Hi Claudine, tell us about yourself and your background.
I started working in the IT Industry in 2010, and in Summary from a service desk agent taking support calls to senior management at one of the largest IT companies in Africa to now being a founder of an IT company that focuses on Data in IT. In between the 11 years in the industry I also learned how to fly helicopters, and lived in China just under a year. (If you require detail in more depth please let me know)
What is the biggest misunderstanding about customer experience, in your opinion?
In my view managing expectations with the customer service teams(internally) and customer stakeholders (externally) is the most critical path to ensure success and to have clarity on how your customers are experiencing your service. There is a massive difference between an Incident that occurred and the customer is not happy about a failure on their IT systems and how the Supporting supplier goes about resolving the incidents.
In other words a customer may not be happy that they are experiencing IT difficulties, but they should be happy by means of the correct skills and valid communication from the supporting supplier to the customer, which in turn will be managed and seen as customer experience. The day to day operations are also critical to ensure customer satisfaction and official monthly service reviews should be conducted between customer and supplier.
What are some of the newer CX companies/solutions you’re keeping your eyes on right now?
Amazon, Spinnaker and of course RadixTrie have a massive focus on CX.
What can companies do to improve customer loyalty and retention?
Keeping track in a formal and ongoing service review meeting, whereby the customer can express their requirements and frustrations, and the supporting supplier has to action on those requirements and frustrations. Another important aspect is to ensure that Account Managers explore the uncovered opportunities within their customers to ensure ongoing support can be delivered to a customer.
What do you think is most relevant and why: CSAT (customer satisfaction score), NPS (net promoter score), or CES (customer effort score)?
NPS, because there are multiple ways to rollout NPS scorings, and the feedback is straight to the point wrt will a customer or wont a customer continue using a service, and will they recommend your service.
How can companies better use social media in the era of customer-centricity and personalization?
Listen to your customers when they talk and ensure that your social media content reflects ongoing content that will resonate with your current customers.
What is your opinion on AI-based chatbots to handle customer support?
I think it is twofold:
A: its good for automation, eliminating human error, long turnaround times for general responses, and company profitability, however on the flip side
B: Customers enjoy human interaction, and questions that are more specific are answered more clearly than general questions answered by a chatbot.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
Monthly service review meetings that include all stakeholders.
