About the author Martin Ellingham is a Senior Product Manager at Aptean. Martin's core business areas are Aptean's business feedback and complaint handling, Respond, and the advanced text analytics solution, TheySay. He has served Aptean in various roles over the past decade. For most of this period, he focused on addressing complaints in regulated markets, particularly financial services. In his current role, he is responsible for providing solutions to serve millions of end customers and consumers around the world. This may seem like a strange question in the context of financial services, but have you ever heard of Kintsugi? It doesn't matter if it's not because I'm about to explain exactly what it is and why it's important to your complaints team. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery. Repairing broken pots and dishes may not sound all that impressive (or seem to have a huge impact on complaints and customer experience), but the underlying philosophy is fascinating and very helpful. In Kintsugi (which translates to "gilded woodwork"), broken pottery is repaired in a specific way. The pieces are held together with a special mixture of lacquer and gold dust, creating a gold seam that is not used to hide the cut, but to enhance it. The ceramic piece is not as good as new; he proudly wears his golden scars. Now they are part of his story and should be cherished. Everything that caused the item to break, instead of making it useless, helped it to become more beautiful. For people who used to see broken things at the end of their trip, it's an interesting concept that takes some getting used to. However, it is a philosophy that, in my opinion, can have a profound impact on the way you approach complaint handling and the entire customer experience.
The problem with a product-centric customer experience.
Delivering an exceptional customer experience is a daunting task for any business, especially in the complex world of financial services. There are so many different elements that need to come together for every customer to be satisfied. Some of them, you won't even have control. After all, how can you explain the events of the day that will influence how they interact with you? Fortunately, in general, customers are extremely satisfied with the products and services they receive from companies. The UK banking sector is above average for all sectors in terms of customer satisfaction. He must succeed, then. The problem arises when customers are not satisfied with the products and services they receive. Too many companies build their CX around the core product. So when it doesn't meet customer needs or doesn't work as expected, the company isn't sure how to handle the situation. Of course, he has a grievance team. However, when CX is focused solely on providing a great product, no agent can do anything to add value or build customer loyalty.
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The importance of reestablishing relationships and building customer trust.
When companies lose a customer, there is a tendency to label each case as a "lost cause." This is especially the case when a product or service has not lived up to expectations because companies do not want to face its failures. I don't mean this as a harsh criticism; It is logical that the external reputation of an organization is based on the success of its offer. Customers want to buy from a company they can trust to deliver the products. However, companies have less and less control over how their brand is perceived. When a customer has a mediocre experience, they can easily post comments online. Companies have no way around this, except to offer the best CX possible. When customers are already unhappy, follow-up and claims processing become essential. Too many customer relationships are broken because there is no effective way to resolve problems and restore trust between the consumer and the company. This is where the following Kintsugi philosophy could make all the difference, both for customer retention and acquisition.How to apply Kintsugi to claims processing
As I already mentioned, many elements go into creating a great CX. You can't deliver the perfect experience 100% of the time, it's just not possible. However, when things don't go as planned, you can take the pieces back and turn them into something new; something stronger. If you apply Kintsugi's insight to your CX, it can change the way you view the customer journey. Instead of hiding the problems that customers have found with your products and services (again, you can't do this), focus on improving these relationships through complaint resolution so that customers enjoy a positive experience all around. your business. By accepting that the customer journey isn't always easy, you can transform the perception of your CX and your brand. When people look at a bowl of Kintsugi, they don't focus on how it breaks, they see a new and more beautiful object that has taken the place of the original. It will be the same for your CX if you have an effective complaint handling operation to restore trust with customers who have had a somewhat positive experience up to the point where they complained.
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