How Customer Service and Customer Experience Can Boost Your Business Results: The Ultimate Guide

a man standing in front of the bar counter
Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com

Customer service and customer experience are often used interchangeably, but they differ.

Customer Service is providing support and assistance to your customers before, during, and after they purchase your products or services.

Customer Experience is the overall impression and perception that your customers have of your brand based on their interactions with you across all touchpoints and channels. Customer service is a part of the customer experience, but not the only one.

Why are customer service and customer experience important for your business?

Because they can make or break your relationship with your customers and, ultimately, your business results.

According to a report by PwC, 73% of consumers say that customer experience is a critical factor in their purchasing decisions, and 32% of consumers say they would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience.

On the other hand, 86% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, and 65% of consumers say that a positive experience with a brand is more influential than great advertising.

So, how can you provide excellent customer service and customer experience to your customers, and reap the benefits of increased customer retention, loyalty, advocacy, and revenue? Here are some tips and best practices to help you:

1. Understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and emotions.

The first step to creating excellent customer service and experience is knowing who your customers are, what they want, how they feel, and what they expect from you. You can use various methods to gather customer insights, such as surveys, feedback forms, interviews, focus groups, social media, analytics, and customer journey mapping. Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool that helps you visualise and understand your customers’ journey from their first contact with your brand to their post-purchase behaviour and identify the pain points and opportunities along the way.

2. Design and deliver a seamless and personalised customer experience across all touchpoints and channels.

The next step is to use the customer insights you have gathered to design and deliver a customer experience that is consistent, convenient and customised for your customers across all touchpoints and channels, such as your website, mobile app, email, social media, phone, chat, in-store, etc. You can use various techniques to enhance your customer experience, such as user interface design, user experience design, content marketing, personalisation, omnichannel integration, etc.

3. Provide proactive and responsive customer service to your customers before, during, and after they purchase your products or services.

The third step is to provide customer service that is proactive and responsive, meaning that you anticipate and address your customers’ needs and issues before they arise, and respond to them quickly and effectively when they do. You can use various tools and platforms to improve your customer service, such as chatbots, live chat, self-service portals, knowledge bases, FAQs, social media, phone, email, etc.

4. Measure and improve your customer service and customer experience over time.

The final step is to measure and improve your customer service and customer experience over time by collecting and analysing customer feedback, satisfaction, loyalty, advocacy, and other metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), etc. You can use various methods to collect and analyse customer data, such as surveys, feedback forms, reviews, ratings, testimonials, referrals, social media, analytics, etc. You can then use the data to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your customer service and customer experience and implement actions to improve them.

5. Customer service and customer experience are a marriage made in heaven

Because they aim to create a positive and lasting relationship with your customers and boost your business results. By following the tips and best practices above, you can provide excellent customer service and customer experience to your customers and enjoy the benefits of increased customer retention, loyalty, advocacy, and revenue. Customer service and customer experience are not optional but essential for your business’s success.

Start today and transform your customer service, customer experience, and business.

Join us at: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

The BPGroup Accredited Customer Experience Masters® (ACXM) Program takes BPM & CEM Training to an entirely new level.

Become an Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACX Master®) through learning and experiencing the most practical, successful and proven toolkit for customer-centric change

Join us at: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

For 2023…

> New Case Studies > 60+ takeaway techniques > 90+ help videos > Fully revised CEMMethod (version 14) > CX Rating (4E’s) integration > All material provided > Dedicated Professional User Group > Ongoing webinars

The Accredited Customer Experience Professional/Master difference

This premier series is designed for those seeking advanced professional skills in customer experience and process management, CX improvement, CX alignment, customer centricity, and innovation.
These are the Outside-In Customer Experience Management, BPM Methods, and Techniques that Deliver!

  • Uncover CX/Process Improvement opportunities in just hours
  • Identify Actions that will improve customer experience and associated processes by 15% to 40% within 20 days of deployment
  • Integrate and Evolve methods such as BPM, Lean, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence to Outside-In thinking and practice
  • Delight your Customers (making them your greatest advocates) through Successful Customer Outcomes and Customer Experience Management
  • Innovate to compete, set the market trend and even dominate your industry
  • Advance Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction to the next level
  • Release significant costs, improve revenues and enhance service (win the Triple Crown) immediately

Hopefully, we will see you soon!
Register here: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

Incredible opportunities for transformation with AI in Customer Experience

During our research into the application of ChatGPT into Customer Experiences, and as a prelude to the launch of the new qualification “Certified Journey Management Professional (CJMP),” we were amazed at how rapidly organizations are integrating AI capability into their core experiences.

