The blending of AI with customer-centricity – the Bajaj Allianz General Insurance way

Bajaj Allianz General Insurance uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to re-imagine the customer journey, orchestrate critical data and decision points, and introduce straight-through in most processes.

 

At Bajaj, we have always focused on leveraging technology to introduce simplicity and speed in our processes. It has helped us solve numerous issues and allowed us to understand and cater to the needs of our customers.

 

These are some of the initiatives where Bajaj Allianz General Insurance has leveraged AI:

 

Saksham

Bajaj Allianz has a large base of corporate customers, and managing the massive amount of data generated from them was a demanding task. Taking an example of group health insurance, we need to collate the details of thousands of employees and their families spread across the country, which was tedious.

 

Even after collating massive data, processing inclusion, exclusion, and endorsements are challenging. With the launch of Saksham, we have moved from a traditional endorsement process to a tech-based innovative approach with the help of ML algorithms. It is also integrated with the corporate portal for ease of access.

 

Raftaar

Raftaar, which means speed in English, is an RPA-based bot launched specifically for policy issuance. With Raftaar, the per policy processing time has drastically reduced by 60%. In addition to speed, a quality check is maintained as less human intervention takes place and multiple sources of information are avoided.

 

DigiSwasth

One of the challenges for underwriters is the pre-insurance medical check-up results. We leveraged AI and IoT to develop an industry first Android and IOS application with integrated lean medical check-up process to ease it out.

 

The integrated labs send the data directly to our database, and Digiswasth enables quick analysis of the results leading to hassle-free and faster policy issuance. With Digiswasth, many cases get a straight-through pass, and only the filtered ones go for underwriting. This has enabled a seamless onboarding process and increased efficiency.  

 

Farmitra

We launched the industry-first farming app, which caters to the specific needs of farmers. We intend to help farmers address their worries and provide them with relevant information to optimize their farming practices through this app.

 

Users of this app can regularly check weather forecasts specific to their area, advisories customized as per the selected crops, market position, news regarding agricultural developments, and locate seed/soil testing labs.

 

Regarding insurance, the farmers can access “Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana” (PMFBY) portal to buy crop insurance and register claims. They can also purchase motor and health insurance policies offered by the company.

 

Caringly Yours (CY) App

Our customer self-service mobile app “Caringly Yours” is technically our office at the fingertips of our customers. Every process is a click away. The customer can buy and renew the policy and seek a claim over it.

 

Claim by Direct Click (CDC)  

Pioneered by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company, “claim by direct click” is an app-based feature that allows policyholders to initiate and track their claim settlements in a hassle-free manner. The customer needs to install the Bajaj Allianz Insurance Wallet app to avail of this benefit. Using this app, claims can be made up to a limit of Rs 20,000.

 

Motor on the Spot (MOTS)

We created the motor on the spot (MOTS) feature within our customer self-service mobile app “Caringly Yours.” Through this, customers can click images of their damaged vehicles and submit them for the claim processing. Through Motor OTS, claim settlement takes place within 30 minutes up to specific amounts.

 

TravelEzee

Having travel insurance assists you with any financial aid you might need when traveling. Usually, we would love to have travel insurance when we travel for vacations. At the same time, hassle-free claim settlement if any misadventure occurs, as nobody would like to spend holidays running after claim settlement.

 

Therefore, while purchasing a travel insurance policy, the claim settlement process is of topmost importance.

 

TravelEzee is an automatic claim settlement service for Bajaj Allianz customers. The uniqueness of this service is that the customers need not initiate the claim process. The process of claim registration and settlement is automated, and it is the insurer (i.e., us) that keeps track of claim events and initiates payout.

 

Connected School

Connected school initiative includes an IoT-enabled technology solution combining safety, security, and insurance coverage for school students, thereby addressing the parent’s worries around school travel and transport. Connected school initiative was launched with Fidel Softech as an IoT technology partner. It is an industry-first initiative as Bajaj Allianz believes in a relationship beyond insurance.

