What customers are talking to me about right now

Jordi Ferrer, VP and General Manager UK&I, ServiceNow

Research shows the pandemic changed purchasing habits significantly, sparking a brand loyalty crisis. The rising cost of living means consumers are becoming more thoughtful with their budgets, while an increasingly busy market means you likely face more competition than ever. Organisations who fail to put the customer first risk getting lost in the crowd, and ultimately losing business as a result.

Put simply, top-tier customer experience isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. Organisations who invest in customer experience are already seeing genuine benefits. In the past, Imperial College London laboured under a fragmented support service that impacted the overall experience for both students, stakeholders, and staff. Users would be given a variety of different experiences depending on which part of the business they were trying to contact. Needing a solution that would standardise service and increase efficiency, the team turned to ServiceNow solutions.

Juan Villamil, Chief Information Officer at Imperial College London explains the benefits the team has realised so far; “It’s integrated, transparent, and frictionless. All the things you would expect from great technology.” The results serve to further emphasise this: onboarding is 99% faster and securing a laptop 95% faster. Crucially, the same seamless experience is provided across the entire organisation.

Customers have extremely high expectations of the experience they receive from businesses, and it’s no longer enough to simply react to large-scale change when it happens. Today, it’s more important to be agile, efficient, and provide a customer experience that promotes brand loyalty, even in difficult times.

The ongoing digital skills shortage is one of the defining challenges of our time, and something customers talk about regularly. Though it’s primarily a ‘people’ issue, I’ve quickly come to learn that it cannot be discussed in isolation — a lack of qualified talent negatively impacts every aspect of business.

Today, leaders must invest in the tools necessary to meet the demands of the future workplace. It’s about identifying fresh new talent pools, upping automation capabilities within an organisation to allow staff to do more with less, and streamlining internal processes from the very start of the onboarding process.

Another challenge lies not just in attracting new, untapped, talent, but in retaining existing employees. The needs and expectations of the modern workforce have changed dramatically, meaning that to retain top-tier talent, business leaders must be prepared to offer more than ever before: a high level of flexibility, a seamless employee experience, and socially responsible policies. Doing this requires a high level of data-driven capability. At a recent panel event, Scott Stoll, our VP of Employee Experience and Sales, explained: “It’s about being proactive in the work environment. Organisations should use a data-driven approach to look at real-time information from employees and be able to feed actions back to them. By doing this, employees will likely have a better experience.”

In turn, leaders who invest more into making lives easier for their employees are likely to see a boost to the customer experience and customer loyalty. ​​Research shows around 61% of consumers said they are more likely to shop with a company that treats its employees well. Improving the Total Experience is vital, and it requires bringing HR professionals further into the strategic planning process with digital and business leaders for better outcomes across the entire organisation.