/ The best customer experience software
Alexander Wijninga
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7 min
Every year companies with exceptionally good customer service are singled out. It is good to look at other success stories and to take from them what your company can learn. This article highlights which companies have been named the companies with the best digital customer experience and how you use this to make it achievable too. This is easy to implement by using the best customer experience software.
Customer experience software (also called CX software) is technology that helps you measure, improve and manage customer contact. To offer a winning customer experience, it is of great importance to keep a good overview and to work in a structured way. This is an aspect CX software helps you with; it collects customer data and analyses it, which lets you interpret the data properly. This is not the only aspect of CX software, though. A large part of the customer experience is also about where you can be found and how customers are approached. That is why it is important to be present on as many channels as possible and to always keep the same, friendly, tone of voice.
The best customer experience software for your company is one that matches your wishes and requirements precisely. Read the differences carefully and determine what your company needs most. Work out where you are currently still dropping the ball and make sure your CX software joins onto that seamlessly. There are therefore different kinds of customer experience software depending on what you look at: the analysis or the system.
Some kinds of customer experience software offer the possibility of analysing feedback easily and efficiently. An example of a company that offers this is Clarabridge. This software analyses structured and unstructured data and shows you exactly which feedback has come back from which channels. By doing this time after time you quickly recognise patterns in negative feedback and find out exactly what is causing it. When you know where the problem lies it is easier to solve.
Other companies such as clicktale are more focused on analysing customers' behaviour on your website. It offers heatmaps to see where people click and the software helps you divide customers into customer segments. By analysing this kind of data you recognise patterns in customers' behaviour. You do have to convert this into usable data for your customer service yourself. This does not necessarily optimise your customer service, but it does help with navigating customers around your website, which means you get fewer questions.
A direct approach with CX software is analysing the questions that come in to customer service directly. This is a service Watermelon offers. By analysing all the data that comes in to customer service you get a perfect picture of exactly what is going on and how customers think about your company. When you work in a data-focused way in customer service it is also possible to make 360-degree profiles, which lets you work more personally
Live answering is about the form of contact in which you speak to someone ‘real time’ by telephone. A way of taking some pressure off this is by bringing in an Interactive Voice Response Representative. This is a recording that asks for the customer's first question, for example, to save the customer service agent some groundwork.
You implement a live chat on all the channels you use. Here people easily send you a message with their question and you then answer it as fast as possible. The best customer experience software also contains a chatbot that enters into conversations with customers. That way you are reachable 24/7 and you have an online colleague who is always friendly and fact-based. Build a chatbot easily with a chatbot platform or choose to have a custom-built chatbot made. The advantage of a platform is that cooperation with the agents is integrated into the same platform.
Not everyone likes contacting a customer service via social media channels; they prefer to keep this separate. That is why email is still the most used channel for customer contact. Customer service has slightly longer to answer.
When you use ticketing software, conversations with customers are automatically converted into tickets. These tickets then come together in an overview, which you work through in order of time. Through this ticketing system you create a clear, calm overview and you know exactly where you stand.
In 2019 Hema was among the front-runners of the customer experience in the Netherlands. Hema's service is fast, friendly and efficient. Hema achieved this by moving to a “data driven” approach, which means they look closely at what kind of customer they are dealing with. When someone makes purchases at Hema often, they are classified in one of the seven customer segments: baby, children, one of the two women's fashion segments, living, food and beauty. From this starting point they can give a customer far more targeted advice, which gives you a hyper-personal approach.
At bol.com, making customers' lives nicer and easier is central. Their customer service is set up from this line of thinking. Tim Akkerman of bol.com says that bol.com continuously measures exactly what customers think of the service, from which they in turn know what has to change. Another way in which they make it easy for customers is by deploying chatbot Billie. Billie is a smart chatbot that answers all the standard questions about delivery, products and shipping super fast.
BKR has been contributing to a financially healthy society for more than 50 years and is praised for its customer-friendliness. The company uses a powerful tracking instrument that collects the data from conversations and customers. This lets them build a 360-degree customer insight. By creating a good profile and overview of every customer, people feel more understood and helped.
By basing all the improvements you carry through on collected data, you can be sure you are making the right adjustments. By analysing the data you see, for example, what is unclear on the website or what is going wrong in the purchasing process. By tackling this you raise your customer satisfaction and save time because you get fewer questions about it.
One of the biggest irritations among customers when it comes to customer service is having to wait for a member of staff. A chatbot such as the one you see at bol.com removes this waiting time. The chatbot also fills in for a shortage of capacity and there are fewer people who impatiently switch to the competition. This makes a chatbot one of the most important forms of customer experience software.
Hema and Hunkemöller both opt for a form of hyper-personalisation. At Hema this happens by means of segmenting the customer, which lets you deal with them in a more targeted way. At Hunkemöller it is by drawing up 360-degree customer profiles. When customers start a conversation, the building of their profile starts. Through this profile you recognise returning customers and you have the possibility of calling your customers by name.
It is important that whenever a customer approaches you, you offer them the same service and are equally friendly. When the customer has first been helped by employee one and later by employee two, there should be hardly any noticeable difference. Train your staff well, to make sure they are on the same page. Do this with the help of a suggestion bot, for example.
You want to be reachable for all your customers and that is why it is important to use all their favourite channels. When a customer is familiar with a channel the step to using it to get in contact with customer service is much smaller. People often know WhatsApp for personal contact, for example, which means they decide to get in touch sooner.
Watermelon offers a new level of customer service software, in which you handle everything from a single platform. This means you never miss conversations again, you measure exactly the strength of your customer service, and you also have a good overview of points for improvement. To offer extra service you easily integrate a code-free chatbot.
Watermelon contains:
One inbox for all your customer questions
An easy flow editor for a conversational assistant
Extensive statistics and export
Work together easily in teams.
Work from several channels
Create a 360-degree customer profile
Curious? Try it yourself and create a free account!
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