Category Archives: Top CX Blogs

Top CX Posts of 2018

Customer service blog posts and/or articles are non-fiction pieces of literature that require extensive research and experience in the field. Therefore, the general expectations that you should expect when reading such an article are for the writer(s) to have at least some years of experience or familiarity with the subject.


There are hundreds and thousands of customer service articles written every week with the sole intent of guiding all those who need help with customer support. The topics are wide, ranging from customer service basics, such as setting up a customer support division for a small business, to unique experiences that companies and teams face when dealing with customers, to the more technical side of operating a customer relationship management system. A variety of topics comes under the umbrella of customer service posts. In this article, we’re going to list the top customer service posts for the year 2018 on a monthly basis. So, let’s get started.

1. January: Jumpstarting Your CX Strategy

At the very beginning of the year, Annette Franz kickstarted the year by talking about a bunch of blog posts intended to help newbies to get started with a CX strategy that will help their business.

Titled, “8 Must-Read Posts to Start Your CX Strategy on the Right Foot”, the post is meant to familiarize those who are only just embarking on their journey to creating a CX plan that will work for their business. The post itself has three main categories:

  • leadership, 
  • culture, and 
  • employees. 
Each category has important blog posts dealing with issues like toxic work environment and the kind of leadership required to help your business. If you’re absolutely clueless about customer experience or are simply looking for a place to start, begin by reading this post and its related contents before moving on. 

2. February: Customer Service As the New Marketing Tool

Micah Solomon’s Forbes article, “Customer Service Is The New Marketing”, makes the case for why having a quality customer service is important. His simple yet informative article talks about how marketing patterns have changed and how we, as consumers, prefer experiencing a company’s offer instead of depending on advertisements or promotion. 


By doing so, he rightly presents a good introduction to customer service for his readers, as well as highlighting why this is the next big thing in marketing. It’s quite a good place to start, especially if you’re a business owner who isn’t quite sure how to start a customer service unit in your company. Even though his article is introductory, Solomon does list the key essentials that a company must have so do give it a read.

3. March: Make It or Break It

Steve DiGioia’s article, “Are Moments of Truth Really Worth All The Fuss?” talks about ‘moments of truth’ in your customer experience- where your service can make or break the deal for potential customers. 


These are super important moments that every person operating a customer service should be wary of because often times, it’s actually quite easy to overlook the experience of one customer when dealing with a large magnitude of customers. As a result, only 10% of business executives agreed that the results projected from CRM were achieved. 

This means that 90% of executives don’t see the results they want to see, which means that, for all the technology businesses are implementing into their customer experience, there’s actually a key ingredient that everyone’s missing that is stopping their business from reaching full potential. DiGioia explores this in great detail in his article, as well as pointing out tips and questions that companies should be asking themselves when dealing with customers.

4. April: Survival Mode Is NOT Good

In their article titled, “Why Survival Mode Kills the Customer Experience”, writers Kevin Hurt and Nate Brown talk about how the “survival” mode can actually damage your business. They do so in a relatable manner, describing in detail how monotony in your service sector can actually cause your customer service representatives to hate their job and fall into the infamous survival mode.

This has damning consequences for your business as the general bored, gloomy environment of your service can affect customer experience, thus driving customers away from your business- and nobody wants that. Luckily, the writers also took the time to list and talk in detail about the five steps you can take to move your business away from this stage and begin to thrive again. This one is definitely worth the read!

5. May: Customer Success and Its Implications

We already featured this article by Michael Pace on our Top Seven Great CX Blogs from May to June’18 post but due to its relevance and importance, we’ve decided that it’s probably the best CX post that came out in the month of May. Pace’s post, “Why Customer Success is the Future of Customer Service” highlights the importance of focusing on a company’s churn rates. If you are able to successfully manage to gain a large number of people to sign up for your service, you’re good. But how do you do that?

Pace talks about it in an analytical way, giving examples of companies like Netflix and Microsoft and how they’re able to not only get numbers on the first go but how they did it. The answers, of course, lies within the first impressions. You need to make your customer service so good that people are bound to get hooked from the get-go. You can learn specifics about that in his blog post. Have fun!

