Decoding the Customer

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer "Moments of Truth". Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares where the concept came from, and how you can use your understanding of Moments of Truth to improve customer journeys and foster loyalty. These moments can make or break a customer journey, so if you’ve heard this term used as a buzzword, but want to learn how to translate jargon into business results, then this episode is for you. Enjoy the best of the archive The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners. Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including VOC research and customer insight) or get in touch via email.                   

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the role of leading and lagging indicators in measuring customer experience. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares examples for how you can build a balanced view of customer experience with the right mix of CX metrics and measures. If you are wondering how to move beyond a one-metric view of CX, this episode is for you. Enjoy the best of the archive The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners. Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX measurement, insights, leadership alignment and CX change implementation) or get in touch via email.   

This CX Mini Masterclass covers the concept of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), how to calculate this, and why it’s an important metric for the CX profession. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, will help you understand how to leverage CLV to demonstrate the ROI of customer experience and foster buy-in for customer-centric strategy. Enjoy the best of the archive The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners. Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX strategy, leadership alignment and CX business case assessments) or get in touch via email. 

Customer experience expert and industry pioneer, Jeanne Bliss, shares insights about the origins of the CX industry as well as where it’s going. Jeanne, also known as the godmother of customer experience, provides listeners with a unique window into her career path from becoming one of the first Chief Customer Officers, to founding the CXPA and becoming a transformative force in field of CX. Jeanne and show host, Julia, discuss the enduring challenges facing all CX professionals and what's next on the horizon for customer experience in the years to come. If you’re looking for some insight, inspiration and guidance from one of the most prominent and respected voices in customer experience, then this episode is for you. Meet the godmother of customer experience Jeanne Bliss has always been an important figure in the CX industry. She is truly a pioneer in this field and has spent 35 years transforming companies, where she’s led organizations to earn 98% customer loyalty rates. Jeanne Bliss helps companies and people become the best version of themselves. She guides them to define, build and live the behaviors and actions that will fuse customers to them, and ultimately create deep and memorable relationships. Creating these deeper bonds has been Jeanne’s singular mission for over 35 years. First, as the inaugural Chief Customer Officer at Lands’ End, Coldwell Banker, Allstate and Microsoft Corporations. Then since 2002, guiding over 20,000 leaders around the world to understand that improving lives should be their most important strategic vision. She has shepherded a whole new breed of leader into the marketplace prepared to lead this change through her pioneering years as a practitioner, experience coaching global leaders, her four game-changing books, and as co-founder of the Customer Experience Professional’s association. If the proof is in the pudding, then there is certainly no doubt why Jeanne is one of the most prominent and respected thought leaders in the world of customer experience.   Jeanne Bliss, CCXP, CEO of Customerbliss If you'd like to learn more about Jeanne's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience and more. Her blog is second to none as a resource for aspiring CX professionals. Her books provide foundational knowledge about customer experience, and her podcast, The Human Duct Tape Show, is well worth a listen! From shoes to the C-suite Jeanne's father set the tone for her career in customer experience. As the owner of a local she store, he became not just a part of the community, but a part of people's lives. Putting shoes on children's feet and welcoming families into his store as though they were part of his family. When he retired, there was a line of customers 3 blocks long, waiting to thank him and wish him well. Customer experience was in Jeanne's bones and it encouraged her to ask questions about how brands can create those special experiences that fuse customers to them. What's your three blocks long? How will you be remembered? And that's really so much of what's missing for me as we get into customer experience. - Jeanne Bliss After acquiring degrees in marketing and apparel design, and working in the retail industry for several years, Jeanne's role at Lands' End really catapulted her into her career in customer experience. At Lands' End she worked closely with the CEO Gary Comber, whose enthusiastic support for focusing on the customer enabled Jeanne to learn, experiment and implement concepts that would become the core foundation of her "CX kit bag". Jeanne went on to lead customer experience efforts at organizations across a diverse array of industries. Each one presented unique challenges and opportunities, but she identified her gift for being the "glue" that unites teams around an end state.  Tips for aspiring CX professionals Jeanne recommends that those who aspire to a CX leadership role first foc...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains a simple yet effective CX tool for driving customer-centric change and ensuring that business decisions support an organization's overall CX goals. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the customer impact scorecard, how to build one and then how to use it to ensure that business changes work for - not against - CX. Julia also shares some news about a planned hiatus for the show. If you’re looking for a practical approach to help cross functional teams stay the course towards shared customer experience goals, then this episode is for you. A simple tool for an important job We've all seen it happen. Someone in IT, sales or operations makes a decision about a new product or a process with the best intentions, but the resulting change has a negative impact customer experience. When these things happen, it’s rarely out of malice. After all, no one (or at least we hope no one) goes around intentionally making customer experiences worse. More often than not, the team that implemented the change just wasn’t thinking about the downstream impact on customer experience. This is bound to happen, because honestly, most businesses are geared to solve business problems. The customer may be the guiding light for CX departments and some executives, but historically that hasn’t been true for all teams. Additionally, the more removed a team is from the customer, the more difficult it can be to draw a connection between day to day responsibilities and customer outcomes. In this scenario, a little assistance and structure are in order. And a customer impact scorecard is a great tool to for CX leaders to have in their toolbox. A customer impact scorecard is a rating or evaluation tool that prompts the user to assess how something – be that a change to people, processes or technology – will eventually turn into customer outcomes and if these outcomes are desirable, neutral or adverse. The idea being that a scorecard becomes a quick and easy check and balance to avoid decisions which might inadvertently damage customer experience. It encourages stakeholders to pause and make an honest assessment of the impact on customer experience by moving the thinking from inside out to outside in. Some organizations already have risk assessment scorecards in place for any business change or major investment, so why can’t the same assessment be done for customer experience? Surely customer experience is just as important to the long-term viability of any business. (And if you’d like to know a little bit more about helping your organization balance business risk and CX, then be sure to check out episode 36.) Building and using your customer impact scorecard Identify which attributes to evaluate - These could relate to your customer promise, CX principles or what is known to be important to the customer. It's helpful to identify 5-10 points to evaluate and phrase them as thought-starter questions. E.g. Will this change impact how easy it is for customers to do business with us?  Set your rating scale - The ratings for each attribute should range from positive to negative. A 3 or 5 point scoring scale usually works nicely. Regardless of which size scale is used, a negative impact should yield a negative score, a neutral impact should yield a score of zero, and a positive impact should yield a positive score. When the overall evaluation points for the business change are tallied, a positive rating indicates a change with a net positive impact on CX, while a net negative score should raise red flags about something that would potentially have an adverse effect on CX. Identify the right forum for implementation - Pinpoint the process for vetting or prioritizing new initiatives and see if a customer impact scorecard can be included in that process. Project management, finance and legal are some of the typical gatekeepers for business change.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores best practices for building a CX dashboard, a critically important tool for any CX program. Special guest and customer experience expert, Ben Motteram takes listeners through the benefits and uses of a CX dashboard, he provides insights on how to build one with the end user in mind,  and he also speaks about how best to distribute your dashboard once it’s up and running. If you’re looking for a one stop shop for expert guidance on why and how you should build a CX dashboard, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Ben Motteram is the Founder and Principal of Melbourne-based CX consulting company, CXpert. With 25+ years of experience working with some of Australia’s most recognizable brands, he has helped many organisations to become more human in the way they deal with customers and employees. Ben assists clients in areas such as CX strategy, Voice of the Customer, and employee engagement. In December 2018, Ben was the only Australian named on a list of global thought leaders to follow on Twitter and his blog has been independently recognized for its insight on all things CX. Ben Motteram This episode was Ben's third guest appearance on the show. If you missed his previous Mini Masterclass episodes on CX Strategy and the Foundations of a Great CX Program, be sure to listen to those. Best practices for building a CX Dashboard Check out Ben's tips for creating a CX Dashboard in this article he wrote for CX Accelerator. It covers many of the same insights shared with listeners in this episode. I'd encourage you to explore the other insights and thought leadership on CX Accelerator, as well as Ben's blog. Both resources are packed with all sorts of other great gems and CX thought leadership.  Want to keep learning about CX? Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including employee engagement, leadership alignment and CX strategy) or get in touch via email. 

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the importance of measuring digital customer experience and some of the most popular metrics for doing this. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, provides an overview of what metrics and measures are typically captured at various digital touchpoints, ideas on how to use these to understand the journey, and tips on where you might be able to find this data within your organization. If you’re looking for some ideas about how to leverage digital experience metrics and measures to better understand the holistic customer journey, then this episode is for you. The importance of measuring digital customer experience So many experiences now happen in the digital realm. Whether that's through a website, an app or via social media, most customer journeys have become at least somewhat digitized. And it’s probably safe to say this is becoming an even bigger trend with each passing year. Within that context, CX professionals need to understand how to integrate an understanding of experiences through digital touchpoints into the larger understanding of the overall customer journey. These metrics for digital experiences aren’t new, most of them have been around for a while, often used by digital operations, marketing or user experience teams, but it’s high time that CX professionals harness them as well. There are a LOT digital experience metrics. It would be impossible to cover all of them in a Mini Masterclass. The following includes a curated selection from different digital touchpoints based on both their prevalence and usefulness in the CX context.  Digital footfall Footfall and conversion can be difficult to track for traditional in-person experiences. That's definitely not the case online. From a web context, the key customer high level engagement measures would be page views, session duration and bounce rate. A bounce is any visitor who lands on a page, but doesn’t take any action. (Note: it’s not always a bad thing). Websites and apps can also track detailed behavior flows, or how customers navigate the different pages or actions. These measures are basically the digital equivalent of footfall and conversion, but the context of digital enables CX professionals to get so much more data about how consumers act and what interests them. Often this data can be tracked back to specific users as a way of measuring digital customer experiences over time. Because many of these measures relate back to the sales funnel, marketing teams are a helpful first port of call if you are looking for website experience data in your organization. Email is still relevant CX professionals should also stay abreast of email marketing metrics, because this touchpoint still plays an important role in customer experience, especially if one is trying to stitch together an entire journey including inbound and outbound communication.  Some of the most popular measures include, open rate, which indicates if people are reading the message, unsubscribe rate, sharing or forwarding rate and the click through rate. This last measure highlights if customers are engaging with any calls-to-action within the message. Some marketing teams put together timelines of customer engagement across email, text, call and other notifications, which can be very helpful for building a comprehensive customer journey. Of these, the digital touchpoints should yield the most readily available data about engagement. Remember that just because someone received a communication doesn’t always mean they engage with it, but it’s helpful for CX professionals to understand these points of interaction so they can be brought into the bigger picture. Social media Email can feel old school these days, but it's undeniable that social media is on the rise as a part of many customer's digital journeys. The great news is that social media has opened up a whole new world opportunities for measuring digital customer experience...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the importance of establishing empathy for the customer among all employees and 3 practical ways CX professionals can help teams do this. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, covers 3 tried-and-true empathy building activities that you can use with nearly any team from service reps to the c-suite. If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration on how to help team members at all levels foster empathy and get in touch with the needs of the customer, then this episode is for you. Establish a culture of empathy There is a lot of focus on building empathy with customer-facing teams. This makes sense, but we can’t forget that customer-centric culture is about rallying an entire organization around the customer, not just a few select teams. It's great if employees on the front lines can connect with others, remain in touch with the context of customers' lives and demonstrate this through their actions. But to maximize the impact of customer-centric culture, those team members who are defining experiences, building platforms or making strategic decisions also need to be able to relate to the customer. CX professionals need to have a multi-pronged approach to foster empathy. The following 3 activities have been curated with a wide ranging audience in mind. Empathy is a difficult thing to "teach", so these activities are designed to gently guide people to the "ah-ha" moment where they see this for themselves. Once team members connect with what it means to feel empathy towards another, the next step is to help them apply this to the context of customers and then flex and train this muscle so they know how to use it. Activity #1: time traveler This activity involves explaining a modern object, like a TV, car or cell phone to someone who lived 200 years ago (or 500 years ago or who comes from a different planet). The group should be divided into teams of two. One team member role plays the modern day person describing the object, while the other person asks clarifying questions based on the perspective of someone who lived 200 years ago. After a few minutes, ask them to swap roles and repeat the conversation about a different object. To wrap up, facilitate a brief group discussion, asking the participants how it felt to put themselves in the shoes of someone who lived so long ago, as well as what it was like trying to explain a normal everyday object to a person who has a completely different context for the world. The idea is to get participants thinking about context of others and what it means to relate to someone with a different perspective on life. During your debrief discussion, connect the activity back to your customer base by asking participants what disconnects might exist between their frame of reference and that of your typical customer. This activity is quick and easy. It's a fun icebreaker and can sow the seeds that foster empathy or reinforce the right empathetic mindset. Activity #2: persona scenarios This activity requires a little bit of preparation, but it’s totally worth it. It’s another great activity for a broad group of participants, and works well for a team offsite or another setting where facilitators have the luxury of time. To prepare, establish several customer personas (if you’re unsure about what customer personas are, be sure to check out episode 40). Next, identify a typical job to be done or customer journey for each persona and a possible hurdle the customer might face. To facilitate the activity, assemble your group of participants and divide them into teams of 4-5 people. Provide each team with an example persona and scenario. Ask one person within each team to assume the role of the persona. This team member should introduce themselves as the persona and explain their customer journey, as well as the scenario information that you've provided. Their team has the opportunity to ask questions and get to know the fictitious e...

