10 Things to Consider While Implementing a Customer Experience Software
Executive Vice President
You understand that paying customers are the backbone of your business, and you want to provide them with the best possible experience.
You are looking at software that can help provide the experience.
A wide range of platforms are available in the market that would help you provide exceptional customer experiences. But how do you choose?
It depends entirely on your organization’s needs and goals.
Some organizations only provide one channel of communication for their customers. They offer exceptional service on that channel and ensure satisfied and loyal customers. And some organizations do the same with multiple channels.
I have attempted to provide you with a checklist to look at while choosing customer experience software.
1. Simple and User-Friendly
Most customer experience software is complex, and people think it would take a few months to implement them and a few more months to leverage its benefits.
This has been the Achilles Heel of the platform providers in this space.
The fundamental question is, can you implement the platform in days instead of weeks or months?
It is entirely possible. We have rolled out our platform to customers within 48 hours. The platform’s training takes about 4 to 6 hours and is completely intuitive.
Our customers have been up and running with their customer experience software within 48 hours.
2. Omnichannel Support
Ensure the software can handle interactions across customer touchpoints, such as email, phone, SMS, chat, messaging platforms, mobile apps, and social media.
Ensure that all of these channels are integrated. Besides, ensure the platform is integrated with all customer interaction solutions like CRMs, Helpdesk software, ERPs, etc.
This would allow you to have a single view of your customers across all the interfaces and channels. You would be able to provide a consistent experience to your customers irrespective of the channels they choose to interact with you.
3. Self-Service Capabilities
Does your platform help you offer self-service capabilities for your customers? Imagine that most of your customer queries are transactional; you don’t need agents to respond to them.
You can have an automated bot responding to those transactional queries and forward the complex questions to the agents.
Ensure that you provide customers an option to talk to a human agent at any point during the interaction without having to wait.
4. Analytics Support
I am sure you collect a ton of customer data every day. What do you do with them?
They remain on the storage servers and don’t get acted on till a situation arises.
If you have analytics, it can slice and dice the data and get you actionable insights. For instance, it can capture misselling, compliance, and knowledge issues. This will allow you to act fast and ensure the damage isn’t irreversible.
Besides, it can give you pointers on the training that your agents may require.
5. Cloud Support
Ensure that your platform is on the cloud. You have numerous advantages with a cloud platform. Some of them are:
- Your platform is work-from-home ready from day one. All you need is functional Internet connectivity and a working browser. You don’t have to be bothered about your agents’ devices at home.
- Your entry barriers are minimal. You pay a subscription fee and get access to an enterprise-grade platform, making it a level-playing field for everyone.
- Pay-per-minute pricing where everything is bundled together for you – dialers, voice, integrations, recording, analytics, workforce management, list management services, etc.
- With cloud, it is easy to integrate with other best-of-breed IT solutions.
6. Scalability and Flexibility
Does the platform offer you easy ways to add agents to it? Do they provide you the option to do that yourself? Or do they ask for minimum licenses or contract duration commitments?
Ideally, you shouldn’t be worried about minimum contracts or commitments. The platform should offer you a way to scale up and down your needs at the click of a button.
It should truly be a pay-per-use software solution.
7. Automated Voice Broadcasting Solution
Why do you need this will be your first reaction?
Imagine a lead generation organization using your platform.
They will have to make 15 calls to connect to a prospect, and you are talking about converting a customer with 100 conversations. This means 1500 dials for a customer, which isn’t efficient.
What do you do?
This is where voice broadcasting solutions would come in handy. You can blast thousands of messages at the click of a button, with an option for customers to respond. You pass only those contact that responded to your agents.
This will help you avoid hundreds of dials and improve conversion rates.
Besides, you can use voice broadcasting to schedule, reschedule, confirm, cancel appointments, and avoid no-shows.
This can also be used for collecting customer feedback and doing surveys, providing insights that can help identify areas for improvement.
8. Customer Journey Mapping
Ensure that your software includes tools to create and analyze customer journey maps.
The visual representation of customers’ interactions with your brand helps you understand pain points and areas of opportunity.
9. Customization Support
Customization costs are often an oversized ticket item in your software procurement, even with cloud providers.
Ensure your provider will customize the software per your workflow and needs.
We do all our customizations to our customers for free when we onboard them. Our per-minute pricing is inclusive of the customizations and integrations.
10. Customer Support
How easy it is to reach your vendor should be the foremost question. Do they offer support across channels, and is it 24×7?
How knowledgeable are the support personnel in resolving your questions? You may not know this till you use them. Ask them to show you their SLAs and customer testimonials.
We offer 24×7 support on calls, SMS, and WhatsApp.
How comforting would this statement be to you?
Besides, we haven’t had a customer churn in the last 6+ years.
This is a broad checklist for you to consider while choosing a platform for your customer experience function. Other specific needs might be workforce management, workforce optimization, list management services, and intelligence capabilities.
See if the platform is scalable to accommodate your needs in the future as well. However, this blog would act as a way to determine if you are buying into the right platform.