Improved Customer Experience Delivers Cost Savings

Primary customer interaction points for service providers with their customers should be limited to buying/renewing, utilizing the services and updating any changes.

It is the service provider's responsibility to make the above interactions frictionless.

The perceived value of services will be affected by friction in the above areas.

A better customer experience can result in cost savings as well.

By optimizing services, the service provider can delight customers & deliver a competitive advantage.

The following approaches can be used to understand value creators and destroyers:

• Understanding the customer personas and their journeys

• An end-to-end process map.

• Data Mining and analysis

• Value stream maps

• Customer Experience ownership

Did you notice the last one? If you don’t own it, you might just pass the buck instead of thinking and fighting for the customer.

A combination of these approaches could reveal, friction points and opportunities, some examples:

1. What are customers’ expectations?

   1. Keeping customer experience in mind when deciding the metrics

   2. Metric should come first followed by the ways to meet it.

2. Is it possible to increase Self Service?

   1. If its low – a persona and journey-based review may offer some insight.

   2. Can self-service be deployed in more areas?

3. What rework loops exist within the process?

   1. Process mining flows may shed light.

4. What are the reasons for customers to call or inquire – which persona calls & when?

   1. Can we identify & eliminate the query drivers?

   2. If not, which is simplest and quickest way to answer those queries?

5. Which parts of the process can be automated, for speed and cost effectiveness?

6. Which parts of the process, do really need to be done by real people?

   1. What kind of people do we need?

   2. Which is the best way to train them?

   3. How can we retain them?

Answered and executed well – the above have led to better customer experience and lower costs.

At EasyProblemSolving – we use ideaTRIZe(TM) to help our clients workshop around these areas and more.

Know more about our innovation services here.

Reach out to discuss, how have we helped Outsourcers and outsourcing service providers do both - improve customer experience while reducing costs.