Today, workflows are becoming increasingly complex. Employees have more than just email inboxes to keep track of; they’re also scheduling video conferences, dealing with advanced software, and collaborating through cloud-based tools. All of these changes are designed not just to improve the efficiency and productivity of the current workforce, but to enhance customer experience too.
The more aligned and connected your team is, the easier it is for them to work together on fixing consumer problems and overcoming workplace issues. Freshworks, the company behind the Freshdesk business messaging software, is dedicated to providing companies with better, more intuitive software for their teams.
Recently, the company conducted a new study to explore how software impacts the changing customer experience marketplace. According to Freshworks, the customer engagement industry is experiencing a rapid period of change. The latest research from Freshworks looks at 3,000 customers across 6 countries. Here’s what they found out.
Freshworks and the New Rules of Customer Engagement
Freshworks’ study, entitled “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” found that over the last 12 months, 56% of consumers have stopped interacting with a brand because of a bad experience. Additionally, 39% of customers are using 5 or more channels to connect with a business, including instant messaging, phone calls, social media, and more.
Today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before because they know what’s possible when a company has access to the right tools. We’re living in an environment where your clients expect you to have omni-channel contact centres, contextual knowledge across all channels, and proactive support solutions. Freshworks found that 47% of global respondents had higher customer service expectations today than they had 2 years ago.
Additionally, your consumers also expect you to provide high-quality service across more than one channel. Around 70% of the respondents in the latest Freshworks study said that they preferred brands which offered services across multiple channels.
Why Companies Need to Improve their CX Strategy
While the benefits of great customer experiences can be amazing, including higher loyalty and brand advocacy, the repercussions of a less than perfect CX can be significant too. For instance, 60% of customers share their bad experiences with others online. American customers are some of the quickest to abandon a brand after a bad experience (69% leave after one bad interaction). The UK follows closely behind, however, with 52% of respondents saying they’d switch to a competitor after a single poor experience.
According to the results from the latest Freshworks study, it’s not just the risk of a bad reputation that should push companies to invest more in CX. 31% of their respondents said that they would pay more for a good customer service. That means that a good CX strategy could improve your bottom line.
Additionally, if you can prove to your customers that you’ll give them a fantastic level of service, they might cut you more slack too. For instance, 42% of consumers say that they would be willing to wait longer for a more knowledgeable and helpful service representative.
Addressing your Customer Experience Issues
The latest information from Freshworks shows us that there are plenty of common pain points that companies can focus on when addressing customer experience. For instance, 25% of respondents said that they hate having to repeat themselves frequently, while another 21`% said that they hate waiting around for a resolution. The more you know about the issues that are causing your customers to abandon your brand, the easier it will be to implement the right training and software to upgrade your CX.
Training is a particularly crucial issue, as many respondents cited issues like efficiency (21%), unfriendliness (5%) and lack of knowledge (11%) to be sources of frustration.
Fortunately, there are ways that you can address CX issues for your client’s tool. Freshworks found that proactive notifications are appealing to 69% of customers, and 80% like the idea of solving problems on their own. Investing in a 360-degree view of your customer and collecting as much data as you can about their buyer journey will help you to see what kind of efficient omni-channel experience you need to provide to delight them.
Whether it’s investing in proactive service for your customers or delivering the bots they need for better DIY support; your first step will always be finding out what kind of pain points your customer’s experience, and how they would prefer you to solve those problems.
Learning about the New Age of Customer Engagement
Research into the changing state of the customer experience environment shows us that there’s still a lot of progress that needs to be made to delight modern consumers.
Today’s businesses can’t afford to take chances with their CX strategies anymore, particularly when clients are so quick to abandon a brand and share negative reviews about them online. To increase their chances of success, organisations need to find out what kind of roadblocks are damaging their customer’s path to a perfect purchasing journey and make changes accordingly.
To accompany their recent research into the changing world of customer engagement, Freshworks has also announced an upcoming webinar on the 19th of June this year. Starting at 10 am, the Webinar discusses “building customers for life” in the modern marketplace. As part of the webinar, Freshworks will be providing a complete insight into the results of their latest research.
Sign up for the Webinar to get more insights from Freshworks’ latest study and learn from a range of industry experts. During the event, attendees will have a chance to discover what is changing about customer experience this year, and what kind of steps they need to take now if they want to avoid falling behind their competition in the years to come.
