How to Use Customer Behaviour Data to Grow Revenue
With customer experience becoming a critical differentiator, many organizations are striving to improve the quality of the services that they offer using customer behaviour data. A number of FinServ businesses, such as Scotiabank, have highlighted enhancing the customer experience as one of their initiatives in their annual report, stating that they are “Focused on digitization to strengthen customer experience and improve efficiency.” And beyond this, offering a personalized experience is preferred by most customers. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 80% of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.
Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey may be damaging your customer experience? Schedule a customer effort assessment.
As an appointment-driven business, it is in your best interest to gain insight into customer needs in order to enhance the experience your organization offers. There are two ways in which you can collect customer information:
- You can collect additional information about the customer prior to their appointment so that your customer-facing advisors can cater to the individual customer’s needs.
- You can gain insight into your customers’ experience post-appointment with customer feedback surveys.
Integrated appointment scheduling offers both these features which will allow your organization to gain more insight into customer needs at the time of the appointment scheduling, as well as glean additional information about the customer’s experience with your organization post-appointment with a follow-up feedback survey.
Why Ask Custom Questions Pre-Appointment?
Typically when customers call into your organization’s contact center to schedule an appointment, they are asked for very basic information, such as:
- What is your name? And do you currently hold an account with us?
- Which branch location would you like to schedule your appointment at?
- What service would you like to schedule your appointment for?
- What day would you like to schedule your appointment for? And what time works best for you?
This is the minimum amount of information required in order to schedule the customer appointment. But wouldn’t you rather do everything you can to create a positive, personalized experience for its customers?
With integrated appointment scheduling, your contact center reps will be able to capture much more information about the customer at the time the appointment is scheduled. Then, the advisor scheduled to meet with that customer can adequately prepared to run an appointment that is better tailored to their needs.
Gain Insight into Customer History
When additional customer information is captured at when scheduling the appointment, you can gain additional insight into the customer’s financial history, which enables your organization to provide a more personalized in-person experience.
If you want to gain insight into their banking history, you can ask:
- How long have you been banking with us?
- When was the last time you scheduled an appointment with us?
- Do you do most of your banking online?
These pre-appointment questions will provide advisors with additional insight into customer banking behaviour, which will allow them to make more informed decisions about what other services they can offer. Additionally, When a customer comes in for their appointment and is recognized by their financial institution, it makes them feel valued and also reduces the chances of them seeking out a competitor who offers a better experience.
Enhance the Appointment Experience
Gaining insight into the customer’s needs can allow the customer-facing advisor to properly prepare for the upcoming appointment. This allows for both the customer and the advisor to get the most out of the scheduled appointment because the advisor is aware of the customer’s needs and can tailor the appointment specifically to them.
If you want to better understand your customers’ needs, you can ask:
- What is your reason for scheduling this appointment?
- What are you hoping to get out of this appointment?
- Have you come in for an appointment for this service before?
Enhancing the appointment service also allows your customer to have a positive experience that will increase their brand loyalty and reduce churn.
Gaining insight into your customer’s financial history, as well as what they are hoping to get out of their upcoming appointment can be accomplished through an enterprise appointment scheduling integrated platform. When customers call to schedule an appointment through your organization’s contact center, the advisors will be taken on an appointment scheduling journey that will assign certain custom questions depending on the service that the customer requires. As the representative is scheduling the appointment, they can ask customers very brief additional questions which will be recorded and stored in your organization’s integrated appointment platform and accessible by the advisor who will be meeting with the client at their upcoming appointment.
Alternatively, if customers choose to schedule their appointment through your organizations self-serve portal, customers will be taken to a page before they complete their appointment scheduling, that will ask them a series of brief questions that will allow their assigned advisor to gain additional insight into their needs.
Why Check in with Customers Post-Appointment?
Consistently providing a valuable customer experience is one of the main ways you can bring them to rely on your brand, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing churn. And feedback surveys give your customers a platform to give feedback on the experience that they had with your organization.
Find out How Your Branches or Locations are Performing
Feedback surveys allow your customers to have a platform where they can reflect on and rate the experience they had with your organization. By receiving feedback on the last experience that your customer had with your organization, you will be able to see how your business is performing in the eyes of your customers.
To gain insight into the customer experience that your branch locations are providing, you can ask:
- Was your advisor prepared for your appointment?
- Did you get everything out of your appointment that you were expecting?
- Were the branch staff knowledgeable and accommodating?
Asking these types of questions will allow you to evaluate how your branch locations are performing, as well as the experience that your customer-facing staff are providing to your customers.
Leverage the Voice of Your Customers to Develop Business Strategy
Hearing back from customers, you can also gain insight into the experience that they are (or were) expecting to get from your organization. This is valuable information when deciding on which technology or process change to implement that will enhance the customer experience.
With customer surveys, you will have first-hand feedback about your customer-facing channels that will allow you to tailor the back-end service delivery processes to better meet the needs of your customers.
In your feedback surveys, you can ask questions like:
- Please rate your appointment scheduling experience out of 5
- Was there anything with your last experience with us that you believe could be enhanced? If yes, please explain.
- Based on your last appointment with us, would you recommend our services to a friend? If not, why?
What better way to increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn than by implementing the tools that your customers are beginning to expect?
Ensure your Customers Feel Heard
People love to be asked their opinion, and asking your customers about their experience with your organization will make them feel valued and will earn your organization major brownie points. Tying back to brand loyalty, following-up with customers and asking them about the experience that they had with your organization makes them feel like their opinion matters. Customer’s who feel that their financial services provider is listening to their needs are more likely to be loyal and continue to do business with that brand.
With Coconut Software, you are able to add the additional touchpoint of sending a follow-up email to customers after they have completed their appointment to gain insight into their experience. The follow-up email can have a survey link embedded in it where the customer can easily access and give their feedback, seamlessly.
Experience the benefits that come with additional insights into customer behaviour
With enterprise appointment scheduling, you will be able to collect additional customer information and feedback. This offers many benefits to your organization, such as allowing you to provide a better appointment service, make customers feel valued and implement the customer-facing tools that are the best fit for what your organization’s customers are looking for. Don’t wait to provide your customers with an enhanced experience with your organization, schedule a consultation today!
What’s Next?
Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey are damaging your customer effort score? Schedule a customer effort assessment.
Interested in learning how appointment scheduling can help your entire organization engage more efficiently and effectively with customers? Download our Customer Experience Whitepaper.
Ready to get started? Schedule a consultation today.