 

Drive Smart

Bajaj Allianz introduced a new telematics-based service called DriveSmart, which customers can opt for while purchasing policies for their cars. With this new service, a customer can monitor his driving habits through data feedback, and in return, their safe and sound driving behavior gets rewarded with discounts in premiums.

 

Doc On Chat/Call

Using the “Caringly Yours” app can even land an appointment with the doctor on chat/call without the need of physically going to the doctor. You can get online assistance for all general medical queries from certified and registered doctors.

These initiatives have helped us deliver excellent customer experiences. As they say, “AI is a Science, and Customer centricity is an Art.” At Bajaj, we blend the science of AI with the art of customer-centricity to offer customer-centric AI. 

Illness to wellness – improving patient care using technology

In Part 1 Blog (the patient care journey is fast-changing), we spoke about how providing and ensuring patient care is critical. In this part, we will talk about how you can improve patient care using technology.

 

How do you go about ensuring patient care?

Accessing quality information and care will be difficult without the use of technology. It is necessary now to enhance access through innovative use of technology to reach out to patients, and it makes a lot more practical sense during these extreme pandemic times.

 

People often consider excellent customer service as an essential part of healthcare. The use of technology minimizes room for error, and providing a superior user experience enhances patient satisfaction, thereby improving the quality of care.

 

We have covered some of the critical attributes of leveraging technology and bringing in accountability to enhance patient care:

 

1. IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY – LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY

A medical emergency can happen at any time. Patients need to know that they can contact their healthcare provider 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Traditionally, a receptionist functions as the main point of contact between your business and the public. However, an in-house receptionist can only work so many hours a day and so many days in a week.

 

You could hire multiple receptionists to work on a rotating schedule. With the technology disruption, Virtual patient counselors through automated bots are becoming mainstream. Virtual Patient counselors’ advantages are that they start learning at a fast pace based on the clinical condition and integration with the Patient clinical records providing a superior and consistent user experience.

 

These Virtual patient counselors supported by Trained Patient counselors from the hospital supplement the personal touch and compassionate care. We have consistently seen patient satisfaction going up where technology and humans co-exist, resulting in improving quality of care and optimizing costs.

 

2. THE TELEMEDICINE REVOLUTION

A lot of people prefer scheduling medical appointments online. It saves time and, if executed properly, limits the risk of miscommunication. As more businesses move to the digital sphere, making your healthcare website or online portal user-friendly is essential for providing excellent customer service.

 

The digital disruption is also leading to broader adoption of Patient care portals which provide extensive and personalized information based on their clinical conditions besides becoming a single point of contact for managing patient data between the provider and receiver.

 

The pandemic has accelerated the disruption of certain care areas with the innovative use of technologies. Telemedicine is now being increasingly reinvented in many ways with a choice of online digital portals and medical devices for continuous monitoring of patient health conditions assisted by video consultations with caregivers. The new Digital cocktail is leading a tremendous upsurge of innovations in point of care. Without exception, every home can now have access to high-quality care at affordable costs from the best of the consultants, a dream till around a year ago.

 

We are also seeing Innovative usage of Telemedicine being integrated with AI-assisted medical imaging solutions reducing time and significantly reducing costs to patients. The rise of AI in medical imaging itself is set to transform early detection and intervention and save high costs to patients over time.

 

3. FROM HIGH TOUCH TO HIGH TECH – LEVERAGING THE “BOTTOM-UP” APPROACH TO PATIENT SERVICE

Not long ago, we have seen providers using a “top-down” approach to patient services. This means a set of protocols being defined, and the patient service counselors rigorously follow the routine in providing the care. For a long time, these regimes have isolated the medical administrators from the reality of what patients want and resulted in higher patient dissatisfaction impacting patient outcomes and inconsistent financial performance.

