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:
- Outline what your digital customer experience goal is; what do you want to offer to customers and what do you expect in return?
- Empower and train your employees so they are equipped for what is coming for them.
- Incorporate innovative technologies and make use of the latest devices and software. Keep up with modern trends.
- Gather feedback, evaluate it, and then implement the necessary changes.
- Chatbots: this is an effective tool that adds a convenient touch in your interaction with the customer
- Make decisions that are backed up by data and thorough research of information obtained.
- It is pertinent to monitor the process and how it is progressing.
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!
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