We are all customers. This may seem obvious, but it is true. We also have expectations of the level of service we receive and of the ease with which we engage with our service and product providers. Our expectations have evolved radically in recent years as digital innovations have transformed the provision of products or services via omnichannel customer journeys. It is painfully obvious to us when the journey hasn’t been implemented effectively. As a result, our (or at least my) patience threshold has dropped remarkably such that if a website, mobile app, service centre or other channel are unable to meet expectations, then it is easy to switch to an alternative company or provider with little effort.

I’m sure that we all have horror stories of poor customer service, shockingly unintuitive websites, apps that don’t work, inefficient or incorrect email or text updates and, most importantly and annoyingly, the delivery of the wrong product or service.

There is little point in providing a customer with the most complete, intuitive and enjoyable omnichannel customer journey if the purpose of their interaction with your business remains unfulfilled. Ultimately the customer wants to receive the product or service they were seeking, quickly, simply and cost-effectively.

I observed to my wife recently that we booked our family holiday using the same travel agent again. To a great extent, this is because we find their website is the most intuitive to use and it enables us to quickly narrow down the holiday we want. However, we wouldn’t continue to use them if the holiday we booked wasn’t as advertised or didn’t meet our expectations, or had hidden costs making it a lot more expensive. In fact, when we did make amendments to our booking, both online and over the phone, it was easy to do, confirmation by email was instant, the details on the iPhone app were updated simultaneously and text message updates were timely and informative. Ultimately we had a very relaxing holiday, helped by a well-designed and delivered customer journey (literally!).

Conversely last year we booked a mini-break in the UK online via a well-known and reputable company. Unfortunately, 36 hours before we were due to travel I received a call from them telling me the cottage we were due to stay in was double-booked. There was no explanation as to how this had happened, nor why it had taken them so long to identify the error, and the process of booking an equivalent alternative was really poor, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of our requirements. We found one ourselves in the end.

Would we use them again? Perhaps, but I would probably look elsewhere first.

Another example was when my wife ordered a book from a popular auction shopping site which she cancelled after two weeks as it still hadn’t arrived. So she then ordered the same book via the website of a large UK book store only to have someone else’s book delivered, and finding on querying this that her order was lost and there were no more in stock. So she ordered it from a well-known online retailer who did deliver it but also delivered someone else’s order as well. Despite several attempts to return the unwanted item they told her they didn’t want it.

Will this experience stop us from using internet shopping? Of course not. Will we have second thoughts about ordering from these sites in the future? Not at all. However, if this experience was consistently repeated by any of these sites then we would probably stop using them.

The fulfilment of the customer experience is intrinsically linked with the journey. Therefore the ease with which something can be ordered, like a holiday or book, is not the end of the journey. Receiving the product or service on-time and as expected is what makes the journey satisfactory. However, there is more to fulfilment than delivering a product or service that the customer has purchased. Keeping the customer informed, particularly when something goes wrong, is vital, but serves little purpose if the resolution doesn’t meet their needs. Therefore fulfilment also applies to when there is a problem, and it is at this point customer satisfaction is at most risk. The problem needs to be resolved quickly and efficiently with as little further impact on the customer as possible.

In a previous blog, 4 ‘Legacy’ Principles Applied to a Digital World, I wrote how my report of a problem with our laptop on the manufacturer’s website resulted in confusion because the only communication I received from them was an automated email saying they’d be in touch. Later that week I received a text from a courier on three consecutive days saying they’d visited our house and no-one was home, which was odd as I hadn’t ordered anything. However, there was no number to call back to query it. As I was in on the fourth occasion, it transpired that the courier was to collect a laptop for fixing, but had no paperwork to show for it. Also, as I hadn’t heard anything from the manufacturer I had taken the laptop to the store.

“The customer service process for dealing with a fault had been designed to be so slick and cost effective that they had lost sight of the customer experience. There was no communication, no means for me to talk to someone, and no expectations were set. I would have preferred a call from a service centre to make arrangements for collection, but this step had been removed, perhaps to save money.”

This demonstrated a flawed customer journey, which resulted in an unfulfilled one. As the customer, I was not kept informed, which meant I sought a solution elsewhere. There can be no better test for the success of the customer experience than that of fulfilling (or exceeding) the customer’s expectations.

