DIGITAL SPECIAL
Customers’ lives are digital—but is your customer care still analog?
Digital
customer care is still new territory for many companies. They can learn a lot
from the natives.
Today’s customers expect digital service. More and more are getting it,
too, across sectors from telecommunications to banking and from utilities to
retail. For example, telco
customers conduct roughly 70 percent of their purchases either partly or wholly
online—and 90 percent of their service requests as well.
The rapid shift
to digital customer care (or e-care) should be good for everyone. Automation and self-service cuts transaction costs for providers. When
e-care is done well, customers prefer it, too. Our research among
telecommunications customers shows that customers who use digital channels for
service transactions are one-third more satisfied, on average, than those who rely on
traditional channels. And since companies that excel in customer satisfaction also tend to create more
value for their shareholders, there is even more incentive to get e-care right.
Despite e-care’s advantages, however, many
companies struggle to give their customers a consistently good digital
experience. The same research revealed that while more than two-fifths of
service interactions with telecommunications companies begin on an e-care
platform, only 15 percent are digital from start to finish. We’ve also found
that use of digital service channels lags a long way behind awareness. In
Europe, for example, 98 percent of mobile phone users in one survey knew their
provider offered a service website, but only 37 percent made use of it. In the United
States, meanwhile, only 18 percent of mobile users said they used their providers’ online
service platforms.
And e-care is getting more complex to
implement. Not only do customers now want access to a fully comprehensive range
of online service offerings—they also want to access these offerings using a
variety of platforms, including both conventional web browsers and a growing
pool of mobile devices and dedicated apps. Customers expect their experience to
be continuous and consistent as they migrate from one platform to another, but
they also want service options that make sense in the context in which they are
asking for help.
Finally, customers are getting harder to
impress. The rapid rise of “digital native” companies, such as Spotify or Uber,
exposes customers to simple, streamlined user experiences designed from the
ground up for digital delivery. Established companies that build their e-care
offerings and processes on top of, or alongside, more traditional channels
often find it hard to meet the same standards.
That comparison is becoming increasingly
important. When customers think about the e-care service they receive from
their bank or phone company, they don’t compare it with its competitors in the
same industry but with the other digital services they use every day. When the
online experience doesn’t meet their expectations, customers go back to the
phone. As a result, some telecoms companies have seen call-center volumes—and costs—rise as they attempt to move to a digital
service model.
Making
e-care work
Companies that have been able to move more
customer-care services to online channels and articulate strong e-care
offerings excel across seven dimensions:
Simplicity starts with a clean, clear, and intuitive design
that requires few mouse clicks or screen touches to achieve the desired task.
The main functionalities are easy to find and well explained. The language is
concise, simple, and easy to understand. Apple offers a wide range of products
aimed at very different customers, for example, but its product information and
support websites use the same clean, pared-down design, with key information
presented clearly and more detail available with a minimum of clicks. In
financial services, companies such as PayPal have dramatically simplified
online payments, in many cases requiring only the recipient’s email address or
mobile-phone number as identification.
Convenience means customers are offered a wide variety of
services and a choice of support channels. User interfaces are easy to navigate
and critical information is not hidden within long pages or complex menu
hierarchies. Even better are sites that use data intelligence to tailor page
content dynamically based on who is accessing it. Similarly, biometric
identification techniques using fingerprint or voiceprint technologies
accelerate authentication steps and reduce the mental burden on users without
comprising security. One telecom company has developed a dynamic FAQ system
that suggests possible support articles as soon as a customer begins to type a
query and that loads the most relevant content automatically without requiring
a page refresh.
Interactivity reflects the fact that customers now expect their
online experiences to be dynamic and interactive, with blogs, social-media
feeds, user reviews, and customer forums all playing important roles in modern
e-care. These are especially important for millennial consumers, who have grown
up steeped in social media and online interactions. Accordingly, an active user
community is central to UK-mobile-phone-network giffgaff’s strategy. Users
receive account credit for helping others with their queries, and individual
community members are regularly highlighted on giffgaff’s support website. One
of the company’s core product offerings—a bundle of text messages, voice
minutes, and data known as a “goodybag”—was introduced as a direct result of
suggestions on user forums. Moreover, through interactive games and a
cocreation system that lets users build new services for other community
members, customers now help set giffgaff’s direction.
Consistency is essential: customers require that the
appearance, functionality, and information available in e-care services be
consistent regardless of which device or software they use. Amazon, for
example, shows customers essentially the same menus, the same links, and the
same tone and language across all of its mobile and website channels, giving
customers the same experience as they move from one channel to the next. This
commitment significantly reduces any need for relearning after each switch—and
any attendant digital friction.