I have included just three examples here of CX next practice, with references for those wishing to dive deep (hundreds of use cases),

And if you are interested in learning more about the three-day CJMP workshop, send us an email with the subject header CJMP, and we will get back to you.

  • ChatGPT can be deployed to create an automated customer service chatbot that offers speedy and precise solutions to frequently asked queries [1].

    This can prove immensely beneficial for businesses that receive many inquiries, improving their efficiency and rapidity.
  • ChatGPT’s natural language processing abilities can be utilized to examine customer feedback, deriving useful conclusions about frequent criticisms, recommendations, and developments [2]. Businesses can consider this data to make informed decisions and enhance the overall customer experience.
  • ChatGPT can offer individualized customer support through a conversational interface, which renders resolving matters or answering questions more convenient and faster [3].

These are merely a few of the potential applications of this technology.

It’s important to note that the specific industry and company will depend on the customer types, organization maturity, and business needs. However, the impact of ChatGPT on customer experiences is significant, with 67% of consumers worldwide now using chatbots for customer support [4]

References:
1. https://www.thankful.ai/chatgpt-for-customer-service

2. https://becominghuman.ai/unlocking-the-power-of-the-chatgpt-revolution-100-use-cases-to-try-before-you-are-fired-979e5986814c

3 & 4. https://www.revechat.com/blog/chatbots-use-cases

Do you want to embrace advanced Customer-Centric thinking and become Outside-In?

How You Can Become ‘Outside-In’… https://bit.ly/WhyOutsideIn

Start here and follow these simple steps:

Step #1 – Review the upskilling options to become an ACX Professional & ACX Master: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

Step #2 – Get The Book: Outside-In The Secret *FREE* https://bit.ly/OI2021now

Step #3 – Get the Software:

Parallel | http://bit.ly/Parallel2021

Step #4 – Connect With The Community:

https://linktr.ee/SteveTowers

Step #5 – Keep Pace with Change:

Recent Keynote – The Hard Benefits of XM | https://cemnext.com/xmroi2023

Customer Experience qualification is now essential for career success

 ONLINE, LIVE, INTERACTIVE and Coming soon to a city near you 🙂 https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

Upgrading your skills and delivery for 2023 will determine your success.  Advance and Evolve beyond functional industrial age thinking to Outside-In customer-centric practices. Tried and tested this program has helped to create more than 140,000 professionals across 132 countries since its inception in 2006.

So if understanding and applying the techniques and methods deployed in Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Zara, Emirates and BMW compels you to adopt the ‘next practice’ approaches come and join us online next month or in a city near you through 2023.

Here’s someone who enjoyed the session:

The BPGroup Accredited Customer Experience Masters® (ACXM) Program takes BPM & CEM Training to an entirely new level.

Become an Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACX Master®) through learning and experiencing the most practical, successful and proven toolkit for customer-centric change

For 2023…

> New Case Studies > 60+ takeaway techniques > 90+ help videos > Fully revised CEMMethod (version 14) > CX Rating (4E’s) integration > All material provided > Dedicated Professional User Group > Ongoing webinars

The Accredited Customer Experience Professional/Master difference

This premier series is designed for those seeking advanced professional skills in customer experience and process management, CX improvement, CX alignment, customer centricity, and innovation.
These are the Outside-In Customer Experience Management, BPM Methods, and Techniques that Deliver!

  • Uncover CX/Process Improvement opportunities in just hours
  • Identify Actions that will improve customer experience and associated processes by 15% to 40% within 20 days of deployment
  • Integrate and Evolve methods such as BPM, Lean, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence to Outside-In thinking and practice
  • Delight your Customers (making them your greatest advocates) through Successful Customer Outcomes and Customer Experience Management
  • Innovate to compete, set the market trend and even dominate your industry
  • Advance Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction to the next level
  • Release significant costs, improve revenues and enhance service (win the Triple Crown) immediately

Hopefully, we will see you soon!
Register here: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP

The Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACXM ™)

Coming soon to a city near you 🙂
>> UPDATE: Just added DENVER ACXM in September <<
Johannesburg | Orlando Dubai  | Dubai  | Sydney  | New York  Denver | Washington DC |  Washington DC Champs London

Upgrading your skills and delivery for 2018 will determine your success.
Advance beyond functional industrial age thinking to Outside-In customer-centric practices. Tried and tested this program is a direct descendant of the CPP program with now over 90,000 qualified individuals across 116 countries.

