WHITE PAPER: Giving customers what they want. A blueprint for creating a single, consistent customer experience

Transcription

1 WHITE PAPER: Giving customers what they want A blueprint for creating a single, consistent customer experience

2 FOREWORD A well-designed user experience is much more than aesthetic design; Service Designers, Information Architects, User Researchers and UX Designers creating a rich end-to-end experience, aligning and mobilising an organisation from the call centre to the CEO. The nature of conversation has changed. Far from being either written or spoken, conversations now may be visual, pictorial, or even based on gestures. They may take place over seconds or over months. And in the biggest change of all, they don t even need to be human. Conversational technology has been central to this change. Yet it is in a continual state of disruption and this poses real difficulties for organisations. How do you focus investment when platforms launch and fade overnight, when new technologies are quickly adopted by the young but older generations remain wedded to the status quo? How do you prevent the disconnection of those unable or unwilling to adopt? Adam Jarvis Managing Director Networking Solutions Adam Jarvis Managing Director Technology Solutions The answer is in bringing user experience to the forefront, to invest not just in technology but in understanding how and why your team, your customers want to interact with your organisation. This whitepaper examines the concept of User Centric Design how it can inform an ICT strategy to maximise return on investment and improve your customer experience. Adam Jarvis, Managing Director, Networking Solutions 2

3 CREATING A WIN WIN SITUATION The challenge to create a consistent and seamless journey for the end user, regardless of their choice of channel. IT teams everywhere want to ensure they make decisions that will maximise the value of their current infrastructure, while also innovating for the future. One of the hardest things about building a strategic IT Roadmap is distinguishing between business and user needs, and understanding the value of bringing both into the equation. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DIRECTLY IMPACTS YOUR BOTTOM LINE: 86% 72% 69% A BAD EXPERIENCE MAKES ME RE-EVALUATE MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM LIKELY TO LEAVE IF SLOW OR NO ISSUE RESOLUTION PEOPLE WILL USE MORE THAN ONE CHANNEL TO SOLVE THE SAME ISSUE All too often organisations focus exclusively on business needs, often designing for siloed departments rather than users, with decisions coming down to cost. The result ironically is that technology doesn t meet user needs or expectations and therefore isn t adopted, frustrating users and failing to maximise on the investment. CUSTOMERS WANT A FAST AND CONVENIENT SERVICE WHEN CHOOSING THEIR CHANNEL TELEPHONE IS KING FOR NOW At the same time, the way users expect to interact with organisations is changing. Before the era of customer experience, customer communications were much simpler. Brochureware-style websites served alongside call centres as the accepted channels of communication. We are now in an era of more complex customer conversations, with artificial intelligence, chatbots and machine learning all driving new channels of automated, realtime services delivered over messaging apps and social media as well as conventional means. As a result, organisations have layer-upon-layer of system architecture and numerous communications channels or touchpoints to manage. The challenge comes in bringing these together to create a consistent and seamless journey for the end user, regardless of their choice of channel. 57% SPEED OF RESPONSE 64% CONVENIENCE 55% PEOPLE STILL SEE TELEPHONE AS THEIR FIRST CHOICE THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL: 1in3 CITING THE DESIRE TO SPEAK TO A PERSON This is where approaches such as User Centred Design and associated disciplines like Service Design come in to play. This whitepaper explores the fundamental principles of UCD and how it can help you ensure your IT strategy answers the needs of both your team and your customers. EXPECT ORGANISATION S CUSTOMER SERVICE TO EVOLVE WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY PLANNING TO USE MORE ONLINE CHANNELS IN THE FUTURE EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO CONTACT ORGANISATIONS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS EXPECT TO USE VOICE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE TO CONTACT AN ORGANISATION IN THE FUTURE 80% 51% 77% 30% 4