 

With the advent of the digital revolution, we see providers use technology and automation to try and manage the outcome by exception. This has resulted in more informed patients, counselors, and providers improving the quality of care.

 

Further, with the extensive feedback system at every point of care, you can probably narrow down the feedback loop to the point where it gets dysfunctional and run quality programs to enhance outcomes. This has seen every patient participating in the feedback process and intelligent systems running the exceptions leading to higher satisfaction levels with patients, satisfied employees, and other caregivers.

 

Extensive use of multiple digital channels like SMS, emails, IVRS, BOTS, etc., help to collect patient feedback, surveys, patient education at the point of care, resulting in a significant amount of data for future use. The learning also becomes a valuable guide to enhance internal training and fine-tuning protocols, optimizing costs, and significantly enhancing value.

 

4. REWARDS & RECOGNITION IN PATIENT CARE

With the extensive availability of data, the medical administration now has many data points to act upon and more so to really recognize their Star performers and suitably recognize them for their outstanding and consistent work. We have seen extensive data integration from feedback. Work performance going into the rewards and recognition program has worked wonders.

 

Patient service suffers when a healthcare organization lacks accountability, and more so when he knows they will not be held accountable for their actions, they’re more inclined to provide poor customer service. Moreover, with accountability, you can help your business identify areas where it can improve more, mainly when a patient service issue arises.

 

Bottom Line

Excellent patient service can help you create a loyal fan base. A happy, satisfied patient is more likely to come back – and even refer people – to you and your facility if they have received exceptional care. If a patient gets a less than warm feeling, they are likely to search out the next option because they assume that’s a reflection of the care they will receive. However, if they encountered pleasant service, they would be likely to retain services. The reputation that you develop will be vital in determining whether patients seek you out in the future.

 

Digital leaders adopt newer technologies to drive operational efficiency, proactive patient care educating patients through their wellness programs and other outreach programs. They are increasingly relying on data leveraging proven and next-gen technologies to enhance patient experience and delight.

At the end of the day, you want your patients and customers to be happy. Happy patients return – and refer others. Hence sustained investment in patient engagement and leveraging technology for outcomes and engagement significantly improves loyalty, leading to patient retention and referral and more likely to enhance revenue in view of better engagement and outcomes.

Do customers have a choice in their customer experience with brands?

I recently wanted to switch my Internet connection from one location to another. I called up the customer care facility and gave my request. This process took me about 20 minutes. 

 

The service provider accepted my request and suggested that they would check the feasibility of migrating the connection to the new location. The new site did not have additional ports, and hence they could not fulfill my request. It took them 72 hours to come back with this information. However, they did not offer any solution. 

 

So, I called them again and asked them about the next steps. 

 

They mentioned that they would add ports and provide me connection at the new location in 72 hours. I had to be on the phone for 20 minutes to get this done. I waited 72 hours, and nothing happened. 

 

So, I tried reaching them three more times. Every time, it took me 20 minutes to speak to an agent, and every time they promised me immediate resolution. However, they did not migrate the connection. 

 

Then, I decided to cancel the Internet connection, and despite trying repeatedly, I could not do that on the phone or their official mobile app. So, I went to their experience center and went through all the Covid formalities before meeting with a representative. I filed my request for disconnection, and they accepted it. 

 

Then, as soon as I reached home, I received a call from their disconnection team asking me to reconsider my decision. They also suggested that they’d waive my charges during the period of inactivity due to this migration. Also, they made sure that the new connection was up and running in the new location within four hours. 

 

What does this teach you? 

This means that you have ways and means by which you can deliver excellent customer experiences, but your process does not allow you to do so. 

 

You end up creating friction at every stage of your customer journey. 

