Not all customers are the same. Your CX strategy shouldn't be either.
There is a rule that applies in most businesses, across most industries, with remarkable consistency: 20% of customers account for 80% of revenue. The specifics will vary from business to business. The principle rarely does.
Labelled variously as the Matthew Effect, the Pareto Law of Distribution or simply the 80/20 Rule, its common knowledge, but too uncommonly put into action.
For any business where customer experience (CX) is high on the list of priorities, focusing here raises important questions: losing one of the top 20% of accounts (whether measured by revenue, margin or strategic importance) would have an outsized impact on the business, so why are those accounts receiving exactly the same support experience as everyone else?
Premium CX, the type provided by the world’s best companies, makes careful distinction between the most important customers and the rest, while still providing everyone with an experience that can become a central element of brand-building for the months and years to come.
Like all the most important things, it’s easier said than done.
The customers who matter most
In any business, the value of each individual customer relationship sits on a broad spectrum. At one end are the accounts of strategic importance, either through a sizable share of current revenue or the significance of their long-term potential. At the other end lie interactions of lesser value that must still be served efficiently and competently, but where the priority might be closer to speed of resolution rather than depth of relationship.
A common approach we often see companies take prior to partnering with Otonomee is to design their support operation somewhere near the middle of the road. That approach tries to cover all bases adequately, but it opens up the possibility of two major mistakes. First, it over-invests in interactions of lesser value, and second it greatly under-serves the relationships the business can least afford to lose. In essence, if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one
The cost of these mistakes is often not seen for months or even years. It’s rarely visible in a single interaction, but instead accumulates in the background, in hesitation over contract renewals, in referrals not given, and finally in accounts that drift away to a competitor without ever explaining why.
If we agree that one-size-fits-all is never the right approach, let’s explore how to do it differently.
Different customers have different expectations
Firstly, there’s a strong likelihood that your most strategically important customers will have a different set of expectations, or a different tone to their expectations, than the remainder.
This gap in expectations is often widest in B2B environments, where customers are rarely one person facing one small problem. Instead, they could represent a purchasing decision made at senior level, an ongoing commercial relationship, and in many cases an internal champion who has staked part of their professional credibility on the choice they’ve made.
Their CX expectations are reflected in this context. They want someone who understands the complexity of their situation instantly without a refresher course, and they want a resolution that reflects the status of the relationship. A poor experience for your most important customers greatly increases the likelihood they will look elsewhere when a contract comes up for renewal.
Customers of premium B2C offerings, such as those commonly seen in the HealthTech industry, for example, have similarly high expectations: their purchase plays a central role in their sense of self and wellbeing, and one disappointing customer support experience will seep into their perception of the brand as a whole.
Offering highly templated, scripted and rigid customer support, which can be rolled out to multiple customers in multiple industries might look good in theory on a vendor’s spreadsheet business model.
But when you offer a high-value enterprise account the same support experience as a one-off consumer purchase, you’re sending an important signal, intentionally or otherwise, of how much that relationship really matters.
Social media has raised the stakes for everyone
The emergence of social media as a channel where customers expect to engage with brands has changed the landscape for businesses everywhere.
There is a direct line between the very public visibility of support quality for customers who raise issues with businesses on social platforms and the broader brand perception on review platforms like Trustpilot and G2.
One bad experience does not now stay behind closed doors for long. Best case scenario here is that a prospective new customer will see the exchange and think twice about engaging. In the worst-case scenario, that interaction will be screenshotted and shared, and occasionally even picked up by major media outlets for negative coverage.
The brands delivering best-in-class CX understand that the inverse is also true. A negative experience that gets resolved with real expertise, genuine empathy and an excellent outcome becomes the kind of story that customers, interested observers and the media can amplify.
It would make little sense to the bygone era of broadcast media, limited TV channels and the ad men of Mad Men, but one well-handled moment can now be worth more than a dozen clever marketing campaigns.
Investing in premium support — the quality experience your customers expect, everywhere they expect it — is about broad brand reputation as much as a single customer’s satisfaction, and the reality is that those two things, broad brand reputation and one customer’s satisfaction, are fast becoming one and the same.
AI sharpens the need for the expert human
Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 led to an explosion in AI chatbots, there have been warnings that AI will remove the need for human customer support teams. Our experience has been different.
It’s true that standard customer support enquiries and information requests can often be handled end-to-end by a well-trained AI model and predictable workflows. For many of our partners, we’re helping them handle more than 50% of their customer support interactions solely through AI, with no human-in-the-loop.
The interactions that remain, however, still require human support. What’s more, they are often so nuanced or so emotionally charged that the need for exceptional humans in the support chain is elevated.
The skills and characteristics of the person handling these interactions, including experience, emotional intelligence and sound judgment, often make the difference between a positive outcome (for both customer and brand) and a negative one, with all the possible ramifications for the business’s reputation.
Back-office AI systems can also supercharge the human being on the front-end of the interaction.
AI can process masses of data orders of magnitude faster and more comprehensively than the most skilled human being, allowing customer context to be pulled to the forefront in a matter of seconds. Enabled by underlying AI technology, the human being in the support chain now has the power to do what they do best, increasing the likelihood that everyone wins at the end of every interaction.
The impact of the reactive to proactive pivot
The most forward-thinking companies are making a shift that wholly reframes what a support team is in place to do. Instead of being just a reactive function — wait for ticket, resolve issue, close ticket — teams now have the headspace and the permission to add value at every step.
They can deliver both the responsiveness of traditional support and the proactive, relationship-focused approach of premium customer success. This leads to agents who can do much more than simply process requests. They can spot patterns in how customers are engaging with a product, anticipate issues before they arise, and offer valuable insights back to the business.
In all of this, the opportunity is clear. It means treating a customer support touchpoint not as a cost to be minimized, but as a moment of genuine commercial significance for the business.
This pivot from reactive to proactive requires a different profile of customer support person. It asks for team members who bring commercial awareness, experience and sound judgment, and can act with autonomy because they have been enabled to do so.
The Otonomee view
In the age of AI and rapid digital communications, a one-size-fits-all approach to customer experience sows the seeds of big problems for businesses everywhere. It underserves the highest value customers, reduces overall customer lifetime value and presents a clear risk to brand reputation.
The businesses Otonomee works with — including HealthTech, FinTech and other high-expectation sectors where customer trust is the most valuable commercial asset — have identified that strategic customer segmentation for CX purposes can give them a significant competitive advantage. They have invested accordingly.
Otonomee provides teams of experienced and empathetic people, all of whom bring sound judgment and a level of comfort with both AI technology and autonomous support.
Our people, and the mature operational systems they work within, make a differentiated support model possible, helping partners move past the purely transactional to create relationships that carry an outsized weight for positive brand perception.
Where to start
The starting point is careful segmentation.
By looking at your customer base through a commercial lens, identifying your highest-value relationships — by whatever measure is most important to your business: revenue, growth potential or relationship importance — and asking honestly whether your current CX model is built to serve them at the level they expect and deserve, businesses can set themselves up for long-term success that comes when existing customers become the biggest driver of positive brand perception and future growth.
This is where experienced, empathetic and empowered people, acting autonomously, can make the biggest difference, both to today’s customer outcome and tomorrow’s brand reputation.
This is exactly where Otonomee is built to operate.
Would you like to hear how Otonomee can supercharge your CX function? Reach out to our team today, and we’ll be pleased to talk you through how it has worked for our suite of rapidly growing companies all over the world, and how it might work for you.
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