Tag Archives: Maxie Schmidt

Customer Experience

How an investment in CX can help your bottom line

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If you ask me, I’d say that currently, COVID-19 is ruling the entire business world. Every move and every strategy played by organizations is heavily influenced and structured by the pandemic. Though the graph of different departments and sectors in a business has declined, the customer service graph continues to soar high on improvement and effectiveness and I’m not surprised. Many businesses have realized that an investment in CX is one that pays major dividends in the long run.

I’ve shortlisted here some websites that you can use as great references to improve your CX. With this new year, I’ve seen considerable changes in the CX industry and I can say without a shred of doubt that the future of customer service seems to be very successful.

1.   What returns should you expect on your investment in CX?

Forrester has been one of our loyal partners throughout this series of reviewing top CX blog posts. And it didn’t fail to educate us again about the significance of transforming CX and investing our resources in it.

Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt discusses the benefits of CX transformation in her post and capitalizes on the fact that they contribute towards a positive ROI.

The following numbers were reckoned via the analysis of data (benefits of investing in customer experience) obtained through the Customer Experience Index (CX Index) consumer survey:

  • Customers are 10 times more likely to recommend your company and be your ambassadors if customer service employees present in physical location vigilantly answer all customer queries.
  • Customers are 2.4 times more inclined towards staying in business with companies when their problems are resolved quickly.
  • Customers are 2.7 times more likely to invest and spend more in companies that communicate well with them.

All the data obtained was highly reliable and was an accurate representation of what customers felt as the survey was conducted on a large-scale. Such researches help companies in improving their CX and compel them to invest more in perfecting the customer experience.

Maxie also comes up with a few real-life examples that companies can incorporate into their own customer service sector. She stated that investing in training employees, upgrading technology, and improving professional services can prove to be a game-changer. We should learn from the behavior of Lloyds Banking Group, Target, Ping An, and Scottish Power.

2.   How to use data to create an impeccable customer experience?

Throughout this entire journey, I have seldom recommended a podcast to you or an interview; our favorite picks for blog posts have always been different reads. But this incredible piece written by Gabe Larsen summarizes his podcast where he talks to Steven Maskell and entertains his views on perfecting the customer experience.

In this riveting post, the main theme of discussion is how a personalized customer experience can be created and how it guarantees a customer service win for the company. The gist of the entire post is boiled down into three major points:

  • Using data to your advantage – Steven Maskell has been leading customer service teams for 30 years and he condensed his wisdom into a key pointer; creating a data-driven customer experience. In this post, Steven’s insights about how data must be integrated and analyzed allow us to better understand what customer wants. Steven’s emphasis on collecting data and fusing it with our knowledge allows us to shape the ideal customer experience that caters to every need of a customer.
  • Ripples together create a wave – After the data has been obtained, it is essential to determine the best way of storing and organizing it. Steven empathized with different companies and suggested that they should start somewhere small. One should learn about different relational databases and other tools so that the data is structured, right into the systems.
  • Bring in the big guns – I am referring to Artificial Intelligence (AI) here. It is like a godsend for every CX expert. AI has been normalized to a great extent and almost all organizations’ customer service departments benefit from it. But even with this miracle of technology, one must set up realistic expectations.

3.   Predicting CX Trends for 2021

Steve Davies captures our attention through this post about what the future of 2021 holds for Customer Experience. After a lot of meticulous research and comparisons with 2020 trends, Steve was able to come up with a compelling piece of writing.

In this post, five major trends in messaging are listed and explicitly discussed. These trends are expected to be seen in the CX world for the year 2021.

  • Widening Messaging Channels – It goes without saying that one of the most effective CX strategies is to improve the communication channels between customers and customer service employees. And the best way to do so is to offer a convenient solution, like messaging. It was deduced through research that more than 68% of customers preferred communicating to brands via private messages.
  • Customer Experience will outweigh price and quality – Through a study, it was found that customers valued Customer experience at 25%, which was nearly as important as the quality of product and service, which was valued at 29%. The price was below both factors, valued at 22%.  
  • Automate the Interactions – A study proved that around 67% of customers were more satisfied with the AI and automated interactions as compared to engaging with human customer service representatives.
  • Digitalize Interaction – Steve has talked about how the customer experiences can retain the personalized touch even if all interactions are shifted to digital forums. Though he covered all perspectives by stating that not everyone approves of digital customer relationships as personalized, but after months of the pandemic, it is the most effective and convenient option.
  • Only a few CX interactions are Proactive – Steve encouraged the brand to reach out more as only a handful of customer experiences are proactive and lead to something fruitful.

