After working hard to gain a new customer, the emphasis quickly shifts to retaining that customer. From fulfilling the order or the service to helping them work through implementation and use, the customer is now on a journey with your company. How well that journey goes will have the greatest impact on whether or not your relationship with them grows or withers.

Customer Service is not Customer Experience

Not everyone realizes it, but there is a difference between customer service and customer experience. Understanding that difference is the key to keeping current customers happy while also gaining new ones.

We have all experienced customer service. Oftentimes it’s thought of as troubleshooting. A product isn’t working as it should or is difficult to set up, so the customer sends an email or makes a phone call and gets help to make everything work. The smoother this goes and the better the help is, the happier the customer tends to be. 

Customer Service can also be checking in with customers and clients to ensure that the product or service they bought from you is meeting their expectations. Reinforcing a positive experience, or getting ahead of potential frustrations provides good customer service. 

Customer experience is that and much more. It is the work of providing positive experiences to your customers and prospective customers through their entire journey with your brand. To do that companies need to meet the customer wherever their customers want to connect, be it by email, SMS, chat, apps, social media, voice, or in the rare case these days, face to face. 

Customer Experience Now for the Future

Old school call centers handled only one digital channel, voice. Today, companies need to monitor and interact within as many channels as possible. Social Media, email, and messaging systems are all being used in addition to calling on the phone. 

Many customer interactions these days also start in public. A customer may find your product through an internet search, or a recommendation from someone on a social media platform. Those who choose to “self serve” and navigate your buying process completely on their own, and have negative experiences are often just as likely to express their displeasure in public on those same channels as they are to message or call in private. How your organization handles these opportunities to interact with your customers will define their customer experience. 

Having a program that encourages people to reach out to your business in whatever way is most convenient for them is the start of providing a great customer experience. From there, the interactions have to be genuine in order to build trust and continue to shape how each particular person feels about your organization. Quick response times that lead to human interaction are beneficial.

Contact Center as a Service is a Solution

As important as being able to shape the customer experience is, it can also be time-consuming. When it was just voice, call centers were very important. They were an economical way to create a standardized and human response for almost any customer situation. 

Today, call centers are morphing into contact centers and technology is allowing them an expanded role. Contact Center as a Service software is being used to help companies provide low-cost, flexible customer experiences across all the communication channels being used by customers. 

Between constantly evolving customer preferences and the prohibitive expenses of building and operating an in-house contact center, it makes sense to turn to those who provide these services as their specialty. 

Going into the cloud for your contact center offers a number of benefits.

• Implementation is instant, once the contract takes effect. You have nothing to build, install or maintain. 
• You can quickly scale as needed by adding or reducing the number of agents based on the volume of interactions.
• The agents who support your business can be anywhere in the world, which guards against a technology issue in one place taking down your whole center. 
• The contact center evolves, upgrades and receives maintenance as needed because providing an effective service is a core outcome for your contractor. 
• It makes accounting easier. Your contact center is now a monthly bill that only changes when you make changes. Predictable operation expenses make your life a lot easier. 

Working with Symplicity Communications and Our Partners

The benefits of developing a contact center and thinking widely about all the experiences and touchpoints your customers will have with your business are only the start. Implementation can be daunting, and that's where Symplicity Communications comes in. 

We are a partner, not a vendor. Using our expertise we will work to understand the needs of your business and then create a roadmap of how to implement the solutions you need. We will be by your side helping you to evaluate options and helping make the best choice for your unique needs. 

Be a Part of the Future

Customer expectations are changing as fast as technology evolves. You likely have already experienced a contact center as a service in your own dealings. Currently, face-to-face interactions are on the rise again, as video chats have become normalized. Beyond that, the possibilities are immense. 

Imagine being able to start their customer journey with a virtual reality experience that allows them to try before they buy. Perhaps it's integrating Artificial Intelligence to streamline interactions and get customers in front of the people they need to speak with faster. You can even harness the power of hyper-personalization and tailor your brand to the needs of each individual customer. 

These things and more are coming. Talk to us at Symplicity Communications and let's explore a partnership that will help you reach more customers today and all the tomorrows that come after.