Over at clickz, (link) Jack Aaronsen claims that in these downturn times its even more important to focus upon the quality and consistency of the customer experience, particularly customer service. The article focuses particularly upon the importance of touch-point co-ordination for customer service, noting that customers expect to be able to use whichever touch-point they feel convenient to interact with your company. Not only this, todays multi-channel world creates expectations that your touch-points are not only coordinated, they should work in parallel real-time. As an example of this, he suggests that when chatting, it should be possible to add a channel, eg. telephone, so that text and audio can be combined to solve the customer problem.Â
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He gives some useful tips for touch-point co-ordination:
1. Make Your Contact Information Easy to Find
2. Operate a Multichannel Customer Service Center
3. Operate Live Chat When Customers Are on Your Site
4. If You Are Multichannel, Be Multichannel
5. Use Your Use Cases for Customer Service
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The last point is worth noting. When developing services, you should use personas, and service-journeys to create scenarios of use, so that the customer experience is thought out beforehand, and accross touch-points. A good description of your customers, and multiple scenarios for how they interact with your customer service will take you a long way.