Customer Experience vs. Customer Service
Title agencies understand that customer service is critical to maintaining a strong and loyal client base. In creating a customer service strategy, tile companies tend to think about what they are going to do for that customer when what they should focus on is how they are going to make that customer feel.
It’s time to shift the focus, as many industries have, to the idea of creating a customer experience that will build loyalty over time. Which means in creating a strategy, the focus shifts from being reactive to the customer needs to be proactive in looking at the customer’s journey.
Let’s break it down.
Customer experience
Customer service is a reactive process where companies assist a customer who comes to them with a specific need or question. Think of it as a single touchpoint. On the other hand, the customer experience is the journey a customer takes from the moment they have a need and begin searching for a service provider to the final moment when the need has been satisfied.
Let’s use a restaurant as an example.
You are on vacation at the beach and hunting for the perfect restaurant for your evening meal. Your internet search turns up four promising seafood restaurants. Your first experience with the restaurant includes the quality and ease of the website, the presentation of the menu, the photos that provide you with a view of the ambiance, the reviews customers have left behind, and an option for making a reservation.
Before the customer even arrives at restaurant to be “served”, you have encountered five touchpoints that were either inviting and easy to gather information or obscure and difficult to navigate.
You arrive at the restaurant and encounter another series of “touchpoints.” How easy or difficult is it to park? Is the entry way inviting and clean? Is the hostess or host smiling and helpful? Is the table clean and already set up? Are menus delivered promptly by the hostess or host?
Five more touchpoints have been experienced and the waiter or waitress has not even approached your table yet.
A restaurant owner may hope their wait staff is cordial and accommodating so patrons will return, but the owner actually controls the first ten touchpoints of the experience.
Of course, good service from the wait staff and delicious food is critically important and can make or break the experience. However, you can’t serve a customer until you get them in the door and seated at the table. All points of contact along the journey add to create a positive or negative experience for a patron.
Automating communications
A title agency can craft their customer experience in the same way, planning for the totality of the relationship with the customer throughout the journey.
One aspect of that process is to become proactive in how you communicate with your customers. Instead of just reacting to a question about status and scheduling, make sure you are providing information at regular intervals. And when you do need to react, what’s better than a nearly instantaneous response? Additionally, when a client wants a conversation or two-way dialogue, most automated communications technology can’t accommodate that. Alanna, however, excels at conversation—not just broadcast!
At Alanna, we can manage a myriad of those touchpoints for you, setting up a series of text messages to all parties from the transaction to walking consumers through the title process or even creating marketing campaigns for post-closing follow-up and client retention.
Call us today to learn how we can enhance your customer experience with automated communications.