 

Let us look at all the friction in this journey of mine:

 

  1. Friction 1 – there was no automated menu option for shifting my connection to a different location. There wasn’t an option for me to reach a customer service representative directly. I had to go through the entire IVR menu that was unnecessary for me before speaking to a live representative. This process took me 20 minutes. 
  2. Friction 2 – the feasibility took about 72 hours, which ideally should have taken only a couple of hours. Even after figuring out that it is not feasible, they did not offer a solution. 
  3. Friction 3 – I tried reaching them multiple times, and every time I had to wait for 20 minutes before contacting a representative. Instead, if they let me key in a complaint number, they can address my queries faster
  4. Friction 4 – there was no choice for me to disconnect on their official app or the customer care number. This requires an OTP authentication, and that never happened.
  5. Friction 5 – I had to take time out to visit their experience center to file my disconnection request. That took me about 90 minutes, including travel time. 

After all this, they were able to fix my issue within four hours. 

 

Is it that difficult for a service provider to map this journey in a way that I feel delighted? 

I understand that organizations are trying to make the customer experience a self-service process and automate more than 80% of the tasks. While this would save the service provider money and make things easy for the customer, is it being implemented correctly? 

 

In my case, they should have just provided me the choice to speak to an agent directly when my request is not a part of your automated customer service process. This would have eased things and reduced the friction. 

 

As a service provider, with any automation or intelligence that you add to your customer experience journey, you have to ensure zero friction. Else, it would affect the customer journey and result in dissatisfied customers. 

Is Customer Experience (CX) the new brand differentiator?

Gone are the days when people competed on product’s capabilities and pricing alone. Today’s customers have thousands of overwhelming choices, making purchasing decisions challenging to choose. 

 

The entire ecosystem has become commoditized, and how do you differentiate yourself from the pack? 

 

It has to be through Customer Experience (CX) and not just Customer Service. CX is the total sum of customer’s perception of how a brand treats them. These perceptions affect behaviors that lead to customer loyalty. 

 

Do we agree that CX is going to be the differentiator? 

Let us look at some of the CX numbers:

 

  1. Gartner says that 89 percent of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience 
  2. A Walker study reveals that by 2020, CX will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator
  3. The Temkin Group found that companies earning $1 billion can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within three years of investing in CX

Bain reports that although 80 percent of companies believe that they deliver awesome experiences, a mere 8 percent of customers agree. 

 

This means that companies have a long way to go. Delivering excellent customer experiences can be a tremendous opportunity to disrupt a competitor and gain market share. 

 

Focusing on customer experience management may be the most critical investment a brand can make in today’s business environment. 

 

How do you provide remarkable customer experiences? 

There is no silver bullet to this question. However, there are two critical elements that you should be aware of, and they are: 

 

1. Personalize everything

Personalized experiences win over customers every single time. This means that the company remembers you, anticipates your needs, and delivers relevant and timely information. What does this do? 

 

Forty-nine percent of customers have bought items that they did not intend to buy due to personalized recommendations from brands. 

 

Besides, brands should create a one-view of their customers across all channels. McKinsey reports that only 1 percent of the data collected is ever used, stressing the disparity between the potential of data and the company’s ability to convert it into value. 

 

When you set out to turn data into value, that would help improve customer experience. 

 

2. Focus on the customer journey and not touchpoints

The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that the customers go through while interacting with your brand – awareness, pre-sales, purchase, post-sales support, and repurchase. 

 

Each journey consists of multiple online and offline touchpoints. While each touchpoint is important, the sum is always greater than the parts. The experiences will have to be consistent, and for that, you need to have integrated systems and channels. 

 

Aberdeen Group states that the companies with the strongest omnichannel CX report an average customer retention rate of 89 percent versus 33 percent for businesses with a weaker presence. 

How do you make your life and the lives of those around you better – the customer service way!

Sales are down, the competition is brutal, and we have zero chance of hitting our year-end profit target if we don’t bring down our costs. 

 

This is what your CEO tell you when you meet with him. He further adds the target for customer service is 20%. You have till tomorrow morning to come up with a plan and present. 

