In today’s episode, join Steve and the president of Kitewheel, Mark Smith, as they talk about the value and potential in focusing on the customer’s journey. Kitewheel is a technology company that creates a centralized intelligence for customer support. Businesses usually have a set of different systems that allow their customers to communicate with them and vice versa. The problem with these systems is that they are often disconnected, leading to inconsistent messaging throughout a company’s various platforms (online, phone, local branch, etc.) Kitewheel connects these systems for them to work together cohesively. If businesses can manage the customer’s journey, they can deliver a great experience, which has become critical for most companies today.

The Importance of a Centralized Customer Journey / Understanding What the Customer’s Journey Is
Our customers have become very powerful because they now have easy access to information through their smartphones. The various systems that businesses have set up can now be accessed through web browsers, apps, and phone calls which are all included in a usual smartphone. Not to mention, they’re always with us and are rarely turned off. With this significant change in how we do business, our consumers have become very demanding. A Forrester research says that 75% of customers expect businesses to know what they’re interested in before making contact. Because of the common knowledge that companies are collecting data from us on the regular, we set a high bar for companies to meet our needs. With that said, businesses have to use that data in a smart, intelligent way to give their customers what they’re looking for.

The Process of Automating a Centralized Customer Experience
There are three steps to build an automated, centralized customer experience. The first one is connecting data. Understand the different data points of your customers, such as knowing that it’s the same person who was checking for rates yesterday and checking on terms and conditions five minutes ago. The second step is making use of that data through analytics to understand the behavior of your customers. What are your customers trying to do? And what keeps them from getting to the next part of the process? Once you get the answer to those questions, you develop a process to help the customer with what they’re trying to do. That’s through prompts, chat pop-ups, or call center agents giving the necessary guidance to get to the next step until they complete the entire journey. By automating these three steps, you can provide real-time, exceptional experiences for your customers.

Why Focus on Customer Experience?
The annual CX Index that Forrester publishes shows that in all industries across the US, only 1% of companies are providing an excellent experience, as regarded by their customers. These businesses are the ones that have the advantage of being new and entirely digital, with everything connected right from the start. For the majority of the organizations that have been around for a while now, they have systems that aren’t connected. The website is great, the call center works well, and the email systems drive results. But who’s going to connect them together and make them work in harmony? As mentioned earlier, that’s where Mark Smith and Kitewheel come in. You need centralized systems. Most are still stuck on using marketing tools to send lots of messages to customers in hopes of driving sales. However, only those who take the time to understand their customers are excellent performers in the CX world. They’re the ones seeing growth right now with the CX market up by 20% and marketing down by 40%!

Early Warning Systems in CX
In addition to building your process, you can also use your data to identify your weak points. Be willing to analyze the data from other perspectives and see where customers get stuck or find the locations where churn is evident. For example, if you notice a particular stopping point in the customer journey where your potential customers leave before converting, try giving them a nudge or reminder via text to help get to the next step. An example that Mark gave was identifying customers who are leaving or switching to a competitor. Find triggers like people who are looking at termination conditions at your website. Once you know who these people are, you can set up a pop-up chat that can try to understand why they might be leaving.


Connect with Steve Pappas!
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