Simple Self-Serve: Meeting Customer Expectations Every Time

With increased purchasing power, modern consumers are savvy and empowered, hold brands accountable on their values and are ruthless in their prerogative to switch to a competitor. Crucially, if they feel let down or disenfranchised in any way, they’ll switch to a rival brand in just a few clicks.

Against this backdrop, organizations are prioritizing the customer experience across all touchpoints as a means to fight back against this trend and instilling brand loyalty against the odds. 

The consistency gap

According to consulting firm McKinsey, there are numerous touchpoints that influence the customer experience, one of the most crucial being the way in which complaints are managed. In addition, efficiency, empathy and effective resolution, one of the cornerstones of best practice in complaints management is consistency. However, in the wake of an explosion in the number of touchpoints and channels available to the customer, consistency is often compromised. When you consider that 60% of customers polled in a recent report from consultancy Huntswood said they would change their provider as a result of a poor complaints experience, it’s not an issue that companies can afford to ignore.

Add this to the fact that 69% of businesses believe their customers are satisfied with their complaints handling, against 26% of customers who report that they are satisfied, and it’s clear that action is needed to address this gap.

Managing disparity

One of the reasons for this disparity is that while many large organizations have invested in dedicated software to support complaints management, it is typically managed within customer services, customer care or the contact center.

For complaints which are made via a web form, for example, consistency and speed can fall short of expectations. A web-based complaint is typically directed to the most appropriate business owner or department and therefore lands in an inbox that is subject to delays and redirection. Ultimately, it must then be re-keyed into the complaints management system which is not only inefficient and error-prone, but can cause cases to fall through the cracks, putting the customer experience at risk.

New capabilities

In its latest release, Respond 8.0, Aptean Respond has addressed this challenge with a new capability. Through its Simple Self-Serve module, customer feedback via a web form can be channeled directly into the Respond complaints management system because there’s no need to re-key data, ensuring comments and complaints are captured and acted upon in a consistent manner with those that come directly into the call center. The risk of inaccuracies or time delays are minimized, and crucially, the response is consistent.

In our modern world where consumers expect the same service and experience from a company regardless of touchpoint, this really is a fundamental step in embedding complaints management into the culture of an organization, rather than it representing an add-on which is confined to the call center.

Scaling to meet the challenge

With the customer journey becoming increasingly digital and the number of touchpoints expanding, there’s little sign of this challenge abating. However, through capitalizing on the tools available, companies can exploit better complaints management to enhance the customer experience consistently and with confidence.

For more information on how Aptean Respond’s Simple Self-Serve solution can help to meet customer expectations more closely, instill consistency and expedite complaint resolution, please reach out to us. We’d love to talk.