 

This wasn’t the first time the costs have been reduced. You did all the possible cost-saving measures and managed 20% savings with automation. You addressed it by not filling open positions, and nobody had to be fired. 

 

The Plan 

 

Within a few months, you are pressed to target another 20% cost reduction. This time it is going to hurt. The agents taking the calls are already stretched beyond capacity. You are 20% lower than your required strength. That’s what your CEO wants to reduce.  

 

You set out to look for more automation to reduce the costs by 20%. You spend the next few hours squeezing out the possibilities, and now you say, “Tada, the numbers seem to work out,” and you are ready with your presentation for your CEO. 

 

You leave for the day. 

 

New day

 

You get up in the morning, and you realize that all of your automation that you are attempting to do will make your customers wait longer to talk to your agents. You are already getting complaints about the existing system, and people are looking for ways to bypass the whole thing and get to an agent. 

 

You don’t provide that choice as you guess that many of your customers would choose to talk to the agent directly. 

 

You feel that the entire work you did the last evening was wrong. Your system is designed to make your customers spend more time and effort so that you wouldn’t require as many agents. 

 

You have heard some of your existing recordings, and you have figured how frustrated your customers are. 

 

Making your customers work harder and spend time to cut costs on your end is a death spiral. Your sales will go down, and you’ll again be in cost-cutting mode. 

 

So, you start to think, what if I ask my supervisors to take customer calls during peak periods. No way, they are all busy preparing reports. 

 

What if I cut out a lot of that stuff? This looks workable to you. Why don’t I automate the report generation? It’d make things easy for your supervisors. They would be available to take customer calls, and that’d make things easier for your customers. 

 

Read More: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and customer experience – the endless possibilities 

 

Everyone is happy 

 

Employees would be happy as they would be working less on mundane stuff like generating reports and work on actionable stuff like improving sales. Customers would be pleased to get the personal attention they constantly sought. The organization would be happy as they have achieved the necessary cost-cutting, while the outlook for improved sales looks promising. 

The contactless approach to customer service

In the last year, most things have moved remote and online as far as customer service is concerned. Agents working from home will be the norm from now on, and the customers would want to get in touch with an agent only when necessary.

 

The contact centers have discovered that moving their agents to work from home hasn’t affected their productivity, and they continue to provide world-class service to their customers.

 

Customers still demand accessible, high-quality support, but the liking towards speaking with a live agent has come down considerably in the last few quarters.

 

With face-to-face interactions coming down, most organizations have migrated to multi-channel and omnichannel operations. They are looking at migrating 60% of their customer service to be handled by intelligent apps and automated bots that would be offered as self-service.

 

The self-service world

What do you need to do to make the self-service world up and running?

You need to get the technology in place and integrate it with your enterprise systems, which would help solve your customer issues.

 

The most important thing is agents’ ability to access your enterprise systems from a remote location – cloud access or VPN access. Once this is done, look at having automated IVR, chatbots with natural language processing, web self-service, FAQs, asynchronous messaging, SMS service lines, among others.

 

An example

I use a broadband connection at home. Whenever I have Internet connectivity issues, I was initially calling their customer service and registering a complaint. Once I register the complaint, I get an SMS with a complaint number. Then a support engineer calls me up to understand the issue. After a point in time, they provided me with an app to easily register my complaint.

 

Once the pandemic set in, they migrated the entire support part of the app into an intelligent application. There is no need for you to speak to anyone as all possible combinations are available in the chatbot itself.

 

Though it is only a rule-based engine, you do not have to talk to anyone, as every possible combination is captured as a part of the chatbot. They have all the options like:

 

  1. Internet not working at all
  2. Internet access is slow
  3. I am not able to access a few sites
  4. Whenever there is a power shutdown, and upon resumption, my Internet doesn’t work
  5. Router configuration
  6. A few others

You provide every information needed for the support engineer to address your issue within a minute and with just a few clicks. You get your ticket number with the approximate resolution times.

