A personalised customer service experience is a key factor success in 'remarkable' businesses, but it doesn't happen very often! Only 4% of UK consumers feel treated as an individual when contacting their service providers including banks, telephone companies, utility providers and retailers, despite almost half of these companies claiming they offer 'personalised' service via contact centres. That's according to a new report by Pegasystems.
They also report:
- 42% of customers feel they know more about products and services they have than their provider does
- Only 2% of respondents actually trust the answers they receive back from organisations (Companies, however, perceive things very differently with 74% believing that customers trust most if not all of their responses!)
- 28% don't feel service providers value time spent talking to them on the phone
Why does this happen? Well one factor appears to be whether staff are given the information that they need to deliver a 'personlised' customer experience. Apparently almost half of customer-facing staff (45%) cannot see all accounts and products for customers on a single screen, or previous communications, and 6% cannot see any information at all!!!!
Information is good, but it's what you do with it that counts! It's clear that in 'remarkable' businesses, front line staff have access to, and crucially use, information to 'personalise' the customer experience. It's called Empowerment and it's an integral element of 3D Characteristic #6 - establishing an UBER culture.
How well do your people know your customers? Crucially, how good are they at 'Demonstrating' that they know?