The rules of the modern customer experience game

Building a great product or solution is essential, but a company won’t go very far if it can’t provide a robust customer experience. With 73 percent of clients worldwide indicating that it’s an important factor in purchasing decisions, businesses have to ensure excellent customer experience to not only meet demand but also keep up with the competition.

Companies also need to understand that expectations and demands are high. People care about having access to instant, consistent, and contextual conversations with customer support teams across several channels. As such, it’s imperative that they’re available on channels customers already trust and enjoy.

Infobip CEO Silvio Kutic / Photo credit: Infobip

Personalization is also a major factor in retaining customers. “Customer retention is instrumental to all businesses, and they constantly have to keep up with the fast pace of change when it comes to interaction with clients and customers,” says Silvio Kutic, CEO of Infobip, a full-stack communications platform-as-a-service company. “A personalized omnichannel communication approach is truly vital in building brand loyalty and [customer retention].”

Channel mastery is important

Using communication channels ineffectively can lead to embarrassing results. One example is how British Airways (BA) failed to proactively respond to a disgruntled customer, who bought promoted tweets on Twitter to air his complaint. The customer was disappointed to know that the flag carrier did not have 24/7 support on the platform and also didn’t seem to know how direct messaging works.

The incident damaged BA’s reputation as many other customers chimed in to share their own bad experiences with the airline.

Photo credit: Pop Nukoonrat / 123RF

According to a study by payments giant American Express, 65 percent of customers say that having their issues resolved in their chosen channels is the most important aspect of a good customer service experience.

“This means that [customers] expect you to reach them on the exact channels that they want to be reached on,” says Kutic. “You need to gain insights about their interests, their behavior, their priorities, and, of course, their preferred method of communication.”

Seamless customer journeys

One organization that has a lock on providing a seamless, convenient omnichannel customer experience is TBC Bank in the Eurasian country of Georgia. It upgraded its onboarding process to enable new customers to begin the origination process for loans through a call center and finish it at an ATM, kiosk, or branch – whichever is most convenient for them.

The improvements resulted in greater efficiencies, cutting the time-to-decision for a credit application from one business day to 15 minutes and increasing loan approval rates by 40 percent. This shows the impact of a cohesive omnichannel communications approach on customer experience.

According to Salesforce, 70 percent of customers worldwide say that connected processes, such as contextualized engagement based on earlier interactions, are very important for winning their business.

“Customer support needs to have a seamless switch from bot support to human communication, and speed is key,” says Kutic. “People want to get the answer to the question as quickly as possible with the least effort. They want communications to happen where they want, when they want, and how they want at each step of the customer journey.”

In fact, businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve 91 percent greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to businesses that don’t.

Improving user experience for Xiaomi

Kutic offers the example of Xiaomi as a company that genuinely values user experience. The Chinese internet company is one of Infobip’s clients.

Through Infobip’s solutions, new users can register for a Xiaomi account via one-click SMS registration, which takes mere seconds. A Xiaomi account is required for users to access the company’s internet services. They can also use all their Xiaomi smart devices through this single account.

The process also involves two-factor authentication via SMS for verification and data security purposes, a more secure and efficient measure than email verification.

Xiaomi sees reduced costs and complexities involved with docking mobile operators in each new territory, and it can access the messaging platform anytime through a customer portal. This facilitates the management of inquiries from within the company by allowing an administrator to keep tabs on all the messages sent and received.

“Infobip’s global messaging service has reduced the complexities of Xiaomi’s international SMS requirements, resulting in an improved user experience for our customers,” says Xiaomi Passport manager Fan Nan. Xiaomi Passport is the team that manages all matters that are handled via Xiaomi account. “Throughout our years of working with Infobip, we find that they are indeed a global messaging service provider of high quality.”

Localization in globalization

The ever-expanding and evolving tech industry presents businesses with many innovative ways to communicate with their customers and ensure a good user experience even as they expand beyond their own borders.

“As companies scale geographically, they all face the challenge of facilitating an experience most appropriate to local online habits,” points out Kutic. “At Infobip, we like to think of it as an opportunity for differentiation.”

Infobip is a global cloud communications company and a leader in omnichannel engagement powering a broad range of messaging channels, tools, and solutions for advanced customer engagement, authentication, and security. The company helps clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their business, and enhance customer experience in a fast, secure, and reliable way.

Find out more about Infobip’s range of communications services here.