The Golden Rules Of Customer Engagement

The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary, believed Sam Walton – the founder of the retail giant Walmart. Ripul Kumar, Founder and CEO of Kern Communications shares the same beliefs. Talking to Biztech2.com, he delves on how companies fail to understand users and risk losing them to competition with poor website design and dissemination of information.

What are common user experience roadblocks that prevent customer engagement and conversions?

Poor visibility of the website on major search engines is one very common roadblock. The website not being found directly translates to a potential customer not reaching your website. Blocking the website with advertisements before the user can reach the homepage or having too many flashing advertisements and tickers there also deters good user experience.

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Potential customers can also get put off by poor visibility of services offered due to use of confusing product names or if the process for acquiring the service is just too long or difficult. Bad information architecture is also a major obstacle.

For the online medium, converting an inquiring customer is the key and most websites fail to understand when the user needs to be converted. Most of them try to either convert too early or not convert at all.

BFSI is one vertical that spends a lot on IT. What are the best practices that banks should follow to ensure that they do not lose their online customers?

In order to find, engage, convert, and retain online/digital customers, BFSI industry has a tough task ahead of itself. Excellent user experience for their online services can make this arduous journey a little easier. And, great user experience starts from understanding users well.

Analytics is one of the means to do that. Analytics helps in understanding what people did: what path did they take, what did they buy, at what point did they run away from your product and so on.

But analytics itself is not enough. It has to be backed by strong market and user research. Market research helps segment type of users – their demographics or perceptions about products or services. And user research helps understand them – their goals, their motivations, frustrations and why they behaved in a certain way. User research can unravel the unmet needs of people (which they cannot express), and thus clearly puts meaning behind analytics and market research.

Usability testing is also an important aspect as it tests user behaviour with a product or service thereby validating assumptions.

Banks are clearly doing analytics and market research, however they have failed to understand users deeply – they need to invest in user research to unravel unmet needs and test their assumptions with usability testing.

What are some user experience practices that BFSI companies should follow?

The homepage is the first thing that a customer will land on. A good homepage should have one clear message, not a million jumping around. There should not be more than one moving and scrolling images or text. The page should also be free from the clutter of advertisements and multiple fonts and format of text.

Most BFSI companies use product names in site navigation – it confuses the users and they are likely to leave the website. For good navigation, these confusing names must be avoided. People cannot understand product names like ‘Can Jeevan Surabhi’, use a generic or a service name like ‘Life Insurance’.

Sometimes companies make it impossible for users to read and clearly understand anything written on the websites. It is important to be legally accurate; however, it is more important that message is conveyed in a language that users understand. Instead of saying that the interest rate is ‘150 Basis Points above PLR’, say ‘13.5 percent’.

BFSI companies should also make buying of their product or service easy for the customer. So, provide ways for people to open their accounts online, buy policies online, etc. Also, ensure that the forms used are short, don’t ask extra information and give sufficient feedback after completion.

How is social media or social CRM tools poised to change how companies provide a good user experience to customers? How is the CIO placed in this shift?

Social media tools help to gauge likeability and give sustained feedback about products and services. Social media is an “instantaneous” tool with expectation of immediate feedback, solutions, thank you notes or apologies. Companies investing in social media must understand its quick and reactive nature and build tools and processes that address this. With quicker response, user experience can be greatly enhanced.

CIOs sometimes fail to understand the end-users – their goals, motivations and their unmet needs. The methods they use are not adequate to understand users of their services and so, innovation in services is left to serendipity with high risks. CIOs need to add another weapon in their arsenal for repeated, sustainable and sure-shot innovation in services and products – i.e. they need to mould their own thinking through understanding users.