 

I can’t be happier.

This is a straightforward example that I have quoted. This is only the tip of the iceberg on what is possible with self-service. Imagine building intelligence to your self-service, and you would be laughing your way to the bank with happy, satisfied, and loyal customers.

Agent Experience is an essential piece in the customer experience journey.

There is very little room for error when it comes to customer experience.

 

In 2021, as is the case with every year, consumers will care even more about the customer experience than they did earlier when deciding which companies to support or buy from. 

 

Any friction in the customer journey will mean loss of business and potential gain for your competitors.

 

How do you go about consistently ensuring great customer experiences? 

It is an arduous task, but you have technology and tools to help you make the customer experience a genuinely seamless one for organizations and customers.

 

The most critical aspect of any customer experience journey is your agent, and putting them in the middle of your customer journey would greatly help your customers and business. 

 

Agent Experience – What should I look at? 

What is that one thing that an agent is expected to provide when it comes to agent experience? 

 

An agent is expected to resolve customer queries and challenges in the shortest possible time to their satisfaction. How do you make this available? 

 

It would help if you equipped them with all the tools that would allow them to provide resolutions in the shortest possible times for your customers. 

 

Some of the key things to keep in mind include: 

 

  1. Do you provide an omnichannel experience, with agent access to all your customers’ interactions with your brand? 
  2. Do you have all of your enterprise applications integrated to allow the agent to pull information together that will enable them to offer resolution in the shortest possible time? 
  3. Do you have intelligence built into your systems that allow the agent to access information based on customer preferences and needs? 
  4. Do you have frequently asked questions and their responses documented so that the agent can access them easily? 
  5. Do you have systems in place to allow your agents to access the right talent by the click of a button to help resolve customer queries? 
  6. Have you defined the performance metrics of your agents that are aligned with customer outcomes? People often look at call hold times, and resolution times without giving weightage to the customer’s challenge or issue. 
  7. Is your agent training in alignment with your customer experience vision? 
  8. Do your agents have the means to provide feedback to the customer service and product management functions on ways and means to enhance to customer experience journey? 

As an organization looking towards providing delightful customer experiences, you should invest in these eight areas to make your agents successful and make your customers happier. 

Zoho is leading the pack in moving to Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 cities. What can you learn from them?

Zoho has been running their development and support centers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for many years ago.

 

They started a development center in Tenkasi in 2011 that develops some of Zoho’s products that they sell across the world. Tenkasi has about 500 Zoho employees. Zoho then established a customer support center in the town of Renigunta in Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh. 120 Zoho employees work out of Reningunta.

 

Zoho calls these offices Village Offices. 

 

Zoho and village offices

Zoho, just like any other organization, was forced by the pandemic to move their entire workforce to their homes and hometowns. During this time, Zoho ran an internal survey, and close to 40% of their workforce – around 3500 people – said they would like to work closer to their hometowns. 

 

This sped up their village office move. Currently, Zoho is experimenting with ten villages in Tamil Nadu, where 200 of its engineers – 20 in each village – will collaborate and build software for the world. 

 

Once this is set in motion, Zoho has plans to implement a similar model in two villages in Kerala and one in Andhra Pradesh. They are also looking at taking this model to Mexico (Queretaro), the US (Austin, Texas), and Japan. 


We are sure that Zoho will successfully implement this model. This would be an example for anyone looking at setting up a satellite office in the villages and Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. 

 

What are the advantages of this model? 

All along, Tier-I cities have been glorified. Your employees want to stay in their hometowns, and work is an eye-opener for most organizations. I guess that is something that every organization should run as a survey and figure it out. 

 

The most prominent reason organizations were flocking the Tier-1 cities was infrastructure – uninterrupted power supply, Internet, transit connectivity, accessibility of airports; and qualified resources.

 

Now, most infrastructure challenges are addressed even in remote villages. Most locations in places like Tamil Nadu have accessibility to the airport within 100 Kms. 

