29 May The Power of Streamlining Customer Experience
I love how technology has streamlined consumer life. Amazon prime provides shopping from home and delivers purchases within hours. GrubHub delivers food to the doorstep of over 19 million users. What an upgrade from epic store lines, waiting weeks for a package, cooking and getting dressed to eat out. The power of streamlining customer experience saves energy, saves money, and saves time for the other things I want to do.
Shrinking Lines
I still value analog experiences, of course. Humans are social animals. As a consumer, I enjoy on-site shopping and events too. Even those kinds of experiences are continually being streamlined.
My friend and I went to In-N-Out this past week (California omnivores know the bliss that is In-N-Out), and experienced the shortest line I’ve ever seen on a weekend or holiday.
The attendants already take orders at your car window while you’re waiting in line. This time they added taking payment at the car window in advance. I think that was the reason the lines were shorter.
Investing in Customer Experience
The process could be streamlined further and a customer pain point avoided. The employee returned to us to ask for payment after taking multiple orders. She took my friend’s credit card, walked to the building with it, and brought it back after payment was processed. This was extra work for her and a strange customer experience.
Paying in advance clearly moves the line faster. However, taking the order and processing payment in one seamless transaction is even faster. It also removes the need to take a customer’s credit card out of their sight and prevents errors. This may require In-N-Out to upgrade their system, but the benefit is being able to serve more customers in less time.
Investing in streamlining benefits employees and builds quality company culture. In-N-Out is known for taking care of their staff. They even have an umbrella with a drink stand outside to provide their employees with shade and hydration. That is huge during 100 degree days in a California summer. Plus above average industry pay rates for entry positions, six figure manager salaries, and benefits create an upbeat, efficient staff that make the customer experience positive too.
Streamlining with AI
Artificial intelligence takes streamlining customer experience to yet another level. It is being used to track customer preferences to target customer needs. AI can assist businesses in reaching their best customers with in-depth personalization. With the top 1% of customers being 18x more valuable than the average customer the investment in such individualized experience is worth it.
AI has the ability to continue to learn and evolve based on the data it is given. This technology can parse that data much faster than humans can. This frees up your human employees to address more nuanced issues that are still beyond AI’s capability.
In this way, AI and humans work together to streamline processes. Identifying when to employ such efficiency is important. The goal is to improve CX, not create a sterile experience: “What doesn’t work and is inherently hazardous is making your goal the removal of humans from the process.”
Streamlining saves your customers time and you money.
Where can you streamline your processes?
Have you been gathering metrics to help you identify areas that could benefit from streamlining? Are you monitoring your agent interactions?
CSAT.AI monitors 100% of chat and email engagements. This empowers agents in real time to answer customer questions and proactively streamline customer experience.
