Customer service alone is no longer enough to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty. It is just one of the many touchpoints that shape customers’ perceptions of your Brand.
Other touchpoints, such as social media, chatbots, websites, and mobile apps, may attract more customer interactions compared to human-based customer service touchpoints like walk-in centers and call centers.
Gartner defines customer experience as the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels or products.
Customer satisfaction is the result of comparing customer expectations against their perceptions. Before a customer engages with your touchpoint, they have certain expectations that they want your Brand to fulfill.
After the interaction, the customer forms a perception of the experience. If your Brand meets their expectations, the customer is satisfied. If your Brand fails to meet their expectations, the customer is considered dissatisfied with the interaction.
Since customer satisfaction is influenced by interactions with Brand touchpoints, touchpoints with higher volumes of interaction have a greater chance of driving customer satisfaction. Organizations need to go beyond providing excellent human-based customer service if they want to consistently meet customer expectations and maintain customer loyalty.
Customer Experience (CX) enables the organization to develop capabilities that will enable them to consistently meet customer expectations in all interactions and drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
*Victor Songa Musiwa, CCXP, XMP, MSc is Namibia’s first globally accredited experience management professional (CCXP & XMP), Founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Relentless CX cc.
