In today’s customer-centric market, saying that the customer experience is crucial to a business’s success is like saying profits are a good thing: True, but not exactly a groundbreaking revelation. Most companies are well aware of the importance of providing a great customer experience, but the challenge is knowing how to provide that experience.
While “customer experience” itself is a pretty basic concept, it can be made up of many different parts. What customers want is constantly changing, and companies need to be able to adapt. However, there are three customer experience basics that businesses can – and should – be constantly monitoring for valuable feedback and data.
1. Reasons for Customer Turnover
Customer turnover can cost businesses trillions of dollars a year in lost revenue. Companies can help retain customers by identifying the reasons behind customer churn and responding accordingly. For instance, keyword-driven scorecards can reveal trends to help identify customer grievances and better understand customer needs. This data can be used to inform business strategies and improve agent training to prevent future issues and reduce churn.
2. Customer Sentiment
Just as important as what a customer says is how they feel about certain interactions. That’s why customer sentiment is a key metric for companies to monitor. Sentiment analysis tools scan conversations for phrases that reveal whether a customer had a positive or a negative experience.
For instance, when a customer says, “You’ve been very helpful,” it indicates a positive interaction, while “This is very frustrating” suggests a more negative one. Recognizing common customer pain points and performing a root cause analysis helps to ensure increased positive interactions.
3. Agent Listening Skills
Active listening skills are extremely important for contact center agents to have. Agents can’t really hear or comprehend what the customer is saying (or trying to say) if they are constantly interrupting or talking over the customer. Also, interrupting customers while they are talking is a guaranteed way to lose customers.
There are tools to help with this. For instance, silence and overtalk detection shows the percentage of silence, or overtalk, within a call for both the customer and agent. Again, using this data to perform a root cause analysis will reveal what additional training is needed to improve agent listening skills.
Finding ways to regularly monitor these three metrics can help businesses improve the customer experience they’re providing on a regular basis. Even small training adjustments when needed will have a huge impact on the overall customer experience.