4 THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY A SINGLE VISION TOOLS OF THE TRADE How do your customers want to interact with you? It s a simple question. But a fundamental one. The answer starts and finishes with the customer and their journey through your organisation. Organisations are listening to feedback, adapting their touchpoint technologies and investing according to how their customers want to interact with them. It is not dictated by cost or by the boardroom but there can be no doubt that the most financially successful digital services are living and breathing their customer journey. UX TOOLS #1 - THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP The customer journey breaks down when the collective touchpoints become siloed. The customer wants to see and experience just one organisation. If one touchpoint lets the user down, the customer journey is broken. The UX tool known as the Customer Journey Map gives a high-level view of the full conversation over all touchpoints, the results of which are filtered into the discipline known as Service Design. It is common for businesses to have multiple Customer Journey Maps, identifying different routes to answering different user needs. The most important thing about the customer journey is that it ensures all touchpoints call centre, app, website, shop window etc - are unified in their purpose, are frictionless, non-invasive and deliver a single experience of the organisation for the customer. And this is where many businesses fall down. For many businesses, communications channels operate on an industrial scale, crossing between different IT departments and customer service teams as well as multiple architectural layers. In these situations there is often no single point of ownership and the result is a tendency to improve customer touchpoints individually - making incremental improvements to apps, websites, in-store service, or call centres. This is understandable technology maintenance and upgrades are part of daily life. The problem comes when the improvements are more substantial. This is because every touchpoint is simply one element of the overall customer journey. They are interdependent. Thus to change one element without considering the impact on either the other touchpoints or indeed the complete journey risks undermining the whole customer experience. Changes must be made in the context of the whole journey and for the meaningful improvement of that journey. Where this happens, businesses see huge improvements in both staff productivity and customer satisfaction. UX TOOLS #2 - SERVICE DESIGN Service Design offer us a toolkit which involves building a solution based on the People, Infrastructure, Communications and Materials involved - joining all the dots of a complicated service ecosystem. Service design incorporates both the physical and digital realms exposing opportunities for innovation and creativity in its maps and plans. However a large part of its mission is to practically identify a solution s overall workability. This involves taking into account all of a system s intricate backstage and front stage operations - the things you see and the things you don t. The value lies in transporting a physical service along with its tangible component parts into absolute usability and clarity of intent. The Service Blueprint is the most potent tool in the Service Design toolkit. This high-level yet intricate document 6

5 BUILDING BRIDGES PHASES OF UX If the Customer Journey represents the increasingly complicated customer experience, it is Service Design that helps form the bridge between that customer experience and the business. And it does this through technology. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER KNOW YOUR EMPLOYEES Research, User Testing, Feedback Justifying IT spend, keeping costs sustainable, remains a key priority for IT decision makers. This means having a clearly defined understanding of the desired outcomes of any investment, as well as how new technologies would impact current internal processes and technologies, is essential. Service Design firstly brings all the aspects of the service into question, considering the views of both employees and customers. This is fundamental to ensuring long term adoption of services - by taking the time to understand the needs of your staff in particular, you gain trust and buy in from the people who will essentially make or break the change you are trying to implement. Identify every journey CUSTOMER JOURNEY SERVICE DESIGN USER CENTRED ROADMAP BETTER CUSTOMERS CONVERSATIONS Next, Service Design takes these user needs and translates them into practical terms: processes and technology. It helps to identify what is working well, what needs to improve, what needs to go, and will result in an actionable, evidence-based roadmap with recommendations across short, medium and long term. It is these results that can then help define and shape an IT Roadmap, bringing it in harmony with user needs and ensuring technology investment will meet both user and business needs. CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP: Understanding user needs Build bridges between your business and your users DISCOVERY: Aligning with the client SERVICE BLUEPRINT: Mapping people, Infrastructure, Communications and Materials The Path to Better Customer Conversations 8

6 CONCLUSION CAPITA NETWORKING SOLUTIONS Conversation is most direct way to connect with customers. A great conversation can change the very nature of the relationship with a customer, building loyalty and creating a sense of delight in that relationship. This is why UX will drive the future of conversation. The implications of new technologies - from AI to chatbots to whatever the future holds - will impact every aspect of conversation, and there can be no doubt they have the potential to drive huge savings for organisations. However the sheer range of technologies and channels now available means that this is simply impossible outside of a formal, defined framework. Organisations will have to take a UX led approach to investment, designing systems around the needs of the user and in the context of the Customer Journey, and building from the unifying perspective of Service Design. By doing this, organisations can harness multiple streams of technology around the customer to create a single, consistent and human conversation. Technology is transforming the way we communicate. Capita is at the forefront of that change, working in partnership with our customers to help them change the conversation, using technology to build relationships, develop loyalty, empower staff and deliver tangible results for their organisation. At Capita Networking Solutions, we specialise in communications technology, delivering a portfolio that covers everything from Customer Engagement Management through to Collaboration, Unified Communications, Networking and Security. We are a Cisco Gold and Avaya Edge Diamond Partner, using our technical experience and expertise to support the digital transformation of private and public sector customers across the UK. We are a division of Capita IT Services, the 2nd largest VAR in the UK. At Capita, we are helping conversations happen. 10

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