buildyourbiz ebook v4

A Digital Marketing Depot eBook

Building Your Business Case to Upgrade Customer Experience

© 2013 Third Door Media, Inc. • http://digitalmarketingdepot.com 1 Email: [email protected]


What’s a satisfied customer worth to your business?

In a world where marketers are driven by data, understanding the value of your customers’ experience is often a defining aspect of success. Customer experience management (CEM) – the process of creating and managing

a positive customer experience – has become an integral part of successful marketing efforts.

Consider the following two scenarios:

#1: A customer tries to buy a blouse from an online retailer, but cannot get passed the billing address form. She calls customer service, spends 10 minutes with a call center representative who can’t identify the problem – and is then transferred to technical support. Frustrated, the would-be customer hangs up and moves on to another site to make a purchase.

What was the opportunity cost of this customer leaving? Will she come back? Will she share her negative experience with others via social media? How many other customers are experiencing the same issues and just giving up?

#2: Same customer, same blouse, same obstacle in completing the purchase. This time, the customer service rep uses CEM software to replay the online session in real time and immediately sees where the trouble is. The site normally serves up a large red exclamation point when a customer neglects to check off “I agree” to terms and conditions. Today, the exclamation point is in a small, inconsistent font that is difficult to see. The customer service rep not only helps the customer to complete her purchase, but alerts the web team about a site issue that is likely causing other potential customers to abandon.

In this second scenario, the benefit of CEM software is clear – it helped convert a sale while also identifying a usability issue on the website that needed attention.

Executive SummaryThis whitepaper will provide insight into how you can quantify your company’s customer experience and make the case within your organization to build out a successful customer experience management program using a CEM solution by taking the following steps:

1. Understand how customer experience impacts your bottom line2. Align different business units and marketing channels to work together3. Identify site issues that can be mediated using CEM solutions



Step One: Understand How Customer Experience Directly Affects Your Bottom LineMoving from identifying a customer experience issue to quantifying its impact on your bottom line can be difficult, but it’s essential in order to make the case for adopting a CEM solution.

In order to quantify the business impact, consider the following questions:• When did the issue start?• How often is it occurring?• How many customers have been affected?• How has it impacted our conversion rate?• What will it cost us to fix?

Using web analytics, system performance reports and call logs, it’s possible to come up with an idea of how the site issue is impacting conversion rates. If a conversion rate drop from 10% to 1%, for example, you can attach a value to the 9% who struggled with the website and didn’t convert. This is lost revenue.

In addition to lost revenue, consider what it costs to repair the issues that cause customers struggle, both in terms of customer service support and web development. When a customer service rep cannot identify a customer problem on the website and transfers the would-be customer to technical support, there’s a cost associated with this – the additional time and staff required to identify and resolve the issue. Finally, from a web development perspective, once you’ve identified the problem, what will it cost to repair this on the website?

Case Study: TravelTravelocity Improves Site Visibility, Saves $1 Million Using CEM SoftwareIdentifying and resolving website problems quickly is a priority for Travelocity, as the smallest technical glitch or poor process design can adversely affect the online experience for customers resulting in site abandonment, impeded bookings, and damage to the company’s brand. According to Satnam Singh, vice president of global data and analytics for Travelocity, “To deliver the type of online experience that our customers expect, we needed better visibility into what visitors really see and do on our site in order to identify underlying causes as quickly as possible.”

Travelocity deployed IBM Tealeaf software to better manage the digital customer experience. The solution records each customer session at the browser level, which allows the company to view problems at the source. Singh explains, “We can look at a replay of a specific session and quickly uncover the cause of the struggle. We then use this information to calculate the number of customers affected by the same issue and determine the business impact. Tealeaf has helped us identify complex issues that customers have a tough time describing, providing the necessary precision in our investigations and eliminating educated guesses.”

For example, feedback about an error message began to trickle in from the company’s call center and from the online customer feedback tool. “Customers were telling us about error messages they were receiving, but it wasn’t clear from their feedback what the actual problem was,” says Singh. “When we used IBM’s Tealeaf to replay those customer sessions, we quickly saw that the system couldn’t process special characters entered by customers and was breaking the checkout process. The fix took about an hour, and conversion rates went up immediately. We estimate that USD1 million in revenue was recaptured by solving this problem as fast as we did.”

In addition to lost revenue, consider what it costs to repair the issues that cause customers struggle, both in terms of customer service support and web development.



Step Two: Align business and IT units to identify areas of focusIn today’s omni-channel world, customers are interacting with your brand through a variety of touch points, the online channel is one of the most critical for overall success. Having visibility into what’s happening on your website is an important ingredient in understanding how well the online channel is working.

This calls for cooperation and coordination between business units and the IT department. If the customer call center is not able to effectively identify or communicate obstacles on the website, IT cannot make the proper fixes. If IT focuses on bells and whistles for the website without feedback about site usability, the customer experience could suffer and negatively impact business.

