7 Myths of Customer Experience (And Why They're Wrong)

“We’ve got to look at what’s causing people to leave, and we’ve got to communicate that out,” Robbins said. He recommends customer journey mapping as an effective way of gathering information that can lead to quick changes.

One health insurance provider realized there was a disconnect between its clients’ HR departments and the employees who were signing up for coverage. The provider was missing out on potential revenue from optional benefits programs because the employees were having difficulties navigating the stack of forms they received during enrollment. According to David Squibb, chief sales and marketing officer at Xpertdoc Technologies, a provider of customer engagement and communication management software, the answer was to simplify the process. The insurance provider leveraged Xpertdoc to create an electronic on-boarding process in which customers received an email with direct links to smart forms where they could submit their personal data. The email also contained materials, such as videos and FAQs, to help them with any questions they might have had. “What they found is that within two months of that going live, they went from less than 1 percent of employees selecting optional benefits to over 37 percent selecting them,” Squibb says. Additionally, the quality was impacted, with customers getting their coverage more quickly.

MYTH NO. 3: CUSTOMERS DON’T EXPECT TO HAVE A CHOICE IN FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION OPTIONS.

Companies operating under this myth assume that after customers contact a company once, they will be happy with whatever channels the company chooses to make available, according to Robbins. But in reality, 86 percent of customers expect that when they reach out to a company, they will be given a choice of channels for doing so. Slightly more than a third (37 percent) of contact center leaders agreed.

Robbins addressed this at the conference by again referencing the electric utilities. To notify customers of an expected two-day power outage, Robbins’s own service provider sent an email. Robbins and his family were on vacation at the time and had limited internet access. When he got home, he found, among other minor inconveniences, that food the family had left in the refrigerator was now spoiled. “Had that company given me the option to get a text or [to reach me] on my social handle, or whatever, I could have done something about it,” Robbins said.

What to do about it: Because of scenarios like the one recounted above, it’s important that companies ask customers how they want to be contacted. This can be done through focus groups or survey systems, but an even easier way to do so is to have service agents simply ask the question and record the answers.

“One of the reasons I love my daughter’s elementary school is that if something happens at the school, the very first day they say, ‘How do you want us to get ahold of you? Do you want us to text you, call you, email you, [use a] social network?’” Robbins said. Unfortunately, “companies aren’t doing this. But if we want better customer relationships, one of the things we have to do is cater to the preferences of our customers.”

Robbins also suggested actively engaging customers in decisions prior to rolling out any new communications channels. When choosing among solutions, it’s good to think about not just what systems would save the company money and time, but which ones customers would prefer and which ones would make their lives easier.

And this applies just as much to self-service channels. TeamSupport, for example, offers the Customer Hub self-service offering, which allows customers to log in and view their account information or access company knowledge bases on their own. “We’ve got a number of customers who spend a surprising amount of time and effort really customizing that, making it look really good, so that their customers can access information and knowledge bases.” While offering these options and producing the content can be “very time-consuming,” Johnson argues that in the long term, it makes for much happier customers.