Customer Experience

MAKING YOUR CUSTOMERS’ WORLD A BETTER PLACE

Customer experience is not a luxury. In today''s hyper connected world poor customer service no longer goes unnoticed. Today''s poor service is tomorrow''s web campaign. In areas where consumer choice is limited the scrutiny of the web becomes even more important in driving regulatory enquiry and intervention. Customer experience is however not a luxury. Good customer experience is good business. Even where customers can not ''vote with their feet,'' bad service costs money. Bad service tends to stem from inefficient delivery processes, poorly managed or motivated people and ineffective or unreliable technology. Improving all of these components will ultimately improve efficiency at the same time as improving the customer experience.

RPC has a huge depth of experience in measuring and mapping customer experience and analysing and understanding the underlying problems negatively impacting that experience. We bring a proven approach and powerful solutions to help you transform your customer experience and at the same time deliver significant efficiency.

Our approach to enriching your Customer Experience is encapsulated and supported in our Customer Experience Solution (CES) approach which identifies five key phases to improving the Customer Experience in your organisation. The CES incorporates many standard tools, processes, templates methodologies and solutions to support each phase. These tools encapsulate best practice, tried and tested solutions and simple and intuitive interfaces. They enable us to deliver quicker, cheaper and more effective and sustainable solutions to the challenges you face. Our rich pool of subject matter experts includes people that have real life experience of identifying and measuring the critical aspects of the customer''s experience.

The five key stages of our CES are illustrated below. They are designed to minimise the elapsed time between starting a Customer Experience improvement programme and the identification of a road map of prioritised actions.

Analysis – understanding the customer

This provides the opportunity to collect the necessary customer data for the services you provide and to undertake detailed analysis of the data to understand: trends in the market place, customer''s preferences, customer''s behaviours and their perspective of the experience they have had. During this phase a high degree of interaction is required with your customers and employees via customer surveys, focus groups and interviews.

Hypothesis – illustrating the experience

This will be created based upon synthesis of the data collection, its analysis and the primary and secondary research we have undertaken. During this stage Customer Journey Maps will be created to help explain the customer''s view of the experience. This is compared and contrasted with an internal view of the services provided and the processes used to manage the customer interaction. Here the key issues will be identified and a number of hypotheses will be created to help define how future access to services will be provided by your organisation. This is likely to consider

• the current access channels customers use to contact you
• the preferences that customers have for making contact with you
• estimates of the total customer contact demand
• estimate of the level of failure demand that is caused by how the current access strategy is configured
• anticipated trends in customer behaviour and how this might impact on their future access requirements
• potential customer segmentation to enable access to services to be customised

Validate – confirming the needs of your customers

We are able to deliver you a visualisation of the journey your customers undertake when dealing with your organisation. Mapping the customer experience provides you with a greater insight and understanding into how customers perceive your brand at every step of their journey. The visualisation will be shared with customers, employees and managers and their feedback sought to ensure that the messages illustrated are an accurate reflection of the current state and their “moments of truth” or an accurate reflection of what the future should be. Further sense checking will be made against the data collected and external references to ensure that the hypotheses developed are sensible and practical areas for targeting improvements are identified.

Opportunities – the improvements that can be delivered

Building on the validated hypotheses, business improvement opportunities will be finalised and assessed to ensure that

• it fits with the needs of the organisation and the customers
• it is practical and capable of implementation
• there is a clear business case to help obtain organisational buy-in and to help sustain the change
• the implementation risks are understood and capable of being managed

Once assessed a recommended list of options is compiled for consideration during the next phase.

Prioritise – the improvements we intend to deliver and when

The improvement opportunities will be reviewed with you and prioritised in order that a strategic implementation roadmap can be created. Organisations and their customers do not always have the same priorities. It is clear however that a focus on Customer Experience can eliminate failure demand, improve customer relations and reduce cost to serve. Potentially, focusing on Customer Experience can of itself lead to improved efficiency. This can then allow investment to be made into enhanced Customer Service features that Customers are demanding.

RPC understands the importance of delivering exceptional customer service to clients and services. The statement that "Customer is King" may never have been more accurate given the vast amount of information and choice now available to consumers. Our customer experience expertise means we are in a position to help you truly understand the mindset of your customers. The fact that customers are now able to alter their consumer behaviour with ease reinforces the fact the service they receive is crucial to securing their repeat business and continued support.