Gartner: Sieben Initiativen zur Verbesserung von Customer Experience

Donnerstag, 28. Februar 2008 um 12:58

Most process redesign is done with the objective of improving operational efficiencies rather than to improve the customer experience: an inside-out approach. Often these changes are made under the auspices of a quality improvement programme. Yet, some organisations are applying the same quality improvement methodologies to the goal of improving the customer experience. First they identify which processes matter most to customers then set about identifying what to improve: an outside-in approach. At every customer interaction with a company, there is at least one "moment of truth" — an interaction that can disproportionately positively or negatively affect the customer experience. “Organisations must fix one problem at a time and shouldn’t try to fix all broken processes simultaneously. The best organisations just focus on the worst two or three,” he added.

Act as one organisation to ensure consistency

The customer may interact with many parties as part of his or her business with a company. The challenge for the company is to ensure that information gleaned at one interaction is not forgotten in the next channel. “Since the company cannot control all these interactions, we recommend they start with the parts of the customer experience they can control. They will achieve more by addressing their own process issues first before making demands of suppliers and partners,” said Mr Thompson.

Be open

Organisations that want to improve the customer experience often become more open. Being more open may just mean opening up more channels or opening hours but it can mean much more. For example, some organisations establish an environment where customers can support, promote, defend or refer their products and services through an online community. This community can be one of the most powerful and influential tools for marketing and as a result, an open organisation should follow three tenets: be transparent and clear, be open-minded and be inclusive.

Personalise products and experiences

Some personalisation options are simple, such as a website that enables customers to monogram products, while others are more complex, such as tailoring and personal pricing. However, customisation creates complexity and costs for the company. Companies need to beware of just evaluating the costs of personalisation against the sales benefits and factor in the longer-term value of improving the customer experience when building the business case.

Alter attitudes and employee behaviour

Employees' actions are often the most powerful improvements in a customer's experience. Companies can alter employee behaviour in three primary ways: recruit the right types of employees, ensure standards such as policies, procedures and governance structures and create training programmes and incentives thatcan modify employee behaviour patterns. Executive mystery-shopper programmes and hands-on manager involvement during peak-demand periods help educate company leaders about what the average customer and employee are experiencing.

Design the complete customer experience

Many organisations have no plan or design for the customer experience. The experience is unplanned and accidental in its execution, with the result that the experience “just happens”. Companies with a focus on selling experiences, such as in the entertainment, education and travel industries, focus on designing experiences. The brand is an expression of a product or company’s reputation built up over many years. Today, brands increasingly are used as part of marketing communications to create a high-level expectation or promise of a particular quality or customer experience.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 3,900 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 75 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

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