Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?
- by Richard Lefebvre
An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon
Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in
common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need.
No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this
“ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service
experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense
for brands.1
Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it?
Toyota is a
great example of using smart assistance technology to understand
customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit
button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures
intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the
data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the
email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it
to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy.
Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com,
part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live
chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at
high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors,
all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat
sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best
products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity
online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as
help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can
co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online
check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the
opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve
customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25%
of chat sessions into product orders.
Photobox,
the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver
personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures
customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on
agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company
experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the
most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity
increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day
decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded
with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15%
increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders
from newly referred customers.