6. June: Dealing with Difficult Customers

Anyone in the customer service industry will tell you that dealing with difficult customers is actually quite frustrating. There’s really no way around it- you can’t be rude to them because it ruins their customer experience and ultimately ruins your customer service’s reputation. You can’t let them feel undermined or undervalued either. So what do you do with them? Elizabeth Wellington does a great job of explaining how to deal with difficult customers in her article, “How to Deal With Difficult Customers.” There’s actually a way to deal with such customers without risking upsetting them or jeopardizing their experience with your firm. Read her article and you’re bound to be set on the right track to satisfying even the most difficult of customers!

7. July: Case Study on Japan

July’s article titled “Japan: The Land of Amazing Service Culture” by Nate Brown is a little different from the articles we’ve covered so far. Unlike previous posts which look at a company or two as a case study, the author decided to write about an entire country and how customer service there is different from the rest of the world.

To be fair, when thinking of Japan, most of us do think of the fun services the country has to offer. Everyone loves Japan because, overall, it has the air of a really fun place to live in. But that’s not all, Japan is actually one of the tech capitals of the world. Android bots serving people food, small yet extremely smart homes- all of this makes up the Japanese landscape. The author noticed all of this and more in his trip to Japan and subsequently wrote a piece about Japanese customer service and why it’s much, much better than virtually everywhere else in the world, thus providing a unique perspective into the Japanese service industry.

8. August: Focus on Mental and Physical Well-Being of Your Staff

This article is also referenced on our top CX blog posts for the month of August post as well. It refers to an article titled “Promoting Mental and Physical Well-Being in Service Roles” written by Nate Brown and Jenny Dempsey that talks about the mental and physical health of staff in the customer service industry. We found this article to be particularly interesting because it deals with the issue of being mindful of the staff’s well-being. In the customer service industry, the concept of “customer first” prevails which is why it is easier to ignore the staff’s well-being.

This article talks about that and also presents the case of why it is necessary to focus on your staff’s mental and physical well-being. Among the many reasons is the fact that healthier staff are far more efficient at their job. The article further talks about how leaders can implement policies that benefit their staff’s health including the initiating of a “code lavender.” We highly recommend that you give it a read.

9. September: Tech Advancements That’ll Enhance Your Customer Experience

For the month of September, we have a very interesting piece by Kelechi Okeke. Titled, “6 Tech Advances That Will Enhance Customer Experience”, this article talks about the technologies being integrated into customer service that is bound to benefit you- if you add them to your CRM system. The author talks about the following:

1. Virtual reality
2. Location-based computing
3. 3D Printing
4. Chatbots
5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
6. Internet of Things (IoT)

These technologies are integrated into customer service. More details are provided on the blog post, so do check it out.

10. Oct: Understanding NPS

NPS stands for Net Promoter Score and was developed by a man named Fred Reichheld. It was created to get a clear image of how satisfied your customers are with your service. In order to get your customer satisfaction score, you need to subtract your promoter audience with your detractors. It’s actually a pretty interesting concept and can accurately help you compare your business against others in the industry if you get it right. If you’re interested in finding out how NPS works, check out our blog post on it.

11. Nov: Service Training, or Service Education?

For the month of November, we decided to delve into the difference between customer service training and customer service education. Many CX blogs stress on the importance of one or the other, calling each integral to enhance the customer experience. But exactly what is it? 

In her article, “Customer Service Training, or Service Education. What’s the Difference?”, Divya Bhat looks for the key differences between these two terms and how each has a lasting impact on the customer experience.

The reason behind these two terminologies might not matter right now. But in situations of crisis, the difference of training and education of a particular team member or representative can change the overall result of the crisis.

12. Dec: Future Trends

We end our year with future predictions to watch out for in 2019. The article, “2019: Three CX Trend to Look Out For” predicts possible trends that we might see in the customer service sector. Through analysis and observation of trends, cxm.co.uk was able to pick up on three trends that are likely to take over in 2019. What are they?

