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Right now, we’re seeing a dramatic shift in customer expectations. They’re calling the shots like never before, demanding more control within the engagement funnel and making bold presumptions about how, when and why brands interact with them.

Much of this shift is being brought about by new brands that are disrupting the status quo. Across a range of industries – from travel to banking to retail – brands like Uber and AirBnB are delivering products and services in new and exciting ways, and raising the bar when it comes to customer engagement.

A recent report highlights the gap between the new entrants and incumbent brands when it comes to the customer experience. The average Net Promoter Score (NPS) for established telcos is a staggeringly low 14/100, while for new entrants it’s an impressive 72/100*. The low score for the incumbents points to a mismatch between their capabilities and what customers want. 

So how do established brands close this gap? How do you deliver the best customer experience to every single customer? 

Our upcoming Customer Experience Webinar will reveal the ways you can achieve one-to-one marketing across the enterprise to reap benefits such as increases in sales, retention and ROI.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at three key themes that customers expect from brands today:

1. Know me

This is key, yet surprisingly few companies can deliver on this right now. Customers expect companies to know who they are. As a result, you need full visibility across every customer interaction within your business, so that when you or your colleagues in different departments engage with the customer, the full history is easily accessible and meaningful. Armed with this history, you can better fulfil the customer’s needs and secure a more trusting relationship with them. 

2. Give me control

A big part of building trust is to hand the reins back to the customer. Let them take control of the relationship; give them the power to create or terminate services through your digital platforms; reassure them that they are in the driver’s seat.

3. Help me as a team

Customers expect you to leverage the experts within your company as well as your partner ecosystem to solve their problems and provide a seamless experience. For example, in the travel industry, how do you enable a customer to book flights, redeem rewards and book accommodation effortlessly? By sharing a 360-degree view of the customer across all partners, both you and the customer will benefit. 

You can rise to the challenge.

Yes, scaling this one-to-one journey across your entire customer base is not simple, particularly if your organisation is stuck with legacy systems that don’t lend themselves to transformation. But it’s certainly possible.

To pull it off, you need a Customer Success Platform – an agile, flexible simplification layer that integrates your multiple legacy systems of record and becomes the environment through which you engage customers. 

The airline KLM is a great example. They have integrated multiple systems including social listening, reservation and loyalty into their Customer Success Platform. KLM’s social command centre manages over 45,000 social mentions weekly and drives revenue. 

For example, when a high-value first class passenger tweeted his dismay that there wasn’t a copy of the Wall Street Journal in the KLM pre-departure lounge, the remote command centre worked out who he was and what flight he was on, so that a copy of the paper was in his seat waiting for him when he boarded the plane. KLM could instantly act, respond and have an impact on this customer’s experience. 

Today, customers expect brands to make life easier for them. They expect that the path to purchase is smoother and faster, and reward those who deliver this with trust and loyalty.

Is your organisation up to the challenge?

Join us for the Customer Experience Webinar this Thursday 10 September at 12PM (AEST).

*The NPS is a measure of the customer experience on a brand’s website. These results are taken from the Satmetrix Benchmark 2014.