How quickly do you get frustrated with slow service? Whether you are waiting a little longer for your food to be served at a restaurant, or even waiting on that red light that took forever this morning on the way to work, our patience continues to lessen. You don’t have time to wait 30 seconds for a website to load or want to drive to the bank to deposit a check.
Expectations have been set by brands that deliver experiences that raise the bar….and they’ll do it again tomorrow. 20 years ago, it took hours to download a song. You had to print out turn-by-turn directions and needed your copilot to read them to you as you drove. You had to go to a store for things like groceries, gifts, and general necessities. Now you can do all of this with your phone. Even calling it a phone is a bit misleading, since calling someone is likely the feature you use the least.
As consumers, we want fast, accurate, and seamless service. We want to place a drive thru order on our phone to make sure the order is accurate and ready upon arrival. We want to go use self-checkout, because there is rarely a line or long wait. We want the websites we use for banking, ordering products, or scheduling a visit to the local urgent care clinic to be fast and easy to use. A website that doesn’t work correctly is a significant inconvenience. So much so that frustration interacting with a company, whether through their website, mobile app, or even over the phone, could cause an otherwise loyal customer to go to a competitor.
Each experience provided by a company is an opportunity to gain a new customer, retain an existing customer, or lose a customer. Each customer has different needs, different thresholds, and different preferences on how they want to interact with a brand. Even so, every customer wants a brand to meet or exceed expectations, and exceeding is where transformation happens. Experiences can change lives by changing perspectives, unlocking new opportunities and possibilities, and establishing a new normal.
As we discussed in the blog piece Why do customers love live chat?, customers want to feel more connected to a company or brand they use. This can be difficult to do in our digital world where computers and screens make everything seem so impersonal. Positive, memorable digital customer experiences help individuals connect to a company or brand. Many are incorporating social media as a vehicle to engage and interact with customers as well.
Coventry is committed to continuously delivering innovative experiences that provide excellent customer service. Innovation is spurred by new capabilities and technologies, new business models, and assessing new and disruptive ideas across all industries. The pace of change is faster every day. It is our responsibility to our customers to identify and leverage new opportunities to improve the products and services we provide.