From Promise through Post-Sales: Is Your Customer Experience Aligned?
As product and service availability, as well as price, begin to fade as competitive differentiators, customer service and engagement have quickly risen to take their place. Early customer-centric leaders such as Amazon and Zappos paved the way for the Age of the Customer, creating a top-down, across-the-board focus on customer service and engagement that propelled their success. But what these brands have made look easy is actually very challenging to accomplish.
A recent study by Bain & Company confirms that while 80% of companies believe they are delivering a superior experience to their customers, only 8% of customers agree.
Brand Promise: Talking the Talk
Talking the talk is easy. Most any brand or organization can create a customer-centric brand promise. Walking the walk, and creating a customer-centric road that everyone in the company helps to build, travels on and maintains at every turn is where most companies lose their way.
Product, Purchase, Post-Sales: Walking the Walk
While the brand promise prominently stands as the customer’s initial directional road sign, it’s the product, purchase experience and post-sales service that often lead customers in a different or wrong direction. Even if the road spanning the first three Ps (promise, product and purchase experience) is well-developed, if your brand or organization loses customers on the last P (post-sales experience – which many brands do), all the effort you’ve put into the previous three touch points has been all for naught – and the belief in your brand promise is lost.
In a recent 2014 State of Multichannel Customer Service Survey commissioned by Parature, 65% of 1,000 consumers surveyed said they’ve cut ties with a brand over a single poor customer service experience.
Creating a Satisfying Start-to-Finish Customer Experience
In a recent recorded webinar now available for viewing at your convenience, analyst Michael Krigsman discussed why companies need to become customer-focused, showing the weighting of promise, product, purchase and post-sales service when it comes to customer engagement, satisfaction and long-term brand loyalty.
Senior Director Bill Patterson of Parature explored how the four Ps (promise, product, purchase and post-sales experience) come together and where customer service comes in. Bill and Michael provided examples of well-known brands that are laggards and leaders (those currently using productive, proactive post-sales service to amplify the brand promise, along with product and purchase success).
Quark Software Vice-President of IT and Customer Support, Mark Lawler, also joined the conversation to share how Quark is building its brand around and has doubled its Net Promoter Score through a strong investment in customer service and engagement.
Whether you’re representing a commercial brand, government agency, or growing public-facing organization, watch this free webinar at your convenience to find out where your organization currently stands in start-to-finish customer engagement and where all brands and organizations should be heading.
