Great Customer Experience Alone Is Not Sufficient; You Need To Create CX Memories The difference between customer retention and customer loyalty is that a loyal customer not only provides repeat business but also buys up and advocates for your company.

Whoever you might be, a CXO or an owner of a supermarket or a leader of a state, you are and will be a customer at some point everyday in your life. Be it the groceries you buy from your local supermarket or merchandise you buy from the online marketplace, at that moment you take upon the role of a customer and search for the products or service which you need.

Now let's take a step back and think of a company you admire. It might be as big as the aerospace manufacturer, SpaceX to your local barber. Now, why exactly you admire the company? Many answers will come to your mind like they have a great product or they respond to queries immediately or something else. In the end, all lead to one thing, and that is great customer experience.

Speaking to Entrepreneur, Sandeep Kuvvarapu, who is part of Ameyo's Product Marketing & Strategy Team, discussed in-depth about the concept and importance of CX memories and how a company should not aim just for customer experience but for creating CX memories.

Is great customer experience enough to admire the company?

If I slightly modify the above question and ask you to name some companies which provided you with a great customer experience, you might pull out a huge list. It is mainly because almost every company you have come across in your lifetime, at some point or the other tries to provide or exceed your customer experience expectations. Like your mobile telecom service provider who suddenly calls and gives you complimentary 5GB data or that delivery restaurant you ordered food from, which provides you with complimentary surprise drink or free coupon. It is great customer experience which results in you ordering again from that restaurant or staying with the same telecom service provider or simply customer retention.

But, how are these companies different from the one which struck in your mind when asked about the company which you admire? That distinguishing factor is the difference between customer retention and customer loyalty.

The difference between customer retention and customer loyalty is that a loyal customer not only provides repeat business but also buys up and advocates for your company.

Let us take the example of the delivery restaurant which provided you with the complimentary drink/ free coupon. Now, this company has exceeded your expectations and enhanced your customer experience. With this experience, there is a high probability that you might order food from the same restaurant next time, resulting in what is called customer retention.

But, the question would be, with that single instance of great experience would you push the restaurant to your family and friends. The answer would be a soft maybe because there might be other restaurants which might have provided you with similar or better experience. After all, we are living in a highly competitive world where there is at least one substitute available for the desired product or service.

Tell us about the Concept of CX Memories?

Let's go back to the company you admire. Would you push the company to your family and friends? The answer would be a definite YES. Now, ask yourself why this company and why not the restaurant. The resulting perspective provides you a glimpse of what your company needs to do to generate more loyal customers.

The company you admire has earned your respect, by delivering a great customer experience across your customer journey, thereby building a euphoric memory block in your mind – a CX Memory. Every customer, across his/her customer journey, expects to have a consistent experience. Each interaction with the company should be effortless and contextual leaving the customer queries resolved in no time. It reduces the average handle time and increases the customer experience quotient.

Role of Contact Centers in creating CX Memories

"Customers are four times more inclined to shift to your competitor if the issue is service related as opposed to price or product related."

– Bain & Co.

With huge competition among companies to impress the customer and minor differentiation in the product, customer support service has taken the apex position. A study by Bain & Co. states that customers are four times more inclined to leave for your competitor in thecase of service related issue rather than product or price related. This understanding has forced the organizations to include customer support as part of the core strategyand invest more to improve it. And thus, contact centers have become an integral part of the company operations,and the choice of contact center solutions plays a major role in providing great customer support and service.

A few months back, I called up customer support of one of the major e-commerce players,and I had to go through a long IVR option selection and queue waiting process, before actually interacting with the customer care representative to explain my problem. Nowadays, the customers are very impatient and don't prefer to wait in long queues for their queries or grievances to be resolved. The waiting would result in customer frustration and force them to leave you for your competition, which would provide better customer support.

Customers, especially high valued individuals, should be allowed to bypass the queue to reach the customer support easily. They should be able to request a callback or reserve their queueposition so that they can go ahead with their routines and reach customer support executive at a later point in time. The arrangement not only reduces wastage of time on the queues but also enhances customer experience and leaves a good impression towards the company.

Post explaining my problem, the representative has promised that the issue will be resolved by the end of the day and raised a ticket against it. After two days, I notice that the issue was not solved, and tried to reach the customer support via chat so that I can bypass long IVR queues, little frustrated. But what irritated me the most was how I had to explain the whole issue and previous conversation to the agent along with my personal details, which I have provided the first time I called. Due to the demographical changes, the majority of the customers are more tech savvy with a mobile or tablet on them all the timeand major presence on the social media. These customers would prefer interacting with the company on a platform or channel of their choice and would want consistency across the channels. It is imperative to eliminate silos across interaction channels to provide to provide a great customer experience.

How Ameyo helps organizations create CX Memories?

Ameyo is an all-in-one call center software solution that manages end-to-end customer interactions. Being a very agile and flexible platform, it allows its customers to scale up or down easily as per their business needs. Ameyo's Omni Queue is one such solution which provides interaction capabilities across multiple channels viz. chat, mobile, social, email, web, SMS along with the traditional voice channel. The OmniQueue solution helps the organizations to eliminate interaction silos across communication channels and provide a consistent experience. Apart from managing, the solution also handles reporting, routing, recording, and monitoring the customer interactions. The reporting, recording, and monitoring of the interactions help the organizations to identify the improvement areas and train the customer representatives to provide a better experience.

Ameyo's Virtual Queuing (VQ) Pass helps enterprises refrain from losing customers due to increased wait times during peak calling hours. The solution helps contact centers to reduce abandoned calls by providing the customers an option to request a callback at a convenient time. The customer can also reconnect to the support representative directly by booking his/her queue position, by calling after the notified expected wait time. The VQ Pass enables the customers to best utilize their time without wasting their time on queues. Detailed information about Ameyo's products can be found on the homepage.

About Ameyo

Ameyo is one of the leading contact center technology and Omni-channel customer experience providers in the world. Ameyo is one of a kind all-in-one comprehensive contact center suite, with rapid application development (RAD) tools for faster deployment,i.e.,low time to market provides solutions both on-premise and cloud platforms. The solution was built on Service-Oriented (SOA), and Model Driven Architectures (MDA) and was designed by three of the IIT Alumni.

With 1600+ customers in more than 60 countries, Ameyo aims atgoing beyond customer KPIs to create CX memories. Learn how to enhance customer experience with the Ameyo product demo