The move to digital self-service is turning customer loyalty on its head.
Switching between brands is a breeze, and customers can navigate their entire journey without ever talking with someone or stepping into a brick-and-mortar location. The allure of a shiny new offer can lead to quick clicks and fast churn.
Acting on customer feedback is the best way to deliver self-service experiences that drive loyalty, but how do you gather vital insights at scale through a voice of the customer (VOC) program, when talking with customers is becoming a rarity?
That’s what we’re going to explore in this article.
The business impact when digital self-service experiences fall short
With customers increasingly open to trying out new brands[1]—and not just willing to use a self-service option, but increasingly expecting and preferring it[2]—it's absolutely critical for companies to deliver unforgettable self-service digital experiences.
If your organization either fails to provide self-service options, or worse, delivers options that fall short of meeting customers’ expectations, you’ll likely see a negative impact on CSAT, loyalty, and revenue.
Our consulting team sees this happen all the time. That drop in CX KPIs is often what prompts organizations to reach out to NICE for help with creating a comprehensive VOC program, or improving an existing program, so that it delivers actionable insights at scale.
For example, if you’re a financial services company and your credit card app doesn’t allow customers to quickly and easily check their balance, pay their bill, report a fraudulent transaction, get answers to basic account questions, etc., OR, if customers find the experience awkward to navigate or too time-consuming, they’ll be much more likely to respond positively when a competitor offers a great introductory rate to switch cards.
An omnichannel approach to customer feedback at scale
Many companies are missing out on vital customer feedback because even with the rapid rise of digital self-service, they’re still focused mainly on feedback in their voice channel.
Alarmingly, ICMI’s State of the Contact Center in 2022 found that while about 70% of companies report monitoring their inbound phone channel for quality and performance, fewer than 10% said that they regularly monitor digital self-service and social channels.[3]
The shift to digital omnichannel journeys creates an opportunity to gather more customer feedback across more touchpoints and gain deeper, holistic CX insights at scale.
Taking an omnichannel approach will help you:
- Reach more customers and fully understand channel or touchpoint experiences
- Pinpoint root causes of dissatisfaction and churn across channels
- Uncover opportunities to address systemic issues
- Use diverse sets of feedback to identify opportunities for digital transformation improvements, as well as selective agent coaching
Making feedback a natural part of digital self-service journeys
Overcoming the inherent challenge around capturing VOC in self-service journeys and achieving the necessary scale starts with making feedback a natural part of the process.
Start by mapping out the digital customer journey and structuring your feedback program to ask relevant, contextualized questions. Then, use what you know to ask the next best question—and then use that information to support the next best action that you take.
Some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind
- ❌ Don’t make the feedback request feel like a bolt-on
- ❌ Don’t make feedback requests overly complex or time-consuming
- ✅ Do make the feedback request contextual
- ✅ Do make the feedback request purposeful
The key to gathering feedback on self-service experiences is that it needs to be embedded within the channel whenever possible. Either the questions should be part of the experience so the customer feels like they’re still interacting, or immediately after.
You don’t want to slow customers down or make them feel like you’re asking them to do something extra just for you—especially if they’ve run into a problem and are already feeling frustrated. After all, customers typically choose and prefer self-service because they think it will save them time.
In a recent consumer and business survey about digital-first CX, 95% of businesses reported seeing a growth in self-service requests, with 34% of consumers citing faster response times as the number one benefit. Among consumers’ top frustrations when interacting with agents: waiting on hold (63%), and not getting their issue resolved quickly (37%).[4]
Transforming feedback into actionable CX insights
An impactful VOC program doesn’t just collect relevant feedback seamlessly, it delivers actionable insights at scale to help your organization continually improve your digital self-service experiences.
To get the kind of holistic insights that will help you move the needle, look for modern VOC technology that uses AI, machine learning, and analytics to combine and analyze:
- Quantitative feedback: CSAT, customer effort scores, quantitative reviews, NPS
- Qualitative feedback: open responses about what customers want/need/prefer, why they provided certain scores, suggestions for improvement
- Operational data: usage, drop offs, time spent, next step when self-service failed, e.g., Did they call the contact center?
For example, if a customer started in a self-serve digital channel and later called the contact center, it likely signals a problem because what started as a self-enabled experience…ultimately became an assisted one.
A voice-only approach to VOC wouldn’t catch this, because the customer might give the agent who helped them a high rating and note that their issue was resolved—which is really missing the point.
As ICMI Principal Analyst Tim McElgunn notes:
“The voice of the customer goes beyond what they tell you in response to the questions you asked. It’s also revealed in the actions that they take in using your systems, so it’s critical to have that feedback loop where you’re constantly evolving and improving on your digital interface for those customers.”[5]
Driving loyalty with digital self-service done right
All digital experiences run on data. Impactful, self-service digital experiences run on VOC insights.
With digital self-service, your customers can start to feel like they're just dealing with a faceless screen, and that disconnect can push them towards your competitors.
To maintain loyalty, show customers you care by requesting their feedback—in ways that feel natural in the channels they’re using—and then take action to improve your self-service digital offerings in the ways that they say matter most.
Learn more about creating impactful experiences in How VOC Can Empower Digital Self-Service Journeys.
[1] Forrester Blog: Loyalty is a Lifeline During the Inflation Crisis (2022)
[2] Webinar: Hearing What They Aren’t Telling You: Measuring and Optimizing the Self-Service Customer Experience, (2022)
[3] Key Takeaways from ICMI’s 2022 State of the Contact Center Survey, ICMI, (2022)
[4] 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Survey, Business + Consumer, NICE, (2022)
[5] Webinar: Hearing What They Aren’t Telling You: Measuring and Optimizing the Self-Service Customer Experience, (2022)