By
Jeremy Watkin
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Date Published: October 07, 2015 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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This post originally appeared on the FCR blog.
Interested in learning more about improving the customer experience? Join Jeremy at Contact Center Expo and Conference! Check out his session: Transforming Customer Experience: Where Do You Begin?
I’m 6’4” tall so I don’t typically spend much time riding in the back seat of cars–especially not in my own car. We had family in town this past weekend so I answered the call and sat in my back seat quite possibly for the first time ever. When I sat down, I adjusted the floor mat and found the tiny USB plug for my headphones that went missing quite a while ago. It had fallen out of my pocket and I assumed it was gone forever.
Isn’t it funny how simply changing my seat resulted in finding what I was searching for? Business insights are a lot like my missing USB plug. Sometimes a change of seat or speaking with those in other seats within your organization will give you new eyes to see problems and solutions you previously believed were nonexistent.
Voice Of Customer (VOC) is all the rage right now for companies interested in improving the experience for their customers. Before you spend many thousands of dollars on a VOC solution, allow me to offer a few ideas to kickstart your program.
Get to Know the People on the Front Lines
Housed within your contact center is a wealth of knowledge and information about what is and isn’t working about your product or service. Whether you periodically speak with customers or speak with the people speaking with your customers, create open lines of communication so they are comfortable sharing the challenges and complaints they regularly face. You may find that there’s a simple, inexpensive improvement that can pay big dividends for your customer experience.
Get People in All Different Seats Talking to Each Other
You may not realize it but many people within your organization have an impact on your customer experience. Sales and marketing work to get customers in the door and signed up, management creates policies that affect customers, and customer service takes care of them once they are customers. These groups should be talking regularly to gain insight into how they can help one another make the experience as smooth as possible. At FCR we are big fans of regular round table discussions in an effort to share more and more insight about customers with our clients.
Ask Your Customers
The best way to ask your customers about their experience is to survey them. At this point I’m less concerned about what survey you use and more concerned about getting regular customer feedback. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), or even the one with the happy and sad face are all great and inexpensive provided that you allow your customers to share feedback about their experience. The important part is routinely reading this feedback, following up, monitoring trends, and fixing issues.
It’s so easy to plop down in our chairs each day and only see the customer experience from our own point of view. Perhaps you think your customer experience is perfect–or perhaps you think you have an insurmountable problem. Regardless of what camp you are in, make it a routine to get out of your chair and view the customer experience from another seat. By gaining a new perspective, you may just find something you lost– whether you were looking for it or not.