Until recently, many tech companies have been able to get by and thrive without emphasizing customer experience. Often they could lock in long-term contracts with buyers who didn’t share the negative opinions end users in the buyers’ organization had of them. And, as in the health insurance industry, buyers often had relatively poor visibility into pricing and competitive options.
But the industry is changing rapidly, and end-to-end customer experience, which includes how easy it is for customers to learn the product, how the product performs and how the vendor responds to customers’ issues -- matters more than ever in enterprise IT. The shift toward cloud computing, changes in the customer buying process and the maturation of the tech industry are all giving customers more leverage in technology purchasing decisions.
To better understand the evolving role of customer experience in enterprise IT, in collaboration with market research firm Research Now, surveyed decision makers and end users of eight different hardware and software categories in the US, gathering about 700 respondents for each category.
7 Steps to Delivering a Consistent Experience (by NPR)
Knowing what the customer expects, aligned to an aspirational vision, is a good start. Ultimately however, a company is measured by the collective actions of its employees, not on its vision. Delivering a high value experience requires all members of the customer success team as well as the company to act consistently, in all interactions with its clients.
Understand the (S)ituation.
Align on the (P)roblem or opportunity and the impact of it.
Listen carefully for the specific (A)sk or demand.
Qualify the associated (R)equirements or need.
Agree on a mutual (C)ommitment.
Deliver and (C)lose the loop.
(S)olicit feedback.
At 24ITintegrator, we follow these practices and take them one step further with our last steps of continual evaluation and re-evaluation to allow us to continually improve our customer support and relationships.