Great customer experience is easier than you think

Lionel Richie thinks Sunday morning is easy. Ella Fitzgerald thinks living is easy when it’s summertime. Loving is easy too, according to Rex Orange County.

I haven’t heard anyone sing about customer experience just yet (Alexa?). But every time I preorder my Starbucks latte so it’s waiting for me at the store on my way to work, I’m reminded just how important easy is. If easy is the on/off switch for great experience, then speed controls the volume. We expect good things to happen faster than ever before.

Reducing customer effort

There’s been a lot of talk about delighting customers. I’m a huge fan of anything that sparks joy. But in most cases, what customers really want is for things to work the way they should—without delay or hassle. For example:

• You forgot to cancel a direct debit. When you contact your bank, you’re not in search of delight. You want to recoup the money—fast. And you want to know when it’s back in your account.

• Your telecom provider needs to do essential maintenance. That’s fine, but you’d like advance warning of any potential disturbance. Nobody wants to lose connection halfway through an important call.

• When a family member relies on in-home healthcare, you need absolute confidence in the caregivers. You expect them to anticipate your relative’s needs, get ahead of potential problems, and deliver outstanding support.

Great customer experience is about making life and work easier for your customers. And that depends on understanding and eliminating their pain points—delivering more of what they want and less of what they don’t.

Building from the inside out

Putting customers at the center of everything we do is essential. But the term “customer first” can be misleading. Time and again, I’ve seen how great customer experience starts with putting your employees first, not your customers. Effortless experience builds from the inside out.

Here’s something obvious but important: People who pursue careers in customer service want to serve customers. They want to be heroes. But you can’t be a knight in shining armor if your armor’s rusty.

As the Great Resignation continues to sweep through organizations, it’s essential that we nurture and support talent. We must equip employees with technologies that make work easier. By automating routine and mundane tasks, we can create space for talented professionals to add value that only humans can.

It’s imperative to create engaging and effective self-service options for customers—not just because customers want to self-serve (and they do), but because it reduces call volumes. It allows customer service representatives to focus on supporting customers who want and need their support.

It’s never been more important to attract and retain top talent. The best people want to work for a shared purpose in a collaborative organization, one that shows it respects and values them with actions, not just words.

Working backward 

ServiceNow is about action, not words. With one platform, one architecture, and one data model, we can help break down silos and build connective tissue across your organization.

The Now Platform® organizes work into discrete tasks. Clever automation ensures those tasks flow across people and functions, accelerating work and elevating talent. Everyone has the information and visibility they need to get more done—and they have more time for valuable interactions with customers.

As Steve Jobs said, "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology." That’s exactly what we do. We work backward to ensure our customers bring the power of their whole organization to better serve their customers.

Delivering results

Let’s take a look at the difference we’re making for a few of our customers and a whole load of theirs:

When Lloyds Bank relied on manual processes, it could take up to three days to process direct debit refunds. Now that those processes have been automated, 62% of refund cases are handled in less than three minutes. And all refunds are in customers’ accounts within 30 seconds.

Thanks to ServiceNow, Rogers Communications, a leading Canadian telecom provider, has the visibility it needs to get ahead of issues and keep customers informed. The company has reduced daily case volumes by 41% and status requests by 43%. Customers are more likely to recommend Rogers (71% give them a nine or 10 out of 10 for “likelihood to recommend”), and employee satisfaction is at 91%.

Tunstall specializes in technology that enables home healthcare for the elderly and vulnerable and supports caregivers in the field. ServiceNow makes it easier for the organization to deliver efficient, effective, and empathetic care. As a result, customer satisfaction has increased 70%.
 

Friction-free customer experience

Not everything in life is easy. But, when it comes to products and services, effortless experience and speedy resolution are what make customers sing your praises and come back for more.

Find out more about how ServiceNow can help your organization deliver effortless customer experience.

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company names, product names, and logos may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.