The customer experience (CE) will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. In a business, having a fascinating customer experience has evolved from a nice to have to a necessity.
Deputy Executive Vice President for customer experience and digitalization at Telkom Indonesia, Sri Safitri, argued that if companies truly pay attention to customer experience, they will easily win the competition. She mentioned it during a guest lecture session in customer behavior class, MBA ITB.
“ I once bought a product through an online application, but the delivery was late from 5 PM to 7 PM. However, the company cared deeply, sending an apology via email and giving me free postage for my next delivery. This is an experience that I feel where the company cares about its customers,” Said Sri when telling about her experience.
She explained that customer experience is a whole journey of customers to the company. Through research, Sri showed that 89 percent of customers switch brands due to poor customer experience, and 86 percent of customers will pay more for a great customer experience. “This is the reason why companies need to transform their customer experience,” said Sri who has expertise in customer experience management.
Sri revealed that there are five reasons why companies have to transform the customer experience. Namely, increasing business KPIs, improving customer satisfaction, standing out from the competition, inspiring advocacy & referral, and building strong customer relationships.
Furthermore, she argued that companies that did not pay attention to customer experience will be facing a decline in performance during the crisis and after the crisis, it took a long time to recover.
Customer experience after Covid-19
Sri revealed that Covid-19 is accelerating transformation mainly in customer behavior. During the pandemic, people’s behavior has changed. “Customers’ behavior has shifted because of Covid-19. It will bring new changes and trends,” she said.
According to Sri, Covid-19 is a challenge for companies to understand customers’ behavior, trend, and pattern that will endure in the long term. We never thought that we would study and work from home, but current conditions have forced us to do so.
Besides, Sri mentioned that there are three things that companies need to invest more in Covid-19 situations namely, data & analytic to deliver an exceptional experience to understand customers better & faster. Moreover, digital excellence for accelerating innovation quickly to replace or complement, and automation (contactless) to connect safety across products, services, and processes.
