By Hanif Joshaghani, CEO, Symend
Customers today expect the convenience and efficiency of digital communications, but they’re also worn out by them. And that means leaders have a real challenge to grapple with – how do you meet customer demands while also reducing churn, avoiding added complexity and keeping costs down? How do you create customer interactions that are meaningful and won’t just end up ignored? It’s no easy feat, but it’s not impossible. And those who figure it out will be the ones who wind up on top.
Service providers need to navigate what digital engagement will look like in the future as they face pressure on two fronts:
- Customer expectations are high: A survey by Symend found four in 10 consumers are likely to leave a provider if they don’t offer the tools they expect
- Customers are being bombarded by digital messages (over 300 billion email messages will be sent in 2022!) and it’s wearing them out, making them more likely to ignore digital communication
The digital economy demands digital communication
Today, methods for effectively communicating digitally with customers are table stakes. It’s not a nice-to-have or an option; it’s a minimum requirement.
In a survey conducted by Symend in July 2021, 42% of respondents said they used their service provider’s digital tools significantly more now than pre-COVID-19. This trend includes new digital converts: 75% of people using digital channels for the first time said they’d continue to use them post-COVID, according to a 2020 McKinsey survey.
That’s good news for service providers who’ve already successfully incorporated digital tools, but it doesn’t stop there. You can’t rest on your laurels because the future of digital engagement is changing rapidly, and customer expectations are high.
Any organization that must effectively communicate with a massive customer base, such as a credit card or telecommunications company, is now focused on digital communication strategies because of customer demand.
Here’s the catch: Consumers want to use digital communication methods, but they’re also worn out by the onslaught of emails and texts. Welcome to the digital interaction paradox.
Solving the digital interaction paradox
Most efforts to solve this problem are focused solely on automation and targeting tools. This only scratches the surface. You can throw all the automation tools in the world at the problem but that won’t fix the core problem.
Customers are savvier than many companies give them credit for. They don’t want to be blasted with spam-like communications that are clearly not meant to help them. Customers, especially those experiencing digital fatigue, need personalized engagement. It’s the key, but most – a whopping 67% of those surveyed – organizations admit they don’t have the right tools to execute personalization at scale.
What’s needed is a way to effectively personalize engagement at scale in a dynamic way – so it remains relevant even as consumers’ needs, wants and desires change. That’s what it will take to get the most effective outcome with the least amount of outreach possible. Each customer interaction should be treated as a “moment of truth” – an opportunity to learn about the customer, understand them and improve your relationship with them. It’s a chance to be the virtual equivalent of that bartender who knows your name and how your kids are doing. Think Cheers but digital.
Bringing true empathy to the table
Businesses should be sensitive to the hard times that face many of their customers – that’s at the heart of customer experience. And during the pandemic, many companies have strived to show their customers they get it. In fact, between March and April 2020, consumers received an average of 12 empathetic messages from each of their providers. This is a difficult line to toe – deploy this kind of messaging too much or too liberally can ring hollow.
This is what’s needed to break through the digital fatigue, but few are doing it right. Most efforts have focused on how to automate the processes. Building more automation tools, using predictive models or AI doesn’t mean you’re more empathetic. It just means you know how to apply technology, and customers will see through this.
Being an empathetic brand is important, but the customer service industry as a whole hasn’t made the investment to make it happen. Using the word empathetic in your market positioning doesn’t mean you have the technology or the scientific capability to actually be more humane and personalized at scale. You can see this in the pricing models used by many vendors of customer engagement management solutions – charging per email or text sent to each of a company’s customers. That’s the antithesis of treating customers humanely and with empathy – and yet this is the mindset of the industry. It’s still stuck in this robocaller mentality that makes it clear companies aren’t really thinking about what needs to be done, and that’s going to cost them eventually.
You don’t have to burn it all down to succeed (but you could)
Truthfully, it’d probably be easier for a lot of companies to completely shut down their existing customer engagement model and start again from scratch. That’s clearly not what most companies want to do. If you want to enact meaningful change without starting over, it’s time for an honest assessment. Evaluate what you’re doing with an objective eye:
Are you building/implementing systems that allow for easy-to-use measurement and scientific analysis of customer interactions?
Are your systems agile enough to respond in real-time to what you are learning?
Are you building and evolving your business with people and software vendors/partners who are obsessed with the customer experience? If not, you’re going to fall behind.
Are you learning about your customer with every incremental interaction and deeply understanding who they are, what they want and how they prefer to communicate?
Do you have the ability to leverage behavioral science at scale to driven personalization in how you interact with your customers?
If the answers to these questions are “No,” then you may need to prepare for a total overhaul. You can’t just layer automation on top of your existing system and assume it will fix the problem. Instead, you need a mindset shift as well as a technology shift.
Creating moments of truth
The pandemic accelerated a shift that was already happening – the move to the digitization of customer interactions. At the same time, we’ve also seen the phenomenon of digital fatigue – people can get burnt out on digital interactions and getting their attention is harder and harder. This paradox creates a significant challenge for companies. They can’t just take a lift-and-shift approach when it comes to digitizing customer interactions; it needs to be done purposefully and thoughtfully, in a way that really considers the individual’s habits and preferences. It requires a solution that can both scale and personalize interactions. That’s what it will take for companies to cut through the noise and create “moments of truth,” to make each interaction meaningful and really learn about who your customers are. The organizations that can figure out how to do this are going to be the ones that rise to the top and leave the rest in their wake.
Hanif Joshaghani
About the author
Hanif Joshaghani, co-founder and CEO of Symend, is a serial entrepreneur who has raised $150 million across the four companies he has founded and invested in over a dozen start-ups. His background includes 15 years of senior roles in capital markets, energy, finance, business development and entrepreneurship in a broad range of industries including investment banking, energy and technology.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.