This CX Mini Masterclass covers a roundup of the key insights on CX metrics from previous episodes. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, covers everything from the basic definitions of the most popular metrics to the strategies for putting these to use, plus a step by step guide on where you can go to learn more. Customer experience metrics have always been a hot topic in the industry, so this episode is for new CXers and seasoned experts alike. If you’re interested in an expert-curated guide to customer experience metrics and their role in CX management, then this episode is for you. THE hot topic If you get a group of CX professionals together, at some point the conversation will turn to metrics and measures. It’s inevitable. Largely because metrics and measures are the core of how CX teams validate insights, track their progress, and prove their worth the business. So it should come as no surprise that this is a keen area of interest for continued learning and that conversations on the pros and cons of different metrics have been known to stir up emotions. Given the importance of CX metrics, the topic has been covered quite extensively on the podcast. At least 7 Mini Masterclass episodes to date have featured topics related to CX metric. It was high time for a round up guide to customer experience metrics, and no better way to mark the milestone of the 85th episode.  Kicking off the guide to customer experience metrics In episode 28, guest expert, CX thought leader and former CEO of the CXPA, Diane Magers, outlines the difference between metrics, measure and business value. These are terms that many CX professionals use interchangeably, but it’s important to clarify what these are and how they apply to customer experience management. No guide to customer experience metrics would be complete without baseline definitions of the key terms. Diane broke down her definitions of each: Measures– anything you can count (e.g. number of clients that come into your store, call length, frequency of purchase) Metrics– outcomes of something that’s happened, including a customer’s perception of those outcomes (e.g. customer satisfaction, customer effort score) Value– the financial levers that you can pull in an organization and/or the resulting financial impact (e.g. cost to serve, revenue, expense, profit per customer) For more on this, be sure to check out episode 28. Understanding the "Big 3" metrics Episode 31 explored 3 of the most common CX metrics out there, Customer Satisfaction or CSAT, Net Promoter Score, otherwise known as NPS and a newer kid on the block Customer Effort Score. Each one has a unique methodology and brings as different type of insights to the table. Be sure to listen to episode 31 if you want an overview of the 3 juggernaut metrics of the CX world. Episode 33 was a special deep dive into the pros and cons of Net Promoter Score, as it is undoubtedly the most controversial metric of the bunch. NPS was developed by Fred Reicheld, a notable thought leader and management consultant. The metric was introduced to the world through a Harvard Business Review article, so it caught the attention of executives and helped shine the spotlight on CX, but many CX professionals now feel increasingly shackled to a metric that doesn’t explain the full picture of customer experience, which by the way – no single metric will ever be able to do in isolation. There are many well documented issues with the way that NPS is measured and used. My professional opinion is that NPS has its place as a CX metric, but only in the right context. It is better suited as a dipstick on customer perceptions of a brand across their entire journey and not as performance measure for customer-facing teams. That recommendation only stands if the right methodology is used, which it’s often not. Check out episode 33 for more details. Interpreting metrics One metric used in isolation won’t provide the full pi...

This CX Mini Masterclass comes directly from a listener request about how organizations can ensure that CX is protected, even as customers and companies move to more reliance on technology. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the relationship between customer experience and technology, and 3 ways to maintain the integrity of CX amid a changing landscape. If you’re interested in some practical actions that you can take to ensure great customer experience even as the consumer marketplace becomes more digitized and automated, then this episode is for you. Balancing customer experience and technology The rise of digital technology has brought about an explosion of customer touchpoints. It used to be that if a customer wanted to do their banking, they had to go into a branch, but that’s definitely no longer the case. Now customers have their choice of online banking, app banking, banking through a messenger service, calling a contact center, engaging with their bank on social media or going into the branch. That’s a LOT of different touchpoints, and most of them are powered by tech. At the same time, companies have integrated technology solutions behind the scenes to improve speed, accuracy and efficiency. If you were to go behind the scenes of pretty much any experience, you’re guaranteed to see a mix of people, processes and technology fueling experiences. The role of technology is only set to grow as applications for things like artificial intelligence become more commonplace. This means that CX professionals need to help their organizations keep the heart and soul of experiences, even as touchpoints and the spaghetti wire behind those touchpoints continues to evolve. This is easier said than done, but there are several practical approaches that CX professionals can use.  1. Establish your experience principles A customer promise and experience principles can help foster consistency for experiences throughout the journey, regardless of which touchpoint a customer engages with. Episode 69, explored both the customer promise and experience principles. Essentially, a customer promise is a clear definition of what customers can expect and also how teams should deliver experiences. It’s a high-level statement, or a Northstar of what experiences should ideally look like. The promise can be backed up with more granular or prescriptive experience principles, which outline the “how-to” details behind the promise. An example of an experience principle would be “each customer will walk away from their experience with us knowing we value their business” or “we commit to providing a safe and respectful environment for customers”. These statements are applicable to nearly any touchpoint, and they speak to outcomes or results, so while the approach might be slightly different for a safe and respectful environment in a store vs. online, the way that the customer feels after that interaction should be the same. Experience principles can be a helpful framework for teams to evaluate experiences, reality-check the journey across touchpoints and assess the relationship between customer experience and technology. If an experience isn’t yielding outcomes that are consistent with the promise, that's a red flag. 2. Test the user experience This may sound obvious, but in their haste to launch a new system or platform, it can be tempting for teams to skip the step of testing and refining the user experience. Resist this temptation at all costs. Before any experience is launched into the customer journey, it should be vetted and tested, ideally against experience principles and some sort of customer impact scorecard. An experience should be refined until it receives a passing grade and only then, "released in the wild". Once an experience is live in the customer journey, the monitoring shouldn't stop. It’s important to keep tabs on how customers are responding and to keep refining things.

Customer experience transformation expert and Director of Experience Analytics at Magellan Health, Jennifer Wright, shares insights on CX in the age of Covid 19 and beyond. Jennifer leverages her knowledge of consumer behavior and experience as a CX leader across multiple sectors to provide insights about how customer experience is changing in response to the current global health pandemic. Jennifer and show host, Julia, discuss what “good” customer experience looks like these days, some examples of organizations that have been able to quickly pivot, and how the pandemic may change the way organizations measure and manage CX. If you’re looking for insight about Covid 19 and customer experience, and what you can do to help your organization prepare for CX management in the “new normal”, then this episode is for you. Expert insights Jennifer Wright is a customer experience transformation expert who designs and grows CX capabilities that generate actionable insights for business leaders. Through her experience building multiple CX capabilities across both the public and private sectors, she has developed a deep understanding of the common challenges faced when creating a superior customer experience. Jennifer delivers innovative solutions to these challenges by leveraging cross-industry knowledge and service design methods. Jennifer is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and holds a doctorate in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Her work in the field of customer experience spans multiple industries. Jennifer has worked in the financial services sector, helping writers, data scientists and psychologists to leverage behavioral economics or 'nudge' techniques to help homeowners through the post-mortgage crisis period in keeping their homes. She served as the Branch chief of business analytics at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, building and leading the Voice of the Customer (VoC) team within this US Federal government agency. And most recently she’s worked at Magellan Health where she’s led the customer analytics function for this managed healthcare company. Jennifer Wright, Phd, CCXP If you'd like to learn more about Jennifer's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience and more. Covid 19 and customer experience Covid-19 has changed everything. In a mater of a few short weeks, this health pandemic has brought entire sectors of the economy to a standstill, closed schools, forced a good chunk of the world’s population into some form of lockdown, and brought the term “social distancing” to the forefront of everyone’s mind. It has left a lot of CX professionals wondering what's next. Jennifer anticipates that the next 1-2 years will be very fluid. We've seen a dramatic swing to remote and digital experiences, but the impact will be different for various industries. Within healthcare, the overnight transition to telehealth has been one of the biggest changes, but it's just one of many experiences that has moved from the in-person to the digital realm. Jennifer points out that once people get used to the convenience and safety factor, these changes may remain permanent. Experiences that can't be completely moved to the virtual space, such as dining out or going to the grocery store, have been significantly impacted, and Jennifer suspects there will be some lingering changes in consumer preferences, even after the Plexiglas barriers are removed. She anticipates that consumers will be hesitant about things like touching surfaces for some time. This will fundamentally alter the sensory aspect of physical customer experiences and attitudes towards these interactions. Time will tell if these attitudes and preferences become permanent. Honestly, it's going to be a tough call for probably the next year to two years. We're going to see a lot of different impacts and probably differences by sectors. ...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer touchpoint maps, how these differ from journey maps, and their place in the CX professional's toolbox. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, breaks down what a touchpoint map is (and is not) and this tool's role in helping teams build and manage customer experiences. If you’re interested in learning about touchpoint maps, what they're used for, and tips on how to build one, then this episode is for you. The #1 misused term in CX Touchpoint maps are often confused with journey maps, much to the frustration of CX professionals. In fact, the word "touchpoint" is so frequently misused, that many CX professionals have an aversion to it all together. That said, a good customer touchpoint map can serve an important purpose. These maps help teams understand how a customer interacts with a brand. They can be useful compliments to journey maps, as touchpoint maps can serve as a the link between the outward-looking perspective of the journey map and the inward-looking perspective of a process map or service blueprint. First off, it's important to understand the concept of a customer touchpoint, and how this differs from a customer experience. Touchpoints are the conduits for experiences throughout the journey. They are the channel or mode of interaction, not the interaction itself. For example if a customer is on a journey to get medical treatment and one of the experiences is calling their health insurance company to check on the status of a claim, the experience is calling in, and the touchpoint would be call center. To take things a step further, one could break down the specific touchpoint components within the call center like the IVR system, the agent and maybe even the phone connection itself. These would also be considered touchpoints. Touchpoint map vs. Journey map A customer journey is the series of events or experiences that a customer has as they are trying to fulfill some need in their life. Sometimes this need is referred to as a “job to be done”. A Journey map is the visual representation of this series of experiences, presented from the customer’s point of view. (If you are at all unsure about the definition of the terms touchpoint, experience or journey map, be sure to check out episodes 14, 15 and 16, which cover these concepts in detail.) Example Journey map (Source: Jim Tincher) A touchpoint map is a visual representation of the channels of interaction that a customer interfaces with throughout their journey. To understand the touchpoints you have to first understand the journey. And the touchpoint map is the representation of a customer persona’s journey, not all the possible touchpoint possibilities out there (which would be more of a touchpoint matrix). It’s also not the touchpoints that you want the customer to interface with (which would probably be considered a touchpoint design). Example touchpoint map (Source: Synegys) It's easiest to think about the touch point map as a byproduct of the customer journey map. A team will be best-positioned to build a touchpoint map only after they've crafted their journey map. Once the journey map is built, a team can then create an overlay of the touchpoints that a customer interacts with, delving into deeper levels of detail as needed.  When considering possible touchpoints, keep in mind that customer journeys don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in the real world and so they are rarely isolated to interactions with just one brand. As a result, you may want to include touchpoints that aren’t in your control. In the example of the call to the health insurance company, the customer's phone is an important touchpoint in the journey, even though that isn’t something that the health insurance provider can control. Putting your touchpoint map to use Touchpoint maps are surprisingly versatile tools, though most frequently when used in conjunction with other CX artifacts like journey maps and...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the benefits of interviews as an effective approach to gain customer insight. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum shares when and where this Voice of Customer (VOC) strategy can be most useful, best practices for conducting customer interviews and 5 practical tips for designing an interview research initiative. If you’re looking for some tangible advice about how to leverage interviews to better understand your customers, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP If you'd like to hear more of Stephanie's insights on the show, be sure to check out her previous episodes. In episode 45 Stephanie re-framed how organizations should think of customers and shared practical ideas on how to do this. In episode 50, Stephanie dove into her area of expertise and covered trends with how CX is taking hold in government organizations. And in episode 55, she provided a step-by-step guide to CEOs on how to lead customer-centric change. In episode 63 she explored some of the most pervasive missteps organizations make with their CX metrics and how to avoid these. Many ways to gain customer insight There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer for Voice of Customer. Industries and journeys are different, so each organization needs to craft its own best strategy for understanding customers and their needs. When planning your voice of customer approach, there are many different methodologies to choose from. Episode 79 covered 3 lesser known methodologies, but surveys, focus groups and interviews still rein supreme as the dominant research approaches. And with good reason. If done correctly, they can yield amazing insights. Customer surveys are especially popular for collecting customer experience feedback in the B2C world. But in B2B, where human-to-human, long-term relationships and RFPs make or break the journey, collecting feedback sometimes needs to take on a more human touch to have a meaningful impact. In this case, Stephanie advocates for a client interview program as a great way to gain customer insight. Understanding the methodology Client interviews are just that, face-to-face or telephone conversations with a selected group sample of clients or customers. Interviews are more flexible than surveys. Often an interviewer will come prepared with a set of planned, yet adaptable, questions about the customer or client's business and their experience with the brand. The objective of the conversation is to glean insight about client needs, how the client views the business relationship and how the supplier organization's products or services help address these business challenges. The selection of clients should be guided by the objectives of the research. If the research is designed to gain customer insight across the entire portfolio of customers, the sample should be reasonably representative of this. If the objective is to dive into the needs of a specific customer segment or product opportunity, the sample should be tailored accordingly.  5 expert tips for setting up an interview program Stephanie provided 5 recommendations for any CX team that is looking to integrate client interviews into their Voice of Customer research program: An impartial,

