Guest Blog: The Top 4 Essentials for Exceptional Customer Experience

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my friend and colleague Idit Aloni-Halfon talks about four ideas for providing an exceptional customer experience.  Focusing on every crucial point in the customer journey is key. – Shep Hyken

In a recent blog post we discussed the importance of brands understanding their customers’ individual journeys, and being there for customers during their make-or-break moments in a way that is personal and memorable. Some might even say that providing an individual customer experience will quickly become a strategic advantage in an otherwise identical service market.

So, what do organizations need to do in order to provide a personal customer experience and win over their customers? Here’s our checklist for providing an exceptional customer experience.

Make Them Feel Unique: Focus on Each Individual Customer Journey

There is no denying that each customer has the need to feel special. Customers will take notice of enhancements in products and services and will greatly appreciate the more personalized experience that they are receiving because it speaks to them as individuals.

By using Big Data technology, organizations can examine all customer interactions and transactions. Over the course of time, patterns will become identifiable, and organizations will be able to use this information to better understand trends in customer needs and to decide how they can be proactive in meeting those needs.

Seize the Moment: Leverage Real-Time Analytics for Real-Time Actions

Brands are starting to take notice of the importance of being there for customers during their “decisive moments” – the make-or-break moments when a customer is in need for the organization to act.

Organizations can identify decisive moments in the customer journey by combining real-time data with historical data, and can then determine whether a specific action or contact is required. Actions based on smart decisioning engines, agent guidance and process automation, will have to be taken based on real-time capturing and analytics. At that point, the organization may choose to move the interaction to another channel, change the context of the conversation on the current channel, or create a new interaction altogether. By knowing when and how to act, organizations can provide proactive, satisfying experiences that are fundamental to brand loyalty.

Empower your People: Prepare the Organization 

With changing times and technologies, customers are becoming better educated about products and services that interest them through their own self-discovery and research. As customers become increasingly accustomed to serving themselves, they also have much higher demands for sales associates and agents. Customer-facing employees must feel empowered to take on this challenge.

Organizations need to ensure that the right agents are on the front line, with the training and motivation to succeed during these decisive moments. Using real-time guidance, they can ensure that agents do not miss a thing in this multifaceted environment – be it an opportunity to delight customers or capture sales.

Stay Restless: Instill Enterprise-wide Improvements Using Inside-Out and Outside-In Data

Each customer has his or her individual journey and, as this journey generates varying experiences, there is a lot to be gained from “closing the loop” by analyzing interactions and resulting customer feedback for operational and customer service uses.

This enables organizations to collect a wealth of customer input and use it to generate insights, on different aspects of their operation. These insights can be leveraged to deliver a more meaningful and memorable experience for the customer, and an efficient, effective and scalable service capability for the organization. 

So, how does your organization stack up to the challenge of providing exceptional customer service?

Idit Aloni-Halfon is a passionate Customer Experience professional, at NICE Systems. Idit has spent the last decade consulting and leading CX initiatives in large organizations in Israel and at Vodafone New Zealand. As she works with industry influencers, her passion is finding new ways to build exceptional Customer and Employee Experiences. Follow @NICE_Enterprise