Category Archives: CX

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Top 5 Customer Experience Blog Posts of September 2020

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Let’s mark tick on another month’s top cx blog posts’ review! We last discussed and evaluated the most interesting customer experiences posts of August 2020. But our September reads were also quite riveting and intriguing. The insights and expert advice shared by professionals on how to offer an impeccable customer experience, especially in times where the world is terror-struck due to the COVID-19 pandemic were useful and informative for me, and I hope for you also.

So, keeping up with the theme of our monthly posts, in this blog post I will appraise the top cx blog posts of September 2020 that caught my eye and compelled me to share them with you. Let’s dig into different articles and if you want to explore them further, I will be attaching a link for your convenience.

1.   The Focal Point of any Business: The Customers

Many businesses believe that it’s the product, or meticulous market research that will help them penetrate the industry and establish a monopoly over the market, but they are wrong. It’s always the customers that should be at the center of concern for the companies. All decisions, policies, and strategies shall revolve around them to serve their needs and offer maximum customer satisfaction. Don’t confuse it with agreeing to every request and demand of the customer, regardless of how unethical or inappropriate it is, but to impose a business plan that serves the purpose of achieving the highest levels of customers’ utility.

To guide you in the right direction, Annette Franz, in her blog post, discusses the eight principles encapsulating the concept of customer centricity and then respective practices to implement them. The gist of those principles was:

Culture

She emphasized that culture shall be drawn in which the core values are operationalized and supportive of the social link between the company and the customer. The culture of customer centricity shall be promoted.

Employee Experience

Employees are on the frontline, who deliver customer experience, and making sure that their experience at the company is pleasurable is very imperative. If they are dissatisfied, they will not be able to exhibit customer-centric behavior.

People Before Products, Profits, and Metrics

The companies that structure their decisions on the customer-centricity concept tend to prioritize customers over everything else. So, let your profits, products, and metrics, all be secondary.

Understanding Customers

You must know what the customers want and desire. You should have the knowledge and data to help you achieve customer understanding.

There is no Golden Rule in Customer Centricity

Just negate the rule: treat others the way you want to be treated and replace it with treat others the way they want to be treated.

Be Accepting

Incorporating customer voice in all that you do is essential to introduce customer-centricity.

2. Being Empathetic is Always the Correct Choice!

Many recent studies have proven through the numerical evidence that if businesses are empathetic towards customers and put them in their shoes, they are likely to earn their loyalty and support. It is no secret that the fear and stress prevalent globally due to COVID-19 has affected the masses. In these difficult times, we have to hold each other’s hands and support one another unconditionally. In his post, Adrian Swinscoe highlights this point and recommends businesses to develop empathy if they intend to offer memorable customer experiences.

After exploring a study classified about various age groups, it was deduced that 63% of Gen Z’ers and 56% of Millennials claimed that their customer issues were resolved more effectively with empathy. So, to construct and empathetic musculature, it is vital to change the strategy, design, use of tech, improvement in process, redefining of leadership, and change in the training of employees.

Attribution of empathy is not a one-day job. It will require commitment and dedication. And Adrian has capitalized on that point but has also presented the unmatched significance of this concept.

3.   Is Effective Customer Experience the Secret Ingredient of Successful Businesses?

A Gartner Trend Report suggested that as opposed to 36% in 2010, almost 80% of the companies have begun to compete based on providing effective customer services. This increase in statistics has shown that companies have changed the rudimentary concepts of running businesses and have made serving-the-customers the fundamental point of concern. It has been calculated that enhancing customer experiences and directing resources and efforts to that department can help increase the revenue by 4% to 8%. A popular report proposed that improving customer services has helped around 84% of businesses to establish a respectable place in the market and earn a decent amount of revenue.

Nithin Rakesh capitalizes on the significance of CX and its deep-rooted impact on the flourishment of business in his blog post. He mentioned that simply offering an impeccable product or service is not enough. The companies have to think outside the box. They must invest time in studying the needs of customers and shift focus from earning profits and launching the perfect product. They must invest in knowing what the customer wants and should then act on it accordingly.

 Nithin also explicitly talks about how to completely transform customer’s dissatisfaction or annoyance into delight. The employees must be trained and empowered so that even if an issue arises with the product or delivery, the damage can be salvaged by offering helpful assistance to customers. It is important to resolve their issues in an optimal way.

Finally, he wrapped up by mentioning that the customers may not remember the product or its price, but a significant customer experience will be memorable.

4. Building a Personalized Relationship with Customers

In this era where businesses primarily compete based on offering a better CX experience, it becomes really difficult to draw a line where the companies should intrude in the lives of customers. This is quite challenging for businesses to fully comprehend. In the race to offer a more personalized customer experience, companies often forget if they are crossing the social and ethical line. Many customers are private about their lives and data being evaluated publicly. So, you must respect these boundaries and offer CX experience solely based on the belief to bring value to customers and earn their loyalty.

This point has been raised in the blog post, eloquently written by Sarah-Nicole LeFlore. She clearly outlines how personalization can be strategically integrated with customer experience.

  • It is Important to Reduce Efforts – Customers want to make their lives easy and this means that this must be your priority too. Don’t make customers walk through fires while they are engaged in business with you. They would want to do the minimum work and receive maximum benefit. So, personalize customer experiences to such an extent that they can reach you quickly and you can respond effectively whenever they are in a predicament that pertains to your product.
  • Collection of Data – You wouldn’t want to seem creepy and a stalker to the customer. So, make sure you are obtaining data that is strictly related to the business and your research to improve the customer experience. Don’t gather data through inappropriate means or ask for too personalized information, as this will portray a wrong image of yours to the customers.

5. The Digital CX Transformation

As we all are well aware of the global situation, we know that we have shifted a large percentage of business activities and operations on the digital platforms. It is estimated that this pandemic has instigated a 5x times increase in digitization. Businesses interact with customers via online media platforms. As managing activities digitally seems quicker and feasible, therefore, customers anticipate fast responses and effective interactions.

Nandkishor Tripathi talks about this rising issue in his blog post and recommends companies to get a stronger grip on the digital world as it is the need of time and possibly the future of running businesses. He also proposed some strategies that companies could follow and resort to so that they can keep up with the increasing demand for digitization. These were as follows:

Conclusion

We have reached the end now. Hope you enjoyed reading about my favorite picks of top cx blog posts of September 2020. It is amazing how companies are striving amidst COVID-19 to offer the best services to customers and be even more responsive and considerate of their feelings. Kudos to all the businesses and employees! Share your thoughts and reviews with our audience in the comments below. If you want your post to be featured on this site, feel free to share the link in the comments section. We’ll be back soon with some new and fascinating posts!

CX

6 Ways to Strengthen Your Brand Through Customer Service

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A brand is the front line of any business and what customers retain in their heads in the long run. Therefore, strengthening it is crucial for the success of your business. Impacts to a brand have far-reaching implications and can significantly impact a business’s growth. Companies that have brand issues, often utilize re-branding strategies to start a new business from scratch. While their name might change, they use the same assets and resources of the older organization so they can take advantage of the investments already made.

How Brands Work

Despite their importance, brands are immaterial resources. Hence, you can’t physically touch them, but certainly, you can feel them! It means that brands consist of ideas, feelings, sensations, and experiences. Therefore, that is what you need to offer to strengthen a brand. Whatever happens to your business affects the brand too. The positive side of it is that your strategies to strengthen them may include almost anything.

And one of the most impactful ways correspond to customer service (CX). This a zone where you can mold and affect how people feel, think and react toward your brand. Here are some ways to make sure your brand obtains the benefits when applying CX strategies.

Include and Train your Entire Team in the CX Strategy

All your employees must get involved with your CX tactics because, in some way or another, they all relate to customers. Even if they never get in touch directly with customers, they must know the way their actions affect them.

A good CX strategy should include relationships with providers and employees too. And, they will surely get in touch with customers. You can create this by implementing a permanent service culture. Once you set that clear goal, it would be time to design and implement specifics tactics that correspond according to each team member or employee.

Set and Follow the Company’s Mission and Values

Any company has a compass that works as a guide to develop their operations. That compass consists of mission and values. And the best way to align a CX strategy is to follow them. Otherwise, your brand would be at risk of taking action without order.

Therefore, taking time to develop missions and values is one of the best investments. In addition, you shouldn’t be afraid to review them from time to time to make sure they reflect what you want from your brand.

Educate your Customers

Now we live in the information era. As a consequence, people can access a lot of information on any subject. It makes us more aware of what happens around us. Also, we are willing to learn about the product and services to obtain the highest benefits from them.

Thus, educating your customers will increase their awareness of your products and services too. When customers are satisfied knowing all the possible ways to use and handle them, they connect easily with your brand. While they get educated about your products, they get engaged with your brand too.

Develop a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy

Due to the advance of new technologies, it would be hard to survive in a business environment without developing a digital marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter the size of your business, there is always a way to create and develop it. And, there are many types and sizes of digitals strategies available too.

Nowadays, customers engage with a brand through digital platforms. That is why the competition to reach them by these means is fierce. By developing a digital strategy, you also guarantee a long- term relationship because you know how to reach them closely.

Every year, a new trend or digital opportunity arises, and that makes it important to keep pace with all new developments. As a result, you must be aware of and always remain competitive.

Be Consistent

Consistency might include the following approaches:

  • Consistency through many sources: They might include customer support agents, omnichannel digital platforms, events, and more. In any case, your brand, your strategy, and your messages must show consistency by appointing the same goal. It avoids confusion for the customers.
  • To achieve this consistency, it is important to include all your team and employees in the strategy. Also, make sure that whatever your company delivers, is aligned with everything you offer. For these matters, ethics is essential.
  • Consistency also has the side of strong high-quality. In this sense, customers like to know the business is strong and capable to support their requests. Therefore, your investment in training your team and improving the quality of the service and products will surely pay off.

Include your Brand’s Designs and Logos Everywhere

Brands’ logos and designs are the visible part of a brand. When customers recall their experiences, they always connect them with the brand’s image. Therefore, your designs should always appear in any activity.

In cases when the business is not applying direct customer service tactics, the logo and designs should still be visible. As set above, the customer experience is the result of all the interactions between the customer at any given moment during any stage of the relationship.

As your logo and designs are such an important part of your brand, you should also invest the time and effort to develop them with the best approach. Besides, make sure you protect them properly with Intellectual Property rights.

In short, using CX to strengthen a brand is a smart way to speed up its success. As CX offers the chance to get in touch with customers, you can offer them valuable information to recall your brand easily. CX also offers the flexibility that other strategies might not offer. As a result, they adapt to any business or company.

But obtaining results to strengthen your brand requires that you apply the right strategy that includes a strong sense of inclusion, ethics, and respect toward your customers. After all, that is what brands are made of.

Customer service, CX, Outsourcing, Training

How To Align Your Customer Service With Your Company’s Values

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Many companies have value statements and company goals, but they often miss the mark when they try to determine how to align a specific team to these statements. When you think about how to align your customer service team with your company’s goals, what comes to mind? Do you only think about the staff on the phones or taking those emails and trying to make the customer happy or do you visualize all of the other parts of the business? Do you think about sales, marketing, and product development side-by-side working with customer service, for example, learning from the frontline team and working together to retain customers? If you do, you’re probably on the right track, but sadly you might be the exception!

Traditionally, the perspective was that each of these groups worked in a silo, each having different objectives and methods of achieving them. However, with new tools and technologies in place, it’s possible for many different parts of the business to have information about a prospect/client and what their circumstances are. The new paradigm is that all parts of the company work together as a whole to create a great customer experience. 

 This doesn’t happen by accident. It takes strong leadership and good planning to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. But thorough execution pays off. 

 Companies who have successfully aligned department goals have seen up to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates. 

Promote Integration Within Your Company 

When the different departments within your company don’t communicate, each department might have a narrow-minded idea of its function within the company. For instance, if your sales team just worries about meeting its targets by any means necessary, they might promise customers product features that are only in development – or not even planned. Aside from the disappointment, this causes to the customers, this has a significant impact on the support organization also.  Customer’s do not want to call, they are most interested in a product that works and delivers the features they were expecting and have paid for. When there is a discrepancy between expectation and reality, you tend to negatively impact customer loyalty and any short-term gains in sales, are not worth the reward.

