Author: David Dinh

Large conglomerates are not immune to sophisticated cybercriminals who can find ‘loopholes’ and ‘vulnerabilities’ in a company’s cybersecurity defense systems to exploit customer payments. We normally assume that the corporate world with its enterprise software solutions and high-security firewalls are on standby 24×7. However cyber crime does not choose depending on the size of your business or demographic. It just sees an opportunity and potential weaknesses. The biggest weakness with any firm – big or small – is the lack of knowledge on the employee’s end.

Unwary employees

Employees just have to click on that big red button which says ‘download’ on it, or open up a seemingly trustworthy email that contains a .exe attachment which promises them an unlimited lifetime supply of money. Common phishing tactics that are normally avoided by more tech savvy employees are the root cause of most ransomware and malware attacks that have riddled Australian companies for years. Once inside your network, phishing emails can install various Trojans and key logging software to compromise your user’s credentials and then use it to thwart the overall customer experience by affecting customer payments. In 2011, Sony, a technology company renowned for being at the bleeding edge of technology, was hacked, exposing the data and user credentials of over 77 million PlayStation Network (PSN) users worldwide.

A lot of Aussies were also affected

1.5 million of this massive chunk of user information, belonged to Australians. This includes 280,000 credit card credentials that were ousted to cybercriminals. If these large corporates are not safe, then you probably aren’t either.  Business Email Compromise (BEC) has cost Australian businesses a cumulative loss of over $3 billion since January of 2015. Australian businesses are at risk and if bigger corporations could not avoid massive breaches to their security, then how can small and medium-sized companies without sophisticated cybersecurity systems and enterprise-grade firewalls cope? No one can afford to let their customer’s data get breached. You are required by the Privacy Act of 1998 to take all possible steps to guard your customer’s data – failing to do this can result in crippling fines and worst of all, reputational damage that will ensure that your company is never trusted with user data again. Sony recovered from this damage, and continues to explode in growth – the same can’t be said for your business if it fails to follow the necessary protocols. 

Below are 5 Companies Who Have Lost thousands of Customer Payments

1. Walmart

Walmart might be the go-to place for most shoppers who want to get their grocery done. But its popularity and fame has put a big red arrow on its face saying, “Free for the taking!” And that’s exactly what’s been happening.

A number of users have been reporting that their credit card details have been compromised and their bank balance is just going down the drain. Although we shouldn’t really be blaming Walmart for the breach, because digital payments were still in their cradle at the time; this was way back in the year 2005.

Someone installed L0phtrack into one of the thousands of servers leading to hackers stealing POS source code and executables including a detailed mapping of the company’s transaction processing network.  

2. Home Depot

Many people purchase relevant home improvement tools for their DIY project from Home Depot, but a data breach in 2014 cost the company a massive sum of $179 million. To add insult to injury, the giant retailer was forced to pay $27.25 million to financial institutions and other entities affected by the security breach. 

The lawsuit not only tarnished its reputation but cost it millions of dollars. While it is a billion dollar empire, such thrashing takes years to recover from, which Home Depot has yet to do.

3. Apple

The biggest oxymoron would be a tech giant such as Apple falling victim to hackers sitting in their grandma’s basement. Yet Apple’s security systems were breached in 2014, and the iCloud accounts of millions of users were compromised, leading to a number of celebrities having their ‘private’ photographs being leaked for the world to gawk at.

4. Anthem

One of the largest health insurance companies in the US, Anthem is still reeling in from a massive data breach that occurred in 2015. The incident has come back to bite it for a whopping $115 million settlement because of a class action lawsuit. 80 million patient and employee records were exposed in the data breach, resulting in the loss of $8 to $16 billion.

5. Kmart

In October 1 of 2015, Kmart, which has its headquarters established in Australia, reported that a privacy breach had resulted in millions of customer’s data being stolen by ‘external’ attackers. Details such as their email address, billing address, phone numbers and product purchase details were compromised.

Customer experience has always been a complex topic because of technology’s accelerated growth. The myriad of channels through which your business can serve the query of a grievous customer has evolved beyond the simple phone call into an interwoven network of phone call centers, social media management, chatting and emailing. The customer is now used to prompt and quick response times, the result of which most large companies need to continually monitor their customer channels. Your business must continue to improve customer experience if it wants to survive – one could argue that it is the cornerstone of your company’s success. The only way to spearhead it towards newer heights is by keeping up with the ever-changing customer experience trends.

Top 10 Customer Experience Management Trends to Watch out for:

1. Personalized shopping trends by using data analytics

You are expected to know the tastes, likes and dislikes of each and every single one of your customers, whether they number in the millions or if they can be counted on your fingertips. Today’s shopping experience is heavily personalized, driven by data analytics which is powered by supercomputers operating in the cloud. Companies that understand the importance of personalization are now seeking more and more of the customer’s data so they can curate the product better around your tastes.

