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Conduct customer research to uncover on the ground customer experiences, expecations, likelihood of contract renewal, reasons why they would defect.
Conduct employee (inc outsourced) research, assess attitudes to customers, percieved alignment of service delivery meeting what customers actuallyexpect.
Establish customer interface monioring feedback loop, brigde the gap between sales, marketing and operational service delivery to promote contract retention.
Decades into our customer-driven market place, siloed business units and budgets still going to sales and marketing rather than operations, has seen a steady increase in customer defection and contract loss across all industry's.
Sales by definition focuses on getting customers in the door. Enticing commissions and competition based performance metrics by default promote over-promising to win the deal. Incredulously, critical information regarding 'expections' set during the sales process still fails to be adequately communicated to operational delievery staff, and this is further compounded with outsourced delivery suppliers.
Keeping customers is simple, the bottom line is they prefer to stay with a supplier they know and trust.
Consistent customer experience from sales promise to delivery and ongoing service. Expectations are set at point of sale. Failure to ensure operations fully understand those expections, leads to buyer remorse and risk of defection.
Typically, sales staff are up-beat and competition can promote embellishment to get the sale. This focus on the deal, rather than what customers 'see they are getting' leads to operational delivery teams missing vital information.
Operations staff deal with the reality of what customers were set up to expect from the sale. Too often they find themselves putting out fires and dealing with disgruntled customers, more importantly they are also in the dark.
A consistent experience fosters trust and promotes customers to repeat buy, renew and extend contracts and promote your business. A consistent experience by defintion means, smooth seamless delivery exactly to expectations
The following narratives outline how some of our clients have transfromed their customer interface with far reaching results. An indirect, but perpetuating result, is the shift in motivation with employee's.
"We had no idea that customer service could be so satisfying. When customers expectations are being met, they call for different reasons and are rarely upset. They are polite and grateful for our help".
This industry has a legacy of 'outsourcing problems'. "Its off my desk and your problem now".
This client has changed the whole landscape with the vendors customers/constituents, who now trust that services will be delivered to expectations. If there are delays, customers are told - its simple just let us know.
Transport and logistics is an increasingly important industry as more things move online.
Thisclient has streamlined their entire customer interface, which included outsourced suppliers acting on their behalf. The service 'delivery' with every customer interaction, verbal and non-verbal, is seamless.
Government construction projects outsource to suppliers and managers, a lot goes wrong
This client's reputation was in trouble due to challenges between the construction crew and site management. Each side participated in 'anonymous 'research' the issue was identified and quickly resolved.
Government is bound to operate by regulations, which causes frustration to customers.
Our client realised the words and tone used when explaining a restriction to a constituent, determined the experience of the interaction with both parties. Change transformed satisfaction scores to new heights.
Buyers remorse in a world where sales promise is often signifcantly disconnected from a customers actual experiences of any product or service is increasing.
This has resulted in elevated customer expectations, and businesses who fail to monitor customers experience with their product or service across all their touchpoints, risks higher defection rates and reputational damage. Aligning the experience for customers is imperative to business success .
Led by Dr. Lucia Kelleher, we are business researchers, advisors. As behavioural scientists our focus is on what people actually do, rather than what they think they do and say. As B2B specialists we assist our clients with ensuring every transaction across all touchpoint of your customer interface is as smoothh and seamless as possible.
Any misalignment with the encounters customers have with your business, be that virtually or via a human, will damage your reputation, risk losing customers/contracts and cause your staff (internal and outsourced) to be dissatisifed and unmotivated.
This creates a perpetual negative feedback loop, risks promoting customers to leave, and opens you to poor performance with staff, good staff will simply leave.
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