Seasoned CX leader and Customer Experience Design Partner with Verizon Business Group, Michelle Morris, shares insights from her rich and varied career in customer experience. Michelle helped shape one of the earliest formalized customer experience organizations in corporate America and has led CX teams at global brands from across a diverse array of industries. Michelle and show host, Julia, dive into the critical success factors for making CX change “stick”, approaches for calculating the ROI of CX including what Michelle calls the “4-R model”, and some ideas for those who are interested in pursuing a career in CX.  If you’re looking for some insight, inspiration and practical advice from an acclaimed CX leader who has been working in this field about as long as anyone can say they have, then this episode is for you. Expert insights Michelle is a Customer Experience Design Partner with Verizon Business Group.  In this role, she helps Verizon's business customers create better customer experiences for their customers. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) as well as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB). Prior to joining Verizon, she led multiple CX organizations and has received many awards for her work in CX, including the esteemed CX Impact Award for Outstanding Practitioner in 2014, as well as the CX Innovation Award for her unique work titled, Pay It Forward – Improvements in CX through Employee Engagement. Her work has been cited in more than 20 industry publications including a featured case study by Forrester, "The CX Transformation Success Secrets of Crowe", May 22, 2019. Michelle is currently serving as a board member for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) board since January of 2020. Although her passion today is in Customer Experience, her roots as a Chemical Engineer with 6 patents adds innovation, creativity and passion to her work. Michelle Morris, CCXP Michelle has been working in CX roles just about as long as anyone can say that they have. She established the CX organization at the laser printing and imaging company Lexmark in 2008, and went on to do award winning work at the accounting firm Crowe before moving to Verizon. It's a pleasure to hear insights from someone who has been leading formalized CX teams for as long as Michelle has. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience, the CXPA, and much more. The key to customer-centric transformation During her career, Michelle has seen the field of CX evolve, but the foundational critical success factors for meaningful CX change have remained a constant. CX transformation is still a lengthy process for most large or established businesses, and Michelle cited leadership support as one of three critically important components for the success of customer-centric transformation. If your CEO, your board or the leadership of your company isn't really investing and caring about customer experience, then you're beating your head against a wall because you're not going to make a lot of progress. Michelle added that it's possible to win over the hearts and minds of senior leaders, but that it can be incredibly time consuming. If embarking on a campaign to win hearts and minds, CX leaders need to bring in solid change management principles and understand what motivates leaders. Also, don't underestimate the power of a little peer pressure to help rally unified support. Michelle highlighted grassroots support for CX as a second key success factor. Everyone in the organization needs to believe in the mission that the organization is there to create great experiences for customers. Communication and employee education can be effective ways to get the message across, but there should also be mechanisms to engage employees and reinforce the right behaviors. While at Crowe,

This CX Mini Masterclass explores 3 low-cost unique customer experience research methodologies. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the benefits of expanding VOC efforts beyond the survey and focus group, several ways you can do this, and how to deal with potential push back around sample size. If you’re interested in learning about 3 simple VOC approaches that will help you gain new insight into the lives and experiences of your customers, then this episode is for you. Unique customer experience research Surveys and focus groups have long reigned supreme as the most popular Voice of Customer (VOC) approaches. And with good reason. If done correctly, they can yield valuable insights about customer experience. But, they have some limitations. They can be expensive and time consuming to facilitate. Both rely on customers reporting on what the think they do (which may differ from what they actually do). Surveys allow researchers to engage a large number of customers, but are always subject to bias and may yield limited insights. Focus groups provide a deeper look, but a group setting can impact what participants say. No VOC methodology is perfect, and each one yields unique customer experience insights. That's why it's important to have a multifaceted approach that utilizes several different tactics. Some of the lesser-known methodologies are easy, low-cost, and great complements to the traditional VOC favorites.  Fly on the wall observations - Understand your objectives, grab a clipboard, find a discrete spot and just absorb. This is particularly helpful for filling in blindspots along the customer journey that don’t leave a data trail (e.g. retail before the point of purchase, a customer waiting area). It's a great starting point for VOC research, as it normally generates additional questions that can be included in supplementary research. Job shadowing or "day in the life of" - A researcher spends time with a research subject while they do a particular task or just go about their day. The researcher should have clear direction on the objectives, but also the latitude to ask questions and engage with the research subject. This approach often yields surprising insights about things the research team never expected. It can be particularly useful in a B2B setting, where customers sometimes view their suppliers as partners and might be open to job shadowing as a way of helping suppliers gain insights that can improve products and services. Journaling - this last approach is all about unleashing the customer with a mandate to record their actions, thoughts, feelings, emotions or observations on a specific topic. It's a great window into customers' lives and what they actually do. The age of smartphones opens up many options to make journaling easier for researchers and participants. Instead of logging actions in a physical journal, participants can take photos, screen grabs or video testimonials about a certain activity related to the area of research interest. Commitment to participation is key, so this might be a place where it's appropriate to use incentives or engage with a professional panel of research subjects. Dealing with push back on sample size When exploring these unique customer experience research approaches, it's not uncommon to get questions about sample size. Anyone who's taken a stats course knows that is important when you are looking at things like probability and predictive modeling. On the spectrum of Voice of Customer methodologies, there is narrow-but-deep at the one end and wide- but-shallow at the other. A massive survey, for example, would be wide-but-shallow. There is the opportunity to reach a larger sample size, but limitations in the depth of perspective about a customer's life. On the other hand, something like a Day in the Life Of study is narrow but deep. It’s obviously not feasible to shadow thousands of customers,

This CX Mini Masterclass explains CX maturity models, what they are and how to leverage them. As organizations work towards their customer-centric objectives, they need to find ways of measuring, evaluating and charting their progress. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, demystifies CX maturity and shares practical ideas for how CX maturity models can be used by CX professional to help drive change. If you’re interested in learning more about a tool that is fundamental to customer-centric evolution and goes straight to the heart of the CX profession, then this episode is for you. Why CX Maturity is matters Truth be told, when the Age of the Customer arrived, most established businesses were ill-prepared. They were inward-looking and had been set up to solve business problems, not customer problems. The process for companies to change, adapt with the times and become customer-centric was just that, a process. And generally speaking, the larger the business, the longer that tends to take. There isn’t a cut and paste solution for customer-centric transformation. This will be a unique journey for each organization, but if a leadership team wants to achieve a particular goal, it's helpful to understand where things are and the work that awaits them to get to where they want to go. CX Maturity models help business leaders and CX teams understand the typical mileposts along the way. Demystifying the models As more and more businesses began responding to the new market conditions of the Age of the Customer, CX professionals started to see patterns and similarities within these business transformations, which gave rise to the development of CX maturity models. These models normally track the different phases of CX evolution from outright denial of customer experience as a strategic imperative to a fully integrated customer-centric business utopia. Some of the most popular models out there have been developed by the likes of the Temkin Group, Forrester, Gartner and other big name research houses. Many of the popular models are conceptually similar and vary mostly in their terminology. The magic is in how you use the model, not which one you pick. Bruce Temkin's CX maturity model is one of the most popular and a great example How to use CX maturity models A CX maturity model might sound like some sort of convoluted strategic thing at first, but it’s actually incredibly useful as a means to move from goals to action. CX diagnostic - evaluate where your organization stands in terms of its CX evolution. Use this as a conversation starter with leadership. Understand your strengths (and weaknesses) - most CX maturity models assess different competencies. CX leaders can use this level of granularity to evaluate what might be holding them back from progressing towards their customer-centric goals. Chart the course - There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for customer-centric evolution, but understanding the common competencies and milestones helps CX leaders manage expectations within their organization and plan for the big chunks of CX work.  Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX strategy, voice of customer and culture change) or get in touch via email. 

This CX Mini Masterclass explores how organizations can leverage social media as a rich source of Voice of Customer (VOC) insight. It can be frustrating for brands to have their journey pain points laid bare for the entire internet to see, but social media platforms also provide a unique window into the priorities, motivations and attitudes of customers. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares the top 3 ways that CX teams can tap into social media to learn about customers' wants and needs. If you’re looking for tips and ideas on how to turn a thorn in the side of the business into a fountain of rich VOC insight, then this episode is for you. Social media is here to stay Love it or hate it, social media is part of the fabric of our modern world, and it is here to stay. The platforms have evolved over time, their popularity ebbing and flowing, but the overall trend of global social media usage has steadily moved in one direction, and that’s up

This CX Mini Masterclass looks at the practical realities of managing the customer journey in time of crisis. Interactions during a crisis can be the ultimate moment of truth for the customer, but experiences will only strengthen loyalty if brands have made appropriate adjustments to the journey. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explores how the customer’s perspective changes and what businesses need to do in response. If you’re looking for insight, guidance and practical ideas on how to modify customer experience in times of unprecedented uncertainty, then this episode is for you. CX in times of crisis The world is currently facing an unprecedented global health crisis in the form of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Over the course of the last week, the spread of this virus has skyrocketed in Europe and the US. It’s become a global pandemic, travel restrictions have been put in place, industries such as the travel sector have had the rug pulled out from under them, global stock markets have tanked and businesses are scrambling to respond. Some businesses face total shutdown during government lock-down, but many others such as pharmacies, retailers and grocery stores are still providing essential services. B2B services provides are pivoting to change how they support customers whose workforce is now either operating on reduced capacity or working from home. This crisis will (hopefully) pass, but one thing is guaranteed, this time of uncertainty is not the first and it won't be the last. CX leaders and practitioners need to be prepared to jump in and redirect customer journey management when the unexpected happens. Adjusting customer journey management Interactions in times like these can be the ultimate moment of truth for a customer. It’s an opportunity for brands to demonstrate their loyalty to the customer in a time of need, but it’s also a moment when the relationship is especially susceptible to damage. The key to success is for brands to listen and respond quickly. There will likely be aspects of the customer journey that need immediate attention and change. Regardless of the nature of the crisis at hand, there are several aspects of CX management that are especially important. CX leaders should consider these when deciding how to guide changes to customer journey management. Changing priorities When a "new normal" arrives, it brings with it a whole new set of needs and concerns. CX leaders need to understand how customer perspectives and priorities have changed. Something that might not have mattered yesterday is now important, and what was top-of-mind yesterday is now on the back burner. Changing priorities bring about a heightened awareness both in terms of individual behavior and what consumers expect of others. In the case of the coronavirus, health hygiene has been thrust to the front of everyone's minds. Consumers expect brands to provide experiences in the safest context possible, and they are suddenly scrutinizing the details of cleanliness. Brands need to respond to this new expectation by altering their actions and communication with customers. Today it's cleanliness, but the next crisis might bring about a different set of priorities, concerns and expectations. Brands need to be dialed into Voice of Customer Data so they can stay attune to these changes as they happen and modify the journey appropriately. The ripple effect of new needs Brands should also consider how customers’ need have changed, and what this means for the customer journey they deliver. It might be helpful to ask: what aspects of customers' lives are they leaning on more now than they used to before? How does this impact the customer experience we deliver? Taking another example from the current coronavirus crisis, more customers are practicing "social distancing" and living their lives from within the confines of their home. This means they are relying heavily on remote channels of interac...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the concept of the Voice of Customer (VOC) Feedback Loop and why this is important for customer journey optimization. It's one thing to map the customer journey, it's another to improve customer experiences on an ongoing basis. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, defines the VOC Feedback Loop and shares some practical tips for implementing a framework for continual journey optimization. If you’re looking for guidance on how to move journey management from haphazard to gold standard, then this episode is for you. A framework for customer journey optimization As an organization progresses up the CX maturity curve and customer experience moves from being a “project” to a permanent fixture within the way of doing business, a key component is establishing a mechanism for ongoing management and improvement of the customer journey. This framework is known as the VOC feedback loop (also sometimes called an insights-to action feedback loop or customer journey optimization). The underlying idea is that organizations must have an ongoing, sustainable process for unearthing insights about where to improve the journey, prioritizing solutions, implementing change and measuring the impact. This process is continual. As journey improvements are implemented, it creates an opportunity for measuring results and listening to how customers respond. This in turn creates insights that might lead to future improvements, hence the term "feedback loop" and not "improvement process". The VOC Feedback Loop is not to be confused with Closed Loop Feedback, which is the process of getting back to a customer, after they’ve provided feedback about their experience. For more detail on Closed Loop Feedback, be sure to check out episode 42.  Why this matters When an organization launches a customer insights initiative or maps the journey for the first time, this undoubtedly highlights opportunities to improve experiences. The natural reaction is for the organization to establish a project or a task force to identify, prioritize and implement possible solutions. This can be an effective way to raise the profile of the customer journey, but the challenge with ongoing sustainability is twofold. First, the list of identified improvements is often overwhelmingly long, so much so that it’s not really suitable for a 3, 6, 9 maybe even an 18-month project. The second challenge is that the journey and underlying needs of customers aren’t stagnant. They’re ever-evolving. If a CX team were to do customer research or map the customer journey today, 6 months later there would be new needs and issues. Why? Because products, services and customers are always changing. For these reasons, CX leaders can’t expect to just map the customer journey every few years, come up with a big list of fix-it items, go to work on those and call it good. Ultimately, to establish sustainability and realize the business benefits of customer journey optimization, there needs to be a Voice of Customer Feedback Loop so that issues with the customer journey are constantly being scrutinized, solutions developed and improvements deployed. Tips for an effective VOC Feedback Loop As with most things, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for ongoing customer journey optimization. That said, there are best practices that CX teams can adapt to their context: VOC insights: Establish an ongoing process for aggregating customer insights from across the organization. The answer for where to get this data will be different for every organization, but regardless, CX teams need to be continually sourcing, consolidating and reviewing voice of customer data. Ownership is key, this should be part of someone's regular job responsibilities. (VOC is a huge topic, so be sure to check out episodes 39, 40 and 41 for more detail.) Understand and prioritize: As issues are raised and solutions are vetted,

Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing, Josh Dodson, shares his insights about how the field of higher education is embracing customer-centricity and responding to the demands of the Age of the Customer. Customer experience leadership is quickly becoming an enabler for success in higher education. Josh and show host, Julia, discuss how changing market dynamics are forcing schools to turn up their game, the importance of ease of use in student journeys, the role of personalization in engaging students and how CX success is measured in higher education. If you’re looking for some insight into how customer experience is playing out in an industry facing disruption and steep competition, then this episode is for you. Driving change in higher education Josh Dodson is the Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing. Josh doesn’t just strategize, he delivers results. With his uncanny ability to author strategy, execute nuanced, technical tactics and leverage big data, Josh has helped countless institutions modernize their enrollment and marketing programs. His expertise with digital marketing, analytics and SEO for higher education has made him a sought-after thought leader in the industry. Before joining VisionPoint, he led digital marketing efforts at Bentley University, Southern New Hampshire University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Lincoln Memorial University. His experience both inside the university and partnering with them from the outside gives him a unique perspective that clients find invaluable. While Josh doesn't have "CX" in his title, his work is very much focused around helping higher education institutions deliver better customer (i.e. student) experiences. As a marketer, Josh's work with schools might start with exploration into how to improve the sales funnel and engagement with prospective students, but he's not shy about pointing out the importance of managing the full student lifecycle. He notes that most institutions regard the student lifecycle with a siloed view of the student as a prospective student, student or alumni, though he's working to change this. Josh Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing Responding to a tough market The numbers of college students in the US have been on the decline over the past decade. A decline in the pool of high school graduates paired with concerns about the cost of college and changing attitudes towards higher education since the 2008 financial crisis have led to a 2 million student drop in enrollment during the last decade. This has hit for-profit schools the hardest, along with public 2-year schools in the US. And the bad news is that it looks like the same trends will persist through the mid 2020s. Adding to the challenge of dropping enrollment is a rise in alternative avenues for education. Josh notes that students are increasingly turning to "bootcamp" style learning over multi-year degree programs, meaning that a larger pool of organizations are now competing for the same (shrinking) pool of prospective students. In response to these changes, US colleges and universities are turning to student experience as a way to stand out and differentiate. From the enrollment side of things, schools are becoming more clever and streamlined about they way that they engage with prospective students, aiming to provide a frictionless experience that integrates digital engagement and personalization a la Amazon. To realize these changes, schools have had to completely change the way they think about the student journey.  Schools historically have tended to look at [the student journey] from the perspective of the school and not necessarily from the perspective of the student. And I think that that's also a shift that a lot of schools are really having to reckon with at this point. Just like their business counterparts in the for-profit corporate world,

This CX Mini Masterclass explores practical ideas for how to measure customer experience impact beyond the usual-suspect CX measure like NPS and CSAT. From efficiency gains to market share growth, there are many options for CX professional to demonstrate their value to the business. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares tips for how to measure and quantify the impact of your CX efforts. If you’re tired of being shackled to your CSAT or Net Promoter Score and want some inspiration on how to demonstrate the business impact of CX, then this episode is for you. Don't lose sight of the bigger picture CX professionals are constantly looking for ways to demonstrate their value and worth to the business. Sometimes it seems like all roads lead to metrics and measures. Often, this results in score chasing. CX thought leaders, such a Jeanne Bliss, have famously raised the flag about the dangers of score chasing, as it's a surefire way to have everyone take their eye off the prize. When CX professionals become obsessed with Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction or other metrics, they can easily lose sight of the bigger picture: how customer experience helps brands thrive and grow. Of course the classic CX metrics serve an important function. There is plenty of research showing that happy customers are good for business, but when it comes time to have conversations about things like business budget allocation, “happy customers are good for business” has an uphill fight against “we’re going to save the business $2 million dollars next year”. Executives are, after all, beholden to their own performance metrics, and most of these are related to classic business indicators like market share, profit and loss. It's up to CX leaders and their teams to share stores about the business impact of CX, in a way that will resonate with decision-makers.  Look for efficiency What’s good for the customer experience is often good for the business. When a customer experience involves a lot of hurdles or extra steps, it probably means there are the same hurdles and extra steps going on from a process perspective. If a CX initiative simplifies or cleans up the customer journey, there is an opportunity to look at how that translates into business efficiency. If a simplified journey means less behind-the-scenes processing time, that's an efficiency gain. If experience changes proactively address an issue that is linked to a high volume of customer calls, that's also an efficiency gain. In the business world, time is money. If journey improvements result in time saved, that can be quantified as a cost savings or as time that can be diverted into a more productive activity. For example, if a journey improvement results in a reduction of 10 calls per day at an average of 5 minutes per call, that means 50 minutes per day of time saved. This could translate into money saved through more efficient resource planning or revenue gained by diverting those 50 minutes of agent time to some outbound revenue-generating customer interaction. Customer understanding improves business accuracy The more that organizations know about their customers, the more precisely they can interpret customer needs and tailor interactions. Often these insights emanate from a CX team, so CX leaders should not be shy with highlighting the results. So how do we measure customer experience impact? One way is to look for how improved accuracy of understanding customers might drive efficiency. For example, if a sales team is armed with more accurate information about their customers, it might reduce the initial back-and-forth with customers, enabling them to save time when providing recommendations. It could also streamline the process of making a sale. In these examples, improved accuracy of information about customers translates into an efficiency gain for the sales team, much as a reduction of calls meant an efficiency gain for the call ce...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the concept of a customer advisory board (aka customer advisory council) as a Voice of Customer methodology that can yield incredibly rich insights and strengthen relationships with influential customers. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares insights on where customer advisory boards are best suited as a VOC approach, and some practical tips to consider if starting one. If you’re looking for a quick yet comprehensive overview of the concept of a customer advisory board and some practical ideas that you can take back to the office, then this episode is for you. A robust Voice of Customer approach Episode 39 explored the concept of Voice of Customer, how this differs from CX metrics and measures, and why understanding customers is key to business success. The thing about Voice of Customer is that there are many different approaches. Some of the most popular include surveys, focus groups and interviews, but there are many others, including the customer advisory board (or customer advisory council). A customer advisory board is organized by a product or service provider and usually consists of a group of customers who convene with the service provider on a regular basis to discuss their experiences, provide feedback, and even participate in innovation or co-creation. Most traditional VOC efforts like surveys or interviews rely on once-off interactions with customers to garner their feedback, but a customer advisory board is an ongoing thing. With the benefit of time and follow-up, one can have deeper conversations with customers. Customers who participate may also gain an appreciation for the service provider's business and therefore be able to be collaborative partners in things like troubleshooting and innovation. Customers who contribute their time and energy to participating are also likely to develop a vested interest in the success of the service provider’s business and may become vocal promoters. For these reasons, some companies specifically select industry influencers to be part of their customer advisory bodies. Customer advisory bodies are more common in the B2B context where the customer journeys are often complex, needs are ongoing and the product in question may be an integral part of the customer’s business operations. That’s not to say that you can’t apply this concept to the B2C space as well. Kraft Food's Velveeta cheese brand very effectively engaged with a council of its "super users" to reinvent how it engages with customers and positions its product in the marketplace. Read more about their approach here. Customer advisory council ≠ customer experience council A customer advisory council is not to be confused with a customer council or a customer experience council, which is something else. A customer experience council is usually an internal governance body or cross-functional steerco that meets to discuss customer experience management, journey improvement, etc. Even though the names are similar, the concepts are totally different. To keep the two straight, one can remember that a customer advisory board advises the business based on the external customer perspective. Tips for starting a customer advisory board Customer advisory boards or councils can be useful for nearly any type of product or service provider, whether that’s B2B or B2C. There are a couple of key ingredients that make a customer advisory board successful. A clear purpose - an advisory body can provide insights that will be useful for business strategy, product development, service improvement, marketing, account management, and many other things. Customer participants need to know the objectives of the council, and the engagements should work towards these. The purpose will also inform who should participate. Selecting the right customers to participate - B2B customers are actually a village of stakeholders. A customer’s CEO,

VP of Marketing and Customer Engagement at HUGHES, Sue Brady, shares insights about her team's CXNow! program, an innovative approach to unearthing ideas to improve customer experience. Sue and show host, Julia, discuss the genesis for the program, the resulting impact on the customer journey and what had put CXNow! in a different stratosphere from your run-of-the-mill employee suggestion box. If you’re interested in a real life example of how CX professionals are realizing change and making CX relevant in their organization, then this episode is for you. A CX leader in action Sue Brady is the the Vice President of Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES Networks Systems. Sue is a strategic and results-driven marketing executive with a proven ability to grow revenue and profits through online and direct marketing channels. In addition to her marketing duties, in the last two years she has been co-leading a newly created Customer Experience Team. The goal of the team has been to spread the practice of always putting the customer first. Hughes Network Systems, LLC (we’ll refer to it as HUGHES from here on out) is the global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its flagship high-speed satellite Internet service is HughesNet®, the world’s largest satellite network with over 1.4 million residential and business customers across the Americas. Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland, Hughes operates sales and support offices worldwide, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation Like many CX professionals, Sue comes from a marketing background, though she has been involved with customer experience for many years. HUGHES' parent company EchoStar has always emphasized customer experience, and when the leadership team decided to formalize a CX function, Sue was a natural fit for the role. Her skills have been complemented by those of her CX co-lead who hails from a customer service support background. They both had CX-related responsibilities already as a part of their ‘regular’ jobs, but this shift put more focus on CX. It sounds like HUGHES has found a way to bring together the best of both worlds to great a CX powerhouse in their organization. Sue Brady Vice President Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES To learn more about Sue, be sure to check out her LinkedIn profile or follow her on Twitter, where she often posts nuggets of insight about CX And digital marketing. If you'd like to learn more about HUGHES, they've got a great website with details about their products and services.  CXNow! in the spotlight Customer journeys are works in progress. As customer wants and needs or the technology underpinning the experience evolves, so should the journey. But how do CX teams gather ideas to improve customer experience? One approach is to go straight to the horse's mouth and ask customers what they want. Most organizations with a CX program do this, and it yields tons of insights, but it can also be difficult or time-consuming to manage customer listening on an ongoing basis. That’s why many organizations also turn to their employees as an additional source of ideas for journey improvement. Since employees have a unique perspective about what goes on behind the scenes, they are well-positioned to combine this with things they have had to troubleshoot in the past.  HUGHES CXNow! program does just that. The program was designed to encourage employees, service center contractors and installers to start thinking about ways that the company could improve customer experience. Ideas are submitted through a centralized email inbox, where they are reviewed, vetted and actioned by a cross-functional team on a weekly basis. Team members who submit ideas are recognized through posters, video reels and badge pins. This campaign aspect of the program helps create a sense of ownership and sustain organization-wide energy around the program.  CXNow!