Successful companies such as Netflix and Uber are so good with data analytics that they can make accurate predictions for what their customer would want next in the future – and when that future comes, they’re more than prepared to handle their requests. Despite the importance of data analytics in the personalization of the customer’s overall shopping experience, 80% of companies don’t know their customer beyond the basic information such as purchase history and frequency of their purchase.

2. The low effort in purchases

Time is money as they say and today’s customer is more about saving time than money. They want their purchase to be over as soon as possible. Standing in long queues and then waiting for the clerk to pack up your goods is a relic of the past decade. Consumers don’t want more decisions and spend the time to decide what to buy. Gone if the generation of curious online consumers doing extensive research and deciding the best option after days of digging through websites, consumers want to know the right choice now.

3. Purchases of the phone

Yes – your business needs to have an app if it wants a wider reach. Almost everyone (unless they’re living under a rock) owns a smartphone with access to the internet these days. In fact, most people are now making 51% of their purchases online using their phones! Australian shoppers are becoming more tech-savvy and more than 84% of the population is now using smartphones. The phone has now more power than the TV, you could even say it is the ‘colour TV’ of our generation.

4. Targeting the millennials

Millennials are now increasingly critical of your business than ever before. They make efforts to research your product over the internet before making an informed decision, something that the older generation doesn’t tend to do very often. In fact, 40% of millennials conduct their research online. Targeting this ambitious group of young people requires the use of catchy slogans and turning your business into a brand more than anything else.

5. Catering to emotions

Emotion is now becoming a strong component of the overall customer experience. Think of the PS4 and Xbox One fanboys – how they rage at each other on the internet on forums discussing how their brand is the superior one. That’s emotion at play here.

6. Let the metrics do the talking

Collecting key customer metrics such as customer satisfaction, customer profitability and click through rate should lend you a better understanding of the kind of product which will net you the best results.

7. Integrating with other businesses

Partnering up with other businesses to provide a more streamlined shopping experience to the customer has been an evolving trend. Credit card companies such as MasterCard and Visa are a prime example of this. Their promo campaigns give you voucher cards for discounts if you go to a certain restaurant and use their credit card for making the purchase.

8. Avoid challenging the cognitive resources too much

While giving the customers a wide range of choice is considered to be good business as it allows them greater control over their purchases, it has also been shown that too many of many choices, especially ones with similar characteristics, labeling one product ‘brown’ and another ‘hazelnut’ can place a psychological burden on the customer. Successful businesses are learning to avoid this practice.

9. Augmented reality

Businesses are now looking to gain their customer’s confidence by installing augmented reality images next to their product to give them a more in-depth review of what they’re buying into.

10. Train your staff and agents

Your agents are the ones that engage with the customer on a regular basis, training them on best practices and identifying where their successes and failures lie can be the difference between your support staff being your Achilles heel or a valued service. This is especially true for agents that deal with customer support channels.

Better Customer Experience = More Business

The management of blended channels can sometimes become the Achilles’ heel for many businesses. Instead of providing them with good returns, bad management of blended channels will result in soured customer service and experience. It has been estimated that bad customer experience is costing $120 Billion dollars to Australian businesses each year. This staggering figure clearly suggests how important is to devise strategies for better customer experience. With more people using different social media platforms, businesses can’t provide optimal customer experience only through contact centers. To highlight,  7 in 10 Australians use Facebook and approximately half of the Australian population daily logs onto Facebook, how many businesses do you know respond to their customer service channels through FaceBook?

Here are some of the consequences of Ineffective Management of Blended Channels

Unfamiliarity with Technology: Ineffective usage of blended channels + bad reputation of the business

Answering customer queries through inbound calling is fine but if your customer support agent is not familiar and efficient with the use of other interactive platforms (SMS, online chat, Twitter, Facebook), then your approach of blended channels can’t convert in better ROI. Generation Y is very agile and they are always in a hurry. Hence, they won’t like it when their queries are not answered quickly. Not only will they dump your services, but they will also only propagate the bad reputation of your business.

And it doesn’t stop just with bad mouthing. The same online tools which you have incorporated in your business will be used against you. They probably leave comment or review about their experience with you on social media platforms. A study suggests that more than 80% of people are influenced by online reviews when they reach any business through blended channels.

Related:
Why is Multi-Channel Customer Service Important?

Counter-Productivity of Multitasking Means Leads Won’t Convert

There are many caveats attached to the concept of multitasking. A school of thought believes that it is a good strategy for increased productivity while others think it is counterproductive.

Agents, when operating blended channels, are basically doing multitasking and there is a simple problem associated with that. Not every person is able to handle the challenge of multitasking demanded from the blended channel approach. Therefore, if you have huddled a team without assessing their multitasking capabilities, then there are strong chances that it will backfire.