A similar problem is when a product is released to the field without involving support at any stage of the process. If a customer has a new product/service or feature that the support team is unfamiliar with, their experience will be less than optimal. While support is often able to find the solution, this experience, is less than professional and will only frustrate your customers.

 Clear communication is vital when solving the problem of how to align your customer service with the other divisions in your company. 

Have a Clear Idea of Who Your Customers Are 


 A great way to unite all your departments is to promote the idea that they all have the main goal of creating a great customer experience. In order to do that, you have to know exactly who your ideal customers are. 

 Customer profiles can help everyone get a clear idea of your target demographic and see them as real people, not just abstractions. 

  • Align your customer service through cross-team training sessions – When everyone in your company has some understanding all the different processes in the organization, they’ll be able to address problems from a new perspective. For instance, if your sales team sits in on a customer service call and sees for themselves the consequences of creating customer expectations that can never be met, they’ll be able to see how they need to re-align their actions. Most of all, shared experiences increase understanding among all your teams. Your customers can only benefit. 


  • Similarly, having developers and other senior technical staff, work on cases will only benefit the customers. Often features are created and designed without a clear understanding of the end user and how they will utilize the solution, if the developers are forced to solve these common user problems, they’ll actually work harder to build a product that meets real-world situations. Everyone benefits from an improved product, and customers love to see their that their voices have been heard. This creates brand loyalty and improves your reputation.


  • When thinking of how to align your customer service with your greater goals, maybe you should really be thinking of how to align your greater goals with your customer service. Your customer service team knows your customers and is plugged into your customers like no one else. In some ways, they have the best knowledge of customer needs and desires, which is a valuable resource to guide the rest of the company. However, there can be a problem with too much information. How can your customer service team identify what is important and needs to be passed on to the product team? An important part of how to align your customer service is to have a clear mission and product goals that are communicated to everyone in the company. If your customer service team has access to your product roadmaps, specs, and design mockups, they’ll be able to tell what customer feedback the product team needs to hear, and what is not relevant to the product in question. 

    Keep Your Brand Consistent 

    Your customers don’t care about your internal organization schematics. They expect a consistent experience whether they’re dealing with sales, marketing, customer service, or any other section of the company. They also expect you to remember them across channels. If they gave information to a sales rep, your social-media guru should be able to access it if the customer sends a Facebook message. 

     There are few things customers hate more than having to repeat themselves, and a good CRM and good inter-departmental communication means they won’t have to. 

     Organize everything in one easily accessible place This could be an extensive software system or a Trello board – the important thing is that everyone has access and can see how the company as a whole is doing. Omnichannel CRM tools like Freshdesk are excellent in this respect as they are simple and easy to use with everyone on the same page.

      Accessible measurements for such things as 

    • customer satisfaction, 
    • team performance for all divisions, 
    • productivity,
    • the number and subject of support requests, 
    • and team member suggestions; 

    let everyone keep in mind the real numbers, making it easier to track trends and implement improvements. 

      Everyone can see the real numbers across the board, so action can be taken based on real data, not emotionally-based motives. For instance, if a few customers are really upset over a new feature, it might seem that it’s not been received well when the reality is that most customers love it. 

      Give Your Outsourced Teams In-House Training 

      It’s very common for a company to outsource at least some of its functions, especially customer service responsibilities. This is fine as long as you make the effort to maintain the quality of your customer experience. Make sure everyone follows the same standards and meets the same KPIs. 

       Show that you value everyone’s hard work and set up rewards for outstanding performers whether they’re outsourced or work in your main office. Aligning your company departments with a shared vision allows you all to work together, which increases engagement and improves your bottom line.