Well, you’ll have to read them to find out!

Conclusion

So, here was our list of the best customer service blog posts for the year 2018. We’ve tried to cover a large variety of topics from mental health to dealing with the most difficult of customers and finally, to future trends to look out for in 2019. 

These articles are based on a large volume of CX posts we’ve viewed online. We’ve tried to keep them as diverse as possible, hoping to attract the attention of a diverse audience. You don’t need to be a CX expert in order to read this article. All you need is to have experienced customer service once, or have worked in the service industry once, to understand what we’re talking about. 


Here’s Seven Great CX Blogs from the Month of August

Customer service blogs are a unique genre in the blog writing community. This is mainly because they’re the kind of non-fiction piece of literature that one can only write after extensive research and experience. Furthermore, they’re also quite helpful to those looking to improve their customer service as they offer great advice to all those who’re willing to listen as well as provide a voice for business owners to share their experiences in the community so that certain topics can be discussed.

For the month of August, we’re back with some great customer service blog posts written by talented individuals wishing to share their experience and knowledge with the rest of the world. As you will see throughout this entry, the topics under discussion are vast from mental health to the blame game that we often see in businesses where there’s- to quote the writer- an “I” in teamwork to advise on how to make customers talk about your business.

This month there’s an entire treasure chest full of great information on offer, so, without further ado, let’s begin to talk about the seven most impressive customer service blogs for the month of August.

1. Mental and Physical Well-Being In the Service Sector

The very first article that’s made our list comes from the CX Accelerator website itself, where writers Nate Brown and Jenny Dempsey talk about mental and physical health promotion in the service sector. In their article, they talk about how- by taking care of one’s employees, one can actually accelerate great customer service and increase efficiency in the workplace

Several suggestions for this are given through the course of the article. It starts off with simple tips that don’t really ask for drastic changes. Many leaders complain about a lot of investment (which they do not necessarily have) into well-being programs, but in this article, the writers have successfully mentioned the simplest and most effective methods of making sure that your customer service providers’ health is not compromised. 

This article definitely warrants a read. You can pick up any one of the many suggestions provided to ensure that the health of your staff is not neglected. As the two writers point out, there is a correlation between the health of your staff and their performance. So, don’t neglect it!

2. The Fault In Our “Staff”


On the opposite side of the spectrum, Steve Gioia, his blog post called But the Other Guy is Really at Fault, talks about common problems faced by teams in the service sector, particularly those in the hotel and restaurant businesses. 

Here he sheds light on the problems between the kitchen and the wait staff and how lack of understanding of ‘teamwork’ often leads to both sides not really accepting their responsibility. He gives an example of how a colleague of his received a bad service at a high end restaurant, thereby, establishing that no matter who’s fault it is, bad customer service and bad staff relations ultimately reflects badly upon the restaurant itself and customers don’t really care who’s fault it is- they’ll see it as a failure of the all the staff. 

This is an important lesson in customer service and reflects a side of customer service which we’ve often seen in restaurants, but don’t really comment on it and chalk it out as bad service. Gioia talks about how this badly affects the business. Give it a read, there are important lessons to learn from here.


3. Lessons From Amazon


In his article, writer Dan Gingiss presents the case for Amazon (and everyone else really) and how in today’s globalized world, you- as a business owner in the service sector- are actually in competition with Amazon and a lot of other online (and big) retailers. The reason behind this is investigated by the writer. 

He talks about how today’s market is very, very competitive compared to the “older days” where competition only extended towards local markets. Now, because of the advent of technology and social media, your competition is everyone, everywhere. Therefore, the importance of customer experience should not be underestimated. 

By taking note from big firms like Amazon and Netflix, we should try to improve upon our customer experience and really understand why a lot of people prefer these platforms and maybe take a leaf out of their books. After all, these corporations don’t simply exist because they’re great just like that- people prefer them over the others. So, what makes them so great? You’ll have to find out because, in today’s world, they’re your competition as well. No matter how big or small your business is.

