Putting Customers First Is A Priority
What everybody knows but not everybody is doing
When I speak to our customers about their priorities, it is clear that their agendas are changing. There is less talk about cutting costs and more about how to improve the customer experience.
This answer is rapidly climbing the list of priorities and more often than not, it is up to CIOs and IT managers to make it happen, because technology usually plays such a key role in these initiatives.
And it’s not just companies changing. Customers and their expectations are changing as well. They expect personalized services and customized experiences that can only be delivered with the help of new mobile and social technologies and better insights. It’s a world that’s mobile-first, cloud-first for companies as well as their customers. This new world of customer expectations is visible in every industry, even in such venerable cost-sensitive industries, such as finances.
A 2013 study by Capgemini has shown that 53% of customers believe quality of service is a deciding factor when choosing banks and 49% say ease of use is a key deciding factor.
The question of customer experience is now often closely related to mobile and social strategies. As a company, you need to take a hard look at how you can talk to your customers online and on their mobile phones.
Companies need to respond and they need to respond with innovative and singular approaches. Let’s look at Delta Air Lines. Their Fly Delta app enables users to track their flight, download mobile boarding passes, view seat maps and much more. Around 19,000 flight attendants has started using Nokia Lumia 820 handsets powered by Windows Phone 8 to interact with customers and provide mobile points-of-sale. In addition, pilots are using tablets to replace their flight maps, which results in less weight on the plane and reduced fuel consumption.
Nedbank enables visitors to their branches to use Lync communication platform to make a video call to contact center professionals that help them. In just a couple of week, the solution was adopted by 40 percent of their branch customers, who appreciate that they no longer have to wait in lines to talk to a bank representative. They are also now much more likely to recommend Nedbank to their friends and families.
In Slovenia, Banka Koper developed a mobile banking solution that enables their customers to use banking services and perform actions on the go. When developing the app, they’ve focused on a user-friendly interface that looks great on a small screen but still provides the majority of capabilities of the web-based version. This ensured that they increased customer loyalty and attracted new customers.
These three examples are just a tip of the iceberg, yet they clearly show how technology can be leveraged to improve the customer experience and differentiate a company from its competitors. Those, who want to create and keep their competitive advantage will need to look for solutions and technologies that will set them apart and deliver the best customer service.