The evolution of the customer experience – 3 years of the Eptica blog

Last week marked a significant anniversary for Eptica – our Customer Experience Blog has now been running for three years. Created in April 2011, it has grown significantly since then, receiving thousands of visits from 160 countries across the world. This is the 290^th blog post, with subjects ranging from the impact of wearables on customer service to how our software has helped safeguard elephants.

The success of the blog is part of a wider trend. Customer service and the customer experience have now moved centre stage for businesses as they seek to win and retain business and increase efficiency throughout their operations. Companies understand that whatever channel customers are using, they need to respond quickly and consistently if they are to succeed in today’s ultra-competitive markets.

To celebrate our three year blog anniversary we’ve looked back through the archives and picked three of the most popular posts and themes from the blog:

1. The hidden cost of poor customer service
Failing to answer customer service queries has an obvious impact on an organisation – customers and prospects get upset and vote with their wallets, leading to a loss of sales and a dent to the brand. But customer service failure creates additional costs. Simply, if customers aren’t satisfied with the service they receive through one channel and they need an answer then they will switch to another. Often this is more expensive for the company (such as answering a phone call rather than providing an answer via email), adding to costs. Read the full blog post explaining the cost implications here.

2. Email is being neglected
One of our most recent blog posts highlighted the increasing issues with the email channel – essentially more and more companies are making it difficult for non-customers to use email to get in touch. The latest Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study found that nearly a third (29%) of organisations can no longer be contacted through the channel. Unfortunately this isn’t anything new – back in 2011 this blog post highlighted poor performance on the email channel. The popularity of this theme demonstrates two things – consumers still want email, and that in an era of increased unstructured content, companies are struggling to respond to greater email volumes.

3. Innovation is driving exceptional service
We’ve regularly featured case studies demonstrating how our customers are succeeding by recognising and responding to customer needs. Here are just three:

• AirAsia, Asia’s leading low cost airline has won several awards for its multichannel Eptica-based solution. This is providing fast, consistent customer service across the web, Facebook and mobile channels, 24 hours a day. Over one million enquiries per month are now being managed through the AskAirAsia system.

• The UK’s leading warranty specialist, Domestic & General, replaced multiple, paper-based systems with Fido, a centralised customer service knowledge management system built on Eptica. Using Fido agents can access up to the minute, accurate answers by typing questions into the web-based system, which provides consistent and fast responses to every enquiry. Since Fido went live, customer call times have been reduced by nearly a quarter (22%) and operational costs have been lowered by £158,000. Furthermore, First Contact Resolution (FCR) rates have increased, hold times halved and the time taken to train new agents has decreased by 20%.
• In order to streamline and optimise its entire customer service operations, perfume and cosmetics group L’Occitane is deploying Eptica’s multi-lingual customer management interaction software in 90 countries across the globe. Eptica is being used to manage incoming emails, web self-service and telephone contacts, as well as to power L’Occitane’s new web chat service. Helped by Eptica, L’Occitane topped a recent index for email customer service performance, as well as scoring highly for social media service.

The past three years have seen tremendous changes to the customer experience market. The rise in the importance of customer service, new channels such as web chat and mobile, along with higher expectations from consumers continue to drive innovation. At Eptica, we look forward to highlighting good practice and sharing new innovation on the blog for many more years. Thank you for reading!