“By James Charuka – Head of Support”
Recently, Gikko had the pleasure of hosting a one-on-one lunch and learn session for one of our long-standing customers, Nyaradzo Group. We talked about updates to our platform, drilling down into best-practice usage. More importantly, we created a forum where we could learn more about Nyaradzo’s requirements to serve their own customers. What did they need to build relationships with their customers?
It was an opportunity for Gikko to go beyond the comparatively impersonal experience of its cloud-based messaging platform and deliver personal attention to key people from Nyaradzo on a variety of topics at hand. In my role at Gikko, I am responsible for supporting Gikko customers. I know how important customer experience is and how complex this frequently used jargon title can actually be.
On the face of it, the question is: did a customer have a good experience while dealing with me? Usually the answer is yes. Of course I take great pride in this result but, like with any relationship, I need to know: is that a “100% yes” or a “60% yes”?
For Nyaradzo the “yes factor”, as it turned out, had probably been a “75% yes”. Our service to them was satisfactory. But that’s not what Gikko is about, it’s not what I am about. We’re after excellent. And herein lies the essence of what I am getting at: for a company to be truly good at customer experience its “yes factor” has to be excellent. So how did we arrive at this conclusion and what could I do to further enhance the “yes factor”?
Best practice, tips & tricks
It was great to hear that our messaging platform was working seamlessly for Nyaradzo. But what I hadn’t appreciated, and what was harder to convey over support tickets, was that the team were uploading their database of customers in a time-consuming way. It was working, but the data manipulation at source was proving to be a pain point. It didn’t take me long to show the team a shorter, easier way to go about their database upload. Yes number 1! ✅
Commercial time frames
A forum for open discussion provides the opportunity to get to the heart of pain points. A commercial matter was pinpointed as being a hindrance to turnaround times. It was blocking them from reaching out to their customers as quickly as they would like. Being able to discuss this and explore and tentatively accept alternatives meant that Nyaradzo customers were likely to be even better served. Yes number 2! ✅
Digital security
No company wants to be a victim of cybercrime. Cyber security is a complex domain and availing Nyaradzo of what Gikko is doing to protect their customers (and therefore Nyaradzo itself) from a data privacy, encryption and API security perspective is the least we can do to provide our customers with an experience of security and comfort. Yes number 3! ✅
So, next time you’re looking to deliver a customer experience, consider the “yes factor.” Take time to understand the limitations of their experience and then remove those limitations to deliver the “100% yes.”
