Customer Experience Management focuses on building a consistent, integrated, relevant customer experience across all touchpoints that leverages customer insights to help enable an organization’s customer strategy. It is much broader and larger than just coordinating marketing messages out to customers. Many organizations are considering or implementing Customer Experience Management initiatives. However, as most of these organizations have found out, this is not an easy task. Consider the following real-life example:
This week I flew on United from Redding, California to Philadelphia. On Monday, I was 700 miles away from reaching 1K status in their mileage program – a status that not many of their customers reach, because it requires a minimum of 100,000 miles flown on United in a calendar year. Due to weather conditions in San Francisco, my flight was delayed by 5 hours. The woman at the check in counter proactively reached out to me, discussed alternative connecting flights, and, together, we booked a back-up itinerary in case I missed my connection. Because of my status, she went out of her way to find a red-eye (my only option) that would give me the upgrade to First Class so I could be at the client site somewhat rested.
Because we were delayed so long at the Redding Airport, the woman who helped me initially finished up her work hours and a new person was assigned the gate. Just before we boarded the plane, the new gate agent called me up to the gate and explained that because of weight limits, they were bumping me from the flight. I looked around at the many non-business travelers sitting at the gate, and asked the gate agent if he had looked at my profile. (Yes, I know, very similar to the “Do you know who I am?” question, but I said it nicely.) He had not. I then explained to him that I was a Premier Executive member, 700 miles away from reaching 1K status. He looked my information up in the system, apologized, and then put me back on the flight.
My red-eye was delayed and eventually cancelled due to mechanical issues. I received an email notice of the flight cancellation prior to the announcement made to the passengers sitting on the plane with me. It included a revised itinerary for me the next day. Before I had even gotten off the plane, I was on the phone with United’s Premier Executive customer service line, where the agent I spoke with quickly addressed my question, changed my flight to better meet my needs, seated me in an acceptable seat, and put me on the stand-by upgrade list. However, she could not email me a voucher for lodging – for that, I would have to stand in the extremely long customer service line at the airport.
On Thursday, I traveled on United back to California. I went online to print out my boarding pass. When I logged on, I was greeted with a “Welcome to 1K Status” message, and my profile had been updated to reflect my new status level. However, when I printed my boarding pass, it still said Premier Executive. At the airport, I was told by a less-than-friendly gate agent that I could not pre-board because my boarding pass did not say 1K. I had her look up my information and, together, we saw that it said I had over 100,000 miles (the requirement for 1K). She informed me that even though the computer system said I had the miles for 1K, because it was not printed on my boarding pass, she could not let me pre-board. Eventually, she relented and let me pre-board.
The point here is not to bash United (I’ve had similar experiences with other airlines as well, and I’m sure you have your own set of horror stories), but to demonstrate the disconnection between all of the touchpoints I interacted with this week:
Gate Agent #1 in Redding: used customer data to proactively prioritize treatments based on the value of the customer, worked directly with customer to develop solution that best met customer needs
Gate Agent #2 in Redding: had access to customer data, did not use it initially to guide customer treatment, but quickly revised treatment once data was viewed
Email Status Alerts: used a variety of information to keep me up-to-date on status of flights throughout the day. In some cases, these status updates were more updated than what the United gate agents had, and I found myself giving them and my fellow passengers the correct information.
Telephone Customer Service Agent: used customer data to develop flight plan that best met my needs
Airport Customer Service Agent: didn’t look at customer data, no usage of customer data to prioritize service
Online profile: had latest update of my behavior, activity and data; used to create a relevant web page to reflect – and congratulate me – my new status
Web-based check in: did not have a complete picture of my profile and customer data, resulting in an incorrect boarding pass
Gate Agent in Philadelphia: had access to customer data, used customer data, but did not modify her behavior or treatment – until pushed – based on that customer insight.
As organizations move toward a customer experience model, they need to take into account all of the customer touchpoints, determine “business treatment rules” for each, and provide front-line employees with the flexibility to use both the business treatment rules as well as known customer data to create an experience that meets the overall experience objectives of the organization AND the needs of the customer. In many cases, this requires an organization to invest heavily in front-line employees, since they are the “face of the company” to the customer. An Infoserv research report determined that 40-80% of customer satisfaction and loyalty is determined by the customer-employee relationship (http://www.infosurv.com/employee_satisfaction.htm). Roles, responsibilities, expectations and measures of these employees need to align with the customer strategy and resulting experience. Organizations that ignore this vital touchpoint risk failing in their customer experience initiative.
(previously published on quaero.com on February 20, 2009)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment