In today’s digital age, customer experience (CX) is paramount. Businesses rely on technology to deliver seamless and reliable experiences for their customers, but recent outages like the one experienced by Microsoft and CrowdStrike serve as stark reminders of the fragility of our interconnected systems. These outages can have a devastating impact on businesses, disrupting operations, damaging brand reputation, and ultimately leading to lost revenue.
The Microsoft and CrowdStrike outage left millions of end users without access to critical services. Businesses across various industries from finance and healthcare, retail and manufacturing, air travel to hospitality were affected. This insight continues our previous discussion and highlights some proactive measures for companies to safeguard customer experience in the face of potential outages.
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In-depth Understanding Of The Outage’s Impact On Customer Experience
Outages can disrupt customer journeys in a number of ways. When applications go down, customers cannot access the products or services they rely on (e.g., access mobile application to check-in or receive flight information, purchase a ticket online for a concert, scheduling software for surgery and patient care, receive funds for a loan). Loss of access can will lead to frustration and anger on a smaller scale but could also need to business failures and physical harm. In the case of the Microsoft and CrowdStrike outage, businesses that relied on these services for core operations were brought to a standstill.
Beyond immediate disruptions, outages can also damage brand reputation. When customers experience problems, they expect them to be resolved in a reasonable amount of time. They may be less likely to trust the business in the future if this expectation is not met. Customer churn and lost revenue is an outcome businesses do not want or can afford.
How To Safeguarding Your Company’s Customer Experience Through Outages?
In light of these potential consequences, businesses must take a proactive approach to safeguarding customer experience. Here are some key strategies to consider:
- Implement Robust Risk Management: A proactive risk management strategy is essential for identifying and mitigating potential threats to your applications and systems. This includes identify key customer experience applications and touch points, conducting regular risk assessments on how a reduction or removal of service would impact customers, employees, and other business stakeholders, implementing measures to reduce outage possibility, and crafting and testing a disaster recovery/business resumption plans.
By anticipating potential problems, companies can minimize their impact on your customers. - Improve Application Redundancy: Redundancy is the key to ensuring that key customer or employee applications remain available even in the event of an outage. This means having backup systems in place that can take over if your primary systems fail. The best approach for your business will depend on your specific needs and budget.
AI can be a valuable tool. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can predict potential issues and enable preventive maintenance, minimizing downtime. However, it’s crucial to train AI models on high-quality data and continuously monitor them to avoid biases or errors. Explainable AI can also enhance trust in its decision-making capabilities. - Prioritize Rigorous Testing: Regular testing is crucial for ensuring the reliability and performance of key customer and employee-facing applications. This includes testing for functionality, performance, and security. By identifying and fixing potential problems before they occur, you can help to prevent outages and safeguard your customer experience. Companies should also communicate any potential service outage resulted from key software updates or fixes being implemented. This extends to any third party involvement in carrying out these changes as customers do not always know difference and will uphold companies to act in the best regards.
- Establish Effective Communication Channels: Communication is key during an outage. When an outage occurs, it is important to communicate with your customers, employees, and key stakeholders quickly, transparently and in the channels they prefer. Provide them with updates on the situation, what/how the company is doing to resolve the issue, and an estimated time for restoration. By keeping different parties informed, companies can help to minimize frustration and maintain trust. The marketing, legal, and public relations team should be on hand to manage any fallout from extended outages.
- Invest in Customer Experience Monitoring: Proactive customer experience applications monitoring can help companies identify potential issues before they become outages. By tracking key metrics such as application performance and customer sentiment through social media/operational performance/feedback monitoring, companies can gain insights that can help prevent problems and improve overall customer satisfaction.
- Embrace a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Safeguarding customer experience is an ongoing process. It is important to continually evaluate approved strategies and make improvements, as needed. Fostering a culture of continuous improvement with key stakeholders across different departments will ensure that the business is always prepared to deliver the best possible experience for customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Collaboration is key to success!
Building Resilience For The Future
By following these strategies, businesses can build resilience against outages and safeguard their customer experience. In today’s digital world, where outages are a constant threat, taking a proactive approach is essential for ensuring business continuity and success.
By prioritizing application redundancy, risk management, testing, communication, and customer experience monitoring, businesses can create a more reliable and customer-centric environment.
By understanding what are the paths forward to manage fallouts of outages, companies will potentially improve engagement/loyalty, and protect revenue.
Chief Experience Officer/Chief Customer Officer’s Role In Outages
As the public face of the organization, their ability to communicate effectively, empathetically, and transparently is paramount. Beyond crisis communication, the CXO/CCO must orchestrate a comprehensive response, including providing immediate support to affected customers, mitigating reputational damage, and closely monitoring customer sentiment across various channels.
A critical aspect of their role is post-outage analysis. This involves a deep dive into the company’s response to identify areas for improvement in crisis management, communication protocols, and operational resilience. By understanding the root causes of the outage and its impact on customers, the CXO/CCO can develop strategies to prevent similar incidents and enhance the company’s ability to respond effectively in the future.
Moreover, rebuilding customer trust is essential. The CXO/CCO must spearhead efforts to regain customer confidence through tangible actions such as compensation, loyalty programs, or exclusive benefits. This demonstrates the company’s commitment to customer satisfaction and reinforces its dedication to preventing future disruptions.
Transform For The Better
15-Point Checklist for Safeguarding Customer Experience
To effectively implement the strategies outlined above, consider the following checklist:
Application Redundancy
- Identify critical applications: Determine which applications are essential for business operations.
- Develop a redundancy strategy: Choose the appropriate redundancy level (hot, warm, cold) for each critical application.
- Implement backup systems: Ensure backup systems are in place and regularly tested.
- Test failover procedures: Conduct regular failover tests to verify system performance.
Risk Management
- Conduct regular risk assessments: Identify potential threats and vulnerabilities.
- Implement security measures: Protect systems and data with appropriate security controls.
- Develop a disaster recovery plan: Outline steps to be taken in case of an outage.
- Test the disaster recovery plan: Conduct regular drills to ensure effectiveness.
Testing
- Establish a comprehensive testing framework: Develop a structured approach to testing.
- Conduct regular performance testing: Identify bottlenecks and optimize application performance.
- Perform security testing: Identify vulnerabilities and strengthen security measures.
- Conduct user acceptance testing (UAT): Ensure applications meet user needs and expectations.
Communication
- Develop a communication plan: Outline communication channels and messages during an outage.
- Train staff in crisis communication: Equip employees to handle customer inquiries effectively.
- Establish customer feedback mechanisms: Gather customer input to improve future responses.
Additional Considerations
While this insight focused on general strategies for safeguarding customer experience, it is important to note that the specific approach will vary depending on the nature of a company’s business model, product or service lines, and target audience.
How Can We Help?
Transformidy is available to assist your company in understanding its critical customer experience application/software tools, their impacts during an outage, the approach to take on recovery and management, customer response management, and overall performance measurement.
Contact us or set up a 30 minute complimentary consultation for more information on our services, insights, or showcases. We look forward to hearing from you.