Opening channels of communication and establishing a common language among IT and call center units will allow the various teams to identify and prioritize customer experience issues. With time and budget constraints, there may be competing interests within the organization, but it’s critical to get everyone on the same page in order to make the case for CEM software.

Case Study: RetailWehkamp improved conversion rates and reduced call volume by identifying payment issueWehkamp.nl provides multiple payment options to make it easier for customers to transact online. However, an application issue in the external payment system caused hundreds of orders to register without a return notification being sent to the company. As a result, funds were deducted from customers’ accounts without the orders ever arriving. Frustrated, many customers called the contact center to complain but wehkamp.nl was unable to pinpoint the cause of the problem and could not remedy the issue.

Watching the replay of customer sessions, wehkamp.nl identified a pattern that had gone unnoticed in other tools. Customers that had triggered the payment error had all checked out using the same external payment method. Based on this information, wehkamp.nl was able to implement a back-end fix that resolved the problem.

With the help of IBM Tealeaf solutions, wehkamp.nl improved conversion and stemmed the flow of disgruntled customers that called the contact center. And, because IBM Tealeaf solutions capture form field information, wehkamp.nl was able to identify products within customers’ shopping baskets and recreate their orders without causing further inconveniences.

Opening channels of communication and establishing a common language among IT and call center units will allow the various teams to identify and prioritize customer experience issues.



Step Three: Identify Site Issues that Can Be Mediated Using CEM SolutionsBeyond understanding ‘why’ customers behave a certain way on your website, you can obtain a visibility into your website that can quantify customer behavior in a way that can be translated into website optimization and improved processes.

When all channels are working together with a CEM solution, companies will often see:

• Faster problem resolution and shorter call handle times• Improved first-call resolution• Improved customer satisfaction and decreased customer churn• Higher customer value

CEM solutions provide the necessary visibility into what each customer sees and does for each visit and each interaction. In doing so, a CEM solution gathers both quantitative and qualitative insight into actual customer and site behavior across multiple site visits – information that is essential to website optimization.Some of the functions that CEM solutions provide include:

• Session Replays: the ability to actually see what a customer encountered on the website. Where did they click? What obstacles did they encounter? The ability to playback an actual session – or to watch a session in real-time – is a powerful tool for a customer call center. The replay capability allows for quick and effective diagnoses of potential site issues, as well as shorter customer service calls, and decreases in call-center costs.

• Voice of Customer: A CEM solution can integrate session replay into the customer feedback that visitors leave on your site. This provides context for comments and surveys so that issues can be resolved and your company can truly understand and where the customer is coming from and use the feedback to make more strategic improvements.

In making the case for a CEM solution, you can identify areas of concern for your website. How long does it take to identify technical issues? Is there room for improvement in conversion rates? How well do you handle customer complaints? Is there a pattern among the customer complaints you are receiving?

With a CEM solution in place, you’ll be able to identify and prioritize customer issues, focusing on those areas that will result in an improvement in ROI.

Case study: MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operating) SuppliesLeading distributor of electrical and industrial supplies reduces call time, frees up resources for more strategic developmentOne of this company’s customers called to complain about mystery items appearing in his e-commerce cart. Prior to installing the IBM Tealeaf solution, these problems were particularly difficult for analysts to manage. Resolution often required requesting a co-browsing session or the customer’s credentials.

By viewing the replay of the customer’s session with the IBM Tealeaf solution, the call center analyst was able to spot a user entry error that was processing erroneous items into the e-commerce cart. In less than 30 minutes, the company’s analyst was able to achieve resolution, retain the sale, and help the customer toward a better experience. Going forward, their analysts are able to replay customer e-commerce sessions without invasive processes. Additionally, sensitive information can be blocked or destroyed from session replays to help ensure customer privacy.

As a result, call center analyst had the insight to resolve most problems within 30 minutes of identification. The solution empowers a single person to achieve resolution instead of requiring resources from four different functional teams. And, it allows web developers to focus on business initiatives instead of problem reproduction.



Digital Marketing Depot provides authoritative and actionable education about digital marketing issues. Register today for one of our free webcasts or download a whitepaper or research report about paid search advertising, analytics, e-mail marketing and other and digital marketing topics.

Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, which publishes web sites, and produces in-person events and webcasts. Each of the four brands - Search Engine Land, Search Marketing Expo, Digital Marketing Depot, and Marketing Land - fosters continuing education, evolution and engagement for the community we serve.

Conclusion:Creating a positive customer experience is a critical piece of any business. When done well, it can boost brand loyalty, conversions, and overall revenue. Having a CEM solution in place supports the effort, by• Providing visibility into online customer behavior• Improving site usability and conversion• Reducing time spent on resolving technical issues• Decreasing call-center costs by improving response time

The benefits can be significant. Make the case for adopting a CEM solution by quantifying your current customer issues, aligning teams within your organization, and identifying areas that you know can be improved. n