of contact resolution capability not only benefits the customer relationship and reputation of the business, but is also a key metric for many regulators.
Keeping it Simple
At EQ, everything we do is with the objective of simplifying every transaction, and caring for every customer. Never is this more important than when a customer is unhappy. In addition to a swift resolution to their problem, customers also want to be understood and reassured that taking their time to communicate a problem has made a difference.
This mix of process driven efficiency with a personal touch can be tough for many companies to balance. Yet, with the right systems and framework in place, customer-facing agents are able to truly focus on delivering the best customer experience. With an intelligent automated workflow system controlling the business processes and regulatory requirements, staff are able to give customers the personal, attentive service they demand and deserve.
With the customer experience a key battleground in the fight for customer loyalty, and the increase in the number and complexity of vulnerable customer interactions, how to turn these negative moments of truth into positive ones should be a key priority for businesses of all sizes.
By using these moments of truth to provide actionable insight businesses can refocus and engender trust. By using a customer-centric automated process, the business effectively has an early warning system for complaint monitoring, enabling the business to foresee issues and to head-off problems. The result? Customer lifetime value is prolonged and potentially discontented customers aren’t just retained but become loyal advocates of the brand.
Three key takeaways to maximise customer engagements
- Delivering a swift resolution that accurately deals with the issue will reassure the customer that you care about them and their custom.
- Using an automated workflow management system can both control and speed up processes, and increase the quality and consistency of each interaction.
- Give customer-facing staff the right support and framework for them to truly focus on delivering the best customer experience.
