Consistent Service Standards
There are three Cs of customer satisfaction: consistency, consistency, consistency. It may not seem sexy, but it's exceptionally powerful, especially when channels to market are proliferating and consumer choice and empowerment is increasing.
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Getting consistency right requires the attention of top leadership. That’s because by using a variety of channels and triggering more and more interactions with companies as they seek to meet their needs, customers create clusters of interactions (the customer journey) that make their individual interactions less important than their cumulative experience.
This customer journey includes everything from buying a product to actually using it, having issues with a product that require resolution or simply making the decision to use a service or product for the first time.
It’s not enough to make customers happy with each individual interaction. Measuring satisfaction on customer journeys is 30% more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual interaction.
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Customer Journey Consistency
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Emotional Consistency
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Communication Consistency
It’s well understood that if companies doesn't provide customers with great service they will most probably go elsewhere. To deliver great service each business area must have clear policies, rules and supporting mechanisms to ensure consistency during each customer interaction.
Assume a customer interacts six times with a pay TV company, starting when s/he undertakes online research into providers and ending when the first bill is received 30 days after service is installed. Assuming a 95% satisfaction rate for each individual interaction - whether measuring responsiveness, the accuracy of information or other factors - even this level of performance means that up to one in four customers will have a poor experience during the on-boarding journey.​
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Positive customer experience emotions - encompassed in a feeling of trust - are the best drivers of satisfaction and loyalty in all industry surveys. Consistency is particularly important to forge a relationship of trust with customers. For many customers, “a brand I feel close to” and “a brand that I can trust” are the top drivers for differentiation on customer experience. In a world where research suggests that fewer than 30% of customers trust most major brands, ensuring consistency on customer journeys to build trust is important for long-term growth.
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A company’s brand is driven by more than the combination of promises made and promises kept. What’s also critical is ensuring customers recognise the delivery of those promises. This requires proactively shaping communications and key messages that consistently highlight delivery.​ Becoming a company that delivers customer-journey excellence requires many things to be done well. But at Sterling Development we’ve found that these three are the top priorities.