Aspire CEO Kaspar Roos about improving customer experience

Kaspar is the CEO and founder of Aspire, a consultancy firm specialized in Customer Communications Management and Customer Experience Management. Dialog Group and Kaspar have the same mission: helping companies with their digital transformation to improve the customer experience company-wide

Time is precious, so consumers want to arrange (almost) everything quickly and easily

Everyone has little time when it comes to dealing with annoying chores, such as taking out insurance or a new subscription. We want to get this over with as quickly as possible. On the other hand, we are willing to make time for a nicer purchase. For example, a car, a piece of clothing or a new smartphone. You consciously choose to take your time for this. As a company you must be able to sense this. When does your customer want to invest time in something and when not? Companies that know how to make this distinction are able to retain customers.

When does your customer want to invest time in something and when not? Companies that know how to make this distinction are able to retain customers.

Companies that are strong in customer experience use different communication channels than companies that are less adept at it.

Everyone has little time when it comes to dealing with annoying chores, such as taking out insurance or a new subscription. We want to get this over with as quickly as possible. On the other hand, we are willing to make time for a nicer purchase. For example, a car, a piece of clothing or a new smartphone. You consciously choose to take your time for this. As a company you must be able to sense this. When does your customer want to invest time in something and when not? Companies that know how to make this distinction are able to retain customers.

That is not surprising. Companies that are at the beginning of their digital transformation to improve the customer experience think in a different way than companies that are already adept at this. An example: when a small company with an average NPS starts thinking and acting from a customer perspective, they start sharing documents through personal customer portals. Customers can download the documents from the portal, print them and sign them if necessary. Companies that have already advanced in customer-oriented thinking - and probably have a higher NPS - see these documents as part of a process. And they want to make that entire process simpler.

Optimize processes with an omnichannel customer contact strategy

Our research has shown that younger generations and higher income groups in particular expect omnichannel customer interactions. The customer contact they have with a company, through whatever channel, must be linked so that they do not have to reintroduce themselves. They see their time as a scarce resource and want to spend as little time as possible on customer service.*
That is why I believe in the use of messaging channels, as long as it is linked to the context in which the interaction takes place. This does not always go well. Companies do not understand the context properly or activate the messaging channels for only one department, for example. Too bad, because this creates silos within your organization and there is a good chance that the customer will be sent from pillar to post.

Human like interactions using artificial intelligence

Through messaging channels, companies are increasingly focusing on human-like interactions. So customer interactions that do not appear robotic, where it seems as if the customer is conversing with a real person, but fully automated. I do not yet recommend using this for the full 100%. The technology is not that far yet. But you can answer about 80% of the simpler questions with it.
Artificial intelligence (AI) also offers the option to automatically scan and index incoming customer questions, so that the question is immediately forwarded to the right department. This only works well if an AI bot understands the context of the question and knows where in the customer journey the customer is. If the bot understands this, it can determine much better what the next best challenge messages are. We are still in the infancy of this, but in the future the engines will do this better and better. You can already see this on the customer service side. When a customer calls, an AI bot can convert spoken sentences into text and analyze them using natural language processing (NLP). The bot can then provide suggestions to the customer service agents so that they can help the customer faster.

Creating good customer communication can be easier

Artificial intelligence is also increasingly used to make creating customer communication easier. Consider a scan that recognizes an unintentional negative tone of voice or notices that the grammar is becoming too complex. The latter is important. The Netherlands has a well-educated population, but if you look at America, for example, you see that many people have low literacy. Such a language check ensures that all customer communication is accessible to people with low literacy. You can also use it for some branding. You can prevent certain words, names or language constructions from being used by your employees.

A different customer experience per department thanks to separate silos

In practice, I regularly see top management shouting: 'Customer experience is super important and we want to have the highest NPS in the industry'. But how this is achieved is up to the departments themselves. With the very best intentions, the departments draw up their own plan and loose silos arise within the company. And it is precisely those separate silos that lead to poorer customer experiences…

Suppose you are a customer of a large bank and have taken out a mortgage and car insurance there. Then you may have had a great digital experience when taking out your car insurance and that any problems were resolved quickly. While everything related to your mortgage is still done via printed documents and customer service is difficult to reach. But as a customer you want one experience, not multiple experiences with different departments within a company.

Bring your departments, systems and processes together and start collaborating

Ultimately, as a company you have to approach it holistically. Departments need to sit down together and think about how all customer communications can be coordinated so that no loose silos arise. Fortunately, more and more companies are starting to wonder why they route all digital customer interactions through different channels, systems and processes. When you take a company-wide approach, you can ensure that every department within your company can offer the customer the same customer experience. So it not only requires modern technology, but also that you organize your company differently.

* The translations on this website are provided by G-Translate from Dutch