Customer Effort

Customer
Effort:
Stop Making It Hard To Be
Your Customer
Why is it so important to understand customer effort in your digital channels?
Research from Matt Dixon at the Conference Executive Board has shown that the more effort your customers
have to exert to accomplish a task or resolve a query, the less likely they are to stay loyal to your business.
When you look at the state of customer experience today, however, there is a big gap between customer
expectations and what companies are delivering.
Consider just these two statistics, which show that companies are simply making customers work too hard to
get problems solved:
88%
88% of customers
want their problems
resolved in
one interaction,1
62%
62% of customers
report more than
one contact to
resolve their issue.2
In this report, we’ll pinpoint a handful of areas along the customer service journey where companies make
customers work too hard, and we’ll show you how to tell if your organization is delivering a low-effort or
high-effort customer service experience in the digital channel.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 1
Points on the Customer Journey
Where Effort is Too High
Multiple
possible
answers
No related
questions
Disconnected
escalation
Inaccurate /
incomplete
answers
No clear, single
destination point
Poor / no
contact info
What is the Impact of these Problem Areas?
When customers go online in search of answers and information, they want the experience to be easy
and effortless. Companies who make it difficult pay an enormous price. Forrester Research shows the
true costs incurred when customers experience frustration in their quest for answers online:
• 75% escalate to more expensive channels
• 25% abandon or defect
Effectively, each of these points of high effort are exit points where customers escalate their journey,
or walk away from your business. We take a closer look at each of these exit points on the next page
to help you understand how damaging each one is to the customer journey.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 2
Understanding Customer Effort in Your Digital Channel
Most organizations are surprised to discover just how much effort a customer must exert in
order to get answers to simple questions online. Look at how each one of the high-effort points
below translates into a terrible customer experience.
1. No clear, single destination point.
When visiting your company’s website in search of answers and
information, the first question that comes into the customer’s
mind is: “Where on this site do I go in order to ask my question?”
If the answer to that question isn’t instantly obvious, it means
you’re forcing your customer to navigate your website in hopes that they find what they’re looking for. Where should they click? What’s the right path? Contact Us? Technical Support? Customer Service?
Help? FAQs? With each unsuccessful click, more customers
are dropping off, contacting live support or simply
abandoning your site.
2. Multiple possible answers.
Are your digital channels set up to deliver a single, accurate
answer? Most companies have an abundance of poorly
structured content that provides customers with multiple
possible answers to their questions. It’s often the case
where customers have to search through pages of search
results, FAQs, or help topics in order to find what they’re
looking for.
3. Inaccurate / incomplete answers.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is relying on
site search tools to handle their online self-service experience.
The simple keyword-matching logic of site search is grossly
inadequate for matching customers’ questions to the exact
answer. It’s actually the ability to understand the intent behind
a question that is the key to delivering accurate answers. Intent
recognition technology, which is built in to the [24]7 Virtual Agent, takes accuracy from 50% all the way up to 95%+. This transforms your customer’s online self-service experience, taking customers from one of complete frustration to complete resolution.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 3
4. No related questions.
When customers choose to ask a question within a digital channel,
it’s likely that they will also have additional questions related to their original query. Companies can go a long way towards making the
customer service journey easier by dynamically serving up a list of
questions that a customer is likely to have next. This reduces effort
because it helps the customer achieve a more complete resolution
to their issue without having to re-enter the channel at a later time, when they think of their next question.
Over the next pages, we’ll show you what Related Questions can
‘look like’ in the context of a digital customer experience, and you’ll
immediately see the value in giving customers the next-most-likely question on their purchase path, without them having to enter it.
5. Poor / no contact info.
The live voice support channel is increasingly becoming an escalation only’ channel, meaning that customers today primarily bring their
customer service questions online as a first-step and then choose to escalate to phone or email support in circumstances where they can’t find the answer they need, or they require more personal assistance.
For this reason, it’s vital to make sure that contact center information
is prominently displayed when the customer needs it. We recommend that it appear on the answer page and easy to spot as part of the
self-service experience, versus hidden away on a separate
Contact Us page.
6. Disconnected escalation.
When customers do choose to escalate their calls from the digital to
the live channel, they don’t want to have to repeat or re-enter
information. One way to solve this is with seamless, integrated chat. Online chat technology that maintains the context of the self-service
allows the customer to bypass IVR systems, saving time and frustration.
In addition, chat technology can intelligently route customers to the agent most appropriately equipped to help, based on the content of
the online interaction. These are all ways in which customer effort
is reduced.
Next, we’ll introduce you to Virtual Agent technology and how it trans
forms the digital self-service experience by eliminating these points
of customer effort.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 4
Is Yours a Low-Effort Organization?
This Self-Assessment Will Help You Decide
Determining if you offer customers a low-effort experience is incredibly easy. All it requires is
10 minutes of your time and a willingness to take a good, honest look at your company website.
Identify 5 questions customers typically ask. Talk to your call center or look at your own current
web environment at the “frequently asked questions”….a bit of a misnomer as FAQs likely don’t
dynamically update to reflect change in customer needs, but likely the best proxy you’ll have.