 

All of the challenges for which organizations were focusing on Tier-I cities are addressed now in most villages. Hence, the move to Tier-2, Tier-3, and villages would make a lot of sense.

 

Some of the advantages of moving to villages include: 

 

  1. Look at the cost of infrastructure between Tier-I and the village offices. Organizations would easily hive off 50% of their expenses. What about resources? Their standard of living would go up many notches while reducing their cost of living. 
  2. Working from hometowns can help people maintain greater work-life integration. They can meaningfully contribute to their villages’ growth by volunteering in community activities, agriculture, and education. Staying with family and staying closer with friends and relatives would also ensure better mental health.  
  3. Increase the disposable income of people in the villages by indirectly helping build the economic ecosystem to support your office and its people. This can also help in reverse migration from cities to villages.

What can we learn from the Zoho model? 

Zoho has proved that this model works favorably for them since 2011. They have been successfully building world-class products from a facility in Tenkasi and have been supporting their global customers from a facility in Renigunta. 

 

They have now started ten satellite offices in 10 different villages in Tamil Nadu and have operationalized it successfully. 

 

While they were skeptical about moving to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, most other organizations were forced by the pandemic to figure out work-from-home and work-from-hometown options. They continued to provide world-class services and products even from remote locations.

 

This proves that this model works, and every organization should take efforts to move their needles towards villages. This would help the organizations cut costs, leverage skills available in remote areas, help employees have better work-life integration, and grow the villages.

The growth of this nation lies in the development of its villages. The future of work lies in the village offices.

 

It is time to think smart and help the village economies prosper. It is in your selfish interests to do so as well.

How do you create your customer experience strategy?

Recently, I called up our service provider, who developed and hosted our website. We have been working with them for the past three years. They didn’t update the site’s SSL certificate, and people couldn’t access the site. 

 

All we wanted them to do was to download the SSL and install it. But, we were told that their system administrator is available only later in the night, and they can get it resolved only after a day. 

 

The website not being accessible was a complete ‘NO’ for us. So, we requested them to get it resolved immediately. The response from them was that it wouldn’t be possible. 

 

So, we took it up, and we did the installation ourselves. 

 

What were the issues here? 

  1. Employees who did not understand our needs.
  2. The expectation that we would be willing to wait a day for a simple but critical request
  3. Unresolved issue

What would you do with this kind of experience?

 

Naturally, we have started evaluating other vendors who can provide this service. 

 

How do you get your customer experience strategy, right?

Customer Experience (CX) is the result of every interaction a customer has with your business, pre-and-post-sale. This can be from the moment they read about you in a blog, their visit to your website, their interaction with your sales, product teams, customer service, and support. 

 

While evaluating your customer experience strategy, you should include all your departments and not just your customer-facing roles. 

 

Read more: How do you provide excellent customer experiences?


Some pointers in figuring out your customer experience strategy:

 

  1. Look at your customer support function and look for metrics like Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction score, and customer churn rate. If you’re scoring below expectations, this would be a good starting point to dig deeper. 
  2. Create a customer journey map. It would outline all the interactions between a customer and your business, including any challenges found along the way. 
  3. Once you understand where you ought to improve, share this information with your team and train them to handle the service better. 
  4. Map out the different ways your customer would feel about their interactions with you. Always act towards delighting your customers and in their best interests.
  5. Do proactive customer service by enabling your customer success teams to work closely with your customers to prevent issues, enhance adoption and business value.
  6. Ensure that you have self-service tools, as customers prefer to get their basic needs addressed with chatbots and knowledge bases. 
  7. Continuously collect feedback from your customers. Never leave a customer without interaction for more than six weeks.
  8. Track the performance of your customer service and support teams regularly. 

These are good starting points that would allow you to define your customer experience strategy and vision. With this in place, you can proactively and progressively keep improving the customer experience function for your customers’ benefit and delight.