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Best of the Web, CX

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!

Customer Experience, Leadership

Top 5 CX Blog Posts from July 2020

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So here we are again; in the middle of a new month, ready to evaluate the best customer service blog posts available on the internet. In the quarantine edition of this article, I will entertain you with successful customer experiences stories and the strategies appointed by major companies to modernize and overhaul their online customer service.

Like June’s post for the series, I have garnered the top five articles and provided a succinct edition of them so you can get a clear concept of what those blog posts pertain to. As July was another month that descended into a quarantine timeline, the patterns of customer service had its ups and downs. Let’s move forward to gander at the brief analysis of the top 5 CX blog posts in July 2020!

If you want to check out the whole version, click on the links and you will be directed to the official post.

1.   How Can You Resolve Customer Complaints?

Gregory Ciotti rightly pointed out in his blog post how we can establish a stronger relationship with the customers after we have resolved their issues or complaints. This ignites their faith in the employees and they can assess the employees’ attitude towards addressing their respective concerns.

Complaints usually arise because the customer’s expectations are not met by what you deliver. Sometimes, their inaccurate assumptions supersede their opinion of you and they are not satiated by your work performance. You may also leave room for accepting any mistake or inadvertent display of incompetence at your part.

However, Gregory explicitly discussed ways in which you could handle such customer complaints and optimize your work performance and feedback to maximize the customer’s utility. The task may seem debilitating but if you follow his guidelines, you are good to go!

Engage in a detailed conversation to find out where the problem stemmed from and ask inquisitive questions to learn more about the issue. It is imperative to identify the kind of customer you are handling, as this will give you a lucid insight into how to proceed with the matter.

He also laid great emphasis on how you should resolve the matter at your earliest convenience, rather than make it a priority. He explained how you can deal with any negative feedback and criticism regarding your response by remaining steadfast and polite.

This post guides you and educates you regarding handling customer complaints, so if any bad customer experience is hovering over you, make sure your read this post and find a way to salvage your relationship with the customer. Good Luck!

2.   Are you Oblivious to Terrible Customer Experience as an Executive?

Faith Adams is a senior analyst who spoke the heart out of customers who believed that the executives and workers would never relate to bad customer experiences. The focal concept of her post was the disconnect witnessed between the customer’s expectations and the ineptness of employees.

She explained her terrible experience with online appliance purchases. It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the market dynamics globally and it will take time to adjust with this “first-time” experience. However, corporations should make a sincere effort to cater to the customer’s needs.

She illustrated how her items were never shipped and delivered, she did not receive a refund and the customer service proved to be inadequate and incompetent. She responded to many surveys and questionnaires; however, her efforts and struggles were all vain.

This experience instigated a desire in her; to change the customer service system. She questioned the thinking of executives and their perspective if they ever had to witness such an awful experience. And then she was determined to empower the customers and hold employees accountable for any negligence on their behalf.

She invited executives from all companies and recorded their responses to such customer service and their terrible experiences with CX. She believes it is time to evolve now and rise beyond the meaningless laurels of appreciation. I completely agree with her and suggest you all treat your customers with the utmost respect and regard.

3.   Rescuers at Your Doorsteps!

The prevailing global pandemic has halted many markets’ functionality and has compelled workers to shut themselves in their houses. The scare of COVID-19 has been surpassed by difficulties in continuing to work from home and earning a decent living just by a sitting confined in a room with hours eyes fixated on a laptop, hours on end.

Vasupradha Srinivasan brought the efforts and dedication of service providers to light. She praised their struggle to go out of the way and ensure the maximum satisfaction of their customers. They lubricated the process of working from home without any major inconvenience.

The service providers accommodated their agents, provided sufficient equipment, and granted their customers access to secure internet connections.

Head over to the official post to read more about the generosity and devotion to the work of these superstars!

4.   Can You as a Marketer, Read Customer’s Mind?

Have you noticed how the digital age of marketing has completely altered the way a marketer accesses information regarding their customers? Have you kept yourself updated with modern marketeering tactics that ensure the services you provide remain remarkable by following the digital traces that their customers leave behind? If no, then this blog post is a must-read for you!

Ultimately, it all comes down to the Customer Experience; whether you’ve kept them satisfied with your product upgrades or not, or whether they have had unsatisfactory experiences with other of their purchases.

To cater to such complications, Annette Franz encapsulated her insights on three vital components:

 Customers

Contrary to the popular belief, customer experience extends way beyond the negotiations between the brand organizations and the customers and just their professional relationship. To understand the perspective of your customers you must comprehend their type and develop a personalized relationship with them.

Technology

The new media age and advanced technology have made it easier for marketers to engage in a fruitful relationship with customers. The technology makes it effortless for the marketers to approach the right customers and the analytical tools can help you to make informed decisions regarding investing in customer service.

Data

To earn customers respect you must keep their expectations high and fulfill them. Make sure you have collected all essential statistical data that is obtained through thorough research, questionnaires, and surveys to deliver a personalized experience that cannot be matched by any of your rivals.

In today’s digital world, you are deprived of the live interaction with the customers but you can compensate for this by providing engaging and consistent customer service.

5.   Where Does CX Fall on Your Priority List?

If you can’t master the art of prioritization, you will probably fail at making any vital decision that pertains to the functioning and future of your company. If you want to play it safe and make fruitful bets on your customer service, make sure you are equipped with the apt skills. But all of this is futile if you don’t prioritize giving customers the best experience of their lives. Judy Weader has explicitly talked about this in her blog post.

She proposed three approaches to prioritize and improve the customer experience, which are:

Base decisions on facts and statistical pieces of evidence

Judy described how customer service’s relevant decisions are of grave concern and hold great importance in altering the paradigms of business activities. They have the power to change hefty amounts of revenue, provide job security to workers, and anticipate the future growth of the company. Wouldn’t executives and analysts like to have quantified data and research statistics to make an informed decision?

Two-by-Two Matrix

This concept illustrates the customer’s importance and importance to the business as two individual dimensions. She classified customer importance as pivotal drivers of customer experience, the number of customers facing a similar issue, and the impact of a common complaint affecting the use of product and service. This was positioned against importance to a business that referred to corporate decisions and strategies to improve revenue and minimize risks.

Unanimous Decisions

Judy raises an excellent point about how prioritization doesn’t happen to occur in a business rather it should be a set of choices made and conscious actions performed by the business team collectively. She shed light on how we need to prioritize aspects that are consistent and mutually agreed upon by the whole enterprise.

Conclusion

So, these were my favorite picks from the July’s pots regarding Customer Services and Customer Experience. I found all of these posts to be quite interesting and compelling. It is truly amazing how companies remain undeterred and resilient in these difficult times as we are caught unprepared by this Global Crisis. Comment below and share with us your favorite customer experiences. We would love to hear from you! Also, if you want your next post shared with our audience, just share the link below, in the comment section and we will feature you in our next session! Will meet you next month with some more amazing posts. Till then stay safe!