The genius of Apple’s products is that they create great user experiences. They are simple, intuitive and satisfying to use.
Watch a small child playing with an iPhone or iPad and you’ll see even if they are not yet able to speak they can still master swiping the screen and pressing an icon.
We know creating great customer experiences gives us a number of benefits:
- Ease of use
- More engaged, happier and satisfied customers
- Increased loyalty – less likely to leave
- More likely to recommend us
- Less frustration
Just try taking someone’s iPhone away and you’ll realise that creating a great customer experience is the key to loyalty and advocacy.
Design an outstanding customer experience like iPhone and you’ll create raving fans.
What does this mean for us?
With disruption all around us in virtually every facet of life we have an opportunity. Redesign our business processes and make life easier for the customer.
Our business processes need to be designed with both business efficiency and the customer experience in mind.
Making it easier for your customer means going paper-free from the outset.
Paper is not only inefficient in the office it’s harder for the customer too.
Imagine something as simple as filling in a form for a direct debit on your utility bills.
As a customer you have to fill in the form, find an envelope and a stamp and go to a post box. Hardly a major job but it creates several small and unnecessary hurdles for the customer which may lead to delay, frustration and even inaction:
- Can’t find an envelope
- Haven’t got any stamps
- Put it to one side to go the post box later…and it’s still sitting there in a week’s time
Even when it does finally get posted and received by the business the form has to be processed, either scanned or data entered manually. All this is expensive, time consuming and slow.
The simple, pain-free alternative is online forms. Direct debits can be set up instantly online without the need for any extraneous processes for the customer:
- Fill in the form
- Click submit
- Done!
As a business then all the data is then held on your system and you are set up.
In a recent AIIM survey 72% of organisations said “Business at the speed of paper will be unacceptable in a few years’ time.”
If you were starting your business today you would most likely take advantage of modern technology and make life easier for your customers by going paperless. Yet many businesses persist with outdated business processes which are frustrating for customers and inefficient for the business simply because that’s the way it’s always been done.
When did you last review how your business operated and what this means for your customers?