Are You Leveraging Advanced Customer Experience Technology?
In the past, having a great Customer Experience was dependent on the quality of an organization’s staff, and their ability to make each individual interaction a positive reflection of the brand. Customers would walk in to a store relatively unaware of the product or service they wanted to buy, hoping to find an employee to help fill in the gaps of their knowledge. However, in the modern business community, customers are walking into stores with a completely different mindset, if they even bother to visit a brick-and-mortar location in the first place. Due to increased technology, Customer Experience is now so much more than the service provided by employees during customer interactions, and now encompasses aspects like the ability to reach a product, quality of a branded website, ability to access product information, and virtually everything else that encompasses the customer journey before, during and after a purchase.
One example of advanced Customer Experience technology that is impacting the way brands interact with customers is the ability to make connect with customers beyond in-store transactions. A brand’s social media and web presence play a huge role in the identity formed in the mind of its customers, and it is no longer good enough to just have a dormant profile or website. These profiles need to be actively managed, and provide the kinds of service that match that doled out by in-store employees. In practice, this means quick response times for messages, as well as providing value like useful video or blog content about the product, service or industry involved.
Beyond ways to communicate with customers online, technology like artificial intelligence and digital wallet applications are revolutionizing the payment process for retail and like-minded brands. For example, rather than getting to the movie theater early to make sure there are tickets and good seats available, enhanced technology has made the process virtually stress free. In most new theaters, customers can order their tickets and choose their tickets online before they even get to the theater, eliminating the need to arrive early and wait in line. Another example of increased Customer Experience technology brands should be utilizing are “quick-pay” services that streamline the payment process with the swipe of a wallet or phone app. By integrating technology like this into the Customer Experience, brands can reduce wait times and improve customer satisfaction and attrition.
Technology has profoundly impacted the way that society communicate with each other, and the same can be said for the way customers interact with brands. The journey now involves many more steps, and involves a lot more effort put in place by brands because customers have more purchasing options than ever before. Brands that realize this change and adjust their budget and resources to include these Customer Experience technologies will find that they are forming better relationships with customers, thus resulting in more brand ambassadors and more opportunities to form new customer relationships with these referred individuals. Modern brands must have up-to-date digital technology to create an industry-leading Customer Experience platform.
Second To None empowers customer-centric brands to deliver consistent, intentional and authentic consumer experiences.
We adeptly design and manage mystery shopping, compliance, engagement and voice of customer solutions grounded in strategic relevance, program integrity and actionable insights. Our solutions are developed on the basis of solid research and statistical science. We achieve success through a relentless focus on quality and innovation, consultative relationships and a talented team of professional associates.