4.   What should you steer clear of when it comes to good customer service?

By now, we must have read a hundred articles, all talking about different strategies that a company must incorporate in order to perfect their customer experiences. However, this engrossing blog post by ASTUTE helps us identify the five practices that businesses should instantly give up as they are harming their customer service.

This post begins by highlighting the determining factor of an excellent customer experience: time. No one likes to wait, certainly not customers. And they measure the effectiveness of customer service and regard it as a great one based on the length of time taken to resolve the customer’s issue.

Next, this post outlines the benefits of providing efficient customer support. These were as follows:

  • Highly cost-effective as it reduces cost-per-contact
  • Contributes greatly towards a higher profit and revenue
  • Ensures customer utility and satisfaction
  • It builds customer loyalty

Then the main crux of the post revolves around the 5 major things that hinder the execution of efficient customer service. These five pointers were:

  • Avoid using key metrics and failing to measure customer service efficiency
  • Having human representatives handling every stage of customer service and not maximizing efficiency by automating customer service.
  • Having disconnected tools which waste a lot of time in keeping all platforms updated separately.
  • Having customer service agents work hard to find answers and not giving them complete knowledge about the arising of all possible issues.
  • Using tools that are in no way useful or related to the contact center.

5.   Co-Creating Customer Experiences with Customers

How could have we forgotten Annette Franz? Her posts have always been my favorite; they are so informative and refreshing that they always offer a new, bright perspective on improving the customer experience.  

The main focus of Annette throughout this post is to introduce a modern and more effective relationship between customers and organizations; she defines it as participative. She formed a connection between her previous posts and her recent ones to make the concept clearer. However, if you aren’t as big of a fan of her as I am, and you haven’t followed her posts, that is completely okay too. You will catch on to her perspective very easily.

Annette focuses largely on including customers in building a customer experience. She mentions that customers too are looking for a participative role in the relationship. Like all other relationships, this one too is two-way. Though companies are in the business of nurturing customers, but they are fulfilling the needs of customers through their services and products. And customers too want to include their input; so, the control should be shifted to co-creating.

Annette also mentioned a few co-creation tools that will lubricate the process of establishing a participative customer relationship:

  • Collecting customer feedback and data to understand them
  • Involve the customer in journey mapping
  • Ideation: gathering ideas from customers and prioritizing them based on customer votes
  • Form online communities to keep customers engaged
  • Build prototypes and test ideas with customers
  • Try crowdsource ideas

Conclusion

These were the top 5 CX blog posts from recent months, though I have to be completely honest, it was quite challenging to choose just the top 5 because, with the new year, the trends in CX transformation have also changed rapidly.

But it is truly commendable to see how smartly our CX experts are battling all issues put forward by the pandemic. I’ve come across hundreds of stories where customers are praising the customer service for empathizing with them and creating personalized experiences via digital platforms.

Comment below if you would like to share your insights. We can also feature a post written by you; just share the link below. I will meet you all next month with some new, exciting posts!

Customer Experience

These are the Top 5 CX Posts of December 2020

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I have to apologize for the lateness of this post. Suffice it to say that the challenges of a new job impacted my free time for January. However, let us pick from where we left off last; reviewing the top customer experience posts of November 2020. I have picked up the top CX posts of December 2020 for you, but it was quite challenging as I came across a compelling and interesting pool of CX posts. After studying all those posts, I realized that the CX experts out there continue to amaze us even as this unpredictable year wraps up.

Like all the previous posts, I will offer a detailed analysis of the gist of the top five posts and share with you the CX journey of companies worldwide. I will not be following a particular theme, so you can expect to be bedazzled by different stories. But one focal point will be the deliverance of impeccable and unprecedented customer experiences online. I will be attaching the link to each post so you can individually check them out. Let us get started!

Can you measure CX in dollars?

Forrester has been our top consistent partner in these blog posts. I don’t remember a single month where we didn’t quote a remarkable post from this site. This month too, Maxie Schmidt, a Principal Analyst, shared her insights on Forrester’s platform. In this post, she defines the dollar value of improving customer experience.

She reckoned the relationship between business growth and improvement in CX. A numeric value was assigned to this association so the significance of improving CX could be known. 14 industries were studied under the Customer Experience Index Survey.

