Leveraging Analytics to Deliver Excellent Customer Experience in Uncertain Times

Customer experience has taken on a new level of significance since the global downturn in the economy triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and worldwide introduction of remote working. Uncertainty has touched every business, on every continent, resulting in a focus on customer experience being more important than ever. Customer retention is driven by customer experience, which leads to revenue protection. In order to deliver excellent customer experience, customer interactions need to be monitored, internal performance and processes analysed and service levels maintained, whilst continually evaluating to meet evolving business needs through these challenging times and beyond, in the new form of ‘business as usual’.

Ensuring that the right data gets to the right people at the right time is, therefore, crucial. By understanding everyday interactions and applying intelligence, critical business insights can be shared on specific individuals, teams, departments and indeed across a whole business. For example, one business may need to understand customer experience across every touch point in the customer journey, whilst another may only want to manage a busy support queue. No matter the driver, as long as the insight provided is easy to understand and shared with key decision-makers then you can begin to relate historical and real-time analytics to business performance, and indeed to business strategy.

Driving crucial Business Decisions

Businesses that use analytics in this way an clearly see the impact of their processes, policies and performance on customer experience and focus on the KPIs that matter right now. With ongoing measurement and access to the right level of business intelligence, businesses can ensure that their teams-whether working remotely or otherwise-are meeting performance targets and service levels to deliver the best possible experience to customers.

In practice, a major focus for every business should be reviewing unreturned missed calls and a caller’s tolerance for waiting in a call queue. Are there patterns for when more calls are missed? How long are callers prepared to wait to be answered? How many missed calls are returned? Is it easy to speak to the right person on first contact? Armed with this information, organisations can resource their teams effectively by considering busiest hour analysis, or longer term peaks and troughs of activity. It helps determine if more staff members are needed, or if their working day could be reorganised to solve a problem.

Mangers should look for patterns of high-level performance and dig deeper with call recording evaluations. Who is spending the most time on the phone? Is it with the right customers? By determining which conversations are working best for a team, it is possible to reward top performers or help them to work more effectively, providing training to those that need additional support.

More informed decision-making not only facilitates agility in uncertain economic times, but also enables businesses to prepare for the next stage-whether it be returning back to ‘business as usual’ or moving forward as a leaner but stronger business-with more if a competitive edge.

With the right processes and feedback opportunities in place, employees, managers and business owners can approach future uncertainties with confidence, continue to provide high levels of customer service, and put them in the best position to thrive.