So if understanding and applying the techniques and methods deployed in Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Zara, Emirates and BMW compels you to adopt the ‘next practice’ approaches come and join us in a city near you through 2018:

Johannesburg ACXM

Orlando ACXM

13-15 March 2018

26-29 March 2018

Dubai Masters ACXM 8-11 April 2018
Dubai UAE ACX Champion 15-17 April 2018
Sydney ACXM 28-31 May 2018
New York ACXM 10-13 Sep 2018
Denver ACXM

Washington DC ACXM

17-20 Sep 2018

9-12 Oct 2-18

Washington DC ACX Champs 15-17 Oct 2018
London ACXM 10-13 Dec 2018

Here’s someone who enjoyed the session:

The BPGroup Accredited Customer Experience Masters® (ACXM) Program takes BPM & CEM Training to an entirely new level.

Become an Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACX Master®) through learning and experiencing the most practical, successful and proven toolkit for customer-centric change

For 2018…

> New Case Studies > 60+ takeaway techniques > 90+ help videos > Fully revised CEMMethod (version 11) > CX Rating (4E’s) integration > All material provided > Dedicated Professional User Group > Ongoing webinars

The Accredited Customer Experience Professional/Master difference

This premier series is designed for those seeking advanced professional skills in customer experience and process management, CX improvement, CX alignment, customer centricity, and innovation.
These are the Outside-In Customer Experience Management, BPM Methods, and Techniques that Deliver!

  • Uncover CX/Process Improvement opportunities in just hours
  • Identify Actions that will improve customer experience and associated processes by 15% to 40% within 20 days of deployment
  • Integrate and Evolve methods such as BPM, Lean, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence to Outside-In thinking and practice
  • Delight your Customers (making them your greatest advocates) through Successful Customer Outcomes and Customer Experience Management
  • Innovate to compete, set the market trend and even dominate your industry
  • Advance Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction to the next level
  • Release significant costs, improve revenues and enhance service (win the Triple Crown) immediately

See more information here, or book directly to a city of your choice:
Johannesburg | Orlando Dubai  | Dubai  | Sydney  | New York  Denver | Washington DC |  Washington DC Champs London

 

Hopefully, we will see you soon!

Advanced BPM and Outside In – The CEMMethod

The CEMMethod is widely used as the means to help organizations progress Outside In. This slideshow shares the most recent updates to this popular framework, with 38 techniques included to enhance your capabilities, individually and enterprise wide.

Access more informaiton on how to lean and apply the CEMMethod from here.

Process Outside In – vidblog

The BP Group compiles a bi monthly update of all things process which gets listed on the blog and syndicated all over. The latest can be Process Performance Update. However one of my close colleagues suggested I should produce the update as a travelog, where ever I am, whatever I am doing – just say it! – so here it is. Depending on your point of view it is either an informative light hearted look at process, or eight minutes of relevant pertinent stuff for business professionals. You choose 😉

Videos/new BPM apps/presentation downloads/conference updates

In the Process/Performance basket this time we have Videos/new BPM apps/presentation downloads/conference updates

Greetings from Mumbai 
My travels this last few weeks have included USA, UK, UAE and now India. The team are also hot footing around South Africa, Australia, Kuala Lumpur, Europe and the US through this month.

Not only has it been the significant contrast in weather (snow/cold > sunny/hot) it is the somewhat different approaches being adopted towards Outside In. This week sees me at the India Leadership event hosted by NASSCOM. I will be meeting with the press and continuing to learn about what is making India so successful. My talk will be accessible later, if you want a copy let me know, http://bit.ly/IndiaLeadershipForum

On the subject of talks and videos have you reviewed the latest videos of the key tools and techniques? Here they are (and they are available to download and distribute!)

Business Process Management – what is it? http://youtu.be/NO54KXxTp9I

Moments of Truth – what are they? http://youtu.be/OT_2cqMtrUw

Breakpoints and Business Rules? http://youtu.be/_8KSN_McWIg

Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s) http://youtu.be/u4keI_kmdxM

Voice of Customer? http://youtu.be/bTbHrxi1Vq4

And now drum roll > have you downloaded the BPM Certifcation app (IOS and Android)?