4. Breaking Boundaries


This one’s a little different. In the article, writer and co-founder of CX Accelerator talks about surveys, their accessibility and how likely customers are to answer them in today’s time. He presents his case by highlighting that, contrary to popular belief, it might actually be more difficult to get customers to talk about their preferences through surveys. In fact, many industries are actually struggling with the lack of data available. But this is mostly because companies- not all but some and that’s still a significant amount- take the voice of the customer for granted, and probably still look to surveys to make a decision. 

Brown disagrees with this method as the only one in the business and suggests that there are other ways one can capture data. After all, customers haven’t gotten quiet in today’s world. There’s plenty of other ways they’re letting their voice be heard. Companies just have to tap into this oilfield of wealth in order to collect this valuable data, and maybe along the way, they’ll also end their dependence on surveys.

5. The Power of The Word of Mouth (150-200)


This one’s an interesting read in particular. Author Dan Gingiss once more finds himself on our list for his article. The reason behind this is simple: this article holds key advice for those looking to get their customers to do a bit of promotion for them. Of course, the main aim here is to get your customers to talk. 

Word of mouth is single-handedly one of the most powerful promotion platforms out there and it can also be used to your advantage. Of course, a lot of people struggle with it in their businesses- but you don’t have to be one of those people. In his article, Gingiss talks with various experts in the field and how they would do the job. There’s an abundance of advice from a number of people in a variety of different fields. Their tips aren’t very hard to pull off either. 

If you read through all of the advice given, you’ll notice it is the attention to detail the customer likes and they’ll recommend you for it. Customers want a personalized experience where they feel comfortable and at home- do this and they’re sure to talk about your business with their friends and colleagues. You can find more great advice from the article as well, so do check it out!

6. The ‘Peak-end’ Factor


This is a great read by Mary Drumond. The article, Understanding How The Peak-end Defines Customers’ Experiences the writer talks about the ‘peak-end rule’, a psychological heuristic developed by two professors called Kahneman and Tversky and is described as a phenomena where people remember a particular experience- it can be good or bad- based on how they felt at the ‘peak’ and the ‘end’ rather than judging the whole experience. 

This is an interesting phenomenon and Drumond has delved deeper into this phenomenon. She’s talked about how companies can use this to their advantage and thus, enhance customer experience. We can further look at it as a way of understanding the mindset of a customer and thus eliminate any cognitive bias or something along those lines and make them like your product. That, or you can simply research into this to just understand your customers better. 

After all, understanding the mindset of one’s customers is one of the most important pillars in customer service. 

7. A Study For Coffee Lovers Everywhere


And lastly, we end up with another Dan Gingiss article, and it’s quite literally a case study and look into a neighborhood coffee shop in New York and how it stands out in a world full of Starbucks. Gingiss uses this case study to show how this coffee shop is back to basics to attract new clientele. It’s not the “anti-Starbucks”, he lets us know that early in the blog post. But it’s good; it’s different. And sometimes that’s what customers want. 

He talks about his own experience with Birch Coffee and how we can use that as a lesson in customer service. This company doesn’t just serve ‘drinks’ like Starbucks has taken to doing. In fact, it’s really not just Starbucks- it’s a lot of coffee shops these days. Birch Coffee goes back to basics- we’re talking simple coffee. Nothing fancy. In fact, this is how they’ve advertised their business on their website as well. I think it’s a pretty good case study to look into, so do check it out!

Conclusion


There you have it- this month’s list of the best customer service blog posts on the Slack CX Accelerator community. These articles are truly great in the wealth of information that they provide us with. From tips to case studies to pointing out key factors that may change a company’s entire relationship with their customers, these blogs are for those who are all ears and want to improve their businesses. 

Read them and discover key information about the world of customer service and how you, a business owner, can benefit from the extensive and meticulous planning that goes into customer service to make it the face of your company and, in return, to make people come back to your business over and over again. We hope you found these articles hopeful!