How the Pandemic has Changed the Customer Experience for the Better

The global Covid-19 pandemic forced many business owners to take a deep introspection and re-evaluate what is working and what can be changed to improve the customer experience and as a result, there are a few key areas that have shifted and ultimately improved the full experience for the customer:

Streamlining Applications for Better Customer Experience Management

Many businesses were (and some still are) managing 10-15 enterprise grade applications to run different departments–from marketing to customer-facing teams to human resources and finance. This fragmented approach creates siloed teams, siloed efforts and ultimately leads to a decrease in transparency into the customer journey, along with a decrease in customer satisfaction and retention.

On top of that, it is expensive.

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The pandemic shined a light on inefficiencies and areas to streamline communications and customer data in a way that allows businesses and teams to work together and gain a clearer, more complete picture of the customer experience.

Now that companies are implementing remote and hybrid work models, this is a good time to implement quality (not quantity) applications to save on costs and more importantly, create a more unified experience both internally and externally.

Leveraging the Village

It takes a village to make strong customer connections and build lifelong relationships. To make this approach a reality, customer service must be the responsibility of the entire organization, not just the customer support team. For a company to live up to its promise of being customer-centric, it must be customer-centric across all departments and teams. To do it most effectively, businesses should ask themselves:

• What is your company’s definition of an ideal customer experience?
• Does a united definition exist?
• Do all team members receive customer service training or just the support team?

Evaluating these aspects of the customer journey ensures everyone is on the same page and as a result, can deliver a unified experience that puts the customer and their needs at the center. Take for example when you ask your customers for information regarding their preferences and specific needs. A customer-centric approach would be ensuring all of your teams have access to this data and use it to serve that customer’s unique needs without having the customer provide the same information every time.

Back to Basics with Customer Experience

In an age of optionality for buyers, customer service is the only true differentiator for companies. The pandemic forced businesses to realize they needed to change how they were doing this going forward.

As mentioned earlier, some companies are still using different enterprise applications for every team, causing them to work in silos and provide a fragmented customer experience. Using Insightly allows you to share customer information across applications on our platform, aligning teams to better serve customers in a unified way.

Lesson Learned

If there is anything positive to come out of the global Covid-19 pandemic, it is that businesses are focusing on an individualized experience for each customer. We must use this momentum and not forget that customer service is constantly evolving – this is what leads to lifelong customers.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]