There are links to resources, videos. events, reviews and much more. It is only version 1 so let us know your thoughts and how we can make it better for the community.

Apple version: http://bit.ly/12EFNCC

Android version: http://bit.ly/X0X4iw

Recent presentations..
Access my recent keynote for some pertinent insights (or Outside In depending on your view point)

http://bit.ly/OutsideInSteveTowers

The associated slide show is embedded however you can download that from here.

http://www.slideshare.net/stowers/steve-towers-nasscom-bpo-summit-2012-opening-keynote

Topical articles –

Brad Power – Working successfully with physical fragmented teams http://lnkd.in/nAwERk

Chris Taylor – Business process failure goes viral http://lnkd.in/iuG4UG

Dr. Mohan K. – Rethinking the function of Business functions http://lnkd.in/fU3UmB

Reint Jan Holterman – 5 steps on the Path to Success with BPM http://lnkd.in/pp4ZWV
* And lastly for now have you reviewed the all new classes? new case studies and coaching from been there and done it experienced mentors*.

Review the coaches and their in depth practical hands on wisdom.

http://www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html

Considering training in Enterprise BPM/Outside In?If someone in your organization is considering certification do ask these questions of anyone offering the training:

1. Where have you done this?

2. What credentials can you claim in the community?

3. Who trained you originally in Outside In?

4. When did you start and who have you helped?

5. What references can you provide, at a CEO level for the successes you have achieved?

6. Are any of your people published, and if so what and when?

7. What is the size of your network?

8. Are your trainings and courses accredited, and if so by whom?

9. Are you helping to develop the community? If so how?

PS. Tell your colleagues they owe themselves the best to go with the most experienced, up to date, pragmatic, relevant and immediate training from the BP Group http://www.bpgroup.org

Ciao Steve

Was 2009 the year BPM really died?

Thomas Olbrich

Thomas Olbrich
Co-founder and Managing Director at taraneon Process TestL
Saarbrücken Area, Germany

Downsizing, cost cutting, re-aligning to new realities, survival, new business models … 2009 has offered so many challenges to which process owners might have provided not only answers but solutions. And on the whole they have failed:

Failed in that we’re still spending an unacceptable amount of time on process discovery

Failed in that we’re still insisting that automation is a type of management

Failed in that we’ve still not understood that processes either create or destroy value

Failed in that we’re still thinking that any improvement of our internal processes will automatically lead to improved customer processes

Failed in that we’ve still not understood the difference between process projects and process operations

Failed in that we’ve not linked processes to business strategy

Failed in that still we’re using the term ‘process’ as a figleaf to cover functional orientation

Failed in that we’re ignorant of how changing circumstances affect processes

Failed in that we’ve refused to hold process owners accountable for the mess they are administering

Failed in that 20 years after the first big reengineering wave and 10 years after BPM became fashionable to talk about, we have still not managed to create a process mindset

And we’re still wondering why senior management refuses to believe in the value of processes – other than as a theoretical concept? I dare anyone to explain how all the nice sounding process predictions for 2010 a la cloud, SaaS, green processes, BPM 3.0 etc. will make things any better if we first don’t adress the basic issues we’re facing. Looking to the future is one thing but without learning the lessons from the past (http://bit.ly/7fMaAY) the future will just pass us by.

(Sorry about this rant, it’s been a good year from a business and personal perspective, so no complaints there, but I really thought that 2009 would have pushed BPM to a new/higher level of contributing to business excellence)

Thomas

Recap on the discussioon at: Ongoing – Join the debate here

Advanced BPM – Case Studies for download

The following casestudies from Toyota and Virgin Mobile tell the unfolding story of a quest for Outside-In.

Download the PDF’s
> Toyota http://bit.ly/1IymL <
> Virgin Mobile http://bit.ly/EkImH <

Organisational Behavioral Aspects of BPM Implementation.

In 2008 Pieter Jongstra (Enterprise Architect) shared some of the secrets of SNS Bank Organisational Behavioral Aspects of BPM Implementation.  Great insight to help with the whole issue of BPM and change management. SNS is no different from any other large organisation coping with the 21st century – for instance this is the Business Operating Model.

 You can download the presentation from this link.
In a few weeks time the BP Group will be twenty years old. As part of the celebration we are publishing an article a day – all are evergreen and provide an insight as valuable today as when they were originally published. As we move towards September 19th we will bring the story up to date with a preview of the upcoming book – The High Performance Organisation (Samir Asaf & Steve Towers).