How to Create a Holistic Customer View to Improve Customer Experience

Do you have a holistic customer view of your customer? When customers think about your business, they see it as one entity and expect a holistic customer experience.

Customers who contact your company may end up speaking to multiple departments. However, they still expect a frictionless experience.

Get a holistic view of your customer to improve their experience

Research from our State of Service report found that just 43% of frontline workers, dispatchers, and other service agents could find the information needed to do their jobs on one screen. The majority have to toggle between screens to see what they need.

This disconnection from the holistic customer view has real business consequences. In fact, the lowest-performing service professionals also tend to be those most siloed from marketing, e-commerce, and sales.

We found that 78% of agents say they have the tools and technology they need to do their jobs (up from 69% in 2018). However, easy access to a complete customer data profile still proves challenging.

Bear in mind that survey responses can vary by region. For example, in Belgium, 80% of service agents agree that remotely accessing data is the only way to provide a positive customer experience (compared to 77% globally).

Three ways to create a holistic customer view

Customer expectations of their service experience and interactions are changing. Therefore, it is essential to create a more holistic customer view.

This allows organisations to create a more unified and cohesive experience for customers.

Here are three ways to create a more holistic customer experience:

1. Improve workflow processes and platforms for better customer experiences

Service professionals agree that their work processes are not efficient enough to provide the level of service customers have come to expect. Customers expect to have their issues resolved without having to speak to more than one agent.

Often, service professionals will have to send a customer to another department to resolve their issue or place the customer on hold while they access the information they need. Neither of these options is a viable solution when it comes to creating a positive and holistic customer experience.

Service agents must be empowered with knowledge and permissions to solve customer issues quickly and efficiently via a holistic view of the customer.

Salesforce Field Service can help you automate processes and deploy your service employees optimally for good customer service, resulting in a great customer experience, customer retention, and the use of the field service as a sales channel.

2. Facilitate open communication and knowledge sharing

Your service team must use the same CRM system as the other departments within your organisation.

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a bright light on internal communications and information-sharing deficiencies. Especially as customers turned to online and phone ordering and service en masse.

As a result, 78% of service decision-makers have invested in new technology. So ensure that your team has all the tools they need for improved insights into customer behaviour.

3. Ensure consistent agent agility with policy updates to improve customer experiences

In the face of uncertainty and financial precariousness, customers can be hesitant to commit.

Many organisations have empowered agents to provide services, offer exceptions to policies, and authorised flexibility in discounts or payments at unprecedented levels in past years.

In fact, 83% of service teams say they’ve changed policies to provide customers greater flexibility. Rethink your policies around returns, refunds, and other service issues.

Communicate policy updates across your agent base to ensure each one can understand and be responsive to their customers’ needs.

Unify your organisation to provide a holistic customer view

State of Service respondents said that 87% of their service metrics revolve around customer satisfaction.

Shared goals and metrics are a baseline for providing the experiences customers expect. However, service professionals realise that a customer’s experience is influenced by more than their service interactions.

Over two-thirds of high performers report alignment across marketing and digital commerce, with even greater alignment (82%) with sales. Aligned organisational structures will allow for a better and more holistic customer view.

Improving experiences with a holistic customer view

Industry experts agree that consumers are increasingly less tolerant of companies that do not provide a positive customer experience.

• Ensure you provide every department with the same CRM system. Improve workflow processes to ensure that your business retains its loyal customers.
• Train your employees the right way. Globally, 83 percent of service professionals state that they are more effective in addressing customer concerns when they have the proper training.
• Aligning IT and service agent management tools is imperative in gaining a holistic customer view. This helps bring cohesive, connected customer experiences to life.

Partnering with Salesforce can provide your team with the latest, most complete service platform and the best solution.