Originally published in CustomerThink.
In guerrilla warfare, military leaders forgo the traditional lengthy military strategic planning process in favor of lightning-quick tactical strikes that contribute to the longer-term goal.
Many CX leaders are struggling with long-term projects involving big data collection and analysis and complex business process modification. Executive management is losing patience and is turning up the heat, impatient to see positive results from CX initiatives today.
Embattled CX leaders might do well to mix in some guerrilla CX tactics to show quick progress and take the pressure off.
CX leaders are struggling to prove value
CX project success rate is shockingly low. A recent CustomerThink headline shouts “93% of customer experience initiatives are failing!” Aptean Respond reports that 95% of companies surveyed collect customer feedback, but only 10% are making improvements based on the feedback. Gartner reports that 28% of companies deploying CX initiatives have failed to uncover the relationship to financial or business impact.
CX solutions can be complex, take a long time to complete, and positive outcomes are far from guaranteed.
How can CX professionals “go guerrilla” with quick strikes that move the needle?
Not all initiatives to improve customer experience need to proceed at such a glacial pace. Customers are calling your service agents every day hoping to get their problems solved. CX professionals would do well to focus on those calls because each customer/agent interaction is an opportunity to turn a frustrated customer into a raving fan. If enterprises can incrementally improve the experience and outcome of each call, the aggregate impact on customer satisfaction can be massive.
Intuit TurboTax deployed a Visual Engagement solution to improve the experience of every customer calling for support while filing a tax return. When a call comes into the call center, the TurboTax agent is able to click one button in the CRM record to instantly launch a sharing session with the customer, view the customer’s screen, quickly understand the problem and guide the customer to success.
Intuit’s Visual Engagement solution even includes one-way agent video, so the customer can see the tax expert working on their behalf — live, on-screen — during each service call. Agent video has a dramatic impact on agent/customer empathy, quickly cooling down emotional engagements. Intuit calls this unprecedented level of collaboration “a game changer.”
Intuit’s strategy of delivering a “white glove” customer service experience to every caller has paid off. Visual Engagement has delivered an 18% increase in Transactional Net Promoter Score. They’ve also experienced cost reductions in the call center thanks to higher First Call Resolution (FCR), and have driven millions of dollars of incremental service revenue from agent/customer interactions.
Constant Contact is another enterprise that has improved customer satisfaction by using Visual Engagement for customer care and support. When customers call in for support, Constant Contact service agents use Visual Engagement for coaching and break/fix problem-solving. They track customer satisfaction ratings from callers and see a consistent measurable CSAT lift attributable to Visual Engagement. In survey responses, one customer went so far as to equate Visual Engagement with “getting a comfortable hug.”
An important part of the mission is to support customer self-service by teaching callers how to use the product for themselves. Indeed, they track a lift in First Call Resolution (FCR) when Visual Engagement is used. Customers retain what they learn on calls better when Visual Engagement is used.
Intuit and Constant Contact are not alone. Forrester studied Visual Engagement and found that companies that build Visual Engagement into their customer care process reported improved customer satisfaction, improved customer loyalty, improved customer retention, and higher revenue from customers. Because of improved CX and improved call center efficiency, Forrester calculated nearly a 400% ROI over 3 years, with break-even in less than 6 months.
With guerrilla tactics like Visual Engagement in the arsenal, CX professionals can not only win the battle but also the CX war. Enterprises can achieve near immediate business impact without protracted timelines, massive process change, or analysis-paralysis.
Read the full article on the CustomerThink website here.