Act on the Customer’s Total Experience

By Denise Davert, Elixir

Customers receive a wide range of communications spanning the lifecycle of their relationship with a company. It starts with the courtship phase, which includes both direct communications, such as mailings, but also includes general advertisements promoting the company’s offering. It concludes if (when?) the customer moves on—though I argue at that point it’s back to the courtship phase.

In between these two points there can be a myriad of communications generated from a variety of departments. These departmental workers mostly likely know that other communications may go out; they most likely don’t know if and when they’ve been sent. For example, the accounting department is issuing their third reminder for payment, but do they know the circumstances from the customer’s perspective?

Managing and connecting those departments’ activities using workflow tools can provide a view into the big picture and enable you to communicate at a more personalized level with each customer. Here is a partial list of the typical types of communications a customer may receive:

-          Welcome letter

-          Invoice mailing

-          Late payment letter

-          Customer support call

-          Up-sell mailing on your products and services

-          Up-sell phone call on your products and services

Many of these touch points are repeated throughout the duration of a customer’s relationship with your company. Wouldn’t it be nice to know from their perspective what that big picture looks like and then be able to act on that information?

Looking at the overall workflow allows you to measure the customer experience in real time and take action.

Workflow allows you to tie all those in and associate them into the big picture.  Negative communications are inevitable but perhaps, given the context they can be balanced by positive ones. Maybe you send out a few more positive communications to customers who seem to be getting caught up unfairly in some red tape.

I don’t know about you but in looking at Gary’s chart, can you blame him?

Visit Elixir to learn how they can help your with the big picture!