Saana Borgström Are you aware of all the opportunities real-time analysis of customer initiated contacts can offer for your business?
Customer contacts are a highly valuable and often unused resource that can help improve customer experience, increase loyalty and to expose the internal and operational inefficiencies that generate customer contacts.
Here are 4 business challenges that can be addressed with the Customer Contact Intelligence Aiwo produces.
- Decrease in consumer spending growth
- Decreasing digital satisfaction
- Increasing call volumes
- Talent attrition in customer care
Next, I will explain these in a little more detail.
1. Consumer spending growth is expected to drop in 2023
The year 2023 has got off to a challenging start. Inflation is high, the energy crisis weighs on consumers’ finances, and the geopolitical situation in Europe causes global concern. With so many uncertainties in sight, it’s no wonder consumer spending growth is predicted to drop in 2023.
In a turbulent economy, consumers are considering their purchasing decisions even more carefully and their expectations for quality and experience are sky high. Understanding your customers’ needs and staying on the pulse on how well your service actually meets them is now more important than ever.
Ability to act upon continually evolving customer needs with real-time data can be a key growth driver even in a tough economy.
Aiwo offers a systematic way to capture and analyse contact data and to produce valuable insights about what your customers really want and how they feel about your current product or service. It also helps to identify emerging trends and hidden signals that could be crucial in enhancing your competitive advantage.
It also helps to communicate this information efficiently within the organisation, all the way from C-level to individual support agents.
2. Digital satisfaction is decreasing
The global pandemic forced businesses to rapidly digitise their operations. Some managed to do so effectively, while others found themselves overwhelmed in the abyss of customer issues from multiple channels, resulting in a duplication of their customer service numbers.
According to the third global consumer sentiment survey, consumer satisfaction of digital experiences is decreasing globally. Also, the majority of digital customer contacts still require assistance, and only 10 percent of newly built digital platforms are fully scaled or adopted by customers.
Ultimately, creating a great digital experience requires a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and preferences. Improving one communication channel without considering its connection to other channels and the overall needs and preferences of the customers will not yield the best results.
Aiwo offers a comprehensive view of all communication channels and their performance. Gathering and integrating data from all channels allows for determining the most suitable channels for diverse customer needs and interactions. This assists in planning and implementing the optimal channel strategy.
3. Call volumes are up and becoming more complex
According to The State of Customer Care study (2022), 61% of surveyed customer care leaders reported a growth in total calls. No wonder reducing contact volumes is among the fastest-growing priority areas for customer care leaders.
The reason for call volumes being up is not only because of an increase in the customer base but in the increased number of contacts per customer. This suggests that despite the availability of multiple service channels, the customer is still unable to resolve their issue – a classic example of failure demand.
However, it is important to keep in mind that not all customer demand is equal. Answering and resolving complex customer issues can lead to amazing customer experience and this is what customer care agents should be able to focus on. Addressing repetitive queries, such as how to locate specific information, does not add value for the customer and consumes customer service resources.
Aiwo extracts data from customer contacts to help focus and prioritise development actions in order to eliminate the underlying causes of recurrent contacts, thus reversing the trend of increasing call volume.
4. Talent attrition is affecting customer care capacity
Let’s face it, handling frequent complaints from angry customers takes a certain level of fortitude. Talent attrition is currently one of the most significant challenges for customer care leaders.
The typical customer experience measuring systems, like NPS, do not reduce the stress of customer service work. What NPS actually measures is the performance of the customer care team, not the overall satisfaction of the customer – but the results are often viewed as such.
The current measurement systems in customer service are actually creating a CX mirage: when the service is handled well, it creates an illusion that the customer is willing to recommend the company’s service. However, this often overlooks the reason why the customer reached out to us in the first place – the service or product did not fulfill the customer’s initial need.
What most measurement systems fail in revealing is the number of contacts that should not occur in the first place. This results in trying to optimise eg. call durations or the number of handled tickets to improve efficiency.
The data generated by Aiwo helps in identifying and quantifying the underlying causes of contacts – often rooted outside of customer service. Eliminating these causes helps decreasing the overall volume of contacts.
This ultimately enables redirecting the customer service workload away from transactional and repetitive calls and freeing up resources to enhance the customer experience while providing more fulfilling work for customer service representatives.
Would you like to know the volume of your unnecessary customer contacts?
As I mentioned earlier, not all customer demand is equal. The number of customer contacts that enable building loyalty, adding value and doing additional sales should be increased. And those that merely drive costs, should be reduced.
Unfortunately, the average volume of the cost driving contacts is around 60% of the total volume of contacts. This means there’s a lot of scope for cost savings and well as improvements in efficiency and customer experience.
Try our cost calculator or contact us to learn more about how your company could benefit from customer contact intelligence.