Better service? Empower customers to build their own
Many of us welcome bring-your-own-bottle in restaurants (BYOB) and bring-your-own device (BYOD) for technology. What if you could offer your customers a new spin on BYO? Call it BYOSE — Build Your Own Service Experience (BYOSE).
Even as you invest to transform customer service to be more proactive and anticipatory, at times customers will still need traditional, reactive support. Build Your Own Service Experience supports both — empowering customers to decide when, where and how they want to engage with you. In doing so, you give them greater control in reactive moments. It also give you the ability to customize proactive experiences.
As your customers build their own service experiences, they will likely fall into one of these categories: DIYers, DIWMs and Crowd Contributors.
Here’s a look at each segment and the kinds of service experiences they may want to build.
DIYers: Engage the savvy self-starters
Do-It-Yourselfers (DIYers) are highly savvy self-starters. They embrace opportunities to use new and advanced self-service to solve their own problems with little to no intervention from others. They seek service experiences in which they can configure low- or no-touch support using the latest and greatest tech to solve their own issues. Sophisticated self-service gives them the power not just to check their balance or place an order but also to resolve technical issues using new tools and emerging technology. And guess what? They might even enjoy it!
There’s a prime opportunity for DIYers with the in-home modem. For the telecommunications industry, this piece of equipment is one of the most common drivers of service requests (and one of the most common reasons companies send technicians to customers’ homes). Rather than deploying a service truck, imagine offering AI-powered conversation and computer vision to guide customers through their own repairs. DIYers enjoy that kind of faster service restoration. They also appreciate avoiding the effort (and potential frustration) of coordinating a home visit. For the telecommunications provider, this approach strengthens the customer relationship while preventing the high cost of a truck roll.
If you’re interested in more examples of how DIYers are driving service innovation, check out our Fjord Trends 2021.
DIWMs: Figure it out together
This segment of customers believes the best provider relationships are mutually beneficial and rewarding. When these customers have a need for service or support, they don’t want to go it alone. Their ask is simple: Do It With Me (DIWM).
Though willing to use self-service, DIWMs always want the option to work with you. They value an advisory experience and appreciate direct interactions with you when needed. What’s more, they want you to demonstrate a clear understanding of them and the outcomes they are working to achieve.
Consultative experiences are likely to make DIWMs feel more empowered and help them gain more knowledge. That, in turn, strengthens their view of your brand. This also represents a chance to turn passive audiences into active participants by moving from one-way interactions (“Here’s the answer to your question”) to consultative collaborations (“Here’s the answer to your question, and while we’re talking, did you know you already have access to this benefit that you’re not currently using?”).
To make this shift, you must demonstrate not only that you know your customers but also that you care about their individual and/or business success. You can’t just script your way through effective DIWM experiences. Your agents need to understand the customer’s situation and desired outcomes to deliver value beyond basic problem resolution. In other words, your agents need a mindset focused on nurturing relationships — not moving on to the next call.
When you help your customers configure their own service experiences, you’re demonstrating that you “get” them. You care. And you’ve invested the time and resources to serve them dynamically.
Crowd Contributors: Unleash a customer community
This segment points to a potentially underutilized customer service asset: your loyal customers! Crowd Contributors value the ability to team up with other customers — becoming part of a community in which they learn from and help each other.
As highly savvy self-starters, this segment has much in common with DIYers. But Crowd Contributors will do much more than use your digital channels; their engagement can serve as an extension of your service team or field force.
This group welcomes opportunities to interact with other customers, which is an opportunity to create powerful advocates for your organization. With the ability to build their own community-focused experience, Crowd Contributors have the potential to bolster your brand purpose and service ethos.
This customer segment also values transparency, so you need governance and processes for monitoring and acknowledging the community’s input and mitigating any potentially negative brand impacts. With the appropriate design and platform, Crowd Contributors can be a meaningful extension of your team that helps spread the word in an authentic, collaborative way.
Nurturing Crowd Contributors needs to be an ongoing effort, as shown by the experiences of one high-tech company. This company had been using a “one-and-done” process for its reference program. To elevate these efforts, the company implemented a formal advocacy program. The program helped infuse advocacy into sales, customer support, marketing, product management and executive leadership.
Put customers in control
How can you bring the BYOSE concept to life within your organization? Regardless of a customer’s preferred service experience, there are three key enablement areas you need to activate:
1. Customer experience design. Service is your most important “product.” While the service function should be heavily involved in customer experience design, Accenture’s Business of Experience research affirmed that everyone in your organization should be focused on delivering exceptional experiences. In addition to organizational collaboration, design must extend beyond personalization and focus on the outcomes customers seek. Create a design to address what success means for a particular customer at a particular time — and ensure they have the routes to that success.
2. Customer data. Invest in understanding your customer. Collaborate across the organization to assimilate available internal data and augment it with externally sourced and customer-provided data. This data and the resulting insights are crucial to enabling customer experiences and developing the customer view needed to make better predictions and more readily support each customer’s desired á la carte experiences.
3. Technology strategy and architecture. To enable BYOSE, you need to bring together siloed customer technologies and adopt AI in new and innovative ways. When powered by cloud architecture, you can achieve hyper-relevance — understanding and addressing customers’ needs as they take shape. Cloud also enables rapid scaling of innovative experiences through digital and physical channels.
When you help your customers configure their own service experiences, you’re demonstrating that you “get” them. You care. And you’ve invested the time and resources to serve them dynamically.
Customers will appreciate the ability to use self-service when it suits them, to have access to human support when it doesn’t, and to be an active contributor in supporting your purpose while meeting their needs as an individual.