We need to think like the customer in order to fulfil their needs. This includes not imposing internal structures and processes on the customer. The customer doesn’t care how your business works; they just want to receive the product or service they require in a way that meets their expectations. If there’s an issue, then they just want it resolved. They don’t want to be told the ‘system doesn’t do that’, or ‘you need to speak to another department’ or be presented with a problem but with no clear solution or alternatives.

The examples I’ve shared have probably prompted you to recall some of your own. They demonstrate the importance of considering the fulfilment of the customer journey and that too often this crucial step is not given the focus it deserves. Every interaction a company has with a customer is a touchpoint. This is a fundamental principle of CRM [1]and CEM[2]. The receipt of the product or service arguably being the most critical touchpoint. By focusing on the journey but not the fulfilment there is a risk of failing to meet customer expectations and having a dissatisfied customer.

Many companies use Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys post-delivery or on service completion to validate their performance and ensure the customer was happy with their service. How many customers actually complete this exercise objectively or even bother? How representative are the results? How accurately are customers conveying their feelings? To some extent, data analytics can help derive insights and answers to these questions. But if you do fill one out then, like me, it’s probably infrequently, and often a reflection of your overall impression rather than a specific and considered response, particularly if the survey is over-long or imprecise in nature. Nevertheless, they can be used to identify and resolve issues and improve processes, assuming some thought is given to identifying the root cause.

Some years ago one of our telco customers invited us to look at a problem with their customer satisfaction ratings. These were very low, particularly when it came to installation or service visits. The underlying customer complaint was, in many instances, that the engineer was late for morning appointments, which is annoying if you’ve taken time off work and waited in for them. On closer inspection we observed that the company classified the morning as 9am – 1pm for engineer visits, however customers naturally assumed the morning was 9am – 12pm. We suggested to the company they amend this to set the customer expectations appropriately and, having made this change, they subsequently found this particular CSAT measure improved significantly.

The point I want to make is that whilst CSAT surveys are valuable tools, problems with fulfilment, be it a sales or service transaction, should not rely on CSAT surveys to identify them. It’s too late then. Dissatisfied customers may not complete the survey, or may not return even once their problem has been resolved. Worse, they may share their experience on social media! I’m not talking about specific customer issues though; these can be minimised but there will always be some. I’m talking about proactively identifying flaws with the fulfilment process in exactly the same way as you would with other processes within the omnichannel customer journey.

If we reconsider the examples I’ve shared above –

·         The holiday cottage – ignoring the fundamental cause of the issue which I can only surmise, in rebooking our holiday the company had the basic data like cost (budget), dates, location, number of rooms, number of adults and children, style of accommodation, proximity to places of interest and shops. What they offered instead ticked none of these boxes, despite the fact that we found suitable alternatives ourselves on their own website.

·         The book order – three major online retailers all failed to fulfil the order correctly. What happened to validating stock and the tracking process? Why did none of them know they’d failed to fulfil the order or made a mistake until my wife queried it or cancelled it?

·         The laptop – the failure to keep me informed and contact me to arrange a collection meant the manufacturer kept dispatching a courier at their cost despite the fact they had no way of knowing if I would be in.

·         The telco – the simplest of questions had been ill-phrased causing a mismatch in customer expectations. No-one had asked why customers were complaining so many appointments were late.

All of these issues are symptomatic of an underlying common theme. They demonstrate an issue with the fulfilment process. Whilst some of them were personal experiences, they could all equally happen to any other customer because they are process issues. Instead, by mapping use cases to the fulfilment process as part of the overall journey, these scenarios, and the integration points with other processes and systems, can be tested, validated and such issues avoided.

The companies that do this well are typically the ones we return to, mainly because we had a good customer experience and were happy with the product or service we received. Which is why the next holiday we book will probably be with the same travel agent once again.

If we are serious about digitally transforming the customer experience and providing a true omnichannel customer journey then we must not lose sight of the importance of designing and integrating successful fulfilment processes into this journey. Let’s ensure the customer has the experience of receiving the product or service they were expecting. Otherwise the rest of the journey cannot be considered a success.

[1] Customer Relationship Management

[2] Customer Experience Management