HEINO GEVERS Better customer experience requires that important information be communicated to customers timeously and professional advice given when appropriate
Companies must actively and constantly manage the experiences their customers have of their services to improve them, says digital document multinational Mimecast South Africa customer experience manager Heino Gevers.
“The stewardship of customer relationships and constant engagement, in addition to operational interactions, are key to improving customer satisfaction and experience. This means providing value above and beyond service-level agreement or contractual obligations, and doing so in an appropriate manner,” he avers.
However, companies must deploy digital tools to measure and manage customers’ experiences, as customer satisfaction cannot be determined in depth or detail without such tools and systems, he adds.
Mimecast actively monitors the use of features by clients to determine whether they are using the features they pay for, and has also put digital tools in place to assess whether its customers are effectively using the products and services they pay for. This detailed, granular visibility is necessary to effectively monitor all aspects of the customer experience.
Further, the tools to monitor clients’ use of features also enable Mimecast to provide specific training for them, which, in turn, enables their employees to use the features more effectively. This improves their experience of using the product and its value to the organisation, emphasises Gevers.
“Before we started on our customer experience project, we thought that we were delivering high-quality services and that our customers were completely satisfied. Interestingly enough, despite, indeed, providing such services – confirmed by analysts, such as Gartner – our customers were not nearly as satisfied as our industry-standard quarterly surveys indicated,” he says.
One of the customer experience management tools is the minisurvey – a short online questionnaire – that clients fill in when they interact with the company. The results of these are used cumulatively to improve overall customer experience, but the results of each survey are also used by the customer experience management teams to monitor and assist individual customers with their specific requirements.
However, Gevers emphasises that better customer experience requires that important information be communicated to customers when appropriate, such as warning them of cybersecurity threats, as well as informing them of and advising them on the mitigation measures taken by Mimecast and those that they themselves can take.
“The value that customers see in your services is related to the value they get beyond what they contractually pay for a service. Value is added when the service provider meaningfully interacts with customers to the their benefit.
“Fierce competition in subdued markets adds weight to good customer experiences, and providing good value for customers – such as providing expert advice for small-company clients or ensuring that lower costs are achieved for large-enterprise clients – throughout their interactions with the company is important to validate their decision to use your services and significantly improves the probability of them retaining you as a service provider,” concludes Gevers.