Creating effortless customer experiences

Interview with Craig Stoss, Senior Ops Manager at PartnerHero

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Let's talk about friction.

The great thing about effortless experience is, if it's done right, as the customer you don't even know it's happening. You have an interaction with a subscription, company or product and continue about your day.

But if your interactions are full of friction, you're going to be painfully aware at every touchpoint.

And who wants to continue being a customer somewhere that makes life harder for you?

In this episode with Craig Stoss, who has over 20 years experience in customer support and customer centric roles, we discuss what effortless customer experience can look like when it's done well... and when it's done not-so-well.

Scroll down to read the highlights or watch the full episode 👇🏻

What makes a customer experience effortless?

Effortless experience to me is the key to a good customer experience. And by that, I mean, removing friction.

I feel like we in the support industry love to solve problems and use tools that benefit us, but we should be focused on how we can deliver that service and remove that friction that some of those tools introduce into the process.

For example, if you've ever been on a chat bot widget and you're just not getting the answer you want and you're just like "I want to speak to a person, just give me a person". So you type that in and it's like, "I don't understand what you're saying". Well, that's friction to the customer.

So to me, effortless experience is just all about figuring out where those friction points are and figuring out how you can resolve those again, with tooling, with better knowledge with proactivity, which we'll talk about I'm sure later, but figuring out how can I get this information without having to add in pain points along the way.

What are your thoughts on proactive support when things go wrong?

Where customers either have run into an issue or likely to run into an issue, in my opinion, one of the best things that you can do as a support person is to send a notice of some sort or, pop up a message in your app or whatever it might be and let people know that.

You see little widgets all the time where they pop up and say, "Hey, you haven't filled this form in correctly". That type of thing, but at a more complex level where you've analysed the data of what problems your customers are having and then provide added guidance.

So maybe a link to a knowledge based article or an embedded video that says, here's the steps to fix this thing you're about to see, or here's why you would want to change the thing that we think is wrong.

The customer doesn't need to call you the customer can just continue on with the work and be like, oh look, there's something I'm doing wrong, they've told me how to fix it, I'll just fix it and keep moving.

Watch the Episode

In the next 5 years, customer experience is 45% of companies top priority. Investing in CX initiatives has the potential to double your revenue within 36 months. 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
  • In the next 5 years, customer experience is 45% of companies top priority.
  • Investing in CX initiatives has the potential to double your revenue within 36 months.
  • 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
Source: CX statistics

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Creating effortless customer experiences

Interview with Craig Stoss, Senior Ops Manager at PartnerHero
Interview with Craig Stoss, Senior Ops Manager at PartnerHero
Join a community of 2139+ customer-focused professionals and receive bi-weekly articles, podcasts, webinars, and more!
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Let's talk about friction.

The great thing about effortless experience is, if it's done right, as the customer you don't even know it's happening. You have an interaction with a subscription, company or product and continue about your day.

But if your interactions are full of friction, you're going to be painfully aware at every touchpoint.

And who wants to continue being a customer somewhere that makes life harder for you?

In this episode with Craig Stoss, who has over 20 years experience in customer support and customer centric roles, we discuss what effortless customer experience can look like when it's done well... and when it's done not-so-well.

Scroll down to read the highlights or watch the full episode 👇🏻

AI for customer service ebook

What makes a customer experience effortless?

Effortless experience to me is the key to a good customer experience. And by that, I mean, removing friction.

I feel like we in the support industry love to solve problems and use tools that benefit us, but we should be focused on how we can deliver that service and remove that friction that some of those tools introduce into the process.

For example, if you've ever been on a chat bot widget and you're just not getting the answer you want and you're just like "I want to speak to a person, just give me a person". So you type that in and it's like, "I don't understand what you're saying". Well, that's friction to the customer.

So to me, effortless experience is just all about figuring out where those friction points are and figuring out how you can resolve those again, with tooling, with better knowledge with proactivity, which we'll talk about I'm sure later, but figuring out how can I get this information without having to add in pain points along the way.

What are your thoughts on proactive support when things go wrong?

Where customers either have run into an issue or likely to run into an issue, in my opinion, one of the best things that you can do as a support person is to send a notice of some sort or, pop up a message in your app or whatever it might be and let people know that.

You see little widgets all the time where they pop up and say, "Hey, you haven't filled this form in correctly". That type of thing, but at a more complex level where you've analysed the data of what problems your customers are having and then provide added guidance.

So maybe a link to a knowledge based article or an embedded video that says, here's the steps to fix this thing you're about to see, or here's why you would want to change the thing that we think is wrong.

The customer doesn't need to call you the customer can just continue on with the work and be like, oh look, there's something I'm doing wrong, they've told me how to fix it, I'll just fix it and keep moving.

Watch the episode

Join a community of 2139+ customer-focused professionals and receive bi-weekly articles, podcasts, webinars, and more!