Creating a great Customer Experience is 100% dependent on Employee Experience
I grew up in a Customer Service oriented industry. I was 9 years old when my parents chose to ditch their day jobs, move up north, and buy a private campground to run. We had 89 wooded sites on beautiful Lake Superior. People from all around the country would stay at our campground to enjoy what nature’s beauty had created. I can tell you from first hand experience that Customer Experience is number 1 in an industry like this.
People visiting you are on vacation and are getting away for a weekend/week/or longer to relax. It’s less than relaxing to go through a bad experience while on vacation and if that happens you’re more than likely not going to visit that place again. I remember a big change for us at the time was going from a paper based tracking system to a computer based reservation system (yes this was a long time ago ).
During that first season using the computer system, there were delays getting people checked in, longer wait times on the phone to make a reservation, etc…etc… Computers are supposed to be better, faster, easier, but this system was not. It was not easy, and not quick. There were too many fields to fill out, too many screens to go through, and you couldn’t complete a reservation and save it until you went through ALL of them. It routinely took 10 minutes or more to make 1 reservation which was not sustainable for us or the customer. The employee experience for me and my family was not good, and therefore the customer experience suffered because of it.
You may ask why I bothered telling you this story? One of the answers is that it’s relevant to a very hot topic right now in the software world. “EX creates great CX!” The deeper answer is that a great Employee Experience with software is something I’ve been trying to create, promote, and help since I got into the working world. It’s something that drove me to be UX focused and ease of use focused. It drove me to be simplistic in my views of how enterprise apps should operate, and their operational capabilities. From a family owned business, to the largest corporation, you should value your employees. They should receive access to the best possible tools. This will help to complete their jobs efficiently and easily!
Mindset has provided me a place over the years to do exactly all of this. I’m writing and reflecting on this during Mindset’s 10th anniversary week.
But how does EX actually improve CX in SAP?
Imagine this scenario. You are a customer calling a 1-800 customer service number. The agent on the other end is using SAP as a system to help answer questions about an order you placed. The CSR then has to ask you a lot of upfront questions to identify you, the company you work for, the order that is in question, and the material or part that you have a question about.
Each one of those steps takes time. There is always the possibility of frustrating the end customer, asking for a price verification on an ordered part. What you don’t see is the CSR needing every bit of the information they ask you for to navigate screen after screen in SAPGUI. You don’t see a standard SAP Fiori App to get to the part you ordered to be able to quote you the price. However, it takes time to get there. Additionally, there are a lot of upfront steps to be able to answer your question. Not exactly an amazing conversation flow.
Let’s imagine that scenario differently with technology available today at our fingertips. What if SAP could listen to the conversation to provide real-time answers? This would allow the conversation from the CSR to flow a lot easier to the customer. Additionally, the demo video below does exactly this. Further, the amazing Paul Modderman created this demo to showcase just how easy it is to re-imagine customer engagement. Especially from a customer service rep’s perspective. I think it’s an amazing demo to show people who struggle with the “Why” behind UX & EX translating to improved CX!
In conclusion, if you’d like to see a live demo, talk about our innovations, or want to chat about camping in remote places reach out to me at jonathanbragg@mindsetconsulting.com
Cheers!
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