commercial feature
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
Megan Neale is Executive Director for Transformation and
Operations at HGS Europe
www.teamhgs.com
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Channel the trigger is received on – if the trigger is initiated by
the organisation then this will influence in part the channel the
customer uses to act. This is not a given though and the next 7
criteria are important to consider.
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Nature of query – The inherent nature of query influences the way
the customer chooses to contact the company. These could
include the following considerations:
- Is it sensitive to me personally or someone else? E.g. health
related (I require the privacy afforded by the contact channel to
discuss this with the company)
- Is it personal? (information that I would like protected)
- Is it a general query? (I would happily discuss this in an open
environment)
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Urgency – The time sensitivity of the query has a significant impact
on how a customer behaves. If an issue needs to be dealt with
immediately, the customer will choose the route they perceive to
have the quickest resolution time. The business has absolute
control over this, as it should be fully aware of the query types that
require urgent attention and should promote the best channel for
the customer to use.
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Device Access – The customer’s course of action will also be
determined by the device access they have available at the location
(landline phone, smartphone, PC/tablet/laptop or even Smart TV)
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Channels Available – The customer’s course of action will also be
determined by the channels made available to them by the
organisation and how well accessible they are.
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Past Experience – Businesses should not underestimate the
impact of past experience with a channel and its influence on future
behaviour. A poor web chat experience can put a customer off web
chat for a long time. Whilst you cannot control what other
companies do, it is imperative that you don’t disincentives customers
from using your preferred channels due to poor execution
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Personal Preference – And lastly, customers quite simply will
choose to act based on what they like to do. It’s that simple. Whilst
you can’t necessarily influence personal preference you can
educate customers on alternatives methods of contact which in
time may change personal preferences.
Don’t worry about the aspects you will never control, but focus on the
areas you can influence. Analyse those controllable aspects of the
customer decision making process and start to build your digital
strategy around those. Consequently you are designing solutions borne
out of an understanding of customer behaviour and circumstances,
offering a range of solutions which match those behaviours.
Location - The location of the customer at the time of the trigger is
a significant influencing factor in determining the communication
channel. Is the customer alone? With friends or business
associates? Or in a public place? At home? At work? In a car? The
organisation has limited control of the location of the customer but
should consider this in light of the likely nature of the query.
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Step 3: Control the controllable
I hope you see from this that almost every customer contact situation and
scenario could be different and the accessibility of new information sources
and channels only increases the complexity. That leads us to Step 3.
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To sum up, the aim of any customer engagement strategy is to
address the reasons why, when and how customers choose to contact
you. This should be no different when considering a digital engagement
strategy. The introduction of digital into the channel mix has simply
meant that customers have more avenues to reach you. The
significance of understanding what driv