The condensed version of the results is:

  • The benefits associated with improving CX are massive. It was deduced for mass-market auto manufacturers, that by improving CX by 1 point, more than $1B can be generated in revenue.
  • The advantages of improving CX rise exponentially when happy customers are made happier. So, the focus must be shifted here rather than from making unhappy customers less unhappy.
  • The impact of recommendations on the business upside of CX is small and nearly negligible. Gaining new customers through recommendations makes up for less than 7% of the total business benefit gained from the improved customer experience.

Here is how you can calculate and measure the impact of improving CX and relate it to your company:

  • Assess the business impact of every individual customer’s loyalty. Study the intentions of customers who stay, who buy more, and those who eventually recommend you.
  • Build models that display how CX is stimulating growth. Make sure these models are specific to the market and industry.

Use the model to calculate the benefit of improving CX by 1 point and its consequent impact on business growth.

Is great customer experience your intention?

What’s the secret to a great customer experience? Isn’t that a million-dollar question that we have been looking for the answer to? Anette Franz has made it easier for us to understand how we can nearly perfect the customer experience.

In this post, she talks about the famous quote of Bob Farell, the founder of Farell’s ice cream parlors, “Give em’ a pickle!”. Bob said this after he received a disappointing letter from a customer who complained about his services. Bob makes this golden rule that serving others should be the top priority of businesses.

One must not be opportunistic, rather one should look for delivering a personal and good experience to customers. Business is not all about earning an extra dollar or a few dimes, but it is connecting with customers and fulfilling their needs and wants.

Even in her book, she dedicated a large portion of it to why brands fail to retain customers or keep customers satisfied and happy. One of the major reasons is that shareholders are more focused on filling their pockets rather than nurturing customers and creating customer value. So the magical rule that one shall abide by is: Do what’s right for and by the customer. This is how Anette describes the secret to delivering a memorable customer experience. This is a short and brief post, but it teaches us so much about delivering customer value.

Trends to follow to reshape CX in 2021

We now know that there is no going back to the normal, brands must reshape their vision of how they imagine and execute a strong customer experience. John Aves shares his wisdom in this post and introduces the 6 major trends that will shape the CX redesign in 2021. Let us review them:

  • You must not look back – Companies that believe that everything will return to the old normal will not survive in the coming times. They will collapse and will be unable to thrive. Leaders would have to be bold and daring so they can impose changes required to revitalize the customer experience.
  • You would have to take a stand – Customers will look to side with businesses that care about prevailing issues and take a stand. They will offer their loyalty to businesses who assess their brand purpose and align it with customer values.
  • No more consumerism – Consumers are no longer looking for meaningless connections. After a month of being quarantined, they’ll covet social connection. And businesses should offer meaningful customer experiences.
  • Customers want to be in the driving seat – For far too long, customers have been anxious because they are no longer in control. To make sure that they feel secure, CX leaders should make customers feel in control of their experience.
  • Digital Balance – This is a tough time for all and as we move on next year, CX leaders have to be more empathetic and kinder towards customers. They must take their hand and together travel on key digital journeys.
  • Consistency is the Key – CX consistency is the holy grail. No matter where employees or customers are if the vaccination is introduced or not, a consistent customer experience must be delivered.

How can you improve your companies CX strategies?

The expert panel of Forbes drafted this post and they educate businesses about how they can improve their CX strategies. The top CX leaders at Forbes each shared a piece of advice that will help businesses grow and develop a remarkable customer experience.

  1. Focus more on customer journey mapping: the most crucial source of data is search, as it can help marketers to map their customers’ decision journey. This results in more touchpoints and hence, increased sales.
  2. A well-planned execution process: Incorporate feedback and suggestions from your customer and draft a well written CX plan.
  3. Extend the customer experience and adapt to the changes to reach a wider range of customers.
  4. Build a client-centric culture: be more focused on what your clients want and what their needs are.
  5. Make your customer experience informative and delightful.
  6. Make effective use of key metrics and keep on checking them to assess the growth.
  7. Leverage the surveys conducted and record the reviews and study them meticulously.
  8. Make sure that you respond efficiently and take minimum time.
  9. Make sure you deliver the perfect blend of human expertise and complex technology.
  10. You cannot and must not define customer success on your terms
  11. You must deliver a personal experience by being relatable and human.
  12. Incorporate conversational AI as customers tend to leave the brand after one or two bad customer experiences.
  13. Focus greatly on digital experience and try to perfect it.
  14. A personalized experience is the best one.
  15. Have an effective and strong customer retention program where you can receive customer feedback and reviews.

