I have been working on a series of presentations to newly appointed Customer Experience leaders and have come to the conclusion that my chosen industry of Multichannel Customer Experience is suffering from a number of myths held as given truths that are worth calling out. To quote:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” Mark Twain.
I looked around for somewhere where these were collected and couldn’t find them so decided to publish my own list so others can add on to it. So here goes
Myth #1 – The total number of interactions (per person, per hundred people or whatever) is a constant and the division among channels presents a basis for investment decisions by companies
Untrue .. Technology especially mobile has changed the game. If you add the transaction statistics together for online, mobile, email, IM, social, contact center and store interactions the interaction counts are exploding. I can’t find a cumulative statistic anywhere but the following may make a useful example.
I have a client who, way back in year 2000, used to check his bank balance and credit balances monthly when he got his statement, update his checkbook balance weekly, keep a weekly record of his credit card balances on a post it note and call his banks IVR or call center for a balance check about once a month (this is only 2000 we are talking about) and visit his branch about twice a month. About 14 interactions a month.
He recently told me he now, in 2013, gets his balances daily for each of five accounts on his mobile app, by text or email, gets notifications of every deposit or about 10 a month and every transaction over $100 or 20 per month, goes online to each of his 5 accounts at least twice a month, calls the call center or IVR about 5 times a month in response to the balance messages he gets and visits his branch every other month.
That is a move from 14 to 197 interactions a month or 19% CAGR per year 2000 to 2013. And I have a suspicion 50% of that rise is since he switched to an iPhone in 2010.
Myth #2 – The rise in digital transactions is reducing the volume of call centre interactions
Untrue. Mobile especially is increasing interaction counts. However a recent Bancography (June 2013) survey indicated that US retail banking contact center interaction volumes in banking had declined less than 1% a year “forecast to drop 4% over 5 years from 2011 to 2015, 6.4 billion to 6.1 billion”.
From the America Express 2011 Global Customer Service Barometer “US consumers prefer to resolve their customers service issues using the telephone (90%), face to face (75%), company website or email (67%), online chat (47%), text message (22%), social networking site (22%).”
This is changing slowly but even Gen Yérs are just people who still ultimately like to talk to people, especially when they are in trouble. The conversations will get much complex as customers resolve the simple things online or in intelligent agent experiences
Myth #3 – Optimizing User Experiences Is The Same as Optimizing Customer Experiences
Untrue – User experience is focused on the capability and ease of use of a particular transaction on a particular device or maybe multi device to achieve a specific objective. Customer Experience relates to multiple transactions across multiple devices over time (and in fact the concept of a Customer Relationship Experience is emerging for a lifetime of unrelated Customer and User Experiences). These are very different disciplines with very different thought processes.
For example a text message that indicates a fraud alert on my credit card which I click on and auto dials an agent who pushes a picture of a credit card receipt with a signature on it to verify it is me may be a multichannel user experience. However include the message 2 weeks later to indicate that the issues has been resolved in my favor and I will not be charged and it is definitely a customer experience and include a reference to the incident on my end of quarter customer summary and that is very much a customer experience. Do that over 10 years and we are talking about a true Customer Relationship Experience.
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