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How MindTouch Is Leading A Revolution In Customer Experience Management

This article is more than 10 years old.

Customer loyalty depends directly on both product satisfaction and customer experience. The link between the two is such that customers are actually willing to pay for better experiences, according to a recent Forrester report. See Tony Costa, Build Seamless Experience Now (Forrester Sept. 13, 2013). Yet even among content customers, 24% continue to seek out new vendors. Among unhappy customers, 86% will stop doing business with a company because of bad service. Fifty-one percent (51%) will give a company only one chance. And most disturbing of all, only four percent (4%) ever express their dissatisfaction. Companies are in the blind.

Social media has made customer relations/experience initiatives even more difficult. Nearly 95% of customers share bad product experiences online; 45% share bad customer services experiences with others. Yet companies lag when it comes to mastering two-way communication via these critical avenues. As Forrester states:

Online communities and Twitter have seen increases in usage rates in the past three years. However, satisfaction remains low for these channels, as companies have not invested in best practices for managing interactions on [them].

The result of poor customer engagement in a world of social media, distributed channels, and multi-device touch points can be a public relations nightmare nothing short of a brand crisis. Skeptical? Poor customer relations can result in a 20% decline in annual revenues. Not surprisingly, executives have caught on, with 95% stating that a great customer experience is critical to improving business performance.

Solving this problem for both small companies and billion dollar multinationals is no easy feat. San Diego-based MindTouch is a cloud-based service help center and a knowledge-as-a-service platform that improves companies’ customer support systems. MindTouch has identified at least six (6) critical components to any competitive customer experience platform.

According to Chief Executive Officer Aaron Fulkerson, these are:

  1. The solution must provide timely updates with sophisticated analytics. Relevant content should be published immediately after it is available. The goal is not just to provide real-time data, but also to use business intelligence (BI) analytics to mine nuggets from the noise of Big Data. Not all data helps customers make quick, informed decisions. Yet speed remains of the essence: 69% of customers attribute good customer service to quick resolution of their problems. Companies are by no means in a lose-lose situation. The must simply play hard to win.
  2. Collaboration rules the day. The platform must be a central repository of best practices. This invaluable resource is populated by that set of contributors most germane to a company’s ability to improve: its customers. A user community should allow users to contribute their experiences, common issues and resolutions, as well as innovate ways to use the product.  The end result is an ongoing self-improving cycle of support created by incorporating feedback and collaboration.
  3. Integration. Consumer information often still resides in regional silos, which makes it nearly impossible to understand consumer profiles, buying patterns, and the issues they raise. Modern customer experience must be integrated across divisions (e.g., marketing and product development), geography (e.g., a multinational), and partners. Globally, each touch point may have its own call centers, websites, internal product experts, and customers. All of these sources of information must be integrated not only with headquarters, but also with every other corporate node.
  4. Multi-Channel. Companies must be able to gather a comprehensive customer profile and update information based on customer interactions from a variety of sources, including social media, website information, and feedback from call centers. According to Fulkerson, mastering social media is especially critical. He states: "Online communities such as Facebook and Twitter have seen increases in usage rates in the past three years. However, satisfaction in quickly antiquated systems remains low for these channels, as companies have not invented best practices for managing solutions on the channels."
  5. Self-Service & Continuity. Although most would agree that human interaction vastly increases a customer experience, there are times when a question can be solved more easily by referring it to a help center to get relevant information more quickly. Recent Forrester research noted that 71% of customers prefer self-service help, implying a growing demand for world-class self-service capabilities. Along these lines, consumers want to pick up where they left off the last time the visited the forum. According to Forrester, “customer experience professionals face new challenges in ensuring interactions maintain a continuity of memory and experience through the customer’s journey.”
  6. The Cloud. Customer experience software must be based in the cloud. Given the factors set forth above, no effective solution can be located on premise. This would automatically stifle any customer experience department’s attempts to extract vital data from distributed centers, as well as to push real-time product and services information to critical markets nationally and worldwide. The cloud also provides a cheap platform, the ability to scale as much or little as needed with only incremental costs, and the ability “to avoid open source, which requires the IT department to put it in place. See Jon Reed, Can Cloud Fix The Service Experience (diginomica July 10, 2013).

Conclusion

Customer experience must be the first department that comes to mind when discussing business retention. Companies must quickly implement robust experience solutions that will keep them apace their competition. MindTouch’s Aaron Fulkerson concludes:

“Companies know they must deliver better support experiences. By having a solution where people can contribute information based on their skills and knowledge which is updated in real-time, companies can better serve their end-users and create loyal advocates for their company and brand.”

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I am the founder of BKC3 Consulting Group. Please follow me on Twitter @BenKerschberg and LinkedIn. Please also feel free to email me.