CXREFRESH revolves around the notion of a “Customer Experience (CX) Mindset.” High-end hospitality companies have owned the CX space for years because they maintain this mindset that every touch point they have with a customer has to be excellent. They want customers to leave their hotel or restaurant feeling like “wow – that was an amazing thing that I just experienced.”

Here’s the secret though – high-end hospitality’s mindset can (and should) be applied to every industry – it’s the way of the future.

Insist on a great experience

We work with a variety of companies in many industries at CXREFRESH, and we’re seeing that the companies thriving in their given sectors are the ones who have a mindset that “our customer is someone who must have a great experience.”

Whether that somebody is visiting a retail bank; having a field service agent visit their home to perform utility service, or even if that somebody is a patient on medication for a rare disease that requires additional support services from a case manager. What’s it like to walk into that retail bank; to have that field service visit the home; to experience that specialized drug?

Treat every customer like a house guest

High-end hospitality companies approach their customers as guests. Every touch point needs to go really well on every channel – whether it’s online, in-person, or calling a call center.

If you think of your customers as guests, and make every interaction with them feel like they’re a guest coming into your home, your business will change dramatically.

Think through your touch points

Again, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Start by thinking about how your customer would feel interacting with your company at any given point in time. How does your customer feel when they call into your call center and your agents answer the phone? Does the agent answer the phone like the customer is a welcome guest in their home, or are they answering with one eye on the clock with an attitude of “I’ve got to get off the phone in 30 seconds – I can’t talk to anyone for too long or I’ll get fired”?

To create a Customer Experience (CX) Mindset across your organization, make yourself think like a high-end hospitality company – even if you’re not one – and you’ll have an incredible competitive advantage going forward.

Share:
Reading time: 1 min

Client satisfaction is more important than ever. No matter the industry, customers will make comments—online and off—that affect the future of your business. Entrepreneurs must prioritize Customer Success (CS) and teach teams to deliver exceptional service that builds meaningful relationships with clients.

Blount goes on to explain that this change puts, “advocacy, referrals, and personal recommendations on a new pedestal of importance.” Potential customers believe the things they hear and read about your business. Taking steps to ensure clients say GOOD things is imperative.

Here is how to deliberately create a customer-centric organization that builds long-lasting client relationships, and in turn, a solid reputation.

Make it easy to work with you

To create a successful CS organization, be nimble and flexible on processes and services. There will always be elements that an organization must keep intact to function, such as using a CRM system, maintaining your service level agreements and setting critical operational processes.  However, there are variables that you can augment to make working with your partners easier.

Adapting to a client’s workflow (when you can) helps to build rapport, trust and a strong partnership that can weather the unforeseen events that inevitably happen in a business relationship.

That said, don’t sacrifice your core values or overpromise—a common mistake entrepreneurs make, especially in the technology industry. It is not feasible to say “yes” to every one-off request. You can be easy to work with without changing your value proposition.

Be flexible internally, too

Don’t be afraid to try new things as you consider how to best support your customers. For example, we restructured our CS team to find what works best. First, we divided our team by type of client. As we grew, we moved to a regional structure in which team members support all clients within a particular region. This made it easier to build strong relationships because our team understands the nuances of each region.

Remove the element of fear

If your employees are disgruntled, customers feel it. All your employees, especially the CS team, need to feel invested in and secure. To do so, make it OK to fail. Tell your team (and show your team) that if they make a mistake, you will be there to help correct it and put processes in place to prevent it from happening again.

An example of this is when a new team member accidentally inserted the wrong creative for a campaign and we had to refund a client. These mistakes happen, but we can future proof this type of situation, change the process, or even build something into our User Interface to insure this mistake doesn’t happen again. People are going to make mistakes and that’s ok, but it’s important to use the opportunity as a great lesson learned, allowing us to teach these lessons to future employees. As a business owner, accept that mistakes are going to occur, especially if you are encouraging people to make bold, swift decisions.

Create a bond strong enough to withstand problems

Customer Success means owning the “sale after the sale,” and sometimes, that means conflict resolution. This could mean a client is unhappy because a campaign didn’t perform as expected or an ad didn’t render properly. But thanks to strong emotional connections with customers, they trust you to reconcile the issue.

To build a high level of trust, understand your clients’ goals. Ask them about their objectives and challenges. Understand the environment they operate in and how their success is evaluated.

Hire with care

Client Success requires the right fit for the right role. You cannot find success unless you have the right people. Be painstaking about your hiring. When hiring with CS in mind, look for people with exceptional communication skills and the ability to learn quickly and navigate conflict. These attributes, along with culture fit, matter more than industry experience. It is important to ask insightful questions during the interview process to ensure that the candidate is a good fit for your organization and you are a good fit for them! Be sure that you will be mutually able to achieve each other’s most important needs.

 

Share:
Reading time: 3 min

Customer Experience often lives within Marketing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two are always aligned. There is even more room for disparity when CX lives in departments other than Marketing. Today we’re talking about your advertising and marketing versus your customer experience, and the importance of making sure that the experience being advertised to your customers is consistent with what your customers actually experience when interacting with your brand.

When advertising doesn’t align with experience

A lot of money and resources are spent on marketing and advertising — creating wonderful visions within customers’ minds about what an experience with any given brand is going to feel like and look like.

We’ve all been to hotels, restaurants and other businesses that provide incredible pictures and a feeling on their website, but then when we get there it doesn’t quite feel the way it did online.

This leaves us feeling like “Wow – our expectations from this brand’s advertising is very different than what the actual experience is.”

That’s an extremely dangerous place to be

When the expectation set by marketing is incongruent with the actual experience, it will not only deter people from returning to your business, but it will also drive those people to potentially go online and share it with the world.

When we say that customer experience is all about consistency across every channel, that includes marketing and advertising. Don’t let your marketing team or advertising agency position you in a way that you can’t realistically deliver. Customers will not be happy, they won’t come back, and you won’t get the ROI from your Voice of Customer program.

Share:
Reading time: 1 min
external benchmarking, Business leaders, Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Do you ever wonder if you’re doing as well as your competitors? Of course you do! This is the familiar exercise of external benchmarking, or comparing key metrics of your business against others in your space.

Business leaders use this all the time as a way to set standards for performance evaluation on metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or overall satisfaction; and many look to external benchmarking results as key indicators for how to improve customer experience.

External benchmarking is insightful, of course, but have you ever considered utilizing the power of internal benchmarking?

In this edition of CXSecrets, we will explain how you can use insights from internally benchmarking against yourself within your own organization to quickly enhance your customer experience program.

Why internal benchmarking?

We all agree that external benchmarking is important, but we find that looking inward can be even more important to increasing your company’s customer experience.

Start with the best

To start looking inward, you must identify the best locations, work groups or entities within your organization that are delivering a fantastic customer experience.

If you have a large organization, we can guarantee that you’re going to have variability in customer experience between your very best locations and your worst locations.

Exemplify best practices

Let’s say you’re a hotel. Take a look at your best five locations.

Don’t just look at the customer experience survey feedback or social review feedback that you’re receiving. Go to each location. Observe what they’re doing. Interview the people who are delivering those fantastic experiences. Now that you’ve observed and listened, figure out a way to create processes and procedures inspired by the practices of your best locations that you can apply across your entire organization. It’s really that simple.

Now get out there and do it!

Internal benchmarking is an incredibly effective, low-hanging-fruit way to enhance the customer experience across the enterprise, and you can be incredibly successful in improving your customer experience program if you take this approach.

Share:
Reading time: 1 min
Voice of the Customer, Customer Experience, Customer Experience Management, Customer Experience

It’s the age of the customer and the world’s biggest brands are duking it out every day for a greater share of our hearts, minds, and wallets. Customers hold more decision power than ever in an era where information about any company’s products and services is just a mobile search away.

Where does the Voice of the Customer (VoC) land in the priorities for your company’s overall strategy? Forrester’s Customer Experience Council survey shows that 79% of all respondents believe that measuring customer experience is a top priority.

Market research shows that the Customer Experience Management (CEM) market is estimated to grow from USD 5.06 Billion in 2016 to USD 13.18 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 21.1%.” If you’re not investing in CX, it’s very likely that your competitors are.

The stage has been set – now let’s jump right into the top Reasons to Invest More in Customer Experience (CX):

1. The ROI customer experience

Building customer loyalty and increasing revenue go hand in hand. When compared with customers who had negative experiences, those who had positive experiences were more likely to recommend, trust, try new products or services, purchase more, and forgive your company after a mistake.

2. What gets measured gets done

Measuring customer feedback is the first step to measuring up to your customers’ expectations. Whether you’re an advanced scorecard-driven enterprise or just beginning to think about CX, the most important thing to do is to start actively listening and measuring your customers’ feedback.

3. Time to set new customer experience goals

CX is not as fluffy as it may seem. There is real science and methodology to measuring and improving customer satisfaction (CSAT). There are many metrics to consider as part of your VoC program, but Bain & Company’s Net Promoter System and Forrester’s Customer Experience Index stand out as the gold standard top-line measures in the CX industry.

4. Elevate your operational performance

Operational performance and CSAT are inextricably linked. For example, it’s no coincidence that airlines with the best CX ratings also boast the highest percentage of on-time arrivals. The best CEM programs cause cross-functional customer-centric collaboration, which requires your company to break down organizational silos to be more valuable, efficient, and enjoyable to your customers.

5. Put the customer at the center of every decision

Your customers see you as one whole cohesive brand, regardless of how complex your organization, systems, and processes might be. When your customer interacts with your company, they don’t care about any bureaucracy, different divisions and departments, or roles and hierarchies.

6. Plug-in and empower your employees

Ready to take your CX program to the next level? Tap into your company’s most valuable assets – your people. The more customer-facing employees with access to a real-time view of customer feedback, the more awareness, focus, and unity there is around your company’s CX mission and goals.

 

Share:
Reading time: 2 min
Page 3 of 13« First...234510...Last »