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Segment Your Customer Interaction Strategies

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Found in:    joyX | Consumer Products or Services | Financial Services | Healthcare | Restaurants | Retail/Ecommerce

Customer service is a key contributor to an organization’s overall success due to the impact that each individual employee-to-consumer interaction will have on maintaining high retention rates. Brands are now responsible for managing more interaction channels than ever before, and poor service on any of these platforms can quickly change the way that customers perceive your organization. Ultimately, brands should strive to avoid these negative moments by working to provide the unique value associated with each of these different interaction profiles. While customers do prioritize consistency in the content of the service you provide, that does not mean that each channel where an interaction takes place should be exactly the same. Segment your different consumer interaction strategies so that employees within each of these spaces are well-equipped to continue pushing customers along your desired journey.

Maintaining a consistent brand experience across these different channels is something that 75 percent of consumers desire out of the brands they purchase from, but consistency does not equal uniformity. While the information should remain uniform, the process of how this information is transmitted will be different for consumers interacting with your brand online, in-store or on the phone. For example, if a consumer is looking for a product recommendation, an in-store associate will be working with a different set of tools, data and expectations than a live chat representative. Thus, these two employees should be trained to provide the appropriate value for their individual segment. Ultimately, the best consistency is positivity, and segmenting the training and expectations of each different channel will position your employees to reach this level of success.

Too often, brands will be industry leaders in providing service within one of these channels, but at the same time they are missing out on a huge number of potential customers within a different interaction platform. The best organizations will be transparent about the different set of rules and expectations that are inherited within each channel, with the goal of preventing as many negative service experiences as possible. Avoiding these negative instances is essential to organizational success, especially considering the $1.6 trillion lost by companies in the past year directly due to customers switching to competitors after a poor service experience. No brand will be able to monitor all employees within every single interaction, and there will undoubtedly be negative experiences for some individuals, but establishing a company culture revolving around transparency within each interaction segment can help limit the amount and impact of these poor service interactions.

Finding ways to stand out to consumers is essential in the modern marketplace, because of the proliferation of options that is now readily available. Every industry has been forced to adjust to this new reality, and as these changes have occurred, so too have the expectations of customers. The goal of any Customer Experience platform is to inspire a mutual connection between your brand the consumers you serve. And the best way to establish this relationship is to provide consistently friendly service across these different channels. In fact, 73% of customers fall in love with an organization because of friendly customer service representatives. Segmenting the training of your service and support team can help inspires this friendliness because employees will be supremely aware of what is expected of them, leading to a highly engaged staff and consistently satisfied customers.

There are many challenges that organizations in all industries face today that were unimaginable even 10-15 years ago, but rather than becoming stuck in a bad way of doing things, the best brands are constantly completing self-assessment programs and evolving. Creating distinct process for the different channels in which customer interactions take place will help show to consumers that your team is dedicated to providing value along each step of the customer journey, as well as help to keep each employee engaged for every one of these interactions. There is a different set of rules when consumers are reaching out to your brand online, on the phone or in your brick-and-mortar location, and understanding how to segment your team to provide these different values while maintaining a consistent brand identity can be key to establishing your organization as a role model for success.

 https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/05/14-retail-customer-experience-stats.html

 https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-digital-disconnect-customer-engagement

 https://www.slideshare.net/RightNow/2011-customer-experience-impact-report/5


Second To None empowers customer-centric brands to deliver consistent, intentional and authentic consumer experiences.

We adeptly design and manage mystery shopping, compliance, engagement and voice of customer solutions grounded in strategic relevance, program integrity and actionable insights. Our solutions are developed on the basis of solid research and statistical science. We achieve success through a relentless focus on quality and innovation, consultative relationships and a talented team of professional associates.