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the concept of organizational rituals and the role they play in reinforcing culture and strengthening customer experience as a competitive advantage. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some findings from her recent research on team rituals in the business context. If you are keen to learn about this cutting edge topic and hear some tips for shaping customer-centric rituals in your organization, then this episode is for you. An emerging topic Episode 66 covered the link between HR strategy and CX culture. HR strategy is the foundation of team culture, whether that's a customer-centric culture or not. But there are many other things that influence attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. Rituals come from the culture, but also reinforce the culture, and for this reason, rituals are an emerging topic in CX management. It's a particularly important area of focus in terms of how leaders can ensure that team culture supports business objectives, like the customer promise (see episode 69 for a detailed explanation of the customer promise). Rituals haven't been a major area of focus of CX professionals, so there is limited coverage and thought leadership on the topic. Business management academics have been pondering the role of rituals in the business context and, not surprisingly, this research sheds light on how this aspect of business management might be applicable to CX management. Defining "rites" and "rituals" Intuitively, we all probably understand what business rituals are: ongoing actions or interactions that reinforce norms. This interpretation is correct, but a duo of academics from the US and Brazil have come up with a definition that really puts things in perspective.  Ritual action, it is proposed, is a form of social action in which a group’s values and identity are publicly demonstrated or enacted in a stylized manner, within the context of a specific occasion or event. - Gazi Islamro and Michael J. Zyphur Examples of this might include a dinner for employees, a speech welcoming a new hire or a manager’s weekly team huddle. It’s important to note that many scholars use the words “rite” and “ritual” interchangeably. In practice, people often refer to specific types or examples of ritual action as “rites”, and the term "rituals" as a broad generic descriptor (Islamro and Zyphur's research goes into more detail on the background of this definition, should you wish to jump down the rabbit hole on this topic). Different types of rituals Not all rituals serve the same purpose, and understanding the difference between the types of rituals clarified how these might be applied in a business context. Rites of passage serve to “socialize” participants as an accepted member within the broader community. Rites of passage would include things like new hire onboarding. Rites of enhancement are public celebration of commendable behavior, intended to showcase model behavior and recognize individuals. An example of this would be a CEO shout-out in a monthly team newsletter. Rites of renewal are a stabilizing function within an organization. These rituals rejuvenate and reinforce values over time. A Manager’s weekly huddle is a great example of a rite of renewal. Rites of conflict resolution are just what the sound like, how an organization deals with a dispute between stakeholders within the community. Rites of integration work to establish an emotional unity or community bond. An example of this might be an annual team building offsite or even something less formal like a greeting ritual or how team members vents their frustrations at the water cooler. Rites of degradation are less common, but serve an important role and they may be a consideration during change management. Rites of degradation happen when an organization is going through a major change or possibly shutting down. These rites often involve reflection on what went ...

This CX Mini Masterclass defines the concept of the Customer Promise and explores why it's important for organizations to define "What is Great Experience" in the context of their brand. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, dissects an example customer promise and shares tips on how to develop your own. If you’ve been looking for clarity on yet another popular CX buzzword and would like to learn about why it’s so important to create a customer promise in the first place, then this episode is for you. Customer promise Episode 67 covered how and why organizations should internally and externally market CX. This, of course, hinges upon having a clear definition of what experiences customers can expect and how teams should deliver these experiences. Most brands don't cover this in the company vision, mission or values. All of those brand statements are important, and they should support customer-centricity, but they're not the same as a customer promise. A customer promise is a single statement outlining the experience that a brand intends to provide to its customers and prospective customers. It should be clear, simple and actionable, ideally no longer than one sentence. You could almost think of the customer promise as a vision or mission statement focused exclusively on the experience and how this is delivered. Exploring an example The car brand Hyundai has a great example of a customer promise statement for their service team. At Hyundai, we put all our efforts to provide customers with the best after sales service. This statement lets us know that Hyundai takes after sales service seriously, that they’re willing to put some muscle behind providing a great experience, and that customers can expect a best in class WOW experience, one that possibly competes with service experiences from different consumer categories all together. This statement indicates to teams that the service experience is a major strategic priority. When they say “we put all our efforts”, this signals to Hyundai’s teams that everything they do should contribute to a journey-defining after sales service experience. It should be noted that it's not best practice to create a customer promise that is so specific to one aspect of the journey (in this case, after sales service). Hyundai could (and should) have just as easily made a customer promise that was applicable to the entire customer journey. Supporting the promise with principles If Hyundai's example promise statement still feels a little vague to you, that’s OK. Remember it's tough to be overly specific with a single sentence. A customer promise should be backed up by customer experience principles, which unpack the next layer of detail. Experience principles are the “how-to” details behind the customer promise, linking the vision to behaviors or outcomes. Hyundai has defined 8 of these: Listen carefully and actively follow up on your request Maintain a clean, safe and friendly environment Schedule an appointment that is convenient to you Attend to you promptly on arrival in a friendly and professional manner Provide you with an accurate time and cost estimate Obtain your authorization before commencing any additional work Thoroughly explain all repairs performed and review all costs Ensure the vehicle is returned at the time agreed in a clean and tidy condition As you can see, the experience principles are where things can get a little bit more prescriptive, while still supporting the overarching customer promise. If you're curious about how experience principles are put to use, guest expert Ben Motteram spoke about the role of experience principles in CX strategy during episode 29. I’d highly suggest that you check out that episode if you haven’t already. The importance of defining "What is great customer experience"  So why do we care about a customer promise? We could ask the same about a company purpose, vision or mission.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores employee reward and recognition programs as an important driver of team culture. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the different types of recognition programs and how these can help rally teams around customer excellence. If you’ve been looking for some ideas about how to leverage rewards and recognition to encourage customer-centric attitudes and behavior in your organization, then this episode is for you. An important piece of the CX culture puzzle Episode 66 explored the foundations of HR strategy and how this in turn influences customer-centric culture. Reward and recognition programs are one of these foundations. Over time, how behaviors are recognized and celebrated will influence culture. Celebrated actions become the model behavior and what people aspire to. And over time, these behaviors and norms take hold and turn into what people expect from each other. Obviously, the foundations of culture are multifaceted, and based on more than just reward and recognition programs, but these are an important component (be sure to check out episode 66 for more about the key components of HR strategy). Different types of recognition programs Reward and recognition programs come in all shapes and sizes. These programs are defined by 2 key features: public vs. private recognition and peer-to-peer vs. senior recognition. Each organization is unique, so there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for recognition programs. It's probably a good idea to have a variety of different types of recognition structures, but it's not necessary to have a program for each of these categories. As always, it's important to think about the end user. When collaborating with HR teams to plan recognition structures, think about how teams interact. What interests the group of employees in question? A program that resonates with front time team members might differ from what's needed to impact the behavior of senior managers. The role of rewards in fostering customer excellence Rewards can be linked to any of these recognition programs. For example, a senior leader could give a gift card or some company swag to an employee they’re recognizing for customer excellence. Company award programs often include a prize for the winners. Team leaders could also have a discretionary budget to give customized rewards to their team. It's also popular to structure peer-to-peer "badge"-type programs with rewards attached. My advice on this is to take the approach of surprise and delight rather than gamification. Give people the latitude to recognize the desired attitudes and behaviors with appropriate rewards, but be wary of anything that encourages team members to chase the prize rather than live the mantra. If you're wondering where incentives like bonuses fit into things, don't worry, this hasn't been overlooked. Incentives linked to CX KPIs are important, but that's a big topic, possibly for a future CX Mini Masterclass. *Watch this space* Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX culture change) or get in touch via email. 

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the importance of marketing customer experience, both externally to customers, as well internally to employees. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some practical tips and ideas for how you can leverage your customer promise as a marketing draw card, and how to foster awareness of customer experience within your organization. If you’ve been looking for some ideas about internal and external marketing of customer experience in your organization, then this episode is for you. Spread the word about great customer experience Most major brands spend loads of time and resources marketing their products and services, so shouldn’t this be enough to draw in customers? The short answer is no. Most marketing emphasizes the CVP, products and promotions. Few brands dedicate much of their marketing budget to helping consumers understand what kind of experiences they can expect. And to be honest, I’m not sure why. Perhaps they think it’s a waste of marketing spend or they’re afraid of putting a promise out there that the business won’t be able to deliver on. I see it as a huge missed opportunity. If you don’t help consumers know what they can expect, it sets the stage for a mismatch between expectations and reality...something that often ends up with an unhappy customer. If your organization has established a customer promise or experience principles, these should be shared this with consumers. T Mobile in the US has focused quite a lot of external marketing on experiences, such as their unique Team of Experts support team. Focus on the touchpoints If your organization has already mapped the customer journey, you'll know that there are many, many touchpoints. Each of these channels of interaction can become an avenue for marketing customer experience and sharing the good word about what sets your brand apart from the others. Marketing teams are normally very organized with messaging via traditional above the line advertising, newsletters, etc., but remember to look for opportunities to weave the customer promise into less obvious touchpoints like statements, contracts, and sales/support support teams. If you are wanting to learn more about touchpoints and journeys, be sure to check out Episode 16. Internal marketing of customer experience can rally employees  If customers know what kind of experiences they can expect, then naturally employees need to be rallied around the same mantra. This is where internal marketing of your CX program comes into play. Internal marketing of CX is important because it helps establish a cohesive understanding of your company’s customer experience ambitions. Internal marketing of customer experience generally takes two forms: Consistent messaging about the long term vision of CX - Each organization needs to craft an enduring unified message about its customer-centric aspirations. Usually this takes the shape of customer experience principles or a customer promise. Like a vision, mission or purpose, this is something that should remain constant, with occasional refreshes as the business evolves. This message should feature in an organization’s cornerstone employee engagement and rituals like onboarding. Think of it as marketing for the long haul. Employees should know the customer promise like they know their favorite brand’s slogans. Short-term efforts to rally and energize teams - These are communications that are of the moment, often intended to encourage specific behaviors or change rather than act as a philosophical Northstar for CX. If an organization is looking to catalyze customer-centric change, they might investigate launching a branded campaign with an inspiring call to action. We can see a great example of this at Multichoice, the South African media company, where the CX team spearheaded a campaign called #99problems to engage all staff in helping resolve the top 99 customer pain points along the customer ...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains why HR strategy underpins culture and how CX professionals can engage HR to foster a unified customer experience culture. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the basics of HR strategy and shares some practical approaches for linking this - the bedrock of company culture - to CX objectives. If you’re looking for clarity on exactly how HR strategy underpins customer-centric culture, then this episode is for you. The power of unified customer experience culture When we think about the leading customer centric brands of our time. Companies like Disney, Netflix and Airbnb, it’s no coincidence that strong company culture is a common thread. These organizations’ cultures support their brands’ visions, missions and customer centric aspirations through the realization of their respective values. When those values include a brand's customer promise or experience principles, culture can become a powerful enabler of customer experience. But these unified force-of-nature organizational cultures don't happen by accident. Culture is the manifestation of “how we do things around here”. It’s what we can expect from each other and how people will act, even when no one is watching. While the concept of culture can feel “fluffy” and intangible, the drivers to culture are definitely not. HR/People  strategy sets the direction for all of the key areas of HR, including hiring, performance appraisal, development, and compensation. This is the bedrock on which culture flourishes. CX professionals need to understand HR strategy as a driver of culture and how to link this to the organization's customer-centric goals. If the linkage isn't clear, it's quite possible that an HR strategy can create the foundation for a high performance culture that is everything but customer-centric. The key components of HR strategy There isn't a singular template for HR strategy, but most cover at least 4 key areas. These components of the HR strategy should support business objectives, including customer experience, though it's often up to CX professionals to drive the alignment to CX. Hiring - Episode 37 includes a deep dive into how talent acquisition can support CX, but in essence, organizations must ensure that new hires walking in the door are aligned to the culture. We can train new skills, but it’s difficult to teach things like empathy and even more difficult to change deeply held beliefs. Make sure that your customer experience principles feature in your hiring process as both a draw card for candidates and as filtering criteria. Employee development - Training has long been featured as an important lever for customer-centric culture. Yes, training is important, but remember to assess how else your organization helps with the development of employees. Do things like on-boarding and skills development reflect the brand values and the customer experience principles? Are we treating employees as we would expect them to treat our customers? When it comes to employee development, don’t just get mired in the detail of service training, remember to ask the bigger picture questions about how development supports your organization’s delivery of its customer promise. Performance management and appraisal - “What’s measured is treasured”. It's true, people will modify their behavior based on what they believe they’ll be evaluated on, so make sure that your organization’s customer experience goals and principles feature here. Episode 53 explored the connection between KPIs and customer experience management, and yes, KPIs are definitely important, but you may also want to appraise people on behaviors that aren’t so easily quantified. It’s equally important that the link between performance appraisal and CX goals isn’t limited to customer-facing teams. Everyone in the business contributes to customer experience, so this should feature in the appraisal of all employees.

