There is a lot of talk, a lot of work and a lot of success amongst the customer experience professionals of the world about optimizing interactions. More and more interactions continue to move to online and more of those to mobile. Social is finally starting to make real inroads into business operations.
Yesterday in three back to back client conversations I was forcibly reminded that as we map our customer journeys it is worthwhile noting that not all interaction events are equal. And there are some things that just can’t be handled digitally, well shouldn’t be, they can be but I wouldn’t rely on it.
These are events that absolutely transform the customer relationship and it is dramatic how often these “Experience Critical Interactions” can only be completed face to face or at least voice to voice. Mess these up and your relationship is dead.
Rather than pontificate about these theoretically I will spell out the three specific examples that we discussed and you can make your own judgements.
I have experienced all but one of these. I will leave you to guess which one I haven’t.
Automated Banking And Credit Card Owner Error – “oh no – I just transferred $2000 to my credit card company instead of $200. My account is going to overdraw. My partner will kill me. There is no undo button. What do I do? “ The only thing to do is call that’s what. When the agent undoes the transaction because of your customer status you are a customer for life”
Online Dinner Reservations – SMS Text “Because of a computer malfunction your dinner reservation at the word famous Hopolopo Madagascan Restaurant this evening was confirmed in error”. Your biggest client just flew into town with her husband to eat here with a 6 month reservations waiting list that you trumpeted that you had gotten into “Just because she is important !”. Now would be a good time for a Hopolopo phone call or even a “click to dial” in the text message taking you to a telephone concierge service.
Digital Wellness – Posting your health and fitness achievements to Facebook sometimes needs to be subject to some personal message screening and control “Debbie Johnson completed her quarterly check-up at the local pharmacy wellness center. Key Achievements – HDL dropped 8%, weight reduction 8lbs, BMI reduction 4%, now pregnant”. Just because she said she wanted to share her health and fitness achievements with her closest friends still doesn’t mean everything should go there.
Seven key questions for you?
- In each Customer Journey and especially Customer Relationship Journey (consisting of multiple experiences) have you highlighted your experience critical interactions that could transform your entire relationship and what do you do about them?
- Have you defined interaction channel constraints, some things that can only be handled through a particular channel, for example voice to voice?
- Do you differ these interaction constraints by customer segment and customer value? Some people really are more valuable than others.
- What is the cost of getting this wrong?
- Is this an opportunity to differentiate your store based and person to person capabilities from your new digital competitors in your marketing materials? How do you do that in a positive way?
- When you rescue your customer how do you politely remind them that you did so and that you did it because you treasure and care about his relationship with you?
- How can you improve these critical relationship interactions? Analytics driven smart agents? Click to chat? Click to talk ? Referrals to other partners who can help? Referrals to social communities with similar experiences?
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