4 Steps to Optimising the Customer Journey
Using the latest contact centre technology to optimise the customer journey.
All the statistics point to the fact that customer-centric companies perform better than competitors without a customer experience mindset, and the customer journey is a crucial factor in that. In light of advancements in contact centre technology, we’ve seen how CX leaders are reviewing their strategies in order to improve operational efficiency and productivity. Now we’ll look at how this all fits into optimising the customer journey, in terms of streamlining the customer experience, fostering engagement, improving interactions at each touchpoint and elevating customer satisfaction.
Map the customer journey
In any contact centre, the customer is always centre stage. In order to optimise their journey, we first need to look at what the journey entails. While this will be different for every organisation, depending on the sector and business model, essentially when a customer interacts with a brand, it’s a multi-faceted process across numerous touchpoints.
Understanding the journey in relation to your own operations is important as this is what will help you to create targeted and personalised interactions that inform business decisions, enhance productivity and improve competitiveness. Optimising the journey will lead to improved business outcomes, such as improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, better retention and, ultimately, higher ROI.
By mapping the customer journey, you can identify bottlenecks or gaps where customers experience difficulties leading to dissatisfaction. You can then use the CX technologies we’ve already discussed to address those issues and fill gaps.
85% of professionals found that the use of customer journey maps resulted in increased customer satisfaction, lower churn, fewer complaints and higher NPS.
Understand your customers
Understanding your customers is critical to serving them effectively. You can do this by creating customer personas representing the various segments of your audience, then feed this information into your CX solution so that it can react appropriately when they contact you. This may include segmenting based on demographics, such as age, location, buying habits or other behavioural aspects, such as how they navigate your website or the channels they use.
AI analytical tools can identify patterns, learn from them and deliver insights that will enable you to refine your strategies and deliver a better response to each customer segment. These tools can be customised and integrated into your contact centre solution to give you a clearer view of how customers interact with you and any problems they encounter along the way.
65% of companies say that improving data analysis is very important when it comes to delivering a better customer experience.
Personalise the customer journey
Hyper-personalisation is going to be the big buzzword in the contact centre industry this year. And the latest CX tech offers all the functionality managers need to understand customer behaviour intimately and deeply personalise the customer experience, even making recommendations that can influence the customer’s next move. This too will produce valuable information that can be used in other areas of the business, such as marketing and CRM.
80% of customers are more likely to do business with companies that offer a personalised experience.
Test and refine
Optimising the customer journey is all about refinement – refining your processes, your touchpoints and technology. It’s not a one-off task, but an ongoing process. What’s worked well in the past may not be so successful now, or tomorrow. That’s why it’s important to continually reassess and fine-tune to maintain a customer journey that is effective, productive and relevant. A/B testing can help you find the best ways of doing this, removing pain points in the customer journey and giving you the insights you need to adjust your strategy for greater success.
Be aware too that the latest CX tech can give you too much data. You don’t have to measure everything. Measure what matters to your customers. Analysing feedback from them is one way of doing this.
42% of customer support professionals say using AI tools to collect and analyse customer feedback significantly improves the customer experience.
Custom-made solutions for the customer journey
Contact centres are often viewed as cost centres, but with the right CX technology in place, customised and aligned with your business model, they become value centres driving organisational objectives. Which is where DigitalWell can help. We’ll give you the advice and technical know-how needed to get more from the technology now available, so you can drive customer satisfaction, boost loyalty and productivity in the contact centre – ultimately improving your ROI.
Contact a representative to find out more about our advanced contact centre solutions.
For more insights on how CX technology and AI is transforming the customer experience industry, download our report, “AI & CX: From Transition to Transformation“.