CEO of Ivoclar Vivadent, Diego Gabathuler, shares his perspective on what it means to lead a customer-centric business. Diego and show host, Julia, discuss why he’s become such an ardent supporter of customer experience, how he’s moving the business from CX strategy to action and what CX professionals need to do to win over senior business leaders. If you’d like to know what drives an authentically customer-centric mindset at the highest levels of business leadership, then this episode is for you. Insights from a senior business leader Diego Gabathuler has been the CEO of the dental company Ivoclar Vivadent AG, headquartered in Schaan, Liechtenstein, since 1 July 2019. The Swiss native initially joined the company as a member of the Global Product Management in 2002. He then went on to work for Logitech and several other companies until he rejoined Ivoclar Vivadent in Schaan as Senior Director Europe West & South, Near & Middle East and Africa in 2016. Since October 2017, he has been a member of the Corporate Management. Ivoclar Vivadent is one of the world's leading manufacturers of innovative material systems for high-quality dental applications. The company has wholly owned subsidiaries in 29 countries, and it employs about 3,500 people worldwide. Diego views customer experience as a key strategic imperative for the success of any business today...and one that should be led by the CEO. It's in my title. For me CEO means Customer Experience Officer. - Diego Gabathuler CX as a differentiator Diego has taken on customer experience as one of his core strategic imperatives. He sees a customer marketplace that is increasingly complex, both for companies and for consumers. With more technology and a faster flow of information, products can also quickly become commoditized. Amid this landscape, customer experience becomes one of the few ways that businesses can stand out. These changes haven't happened overnight, and Diego highlights that as one of the challenges. Without a "big bang" push towards customer experience, it means that many companies have been too slow to respond.  Diego highlights that he sees customer experience and brand as one in the same. A brand, from his perspective, is the sum of the experiences provided by that brand. That's a progressive view on the concept of branding, and one that many CX professionals would like to be more widely used within the marketing community. Customer-centric thinking requires understanding the customer Early in our interview Diego pointed out the importance of understanding customers and integrating their perspectives into the customer journey, product innovation, and business planning. This is the foundation of customer-centric strategy. The dental industry has been largely product-led for many years, but Diego has pushed his team to actually listen to the customer, rather than relying soley on expert insights, which is often the default in his sector. That said, not all voice of customer (VOC) insights are created equal. Diego spoke about the need to unify customer experience data from 3 different sources in order to provide a robust picture of customer needs: Field research, observation and big data. Asking customers what they want might sound like the best approach, but CX teams need to pair this with user data to see what customers are actually doing. For example, the Ivoclar Vivadent team conducted research to find out where customers wanted to get their product information. Customers responded that they referenced print materials (e.g. catalogs, and brochures) but user data suggested that most were actually getting their information online. Diego chalks this up to people reflecting on their past experiences and longstanding habits, rather than recent behavior. Had the team only listened to customer feedback without pairing this with behavior observations, they might have made the wrong decisions about which touchpoints to focus on. ...

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of artificial intelligence and its emerging role in CX management. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some of the highlights from her 2019 keynotes talks on the topic of AI and customer experience, including the history of this technology and the 3 main applications in CX. If you’re looking for a practical overview of a not-so practical topic and some food for thought about how AI can help your team's customer journey improvement efforts, then this episode is for you. A little background on AI Regular listeners of the show will know that I'm a huge fan of providing basic definitions. In the business world, we bat around a lot of buzz words, often people establish a basic intuitive knowledge of the meaning through context, but it never hurts to provide a clear, concise definition.   Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a machine to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. This includes things like the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. The field of AI research started at Dartmouth College in the US during the mid-1950s, as an intrepid group of researchers developed computer programs that could solve algebra word problems and learn to play checkers. AI technology has evolved leaps and bound since the 1950s, and when you add in the great sea of consumer data that most companies have - courtesy of digital touch points and eCommerce, you create an ideal environment for AI to augment customer experience.   The symbiosis of AI and customer experience AI has many applications in the field of CX. If we have the power to process lots of information about our customers, it’s not a huge leap to understand that there are many powerful applications for this technology when it comes to improving customer journeys and how experiences are managed. Within the current AI technology, I see 3 distinct categories of AI application for CX.   Personalized experiences - To provide a personalized experience, we have to understand the user. AI provides the opportunity for organizations to do this on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Ecommerce “recommended products” was one of the first ways that we saw AI applied to the mass customization of experiences, but personalization has evolved beyond this. Brands like Disney and Netflix are using customer data to create experiences that are tailored for the wants and needs of their customers. Not all personalized interactions are created equal, however. The goal with personalized experiences is for a brand to provide relevant information at the right time through the right channel...without becoming "creepy". Service support - Chatbots are an obvious application of AI in CX. As more and more consumers are adopting digital self-solution options, it makes perfect sense to offer an automated first line of defense that can quickly answer simple issues. When things become more complex and human intervention is required, internal chatbots can be used to support the humans who are delivering cusotmer experience. Organizations such as South Africa's media giant, Multichoice, are using in-house chatbots to help their agents help customers. When we think about AI, we should remember to think about applications that the customer sees, as well as those that happen beyond the line of customer visibility. And if you’d like to learn more about that, check out episode 59 in service blueprinting. Augment and virtual reality - Special guest, Jacques Oberholzer and I spoke about this in episode 61, but AR/VR is definitely an exciting space. By way of just one example, American beauty retailer, Sephora has leveraged this technology to augment the way it helps customers explore and experiment with its products. Through its Virtual Artist app, Sephora enables customers to virtually “try on” different makeup products with augmented reality.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores some of the most pervasive missteps that organizations make with their CX metrics. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum shares 4 of the most common pitfalls and their consequences. She also provides practical tips on how CX teams can turn things around. If you’re looking for some excellent food for thought on how to launch or fine-tune your approach to CX metrics, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP If you'd like to hear more of Stephanie's insights on the show, be sure to check out her previous episodes. In episode 45 Stephanie re-framed how organizations should think of customers and shared practical ideas on how to do this. In episode 50, Stephanie dove into her area of expertise and covered trends with how CX is taking hold in government organizations. And in episode 55, she provided a step-by-step guide to CEOs on how to lead customer-centric change.   A focus on CX metrics If you are new to the CX profession, the world of CX metrics can be daunting. Even of you are a seasoned professional, CX metrics can be intimidating. That said, metrics are the lifeblood of and CX initiative, program or department. CX metrics are how we monitor progress and demonstrate impact, so we need to get over any discomfort we might have with this topic and stay attuned to how we can most effectively use the numbers.   4 common mistakes - and how to fix them Stephanie provided her insights on 4 of the most common missteps that teams make with how they manage CX metrics: Mistake #1: Top-line revenue tells you everything you need to know about customers’ experiences Yes, revenue can be a barometer on how happy customers are or how well products are doing in the marketplace, but it won't tell teams what is going right or wrong. So make sure you are reporting on a balanced mix of metrics and not reliant on just this number. Mistake #2: Thinking customer experience metrics make you look bad Sometimes the results might not be flattering, but that's not a reason to avoid them all together. Ensure that CX metrics are used to start constructive dialogue with your team, not as a policing mechanism. Mistake #3: Customer satisfaction is the only customer experience metric that matters There can be alluring simplicity in focusing on just one CX metric, but resist the temptation to do so. As with top line revenue, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) has limited use as a metric-in-isolation. Embrace a wider scope of quantitative and qualitative data points. E.g. customer wait times, transaction completion rates, acceptance rates, types of customer compliments, verbatim feedback. Mistake #4: A once-per-year customer experience data review is all we need Customer needs and expectations aren't static. Service standards like wait times and processing times should keep pace with customer expectations. Look for data sources and CX metrics that are ongoing, so you can monitor how things are changing. Your organization is probably already gathering data that can be used for this purpose.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the importance of human experience and why brands need to ensure that their promise is delivered to all stakeholder, not just customers. Special guest and CX thought leader, Pierre Daems, shares insights about why an ecosystem of human experiences is key to a brand's success. If you’re looking for inspiration on how the essence of brand promise extends beyond the customer experience, and why this is something CX professionals should care about, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Pierre Daems is a seasoned expert in the field of customer experience.  He is the CEO of the French and Canadian strategy and management consultancy Aube Conseil, which specializes in customer experience management. Pierre is a CCXP, longstanding member of the CXPA and co-founder of the local CXPA communities in Paris and Montreal. He is a recognized expert and keynote speaker on customer experience management, with a focus on cities, airports, hospitals and a deep knowledge of Bank/insurance sector. If you are keen to get in touch with Pierre or follow his work, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.       Pierre Daems, CCXP With such broad expertise working on citizen experience, patient experience and passenger experience, Pierre has been fortunate to help shape CX in a number of different sectors, for many years. For that reason, he's the ideal person to help CX professionals push their thinking beyond just customer experience.   What's beyond customer experience? We've all heard about the importance of employee experience. Happy, engaged employees are more likely to deliver good customer experience. Pierre suggests that we shouldn't stop there, but rather as CX practitioners, we should also understand the importance of other stakeholders and their experiences. Suppliers, partners, governments and even shareholders are not traditionally on the CX professional's radar, but they should be. These stakeholder groups still play an important role within the brand's ecosystem. In the case of suppliers and partners in particular, it's easy to see how their experience (much like that of an employee) would influence the customer experience.   The role of purpose Pierre suggests that a brand's purpose is at the heart of the human experience it delivers to all stakeholders. He uses the example of Michelin brand, and their purpose:   "The Michelin brand is the best expression of our Purpose: giving everyone a better way to move forward. It embodies the Group's strengths with our customers and partners around the world. It's a promise that defines us and commits us.” The Michelin Group A better way to move forward, isn't just about tires or helping passengers move from point A to point B, it's also applicable to shareholders, employees and others. The brand has decided to charge customers per kilometer rather than per tire, an innovative approach that delivers value to the company, its shareholders and customers. A great example of delivering the purpose to everyone, not just customers.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business ...

