Investing in your customer experience is more important than ever before. Customers are more connected than ever before, and they have many options to buy and many options to express their opinion about your product or service. If you want to remain competitive in the marketplace, you need to get serious about delivering excellent customer experiences.
Post-Covid 3 things have gained importance,
- The emotional response to an interaction with a service or product.
- The cognitive process that informs the emotional response
- The behavior that results from an emotional and cognitive response
This means that they take into account not just how your customer feels but also why they feel that way. It’s important to know not just what you are doing wrong but also what you are doing right in order to create a great customer experience. Customer experience is traditionally associated with a product or service purchase but never before have post-purchase behavior and the emotional quotient of a provider been tested as it was during the pandemic. People will not forget the
- The Nurse who was kind at the Hospital.
- The delivery guy who delivered stuff to our doorstep within the time.
- The pharmacy which delivered medicines during an emergency.
- The Airline which refunded money for pre-planned tickets/bookings.
- The Insurance company which settled claims seamlessly.
These are emotional experiences and irrespective of the way technology was used/not used these will remain etched in our memory. On the other hand, the pandemic has also shown up sharply in black and white about brands that have empathy and brands with which empathy is not associated. Macro-economic trends in customer experience are affecting cutting through all industries
Healthcare: There will be a major uptick in Customer Experience investments in the Healthcare sector, Traditional Hospital Management systems are good on the operation side of things but with more and more investments in healthcare, this will be a sector where Experience will be compared in line with Hospitality.
Retail: The term revenge shopping is the right one, as consumers tired of screens and confines will return to brick-and-mortar stones with a vengeance, People long to meet other humans, touch and feel stuff, and listen to actual people rather than a chatbot. Make no mistake Online shopping will continue to evolve but more and more brands need to embrace Omni Channel services, it’s still not there contrary to popular notion.
Hospitality & Travel: This sector has a different problem, as holidaymakers and travel return with a bang. They will have the challenge of keeping everybody happy without getting drowned in operational details, the new airports /hotels complete with Facial Recognition, Biometrics, and seamless bookings will keep this sector on its toes, Brands will also market sustainability and green travel aggressively. Experience will be driven thus.
Banking and Financial Services: Experience in this sector will be a challenge given the scale of operations, as more and more customers get onboarded on online and digitally-enabled fintech platforms the casualty is personalization, so expect customer loyalty and satisfaction to be low unless some sane and planned investments are made on technologies where Data is mined and monetized properly.
Manufacturing: Manufacturing has realized that in such trying times collaboration internally is key to keep the organization going, hence there has been a lot of focus on improving employee and internal process experience. With disrupted supply chains, locked down plants and health-affected employee companies have realized that a good experience is not something meant only for its customers