The year of CX Data

If you enjoy a little bit of wit with tons of resourceful and informative posts, then you are going to love this piece eloquently written by Jim Tincher. In this post, he talks about digital hygiene and how crucial it is for us to clean the bad data.

We can view 2020 as the year of digital transformation. And though for many years, CX leaders were thriving to make customer experiences digital, this year transformed this desire into a need of the time. And we had to amplify our works to make sure that seamless customer experiences are delivered online.

The one limitation that held us back and continues to limit our growth is bad data. It limits the organizations’ abilities to meet customers’ needs and satiate them. The dirty, disconnected, and unmatched data makes it almost impossible for organizations to implement digital transformation and get the operating systems running. Lack of clean and good data results in the wrong and incorrect information being delivered to customers and that can put your whole organization and business in jeopardy.

It is safe to assume that bad data is the underlying cause that triggers bad customer experience. There is no time for organizations to waste. We must make sure that we clean the data often and regularly. So, our predictions for 2020 are, that this year will be the year of empathy, technology, and executive engagement.

Conclusion

This is a wrap for us. As we’ve bid adieu to the year 2020, we hope and pray for positive news in the upcoming year and though the previous year brought a lot of pain, it also showed how resilient and adaptive our companies are.

Let’s hope this global crisis soon ends and we all adjust to the new normal. Comment below and share with us your views and thoughts. If you want to get featured on our blog, share the link of your post in the comment section and we’ll share it with our audience. Will meet you next time with some more new and exciting CX posts!

Customer Experience

Top 5 Customer Experience Blog Posts from October 2020

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I solemnly welcome you all back again to our quarantine edition of the best Customer Experience (CX) blog posts. Though it is deeply saddening to see how rampant the pandemic is around the world, you will certainly be amazed at the strategic planning of organizations that continue to focus on offering exceptional customer service.

If you remember the amazing CX posts batch from September that I shared previously, you would know that you are in for a treat this month too. I have gathered the top five CX posts for October 2020. As the world is impacted by the ramifications of the COVID-19 outbreak, a shift in the pattern of customer support service was discovered. So, let’s see how major businesses surmounted these obstacles and what pearls of wisdom they have shared.

As I’ll be discussing the gist and the condensed version of each blog post, if you want to read the post in its entirety, just follow the link.

1) Now Customer Support Entails Being a Mind-Reader

Adrian Swinscoe interviewed the well-reputed Paul Adams, the SVP of Product at Intercom. In his blog post, he discussed the crux of the interview and jotted it in pointers. This unconventional blog post highlighted an integral aspect of customer support: proactive service.  He mentioned how this term may be perceived as ambiguous, but it captures the essence of impeccable customer support service.

Paul outlined the proactive approach as anticipating the questions of customers before they even ask them. This predictive behavior is the holy grail of customer support. Paul also stated the statistics of a study that claimed that 78% of support managers wanted to incorporate the proactive approach and remove reactive service. But, only 26% of such leaders carried the knowledge, skills, and equipment to do so.

Paul categorized proactive support into the following three major types:

  • Planned: this refers to supporting customers based on their usage history, behavioral patterns, and other data. In this approach, predictive analysis is conducted.
  • Situational: the support team opts for this approach when they are aware of a fault or an issue in either the product or service, but they appraise the customers beforehand. This way they avoid an influx of complaints and calls.
  • V.I.P Proactive Support: this approach is slightly complex and not so common. In this approach, the clients’ needs are under constant spotlight and undisturbed attention is granted. Their behavior is seen and even minor changes in their usage or behavioral patterns are noted and then meticulously analyzed.

2) Don’t Let the Pandemic Stop You

Francine Johnson shared her insights in this educative blog post that guides the audience about how they can fashion a congenial customer experience. She termed CX as an essential part of the customer’s end-to-end journey with the product.

She used the F5, a B2B cyber-security company, as a reference and explained how businesses can continue to deliver exemplary customer service despite the hindrances posited by COVID-19.