      Customer Experience, Customer service, CX, Measurement, NPS

      Understanding NPS, How It Works & Whether it’s a Measurement that Makes Sense

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      Improving customer experience is one sure-fire way of expanding your business and establishing a credible brand name for yourself. After all, who doesn’t want their brand to be known for a great customer experience?! Great customer experience is essentially the key to a successful business. So why not use tools to help you improve your customer experience? There’s an abundance of tools available both online and offline that are designed to help you achieve the ideal you’ve envisioned for your clients. However, few can boast the power and usefulness that the NPS can provide you with.

      So, What Is This “NPS”?

      NPS stands for Net Promoter Score and it was developed by Fred Reichheld. It helps to create a clear and understandable customer satisfaction score which can then be used as a comparison between various businesses over even a single business across an extended period of time. This is done through surveys (we’ll get to that in a bit), and sometimes questionnaires, which are directly given to consumers so that accurate data can be collected. Of course, you’re probably wondering where this happens.

      Well, think about any random time you ever got a pop up on your screen while you were visiting a website. Often times you will get questions like “would you recommend this product (or service) to a family or friend?”. Considering how little time it takes, you will probably answer and then continue your search. Well, that is the kind of surveys used to determine the NPS. They’re short, to-the-point and strategically placed by companies so that you answer them as honestly as you can as you’re doing your search.

      Calculation


      The NPS question given to the customer will generally include an 11 point scale from 0 to 10. Think of it as a rating with 0 meaning that you are not likely to recommend it at all to 10 meaning that you are extremely likely to.

      According to the NPS guidelines, consumers can be broken down into three categories:

      Category #1: Promoters


      These are the people who will be giving your recommendation question a 9 or a 10. We call them promoters because they are very likely to spread the word about your product. 

      These are the people who loved your customer service and will probably be advertising your brand to others through the word of mouth; never underestimate the power of word of mouth! It is a great, genuine and free advertisement for your business and as such makes promoters very valuable.

      Category #2: Passives


      Next up are the “passives”. These are the people who will give a score between 7 and 8. These are the most vulnerable of your clientele. Why? 

      Because, unlike the promoters, they aren’t spreading the word about how great your brand is. They’re just there because. 

      They don’t love your brand; they don’t hate it either, but they can be easily diverted elsewhere if the competition is offering the right price tag.


      Category #3: Detractors


      Detractors are the unhappy customers who’re giving you’re a score of 0 to 6. These are the people who can cause some serious damage to your brand. Like the promoters, they’re going to be spreading the word…of how bad your brand is. 

      You need to make sure that you do not have a lot of detractors because they can seriously hinder the growth of your business.

      In order to calculate your Net Promoter Score, you subtract the percentage of detractors from the promoters. The NPS is not expressed in terms of percentage. It needs to be an absolute number between -100 and +100. Generally, a positive NPS is considered good for businesses. In fact, many businesses aim to make sure that their NPS does not fall to zero or negative as zero shows that your business is stagnant while a negative NPS will show that your business’s customer experience is bad and that there are more detractors than promoters. This will, in turn, lead to a series of losses for you, so it is vital to make sure that your NPS is always positive.

      By using this data, you can begin to plan a business strategy that improves your NPS.

      Why Is It Important?


      The biggest advantage of NPS is that it is able to provide a simple, yet holistic, understanding of your customer experience. This coupled with the fact that your customers are the ones directly answering questions without any filter, provides you with accurate data. 

      The NPS is able to give you the real picture of how your clients perceive your business. Similarly, by comparing the NPS of other businesses, you can determine how well you’re doing. In some sectors, the NPS score rarely comes out to be more than +50 and even though this may not look good, if held up against the rest of the market, you will find that the NPS of +50 might actually be the score of the highest performing company in that industry. 

      It’s relative yet it does not generalize or marginalize any competitor. You get a clear picture of what’s happening and that is great for business. There are many other benefits to the NPS which you can find here.

      Does It Make Sense?


      While it might initially take some time to wrap your head around it, once you get it you’ll realize the NPS is actually really easy to use and understand. While other tools can be very complicated, the NPS is simple, and its effectiveness lies in its simplicity. 

      The results are pretty clear: the promoters are your loyal customers, the passives may be deterred away and the detractors are leaving. As we’ve already said before, you can use this to your advantage and establish an order that helps to grow your business. It accurately shows how your client feels.