Who Delivers the Best and Worst Customer Experiences?
The Results Are In.

Banks topped the best experience. The next top-scoring industry – but with a delta of 24 percentage points – was credit cards, followed by utilities. Consumers cited ease and clarity of communications as their reasons for ranking these industries the highest. On the flip side, customers ranked their telecommunications providers, followed by utilities (which made both lists) and health insurance companies, as providing the worst experiences due to poor customer service and confusing communications.

Communications clearly play a critical role in the customer experience – for better and worse. Based on the results of our survey, and my interactions with hundreds of companies, here are three things you can start doing today to make communications work better for you and your customers.

1. Think omni-channel.

Today’s consumers expect personalized journeys that are truly omni-channel. Let’s leave binary thinking (print vs. digital) behind. Instead, I suggest focusing on customer behavior: How do your customers prefer to be notified; how do they consume content; and what actions do they take? You can apply business rules to these data points that drive the customer journey – across all channels and connections.

2. Simplifying is important to customers and can lead to big payoffs.

Customers want communications with simple language and clean design. Achieving simplicity doesn’t have to be a “big bang” effort. Before you begin, it’s important to inventory your existing communications to make sure you are addressing content needs, identifying any operational constraints, and meeting regulatory requirements. Then, identify smaller, incremental improvements you can make to satisfy your customers, starting with A/B testing and competitive benchmarking.

3. Leverage established customer touchpoints.

You have a communication touchpoint that customers don’t ignore: bills and statements. Leading companies are maximizing the upsell opportunities of these essential communications. With 20 percent of surveyed consumers indicating they have purchased a new product or service after seeing a message on a bill or statement, these required communications create an attributable channel of engagement and ROI.

To gain more insight into consumer attitudes toward CX and communications, download the new report, CX and Communications Trends for 2019. It includes consumer viewpoints on the content and design of communications, notification and delivery preferences, payment behaviors, thoughts on emerging technologies and more. You can also view our on-demand webinar.