People who fail to multitask can’t simultaneously concentrate on every interaction they are making on blended channels. Failing to provide 100% to every customer interaction means there will be less display of persuasion and convincing. We all know that with little persuasion you can’t successfully convert leads into customers.

Inefficient Management of Blended Calls and Increased Employee Turnover

Assigning agents that are not familiar with newer online platforms or who are not good at multitasking to the operations of blended channels also becomes problematic for your own employees.

With more workload and failing to manage multiple channels, their stress levels can shoot up. Apart from that, failure in converting leads and satisfying customers can also lead to frustration. Working under constant pressure can make many of your employees switch. Greater turnover rates are not good for the consistent performance of any business.

Unrelenting Mismanagement and Profit

If a business doesn’t mend its ways in managing the blended channels effectively, then the worst possible outcome will be decreased profits. With bad reputation, a business will have less lead generation, and with bad customer support even the loyal customers start to call it a day. The failure to acquire new customers and the inability to retain existing ones only means one thing: a significant dip in revenue.

It is an undisputed fact that devising multi-prong blended channels strategy is good for businesses but managing it effectively is the key to reap its benefits. If you are looking for better ways to improve customer engagement and offer better customer experience, get in touch.

For any business to succeed in their niche industry, it’s essential to have a well-defined customer experience strategy – one that creates distinctive value for targeted customers. The creation of a definitive strategy in order to improve the consumer’s experience allows corporations to bring innovation and instill energy into the company’s growth. In the modern digitized era of today, there’s a greater focus on digital customer service capabilities. According to research, it has been found that corporations that invest their time, energy and effort into creating a much-needed balance in the customer services journey by addressing all the possible needs and requirements of a consumer, reap staggering amounts of benefits.

Request a FREE Woveon Conversational Software demo today.

Here are the 7 Ways to Create a Customer Experience Strategy

Apart from the basic benefits such as increased customer satisfaction, increased revenue, decreased consumer backlash, organizations that skilfully mediate the customer services experience for consumers to provide a well-rounded transaction are also able to gain improved employee gratification such that it leads to improved company outcomes overall.

1. Create Intelligent Customer Engagement

While human interaction provides that empathetic factor in between customer-representative relationship – the fact remains that humans can only do so much. Strike the perfect balance by allowing Woveon to simplify customer services for your customers as well as employees. Woveon is a multi-faceted platform that combines the various elements of customer services under one umbrella so that neither the consumers nor the employees have to reach too far for valid solutions to customer problems.

2. Improve Customer Service Accessibility

One of the biggest reasons that organisations feel high levels of consumer churn is because the customers have to navigate a labyrinth of customer service representatives before they reach the individual actually responsible for providing a viable solution to their problem. By using Woveon, organizations eliminate the detours and hurdles to create a quick and easy pathway directly to the concerned personnel. Through Woveon, customers have the choice to communicate with the CS representative through multiple platforms such as in person, via phone, email or quick-chats – allowing them to choose one which suits them best.

3. Enhance Speed and Efficiency

Often times, the customer is left disappointed with the customer services because the representatives are unable to either address their present concerns or correlate with their past issues. Woveon eliminates this issue by allowing organizations to perfect their digital services to the point where they have instant access to all consumer details in one place at one glance.

4. Construct a Well-Rounded Management System

Customer service complaints arise most often when organizations are unable to address all the concerns and complaints of a consumer. Woveon simplifies that by having Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence programs in place, which collect and utilize essential consumer data to predict complaints, provide assessments and suggest simple responses in an efficient manner. By constructing a well-rounded management system, it takes the pressure off the customer services representative, allowing them to better address the consumer and their concerns.

5. Identify Consumers Priority

In the midst of an onslaught of complaints, concerns and requests by a large number of consumers, sometimes customers can get lost and buried under the masses. Woveon, based on the previous data collected, allows organizations to distinguish between the consumers on a priority basis such that no customer is left unattended.

6. Instill Flexibility

Customer churn is at its peak when consumers are provided with generic answers in response to their individualized queries. Organizations that place individual importance on each consumer by keeping a track of their specifications and personal requirements achieve far greater customer excellence and satisfaction than those who don’t. With Woveon, organizations can successfully instill flexibility in their customer strategy such that each representative is able to address the specific customer problems pertaining to their unique circumstance.

7. Sell Knowledgeably

Last but not least, one of the most essential ways to create a customer experience strategy is to have a customer services team that is knowledgeable, educated and aware. Vague responses such as ‘company policy’ or other generic replies only help in ensuring that the customer never returns to engage with the corporation again. If the customer services representative can make personalised suggestions and recommendations of newer services or products to address the consumer problems, it successfully depicts a more helpful and concerned service. Moreover, it ultimately provides increased value to the consumer-representative relationship, thus allowing for the achievement of improved results.