3 steps to better Customer Experience Management

What do you know about Customer Experience Managers? It's a popular role with companies as a whole, but not typically with Service Desks. What does this role imply? And how can it inform your approach to better Services?

Well, I work in a similar role (Customer Success) at TOPdesk, so I thought I could share some insight into here! Let's look at some ways to boost the customer experience at your Service Desk, based on some things we've done internally. But first, some quick background.

Focusing on the Customer Experience

At TOPdesk, we always aim to build stronger relationships with our customers. Partially, that's done by making sure our software is always up to standard. But nowadays that's not enough. And that's where my role as a customer success manager comes in: making sure all our customers are having the best TOPdesk experience possible.

Why am I sharing this? Because just like for us as a company, customer success is incredibly relevant to your Service Desk. (Read a great Stephen Mann post on that here.) And even if you don't implement a real customer success manager, there are still some valuable lessons for you in the type of work we do.

Essentially, to offer better Services, you must know what your customer wants from you, and what you can do to make customer relationships successful. At TOPdesk, we applied the following three steps:

Tip 1: Map customer experience journeys

If you want to give your customer the best possible experience, you must first get to know them. Try paying attention to your Customer Journeys. A "journey" in this case is every experience your customer has with the Service Desk. Like logging a ticket and waiting for a resolution for example. What can you do to optimize this journey?

More on Customer Journey's from my colleague Wes in the first of this two part blog post here >>

We looked this at TOPdesk in Support, for example, where we've worked on all possible interactions customers can have with us and work on continuously improving the experience. For example, we have been looking for the trip the customer makes once the signature is put on a contract, and mapped out the best possible on boarding experience we can give.

Tip 2: Look for your touch points

The point of Customer Journeys is to be able to optimize every touch point. For us, that would mean a call to support, maybe about new modules or the extension of a contract - or a number of other things. For Service Desks, it could be anything from a company wide email to the individual touch points of a complex Change-procedure. 

The point is to look at things from the customers perspective and ask "how are we presenting ourselves here? How are we perceived?"

The good thing about analysing touch points is that from every touch point we can get important customer information. For example, you can dig into your call closure data and analyse reoccurring themes in customer feedback, where such is given. 

Why employee engagement and customer experience go hand in hand with digital transformation >>

Tip 3: Sit down with your Customers

Armed with historical data and information, you can also reach out to your actual customers and ask them what they would improve in their experience with you. Either in focus groups or with a survey of some kind - via Surveymonkey or a similar tool. But the best is personal connection. It doesn't give the widest sample, but it gives the most detailed feedback.

At TOPdesk we made an appointment with a user community in northern Holland. For us it was ideal, because as a community, they bring together different customers in varying sectors which meant we got varied feedback. We learned a lot about different contact channels and new knowledge sharing opportunities for example.

Analogously, if you run a focus group at the Service Desk, it's great to bring in customers from different departments and different age groups. In Higher Education for example, an aging professor may have completely different requirements and understanding of good IT Service than a first year student, but both need to be provided with the same level of excellent service.

Learn more about Customer Experience

Wanna learn more about better Customer Experience? We wrote a book on it! Download the Customer Centricity ebook for invaluable tips and tricks to make your Services stand out.