You might think there is nothing more commoditised than transferring money internationally.
It’s as easy as 1) You want to send money 2) You send it 3) It’s received.
However, what seems like a very simple transaction is anything but, leading to opportunities for specialist providers to grab share from the retail banks. What many of these specialists are very good at is the technicalities behind a complicated transaction, but less experienced or set up to deal with the emotional anxiety associated with sending large amounts of money overseas for the customers’ involved.
One appeared to be different. They recognised the need to be empathetic with customers and using the ‘CXStart’ approach, embarked upon a transformation programme to deliver an enhanced customer experience.
However, embarking on any CX programme is as much about stakeholder management as it is the improved experience deliverables or incremental profit which follows. Whilst by now almost all multi-national corporates see ‘putting customers first’ as standard, it’s fair to say for SMEs’, including the larger ‘M’’s it’s still met with glazed expressions and often feelings of “Our brand is strong, our customers buy from us, we are doing well, therefore why do we need to rethink customer?” Adding an external independent adviser (Colette Porter, that’s me), regardless of capability of relevant expertise, to the mix and it’s obvious that winning over the client team early is extremely important.
Our evidence suggests, the more silos, the greater the resistance. But interestingly it’s here you often get the greatest gains too.
What did we achieve?
- Over 200 Customer Touchpoints identified
- 50 journey maps in four days, every touchpoint process blueprinted in minute detail through every department and every system.
- We gained invaluable insight and some crucial feedback from existing customers via the survey that, together with the journey mapping, enabled us to provide a comprehensible report.
- A strategic collaboration of over 100 recommendations put together for improvement areas.
What were the top 5 key findings and recommendations from this?
Rates and Charges
The rates and charges were sited as the main reason customers would not recommend or continue to use their service. Out of 70% of Customers who reported no service issues, 82% of these stated the rates and charges as a reason as to why they would discontinue using their service. Comments received ranged from exchange rates not being updated quickly enough to charges and taxes being too high compared to their competitors.
Website
The website could be more user friendly. Too much scrolling, helpful info hidden, not enough relevance and too many clicks were key issues.
Referral System
Reassuringly, results from the survey emphasised how much the existing customer base loved their proposition. A huge 39% of the existing customer base cite “word of mouth” as their way of finding out about the company.
It proved this was a very effective marketing strategy, not that it was deliberate. A good referral system would negate the need for regular promo codes thus maintaining loyalty and growing their customer base.
Customer Service
Their Customer Service dept didn’t favour well with contact problems, of those that had issues 2% complained of not being able to get through to anyone, others were not called back when promised and their response times and often replies to emails did not reflect the problems raised. Customer Services was cited as an improvement area.
Focus on recruiting the right type of people and training to engage and empower employees to take ownership of issues and build an emotional connection with customers whilst on calls is important.
In addition clear, concise and engaging communications would help spark the right connection with customers.
Communications
All automated communications needed to be re-written and personalised with a common appropriate tone of voice needed across verbal and written comms. This was sporadically deployed with the“Welcome” email being a great example of what to do and other subsequent pieces leaving customers seeing a huge inconsistency.
How do we do it?
Listen to the business. Listen to the customer
We started with the feedback survey, (every customer is different so this is reflected in tailored surveys) which will give a good snapshot of what current customers think; how satisfied they are with the service they receive and more importantly how likely are they to return.
Whilst we wait on the results we delve deep into the workshops. Inviting a mixture of crucial employees for these workshops, we start from awareness (How a potential customer could become aware of your service) and work through into information search and so on through the other elements “through the customer’s eyes”.
This workshop may include pre-sales, sales, customer service, marketing, web team, tech team and any other dept that has a customer touch-point for potential customers trying to gather more information about the service or organisation.
Understanding the journeys that customers could take for every request and decision they could make is crucial to mapping each process, in detail. How does that thought pattern or request pass through different teams or different software? How is that impacted in potential customers finding exactly what they want in a time that suits them or what they perceive is acceptable?
Once the workshops are complete and the survey results in analyse what we’ve been told by customers and compare it to what employees believe are the strengths and issues in the customer journey.
We return after 3, 6, and 12 months to assess progress and provide support to ensure you can realise your potential from CX.
It’s an enjoyable process which in a relatively short space of time will help any medium sized business sharpen up their potential to profit from customer experience.
We help clients build memorable customer experiences and create engaging customer value propositions.
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For further information contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or call us on M: +44 (0) 7968 316548 or T: +44 (0)1279 902205. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter or read client testimonials and case studies at www.lexdengroup.com.
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