User experience design expert, Jacques Oberholzer, shares his insights on UX and how businesses are dealing with today's digitally savvy customers. Jacques and show host, Julia, discuss the evolution of the field of user experience, the relationship between UX and CX and the latest trends in digital customer experiences. If you’re looking to stay abreast of the latest trends, capabilities and what's on the horizon with digital customer experiences, then this episode is for you.   UX and CX As more and more of the customer journey moves into the digital realm, it's important for CX teams to understand what consumers are looking for in digital experiences. Fortunately, there is an entire field of UX specialists out there focusing on how to make great experiences in the digital space (and beyond - though a lot of emphasis is being placed on digital). This begs the question of how UX differs from CX, and how these two functions should most effectively collaborate. Episode 56 explored the similarities and differences between UX and CX, and it was reassuring to hear a UX expert like Jacques corroborate the same key points. Essentially, we can think of both as functional areas that advocate for the needs of customers, but that UX tends to do this through the lens of a user's experience on a specific system, platform or touchpoint. We can think of CX as a more holistic look at a customer's overall experience, while UX zooms in on a specific subset of this.   The role of data One of the challenges with managing experiences in the non-digital world is that we have gaps in our understanding of the customer's experience. In a traditional retail context, for example, a retailer might only gather data about the customer at the point of sale. Information about their journey through the shop before purchase is largely unknown. Granted that might change with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), but for now we have limited insight. That's definitely not the case in digital space, where every click produces a data point. In our conversation, Jacques highlighted the role of data as a game changer for digital UX. Website tracking has empowered organizations and their UX experts to quickly gather insights about what customers do and don't like. It's also forced UX specialists - many who hearken from a creative background - to learn the language of quantitative analysis and to figure out how to integrate this into their understanding of customer needs. These insights can help teams develop great websites, but they also bring the voice of the customer into the conversation early and often, something that can be simultaneously helpful and frustrating.   Major UX trends on the horizon Jacques and I discussed a number of UX trends that should be important considerations for CX professionals who want to help their organizations craft and deliver great digital experiences:   The move to mobile - consumers are doing more and more on their mobiles. From streaming to social media, many experiences skip the desktop all together and are mostly experienced through mobile devices. This has advantages and disadvantages. From a design perspective, mobiles present limited space for visual engagement. On the upside, mobiles had additional sensory features, like motion sensors, that enable brands to deliver richer digital experiences which just aren't possible on a desktop web interface. Hardware may drive the next wave of UX innovation - Jacques pointed out that UX innovation has probably plateaued with the current prevalent hardware (mobile phones, etc.). He thinks that hardware innovations like wearables and new phone features may dictate where UX goes next. The ethics of UX - Customers may be telling us that they like immersive online experiences, chatbots and tailored content, but is that actually good for them? UX designers are increasingly faced with questions of ethics and doing what's right.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the key components of a successful CX program. There might not be a one-size-fits-all approach for CX management, but there are common threads among global best practices. Special guest Ben Motteram takes listeners through the 7 foundational components of a best in class CX program. If you are setting up, reshaping or refining a CX program in your organization, then this episode is for you.       Insights from a special guest Ben Motteram is a customer experience specialist based in Melbourne with over 20 years experience developing and implementing customer acquisition and retention strategies within some of Australia’s largest organisations. Through his consulting company, CXpert, Ben now assists clients in areas such as CX strategy, Voice of the Customer, and employee engagement. In December 2018, Ben was the only Australian named on a list of global thought leaders to follow on Twitter and his blog has been independently recognized for its insight on all things CX.   Ben Motteram This episode was Ben's second guest appearance on the show. If you missed his first Mini Masterclass episode on CX Strategy, be sure to check it out here.   Foundations of a CX program Normally I provide a synopsis of the episode in these show notes, but Ben has already created a stellar write up on his blog. And I'd encourage you to explore the rest of Ben's blog while your're there. It's packed with all sorts of other great gems and CX thought leadership. A truly fantastic resource for any CX professional.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including employee engagement, leadership alignment and CX strategy) or get in touch via email.       

This CX Mini Masterclass provides step by step instructions for how to develop a service blueprint, a key tool for any CX team embarking on service design. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains what a service blueprint is, how you build one and – most importantly – how to use it. If you’re looking for a practical explanation of how to build and use a service blueprint, then this episode is for you.   The next step in service design Episode 58 looked at service design, which is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers. And with most brands out there today delivering a hybrid of both goods and services, it’s important for teams to carefully orchestrate how they deliver experiences. If not, they'll risk things completely falling apart. Service blueprinting is an important step for any team looking to implement service design. The actions needed for an organization to deliver a service are often complex and need to be documented before plans can be made. That's what service blueprinting is all about.   Creating the service blueprint Service blueprinting is essentially a visual documentation of service design. To build a service blueprint you need to start with the customer journey. And in this case, it should be a very simplified version of the journey, highlighting the aspects of the journey where the organization in question plays a major role. Remember that when we map entire journeys, we need to consider experiences outside of the realm of just one brand’s interactions with the customer – but in this case we’re looking inward, so it’s OK.   A service blueprint often also includes a space for physical evidence, though this isn't required.   The next step is to capture the layers of service functions, starting with what the customer sees. In the world of service blueprinting, these are sometimes called front stage interactions. The next layer down captures the backstage interactions or the operational support that the customer doesn’t see, and finally every service blueprint should include a final layer of strategic support functions.     Download Julia's Service Blueprinting template       Leveraging the blueprint as a CX tool Like journey maps, service blueprints are highly dynamic CX tools that bridge the conceptual divide between the journey and a business’s operating model. Service design is about helping organizations coordinate their activities to deliver experiences. Anyone who has worked in a large corporation will know that the silo mentality is real! Service blueprints can help CX leaders unite teams around the customer journey in a number of ways: Demonstrating how teams from different organizations need to collaborate to deliver the journey. Clarifying team level contributions and determining KPIs that relate back to the journey. Conducting root cause analysis on where specific experiences are breaking down so that teams can work on solutions. Defining how teams will deliver new experiences, either by building future state service blueprints or by demonstrating how current actions would need to change to deliver a re-imagined experience. Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP.

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of service design and why this is important for teams that are working on customer journey improvement. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains how most brands these days provide a mix of goods and services and why service design plays a critical role in bringing customer journeys to life. If you want to learn about service design and its place in a CX professional's toolkit, then this episode is for you.       Goods vs. services To understand service design, we need to clarify the difference between goods and services in the marketplace. Goods are tangible items of value, like cars, sweaters or cartons of milk. Services are intangible items of value like expert advice or training. If we were to look at the consumer marketplace 100 years ago, most brands would have provided either a good or a service, with a few providing a hybrid of the two. In the modern marketplace, the reverse is true. Most organizations provide both goods and services. A medical clinic is a classic example of the goods/services hybrid; they provide a combination of tangible products in the form of medicine with medical consultation that is a service. SaaS providers are an excellent example of the hybrid of goods and services that is so pervasive in the modern marketplace. Brands like Google, Hubspot and others provide a good through their software, but they also provide a suite of services around that software to enhance its usage. Yes, there are definitely still organizations out there that provide just a product or just a service, but these are now the outliers. And with consumers doing so much more through digital channel in particular, it's given rise to a whole ecosystem of services to support customers.   Defining service design Episode 57 looked into design thinking, which was essentially born out of product design. While modern design thinking can also be used to creatively problem solve for service-based solutions, actually providing experiences that are based on a blend of goods and services is a complex undertaking. That is where service design comes in.   Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers. Wikipedia Service design is where teams lift up the hood and look at all the parts that are needed to make an experience happen. CX teams can dream up the most amazing customer experience in the world, but if the rest of the organization isn't equipped to deliver that experience, it’s all for not. So, service design is where we get to turn our perspective inwards to the people, processes and technology that make experiences happen. Service design clarifies the roles, responsibilities and inter-dependencies that are needed to deliver an experience. Service design unpacks this in terms of interactions that the customer sees and the layers of behind the scenes actions functions that are necessary. Wondering how to actually do service design? Stay tuned for episode 59...   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in...

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of design thinking and how this methodology can be used to craft new experiences, refine journeys or build solutions around the needs of other stakeholders. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the 5 key phases of the design thinking approach and how CX professionals can incorporate this into their repertoire. If you want to learn about the relationship between design thinking and CX management, then this episode is for you.       Not just another business buzzword You've probably heard the term "design thinking" before. Unlike "customer experience" or "user experience" (UX was the subject of episode 56), the concept of design thinking has been around for a bit longer. It also has a much less nebulous definition.   Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO The origins of design thinking start in the late 1950s and early 1960s as creativity techniques for designers and engineers. Through the 1960s and 1970s design thinking methods and theories began to take hold in the fields of industrial design, architecture and product design. By the 1980s and 1990s people began talking about this in terms of human-centered design. During this time, design thinking firms such as IDEO came into being and the most innovative and forward-thinking organizations started to embed design-centered business management. From 2000 onward, we’ve seen the steady rise of design thinking as a proper business discipline that can be applied by organizations to many different contexts.   The 5-step methodology Design thinking aims to solve problems at the intersection of three things: desirability, viability and feasibility. Design thinking methodologies push teams to balance these competing forces. Unlike CX, which doesn't have a set approach or methodology, classic design thinking has an adaptable 5-step approach. This is often represented as a double diamond.     Empathize - arguably the most important phase of the process. This is all about understanding the user, their needs, feelings and perspective through research. When we talk about putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we’re essentially talking about establishing empathy. How can we build something for someone if we don’t understand who they are? Define - probably the step that most organizations neglect. Once we understand the user through empathizing, we need to leverage that information to establish their point of view and express the problem we want to solve. The more specific, the better. In design thinking the problem is often posed as a “How Might We” statement that give clues about the user and their needs. An example problem statement might sound something like: How might we provide quick and healthy meal options to the busy working mom on the go, this statement could experience several rounds of re-framing to make it more and more specific. Einstein once said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem. Einstein was onto something. Ideation - this is what people often think about when they envision design thinking. They imagine word clouds and post-it notes and all kinds of creative ideas flying around. Stages 1 and 2 are all about honing in on the user and the challenge, but ideation is where teams want to go wide again, imagine the possibilities and generate lots of options. Ideation is wonderful. It’s creative, exploratory and can be a lot of fun. Prototype - after ideation teams need to pick one idea to work on. Prototyping can take many forms: storyboarding, building with legos or crafting a small 3-d model. The important point is to make the idea real so that a user can begin to interact with it.

This CX Mini Masterclass provides clarity on the difference between user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX). Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, provides a definition of each and then explains the roles of CX vs. UX teams and how their work can complement one another. If you are looking to understand the distinction between UX and CX, then this episode is for you.       Navigating the buzzwords User experience (UX) is a buzzword in the business world. It's sometimes confused with customer experience. As the field of customer experience continues to gain momentum, it’s important to understand how other disciplines like user experience fit into the picture, so that CX professionals can effectively collaborate with these teams and help business leaders understand what’s what. Customer experience and user experience are related. We could think of them as cousins and good friends. Related, but still different. If we want to make a comparison between customer experience and user experience, the most logical place to start is with a definition of each.   Understanding CX On CX Day, the CXPA released a great video with a definition of customer experience. The definition that I use is similar to the CXPA. I cover this in detail in episode 14, but as a quick refresher, we can think of a brand’s customer experience as all the ways that a consumer interfaces with that particular brand. Customer experience is the combined effect of things like touchpoints, products, service support, communication, plus a whole bunch of other things. While the definition of a brand's customer experience is all encompassing, we must remember that as customers move through their lives, their individual journeys will include experiences beyond the confines of just one brand. Customer journeys don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in the real world where people talk with their friends, read online reviews and interact with any number of other entities before or after they interface with your brand.   Defining UX I'm pleased that the CXPA has provided some clarity around the definition of CX. The professional community needed this clarity, and it's probably safe to say that the UX community could benefit form the same. There are a wide range of definitions out there. One of the most commonly referenced definitions is from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). They've defined UX as a person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the use and or anticipated use of a product, system or service. We could also interpret this as how a customer feels about every interaction they have with what’s in front of them while they’re using it.   CX vs. UX While UX and CX both pertain to a person’s interactions and their responses, user experience tends to look at this through the lens of an interaction with a particular system or touchpoint. And in practice, user experience assessment or user interface design normally hone in on an individual’s interactions with a specific thing. This makes UX essentially a subset of CX, and it explains why user experience maps often feel like a zoomed in look at a particular facet of the customer journey. In the business world, UX has gained notoriety as a practice for improving user experiences in the digital space. The definition of user experience isn’t necessarily restricted to the digital realm, but this is why people so often associate user experience design with developing tech solutions. It’s obvious that UX plays an important role in CX. With more and more of our experiences happening in the digital world, it’s crucial that UX and CX teams for work together. We don't always need to think of things in terms of CX vs. UX. In fact there are many opportunities for the two fields of work to collaborate and complement each other. For example, CX teams can help UX teams understand the bigger picture by incorporating customer experience principl...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores how leaders can champion the customer mandate. Great customer experience starts with the goals, data and a vision. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum shares practical tips on on how to kick start CX alignment and how leaders can be prepared for the most common hurdles along the way. If you’ve been looking for some fresh ideas on fostering alignment, or some food for thought that you can send to your business’s leadership team, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest     Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP   The starting block for great customer experience Data and metrics are a logical place to start. Many organizations live and breathe "the numbers", so leaders are already primed to pay attention. Plus, most organizations are sitting on mountains of data. The next step is to identify how this data can be used to understand the customer and foster organizational accountability (e.g. as KPIs - see episode 53 for a deep dive on KPIs). Next, leaders should foster awareness and rally department leaders around these figures. Easier said than done, but Stephanie shares the story of a manufacturing CEO who started a weekly stand-up meetings with his plant manager, HR leader, and lead customer service rep to go over the data. The company's customer experience management efforts evolved from there. Once leaders are begin supporting CX, they can take the message to their teams, sharing results and helping individuals understand how their day to day responsibilities impact the bigger picture of CX.   6 expert tips Great customer experiences may start at the top, but rallying the rest of the organization, won't be without a few challenges along the way. Stephanie provided her insights on what to look out for, and how to respond:   Get comfortable being uncomfortable If the numbers aren’t great, get comfortable explaining the reasons why Align your management teams Present CX as a triage tool, not a policing mechanism Keep going, no matter what When the numbers are great, celebrate! When the numbers aren’t so great, don’t point fingers If you'd like additional insights from Stephanie, be sure to read her full article on this topic.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including customer insights, CX measurement, leadership alignment and CX change implementation) or get in touc...

