“When the customer journey is more digital, you quickly lose control over each contact point, because the customer is not physically with you when they receive your services,” says service and user experience designer Henrikke Haugan at Knowit. “You can no longer hide errors and faults behind a friendly meeting in the office, the store or the branch.”
If companies don’t take this seriously and take control of all of their contact services, the customer will experience a less holistic service that does not provide sufficient value. It is also important to take contact points after sales and implementation seriously. Daily use, for example, of software, like in Compello’s case, also constitutes the residual impression of Compello. You can market yourself as attractively as you want to but if the messages in the digital customer journey have no meaning and feedback is perceived as irrelevant, you will quickly lose the user’s goodwill,” says Haugan.
Compello is currently on a journey from being a traditional software house, based on the sale of licences and consulting services, to becoming a state-of-the-art cloud company with a digital customer journey. Compello will become a market leader within its service spectrum. Compello’s place in the value chain includes helping invoice issuers so that they can manage the follow-up of late and incorrect payments in a simpler and more automated way. In line with changed buying patterns, Compello is now increasing its focus on the user journey, customer journey and user experience.
Knowit has challenged our mindset and helped to improve both the customer journey and our internal processes.
Torgeir Letting, CEO, Compello
“Despite the fact that Compello markets complex services, it is important that you don’t have overcomplicated descriptions that even super users may be unable to understand. In this respect, Compello takes customer needs seriously. It has conducted extensive insight work and identified what customers need, when they need it, and how the dialogue can be tailored,” says Haugan.
“Knowit has challenged our mindset and helped to improve both the customer journey and our internal processes,” says Torgeir Letting, CEO at Compello. “Knowit recommended that we upgrade our visual identity, digital services for our products and future architecture for technology and that we develop a “single sign-on” and clarify our product spectrum for both existing and potential customers.”
How does Compello identify customer needs, and how does it collaborate digitally with its customers?
“In many ways our archetypal customer is a head of finance or financial director and, moreover, our service spectrum is relevant to all types of businesses, regardless of the size of the finance department. We focus on two arenas in particular in order to identify our customers’ needs: a user forum and a customer portal at the top of our platform – as a collaboration arena. We are also developing a product-related auction in which customers can vote on which new functionality they want. This facility will be in place during 2019.
“The customer does not always know their needs, and the challenge for us is to become tomorrow’s favourite supplier. These days, changes take place faster than ever, and the customer needs the supplier to offer proposals for improvements and challenge established practice. Compello wants to be the proactive and challenging supplier it knows the customer needs,” says Letting.
“Up to now, Compello’s product portfolio has also had different access addresses, and one of our tasks has been to develop a system architecture that basically supports the digital customer journey,” explains Krister Karto, senior solutions architect at Knowit. “We have therefore created a so-called “single sign-on” solution so that Compello increases the visibility of a complete product portfolio for everyone who only uses one of the invoice-related services. The customer portal, which will now be located at the top, contributes to better collaboration and total understanding than when you are only exposed to one product,” say Karto.
“One challenge is also to simplify communication. In this area we are doing lot within support, chat and user interfaces, and we are combining personal dialogue and chatbots. We also have a dedicated A1 team in which artificial intelligence in software based on historical data suggests invoice posts and entries,” elaborates Torgeir Letting.
Does the internal value chain intercommunicate well?
“There is always room for improvement, but we have good tools from Microsoft and HubSpot, for example. It is important that sales, product, marketing and delivery talk well together in order to ensure a consistent customer experience in which personalisation, service and the general experience of Compello as an attractive actor is evident.
Easier to open an app than an envelope
“We are now able to send invoices via Vipps through our system as well as to all other electronic channels. This means that Compello’s customers are able to reduce their costs on late recovery as more people now pay on time. Payments arrive more efficiently because many people have a lower threshold for opening an app than an envelope,” says Letting.