Francine discussed how crucial it is to support leaders to identify the friction points and then address them by making improvements and amends accordingly. A fruitful CX program is structured on customer engagements, smooth communication, effective advocacy, and prudent insights. She explicitly talked about three essential ways in which an organization could build a successful customer experience. These ways are:

  • Finding the Right Balance – Striking the balance refers to communicating a particular kind of information to customers. For the F5 company, Francine talks about creating a balance between notifying customers of threats and creating cherished memories. Such a balance can only be achieved through effective communication.
  • Profits are Secondary – Francine recommended that as employees we should empathize with the customers as their lives to are gravely affected by the pandemic. So, instead of focusing on the money-making strategies, the support team should genuinely be concerned for the customers. It is important to lead with a human-first mindset.
  • The Internal Strength – It is imperative to build a customer-first mindset that not only prevails in the support team but is backed up by the executive leadership. Francine claimed that a team of professionals and experts is not enough to execute productive customer support. It would require executive support and assistance too.

3) Does Losing a Customer Sting? Now no more!

This post is written by Jim Tincher and it truly encapsulates the raw emotions felts by a B2B company when they lose a sale, they worked hard for. But it also shows them a light at the end of the tunnel so that they can improve their customer service and avoid any such loss in the future. He introduces us to the Voice of the Last Lost Customer. Then he signifies how businesses can manage the VoLLC. The guidelines were:

  • Frequently talk to salespeople – As a CX leader make sure that you take the feedback of salespeople under review. If the salespeople don’t feel safe sharing their opinion, you may expect trouble. It will become difficult for you to manage and improve your customer service.
  • Go on account calls – You can obtain a holistic view of what your customers need as salespeople talk directly to customer executives and VoC channels are majorly concerned with the users.
  • It can be a blessing in disguise – Though sometimes the sales’ VoLLC is not on the mark. They may not target your major customers but the sales they bring in can be considered significant.

As a CX leader, most people would target customer loyalty. But it is beneficial to focus on VoLLC too.

4) Can You Measure Value for Customers?

In her post, Maxie Schmidt talks about her latest report, “How to measure value for customers?”. She starts by stating that most organizations fail to determine whether customers gain value from engaging in business with them or not.

She explains that customers acquire value from a business when they get more than what they are giving up. Value for customers does not stay constant, rather it changes frequently like needs. Maxie however, encircled the value for customers in the following four major dimensions:

  • Functional: defines the purpose
  • Experiential: takes into account the interactions
  • Symbolic: refers to the meaning
  • Economic: discusses the financial aspect
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She capitalizes on the major incompetence of businesses and how they fail to measure value for customers. This usually happens because they are either making use of unreliable and inaccurate metrics, or they have limited knowledge about how customers gain value and which value drivers are most important.

Then she suggests effective ways in which businesses can overcome the factors that inhibit the measuring of value for customers. These tips are:

  • Integrate quantitative research and locate the key drivers of value: She explains how the feedback and data alone cannot determine customer value. We need to make use of research tools and understanding the four dimensions.
  • Define a practical measurement per value driver: In this approach, the CX professional either needs to come up with new data sources and metrics or they can make use of existing data sources. Their aim should be to not pose a burden on customers.
  • Reckoning a competitive value gap: By acquiring competitive data CX analysts can focus on the key drivers and draw a comparison of their performance and their competitor’s performance.

5) Customers are Humans, not Consumers

Jim Tincher shares his unique and compelling perspective regarding the prevailing customer experience strategies opted by businesses. He begins his blog post with a riveting quote that read: “A consumer is a statistic. A customer is a person.” This quotation inspires his entire post as he staunchly believes that businesses should offer a more personalized experience rather than focusing on the profits.

In his blog post, he shares some insightful tips on how businesses can please their customers. These are as follows:

  • Being specific is not always the smartest option
    Sometimes choosing a highly specific term or label can get you in great trouble. So, maybe sometimes sits prudent to generalize.
  • Treat customers as normal people
    Customers are not some consumers who prey on your product. Treat them with empathy and be genuinely concerned for them.
  • Perspective is important
    It is very important to change the perspective of the audience based on the strategies we incorporate and the labels we choose.
  • Look out for unintentional bias
    Under this heading, Jim mentioned an example of how the term producer was replaced with a financial professional based on the connotation associated with the two.
  • Choose your words wisely
    Jim laid great emphasis on how we label, and term things, and people can change the entire narrative of the situation.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my favorite picks of Top CX Blog Posts for October 2020. For me, all of these posts were very fascinating and riveting. To see businesses, stay headstrong, and continuously improve to offer impeccable customer service and experience is truly amazing. Mostly all companies are being customer-centric and are trying to stay tenacious in these difficult times.

If you have a story or an experience to share with our audience, please feel free to contact us. Comment below or just the link of your blog post and we will feature you in our upcoming sessions.

Will meet you all next month with another enthralling batch of top CX posts. Till then stay healthy and safe!