Beyond the Customer Satisfaction Horizon - Fostering Loyalty through Customer Service
Beyond the Customer Satisfaction Horizon - Fostering Loyalty through Customer Service by Nancy Jamison
The contact center industry can reference decades of success in automating customer interactions using IVR. In the early years, the use of IVR was focused primarily on cost savings for the contact center and after-hours availability for the caller. Back then, customers were simply happy to have access to their information at night or over the weekend when agents weren’t available. And, regardless of the awkward touch-tone interface, IVR became a required component of every contact center strategy and one of the most annoying yet ubiquitous customer service tools. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way from those early years.
Today, while customer accessibility to information is still critical in a customer service strategy, the proliferation of both consumer and contact center technologies has dramatically changed what it takes to satisfy customers. And, unlike in the past, customers are now defining how and where they will be serviced through mobile phones, handheld devices, Internet phones, and of course, traditional landlines. To keep up, contact centers employ service strategies including CTI, IVR, web, chat, VoIP, inbound, outbound, and speech recognition. With these dramatic changes in customer behavior and contact center technologies, how do you determine if you’ve got it right?
In the past, customer satisfaction was the critical measure. Surveying customers and scrutinizing reports told us if customers were using our self-service successfully. Today we are learning that we can push beyond simple satisfaction. Smart contact centers are evolving their service with a focus on customer loyalty. Loyal customers are not only satisfied, they are passionate about a company, making them advocates for that company’s services. The numbers are telling us that loyal customers contribute significantly to a company’s success.
This paper discusses the technology and philosophy trends that are pushing the industry to focus on developing happy, loyal customers.