Building permanent bridges to great customer experience

Many executives and IT management I have met with over the past year share the pursuit of customer experience excellence but they also share a similar pain point - you have to start somewhere and you can't do it all, at least not all at once.

When marketing and technology come together to support a paradigm shift this large it creates natural pressure to get it right and get it right now.  There is no shortage of data that points to real business justification for building stronger ties to your customers.  Consider these data points from Forrester, Gartner and others in the space:

• Companies are increasing their investment in their most important asset – customers - with 90% seeing this as the most important investment they need to make
• A company could increase revenues by over $12 million annually in the research and sales process, while the cost savings for improving service could reach $2 million by improving online customer experience
• Increasing customer satisfaction by 10% for Global 500 companies can lead to additional $200M in potential revenue (on average)
• Four attributes will characterize the next phase of development - experiences will be: customized by the end user, aggregated at the point of use, relevant to the moment, and social as a rule, not an exception.  Forrester's Megan Burns refers to this as the CARS principle.
• 50% of customer service applications are custom built and the packaged customer service app market is highly fragmented, often focusing on a single channel of interaction
• 57% of online customers will abandon a purchase & 65% are very unlikely to return if you do not provide a good online experience

Productivity experts clearly favor the most successful strategy for any large to-do list as breaking it down into manageable pieces and this is no exception.  There are some things you could consider in your breakdown to help you prioritize, such as:

• Finding a quick win that will produce fast or high return and does not require a long project to implement
• Choosing a starting point that will build in a platform or cultural shift that will support further projects or broader change
• Using data to determine where you have low satisfaction or bottlenecks that could ease conversion or increase loyalty
• Focusing on people's passion or commitment to get behind a specific area of change

Many of Adobe's customers who are focused on transforming their customer experience have done exactly this.  By focusing on key touchpoints in a customer's journey around points of conversion (acquisition) or complex support interactions (service) they were able to identify projects that were addressable, had clear KPIs, and would help them put in place a signpost for future change and a platform to support that change.  What follows are some great examples of companies who have tackled the customer journey one step at a time, and they were able to start and finish with a clear and attainable goal.

EBS (more info)

The team at EBS recognized that information technology is a powerful tool in delivering value to the business and to members. EBS had an aging client/server technology for mortgage origination that lacked flexibility and did not offer members intuitive and engaging ways to do business with the organization. Driven initially by the need to replace this mortgage origination system — a crucial tool for specialists in 100 branches across Ireland selling mortgages to members — EBS embarked on a major IT modernization project by starting at the beginning of a customer's journey with them.  Along the way they realized some substantial benefits:

• Reduced time to process mortgage quotes by 62%
• Determined member needs based on age, savings, debt, and other factors, using information from disparate systems
• Linked with multiple systems to recommend a complete array of relevant financial products
• Increased value of every member transaction
• Transformed back-office system into dynamic, front-office sales tool
• Cut total cost of ownership by leveraging existing SOA infrastructure

Another factor driving technology and business process transformation at EBS was the need to comply with “Know Your Customer” (KYC) regulations. KYC requires financial institutions to identify new clients and gather relevant information prior to conducting financial business with them.

“We stay ahead of the industry curve, and we wanted to be among the first to comply with KYC rules, but we saw KYC as more than just a compliance requirement,” says David Yeates, head of IT for EBS.. “We recognized that KYC was an opportunity to more efficiently gather new members’ financial information up-front to serve them more professionally and efficiently, and to tailor product and service offerings to their individual needs.”

EBS put in place a technology solution built on Adobe LiveCycle ES using Adobe Flex that leveraged its Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), existing IBM WebSphere application server and IBM mainframe environment.

Other companies that also benefited from this focus on initial interactions and the purchase process include:

• impuls systems, who signs up new customers online and streamlines closing contracts, strengthening competitive advantage and doubling online engagement. More
• Verizon Wireless, who built an online storefront for engaging customer experience and increased revenue from online media assets. More

It starts with conversion, but don't stop there

Another key area to consider is the second call a customer makes. This is the call a customer makes after they have signed up and configured their product or service and are experiencing a service, product or administrative issue that is going to require some help.  If you acquired the customer online, you have a much better chance of successfully serving them online but you need to invest in this touchpoint to make it as seamless and effective as possible.  According to Forrester, more than 70% of customers still abandon online service and support situations in favor of more expensive support channels and this is hurting your brand image, impacting customer satisfaction and costing you money every time it happens.  For many executives I talk to this is the most important touch point and even if that is debatable the value of getting it right is not.

Rooted in the firm belief that there is no better place to receive medical treatment than in the healing environment of the home, Janus Health set out to transform the delivery of in-home care for doctors and patients. Janus built a rich Internet application (RIA) workspace leveraging Adobe LiveCycle ES solutions that enables doctors to provide full-service, compliant medical attention to patients in-home.

This initial investment not only provided payback in terms of the quality of care provided, it also helped the IT team to put a platform in place that they can build further projects on, effectively increasing the ROI of each subsequent project.

C. Gresham Bayne, an M.D. and Janus Health co-founder, told Adobe, “Escalating healthcare costs can be reduced dramatically by offering acute care in patients’ homes. Adobe LiveCycle ES provides vital tools for solving the complex information and business processing requirements for in-home healthcare."

Along the way they also realized some other benefits, including:

• Streamlined compliance with privacy and Medicare regulations
• Increased number of housecalls possible in one day
• Reduced Medicare program administration costs
• Automated processes for ordering prescription, imaging, equipment, and other critical services

You have to start somewhere

Your customers, partners and business suppliers interact with your company in a myriad of ways across multiple channels and using increasingly sophisticated systems and devices to do this.  Having a technology platform that can help you detangle the problem is a good place to start but an even better place to start is based on what customers need and how employees can help them.

According to Patricia Seybold, whose Customers.com initiative strikes at the heart of this work, "You should realize that this is probably the most challenging and gratifying work you’ll ever do in your career. The satisfaction that comes from working on applications that touch the customer directly is immense. The continuous feedback you get from customers as they use these systems gives you clear, unequivocal priorities for each of your releases."

When you realize additional benefits along the way this is your customer karma and it's performing an important task in building your overall reputation.  It's bringing you happier, higher value customers and empowered, satisfied employees all based on the simple fact that together they can get things done and they can do it in a rewarding, engaging and frictionless way.  This feeling, coupled with some customer data and proofpoints prove that your efforts are focused on the right things.  Cultural and technology shifts will empower the next wave of even more successful and even more rewarding customer experiences.

Re-posted from http://amplify.com/u/hqmo