1 Take those 5 questions and type them into your website’s search box, much like a
customer would do.
2
Look at the results and begin the process of scanning the content to see if an appropriate
answer is in the group. Be critical. How many links were returned? How many did you need to
preview before finding the answer? Did you receive 100 search results for a question about how
to change your billing address?
3 Did you receive a single answer, or a three-page PDF that you had to search through in hopes
of finding the right answer?
4 Rinse and repeat for the other questions.
5 Now score the outcome on a scale of 1 to 5. A score of 1 indicates that the right answer was
presented immediately, with the relevant content, and that you did not have to scan all the
possible links nor conclude that you needed to escalate your query to phone or email support.
A score of 5 indicates you simply could not find the relevant answer based on the question
you asked. Assign yourself a score of 2, 3 or 4 based on how long it took you to find the answer
you were looking for, in terms of minutes. So if it took you 2 minutes, score it a 2, and so on.
Low customer effort = low score!
What Your Score Means
5
Excellent! You’re delivering a low-effort experience.
10-12
13+
Average. Customers are expending some moderate effort to find answers to
common questions. While this score isn’t terrible, it’s still damaging because
in the fast-moving world of digital self-service, forcing your customers to exert
even a moderate effort is too much.
Any score of 13 or more means your customers are expending too much
time and effort to get the answers they need.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 5
Virtual Agent Technology Promises Low-Effort and
High Satisfaction for Digital Self-Service
Virtual Agent usage has jumped from 28% in 2012 to 43% in 2014.3
Low-effort is the name of the game when customers enter a digital channel. It should come as no surprise
that customers don’t want to be made to work hard to find the information they need. However, not all
self-service tools are created equal. Customer service leaders need to fully understand that different
self-service technologies offer vastly different levels of satisfaction.
Many organizations still believe that FAQ pages and simple site search functionality constitutes the kind of
self-service experience that customers want. The problem with this thinking is that neither of these tools
deliver one-right answer to customer questions, nor do they give customers complete control of the
self-service journey. Virtual Agents, in contrast, do all of these things and more.
Over the next few pages, we take a closer look at Virtual Agents – the digital self-service technology that is
surging in popularity and delivering lasting, measurable customer experience and operational benefits in
every industry.
Virtual Agents: Your Low-Effort Solution
1
Customers want a fast and
effortless experience.
An engaging Virtual Agent, located on your
website or other digital channel such as
social and mobile, invites your customer to
ask a question using
natural language.
1
Will my credit card work in Europe?
1
When a customer ask the question, the
Virtual Agent intelligently recognizes the
intent behind the question and serves the
single approved answer.
By recognizing intent, not just keywords,
the Virtual Agent can deliver the one
accurate answer to a question regardless
of the hundreds of ways a question can be
phrased.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Customer Effort:Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 6
2
Customers crave customization.
Virtual Agents not only deliver accurate
answers but they can also deliver marketing
offers that boost online conversion and
revenue.
In this example, a customer enters the
question “Will my credit card work in Europe?”
and the Virtual Agent recognizes that the real
intent behind the customer’s question involves
preparing for an upcoming trip.
Will my credit card work in Europe?
2
In addition to providing the precise answer to
the customer’s question, the Virtual Agent
automatically introduces a highly relevant
purchase path for the customer by serving an
offer related to travel insurance – even though
there was no explicit mention of the word
‘travel’ in the customer’s question.
[24]7 technology can help you achieve
click-thru rate improvement of up to 20X and
conversion improvement of 15X compared to
online ads on a page where the customer intent
is unknown. 3
Understanding the customer
is paramount.
Here is where marketers enjoy truly
effortless voice of the customer insight.
[24]7 VOICES captures every question
customers and prospects ask,
in their own natural language, through
any self-service interaction channel.
This data is then automatically
structured into intelligently-organized
and interactive themes for marketers.
[24]7 Virtual Agents provide interactive
voice of the customer insight.
This is like having a 24x7 market
research agent interacting DIRECTLY
with your customers so that a clearer
and clearer picture of your customer
profile emerges automatically over time.
© 2015 24/7 Customer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Effort: Stop Making It Hard To Be Your Customer | 7
Next Steps?
Gartner predicts that by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting
with a human. The time to deploy a virtual agent solution is now. [24]7 Virtual Agents deliver cost savings, revenue
opportunities, and voice of the customer insight to hundreds of organizations worldwide. Contact us today to see how
we can help your organization meet the needs of today’s digital customer.
Learn more by visiting us at 247-inc.com
US Headquarters: +1 650.385.2247
Canada Office: 1 866.454.0084
UK Office: +44 0 207 836 9203
APAC Office: +61 2 9004785
queries@247-inc.com
www.247-inc.com
US Headquarters: +1 650.385.2247 Canada Office: 1 866.454.0084
UK Office: +44 0 207 836 9203 APAC Office: +61 2 9004785
queries@247-inc.com
1512WPCustomerEffort.pdf
©2015. 24/7Customer, Inc. All rights reserved.