Think of the many ways your customers interact with your brand. It’s much more than just a phone call or chat when something goes wrong. Customers come in contact with your brand through touchpoints along the their journey—from researching a product and experiencing marketing campaigns to ordering it and receiving it and actually putting it to use, customers are constantly getting impressions of your brand. Everything from the packaging to the quality of the product contribute to their overall opinion of you.
Customers who go into a retail store and have a great experience because the employees were helpful and the store was clean will have a better impression of the store, just like customers shopping online at a site that is optimized for mobile and is easy to navigate will also have a much better experience. These actions all contribute to a customer’s overall experience and appreciation of a brand. Customers make contact with a brand in many more places than just the contact center. Most customers will never actually call the contact center, but almost all of them will have the chance to interact with the brand multiple times as they choose and buy a product or service. Each contact your customer has with the brand, from reading a story in the newspaper to seeing the CEO on Twitter, influences how they feel about your company. To create a strong opinion and great customer experience, every contact should be cohesive and leave them with a good view of the brand.
Take time to reflect on your company—what are the ways your brand touches customers? The list will likely be longer than you think. Anything from social media to commercials to delivery times contributes to a customer’s view of your company. You have a number of opportunities to make an impact on your customers in more ways than just the traditional contact center. Get everyone on board to realize that a customer’s impression of your brand doesn’t happen just when they use the contact center—it comes from every interaction with every part of your company. What can you do to improve your overall contact center?
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and author of More Is More. Sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
First published on Forbes.com