Value results
only if e-care works for the customer. Services must be designed to reflect the
user’s individual needs, rather than the company’s internal processes, and must
evolve as those needs change. One insurance company, for example, uses
real-time rendering technology to create a customized video presentation of the
coverage included in the customer’s quotation. The video combines
professionally scripted and presented content with customer-specific data drawn
from multiple sources, and its content is adjusted based on the customer’s
choices and responses during the presentation.
Desirability is a product not only of a consistently appealing
visual design but also of the tone and presentation of the site’s content. Both
usually require adaption to suit local tastes, which may require dramatically
different choices depending on the specific context. For instance, Chinese
websites are typically very crowded, with lots of information available, while
sites in the United States and Western Europe tend toward a more streamlined
aesthetic.
Brand is
not just a label: it is how customers experience a company’s products and
services. Given that e-care has become one of the primary ways customers
interact with a business, brand reinforcement should be a primary e-care goal
rather than an afterthought. The best companies therefore integrate their brand
values deeply into the design of their e-care offerings.
To buttress its message of providing
exactly the services its customers need, one mobile-phone company has tailored
its service experience to support unique “moments of truth” in the customer
journey. Once a customer logs in, the website’s navigation changes dynamically
based not only on what the customer is doing but also on behavioral insights
based on previous interactions with the company.
A customer who’s usually pressed for time
may see just three simple plan alternatives, cutting through the clutter, while
one who wants to be assured of getting the best deal will see more detail on
plan options, so she can feel in control. The site then guides the customer through
activation steps, offers clear instructions on how to get the most from the
service, and anticipates the most common questions with detailed answers.
Measuring
up
To understand how leading players measure
up under this harsh scrutiny, we evaluated the e-care offerings of more than 20
major telecommunications companies across the world, covering both online
services and dedicated apps. We tested half a dozen common service activities,
including access to billing and consumption information, technical-support
queries, and sales or upgrade queries.
Our approach looked at the way e-care
platforms were designed and presented to the user, the functionalities on
offer, and the information available within each of our target service
activities. Under each of those three main concepts, we rated the offerings
across the seven dimensions described above.
Are you
ahead of the pack?
Overall, our analysis should be sobering
reading in all sectors for incumbents that are digitizing their
customer-service offerings. We found only one area—the presentation of
information using simple, jargon-free language—where most of the companies
surveyed are demonstrating best practices. Elsewhere, we did find examples of
best practices, but they have not been adopted by every company, and they are
not always consistently applied even when they have been adopted.
The best websites and apps in our survey
sample, for example, offer a wide range of services using a clear, easily
understandable architecture that requires few clicks to access relevant
content. Several, but by no means all, companies provide a convenient search
function to help customers access technical support. Only a few make “search” the
core navigation method for technical-support information.
Indeed, not many of the surveyed companies
are taking full advantage of digital platforms’ unique capabilities.
Interactive features such as support wizards or explanatory videos were rare.
Only the very best-performing companies managed to integrate their e-care
offerings seamlessly with live channels (such as e-calling or traditional
telephone support) to create a truly multichannel experience. And just a
handful have deployed the most advanced e-care technologies, such as artificial
intelligence or chatbots.
For many of the services we evaluated,
customer experience was inconsistent between web and app platforms. Apps
sometimes offered less functionality and frequently provided less information than
their web counterparts, which companies tended to position as the full-service
option. On further examination, differences in look and function between apps
and web often arose because of the relatively recent introduction of app
offerings, or the use of different design and development teams.
Best
practice is not enough
As they move further into the digital
world, many incumbents clearly have work to do to give their customers the best
e-care experience. But that’s no reason to set their sights too low. Leading
companies not only make their digital channels highly useful and consistent at
every customer touchpoint—they also make them fun and emotionally appealing.
They personalize the experience and keep it relevant across the entire customer
life cycle. For these top digital players, e-care doesn’t just work, it builds
a brand that engages and delights customers.
That’s the standard, and it’s lifting
customer expectations for everyone else. To keep up, traditional companies must
measure their own performance against the best of the best of best—and embrace
a culture of rapid, continuous evolution and improvement. There’s no time to
lose.
By Jorge Amar and Hyo Yeon
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/customers-lives-are-digital-but-is-your-customer-care-still-analog?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1706&hlkid=f168de1a22714c6298775b8dccb7d433&hctky=1627601&hdpid=bce53f35-7747-4853-8182-02f154d5efb8
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