Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business. You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Service reps found behind great customer experiences

Your customer service agents are licensed to thrill

However, the average service organization operates under a model that puts the customer as the top priority. And, for good reason. An above-average customer experience correlates with increased customer loyalty.

This translates into more systems and tools for the service rep to utilize to not only be more productive, but also to provide a more seamless and effortless customer experience. By default, this is creating a much larger problem: More complexity and hurdles for the rep to overcome in order to solve a customer's problem.

Despite the investment in adding more systems and tools to improve the frontline, service leaders see little return. While these tools and systems should support and enable success, a majority (76%) of service leaders report they struggle with the planning and execution of these projects. Research shows that the average live service interaction is taking longer than it did in the past, and most service organizations report either flat or increased call volumes year over year. It has become clear that these projects do not return the expected productivity gains.

Gartner defines the rep experience as "the interactions of frontline reps with systems and tools required to resolve customer issues". To shift focus from the customer experience to the rep experience, service leaders must understand that by improving the rep experience, the organisation will see improvement in operational efficiency and the customer experience. In fact, improved rep experience can help to increase customer satisfaction by 11% and reduce customer effort by 9%.

"We've been living in an age of quality - organizations are focused on improving the quality of customer interactions, in order to increase customer loyalty," said Rick DeLisi, principal executive advisor at Gartner. "We see this in online services through more options, more control and more functionality, as well as in live service interactions by creating a more 'effortless experience' for the customer."

To better support reps, service leaders must lighten the load during live interactions. Specifically, Gartner research shows three key ways service leaders can tame the complexity for reps and allow them to focus on helping customers:

• Identify and remove barriers to rep productivity
  Service organizations devote a large amount of effort to understanding their customers' pain points through customer experience measures, such as voice of the customer (VoC). These same activities can be adapted to assess rep experience improvement opportunities as well.
• Uncover creative, quick-hit wins
  Uncover the nonobvious, quick-hit solutions to help reps focus their time and attention on the customer. By studying reps as they work and enabling rep-led solutions, service leaders can take near-term actions to improve the rep experience.
• Balance productivity and quality
  Research reveals four key strategies and tactics for quick wins in balancing productivity and quality. These include eliminating unnecessary customer contacts, keeping customers on the website, training reps to focus on the best customer outcome and helping to avoid a follow-up issue.

"The element that most service leaders overlook is what we call the 'rep experience' - we're so focused on the customer experience and how it translates into increased loyalty. Or, why it's important to feel empathy for the customer," said DeLisi. "However, our research shows that the rep experience is just as crucial to ensuring a high-quality customer experience. It's only through the performance of your reps that you create a superior live customer experience for your company and increased operational efficiency."

More information on what service organizations can do to improve the rep experience is available to Gartner clients in the report "Unleashing Rep Productivity in the New Work Environment".

Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business.

You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy. Grab this goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, technologies, research, suppliers and partners, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid CX strategy.

While most marketers could list maybe a dozen key points for improving their brand's Customer Experience (CX), the researchers and writers at The Marketing Factbook have identified FORTY main 'CX Keys' which will help you drive your customers to new levels of delight, loyalty, advocacy and profitability.

The areas in which customers have direct contact with your organization are perhaps the most obvious places in which CX improvements can be made, and this report addresses all 24 of these 'Direct CX Keys', applicable to offline and online businesses alike.

At the same time there are many other areas that indirectly affect CX (such as the supply chain, policies and processes) in which every business can make simple but far-reaching improvements. This report guides you through the problems and solutions for all 16 of these 'Indirect CX Keys', many of which are often forgotten or under-played even in the best CX strategies.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)