This CX Mini Masterclass provides a simple and straightforward approach to prioritizing customer journey improvements. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains why this is an important step for fostering organizational alignment. Julia then takes you through her prioritization methodology and discusses some key considerations. If you are looking to make sense of your laundry list of journey fixes, then this episode is for you.       Starting customer journey improvement wisely When teams map the customer journey, they often end up with a long list of customer journey improvement opportunities. Being confronted with a massive list of issues is a tough place to be. For teams that are just starting their customer-centric evolution, picking the right place to start can make or break the momentum of your CX change movement. The good news is that there is a straightforward answer. The first task at hand is to prioritize the journey improvements, based on the customer impact, then evaluate the cost/benefit as a secondary step. Organizations normally jump straight into advocating for the business's needs, but as with all things CX, we should anchor our decisions in the customer's needs.   A winning formula I suggest an initial assessment of customer journey improvement opportunities based on two criteria:   Number of customer (or potential customers) affected. Figure out how many consumers interface with the broken aspect of the journey. The degree to which the current broken experience goes against the organizations customer promise, experience principles or the definition of what good looks like. Establish a rating scale to "score" the experience. I suggest a scale of 1-10, but you could use a different scale, as long as the largest number rating is assigned to the worst experience. Once you've quantified these parameters for each of your identified customer experience issues, multiply the number of affected customers, by the experience rating to get your customer journey improvement prioritization score. The higher the score, the more urgent the journey improvement.   # affected X experience rating = prioritization score This methodology highlights issues that might seem minor, but could impact a huge number of customers or potential customers, as well as those that might impact a small number of customers, but with potentially brand damaging results. Once your team has evaluated potential journey journey fixes from a customer impact perspective, they can further refine the list based on cost, level of complexity, etc. Journeys are constantly evolving, and there will be multiple factors to consider, but the point here is that CX teams should take the outside-in view first.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including B2B CX strategy) or get in touch via email.   

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of customer experience KPIs and how these can be used to foster organizational alignment. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the role of KPIs in driving accountability, which types of KPIs are the most effective, and some common pitfalls. If you want to quickly understand the role and the importance of KPIs in customer experience management, then this episode is for you.       Blog post coming soon! Hi there listener! Please check back in the next day or two for a summary write up of this episode. Sometimes life gets busy.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including B2B CX strategy) or get in touch via email.   

Energy industry expert, Chris Ahlfeldt, shares his insights on how the energy industry is handling customer-centricity and the world of empowered consumers. Chris and show host, Julia, discuss how the electricity industry is changing, what this means for consumers, and how organizations are evolving (or not!). If you’re looking to understand how CX is playing out in the energy industry and other highly regulated markets, or want a window into how non-CXers are facing customer-centric change, then stay tuned.     Customer-centricity in a unique context Electricity is the silent enabler of business, governments and most aspects of our lives. If you’ve ever experienced a power outage, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. We often take electricity for granted, and don’t think about it, until it isn’t there. Historically, electricity has been supplied by large power producers and utilities. These entities were often monopolies, and if they weren’t owned and operated by the government, they were, at a minimum, highly regulated. But in recent years, things have changed significantly. Technology has empowered individual consumers to more effectively control how much power they consume, and they have more options for getting their electricity, including generating this themselves and selling it back to the utility – something that morphs their role from consumer to supplier. Consumer activism is also on the rise, and with it, pressures that power producers shift to sustainable, lower emission options. As has happened within many other sectors, these changes and other market-disrupting forces have created the perfect storm to bring about a rise in customer-centricity. Unlike other industries where marketing or customer-facing operations teams could champion change, those teams aren't as prominent in this sector. As a result, change falls on the shoulders of the engineers, innovators and policy-makers. The energy industry faces other uphill challenges as the hierarchical structures of the incumbent organizations are so ill-matched for customer-centric evolution. Yet, we can see green shoots of change.   The unexpected champions of CX We might not think of engineers or technical folks as natural CXers, but Chris Ahlfeldt is a great example of how those outside of the field of CX work can also help advocate for customer-centricity. Chris is my husband, and while he's not a CX expert, he hears me talk about my work regularly. Over the years, he’s learned enough to understand how CX applies to his area of work. And as it turns out, that's enough for him to be able to understand the implications of his work on customer experience and why that's something all businesses (including utilities) should care about. Chris has learned about customer experience in the same way that others in an unrelated department would, by hearing consistent reinforcing messages and participating in discussions about it. The fact that he's embraced these concepts and applies them to his own work is a testament to the fact that as CX professionals, we need to communicate, communicate, communicate with our stakeholders! You might be surprised at who becomes a champion for the cause!   Insights from an accomplished energy expert It was a real treat to have Chris join me on the show, and not just because he's been such a key behind-the-scenes supporter of the program. Chris was also able to share some fascinating insights about how customer experience is being applied to the energy sector, tapping into his wealth of knowledge to do this.   Chris Ahlfeldt Chris Ahlfeldt has over a decade of experience working globally in the sustainability and clean energy industries. Since founding Blue Horizon ECS he’s helped clients identify opportunities and overcome pressing challenges within the rapidly changing energy and socially responsible investment industries. He’s also shaped early-stage policy and market decisions on clean ener...

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of what makes experience management unique for organizations in the business to business space. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the fundamentals of B2B CX, how this differs from B2C experience management and what approaches are applicable to both. If you are keen for a snappy summary of B2B CX, then this episode is for you. A growing focus on B2B CX   Episode 49 covered how the field of CX is growing and evolving, specifically with regards to the evolution of customer success teams and the role that these teams play in customer experience. The rise of the Customer Success function is rooted in the unique needs of CX within the B2B world, which is an important topic in and of itself. It’s generally accepted that CX gained traction in the B2C world first, but as B2B companies start focusing on customer experience, we need to understand how customer experience management might differ within this context.   Key differences andconsiderations The core fundamental of CX management are 90-95% the samewhether you are talking about B2C or B2B, save for a couple of differences.These differences are also the basis of key considerations for how to manageB2B CX:   The customer is not an individual, but rather a community of stakeholders - The biggest difference is that in the B2B space, companies aren’t dealing with an individual as their customer, but rather a group of stakeholders within the customer’s organization. To effectively manage the relationship, supplier organizations need to understand the wants, needs and drivers of all of their key customer stakeholders, recognizing that these will probably differ from individual to individual. Be wary of an over-emphasis on the needs of the customer’s decision-maker (e.g. the CEO). This person might be key for sign-off at the time of customer acquisition, but they might be removed from the relationship for the rest of the enterprise-level journey. Other stakeholders could become influential voices in re-purchase decisions. So it’s worth the time and effort to do a little stakeholder mapping on B2B customers. Fewer, but more complex, relationships - While B2B customer relationships might be more high maintenance given the number of stakeholders, the good news is that most B2B business models have a smaller customer base. These relationships are also likely to be deeper and more complex, hence the rise of Customer Success teams to help manage these relationships. If your customer base runs in the hundreds or thousands, not millions, it will change the way that you define experiences, communicate with your customers and solicit feedback. What works in the B2C world, might not be applicable in B2B, but the depth of the relationship opens up a new world of possibilities for experience management. B2B customer organizations are ultimately serving another customer, so pressures move backwards through the value chain - In B2C CX, the buck stops with the consumer. In the B2B world, enterprise product and service providers need to understand the wants and needs of the end consumer, as well as how these play out in terms of supporting B2B customers to deliver experiences to their customers. Whatever their customers want will inform what they ask of their suppliers.   Leveraging best practices from B2C What learnings can CX practitioners leverage from the world of B2C CX? The short answer is pretty much everything, as long as the approach is tweaked for the context of the 3 key differences mentioned above. Beyond that, it’s generally good practice to treat individual B2B customer stakeholders in the same way that a brand would treat any end consumer. B2B stakeholders are consumers in their own right. We know that consumer expectations are on the rise, and individual stakeholders within a business are unlikely to check these expectations at the parking lot when they go into work.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores 3 trends that are on the rise with how governments are embracing CX practices. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum speaks about how this trend is gaining global momentum, the importance of adapting government experiences for the modern world, and the growing influence of oversight bodies to ensure that governments are doing right by consumers. If you’re wondering how CX is being applied beyond the private sector, then this episode is for you.   Insights from a special guest Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP   CX beyond the private sector When we think about customer experience, the default is often to consider the implications for the private sector, but consumers don’t check their expectations at the door when they go to the DMV, grab a book at the library or go for a hike in a national park. And they certainly don’t forget these experiences when they go to the ballot box. Consumer expectations are on the rise across the board, and the public sector is also responding.   Trends in government CX Stephanie shares 3 trends for how CX is taking hold within governmental organizations:   Global momentum - CX is being embraced by governments and public sector agencies around the world. The governments of New South Wales in Australia and the City of Dublin in Ireland are just two examples of how government agencies are getting serious about CX by establishing permanent roles and putting funding behind government CX initiatives. Adapting experiences for the modern world - Historically, citizens have had to engage with governments through formal in-person formats like city council meetings. That's just not always conducive to the modern digital consumer lifestyle. As a response, governments are looking at how they can use things like opt-in online surveys to engage with consumers and understand what's important to them. The rise of oversight bodies - The government accountability office and inspector general's office are two examples of how the US federal government is establishing permanent ongoing customer advocacy among agencies. These oversight bodies keep tabs on fraud, waste and abuse, along with government CX pain points such as customer wait times.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including customer insights, CX measurement, leadership alignment and CX change implementation...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer success within the context of customer experience. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the typical function of B2B customer success teams, clarifies how this differs from traditional customer service in the B2C world, and then explores the role of customer success in CX. If you are keen to learn more about the heart and soul of the customer journey in B2B CX, then this episode is for you.       What is customer success? Customer success teams are mostly a feature in the B2B world, often where there is an ongoing client need or subscription based service offering. These teams are responsible for protecting and cultivating the client relationship, as well as delivering client outcomes. Once a sales team has acquired the customer, the relationship is often transitioned to the customer success team, which is responsible for keeping customers happy and engaged. These teams are also usually tasked with onboarding new clients as well as retaining, renewing and growing their business. Customer success teams are the beating heart of the client’s customer journey once the sales process is complete.   How this differs from customer service Unlike traditional B2C customer service, which is a reactive function, responding to specific customer issues or queries, customer success teams usually have some proactive ongoing engagement with their clients in addition to solving issues when they arise. B2C customer service teams are rarely tasked with growing a customer’s business. Retention, yes, growth, rarely. Customer success teams on the other hand are also responsible for understanding a client’s needs and then deepening their relationship with the brand through other products and services if appropriate.   CS and CX If you are struggling with the distinction, a safe way to think about it is that the CX function is often strategic in nature, while the customer success team is usually more tactical. CX management encompasses the entire journey, whereas customer success is responsible for delivering value once a potential customer becomes an actual customer. Both CS and CX will work towards the same end goal, but through slightly different means. The customer success team is one of the most if not the most important touchpoint for a customer in the B2B setting. Besides a client’s interactions with the product or service itself, customer success teams are probably the most important point of contact with the brand. That’s a huge responsibility. In terms of CX management, customer success teams will be an important source of customer insights and they can be a powerful voice for customer advocacy within the organization, but just as CX teams are typically separate from customer service teams, it’s important to create a distinction between the two in the B2B setting. If not, you run the risk of the rest of the business viewing CX as “that team’s responsibility”, which is a slippery slope.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consultin...

This CX Mini Masterclass demonstrates what CX change looks like in action. Special guest and CX thought leader Nate Brown makes the case for why CX professionals must become proficient in change management methodologies. He then takes a practical look at one of the most popular change management models, John Kotter’s 8-step approach, outlining ideas and recommendations for CX professionals at each step of the way.     Insights from a special guest I can’t think of a better guide for this immersive tour of change management. Nate is the co-founder of CX Accelerator, a virtual community for experience professionals. And while Customer Service is his primary expertise, Nate is able to leverage experience in professional services, marketing, and sales to connect dots and solve the big problems.  From authoring and leading a Customer Experience program, to journey mapping, to building and managing a complex contact center, Nate is always learning new things and sharing with the community. Beyond Nate’s expertise bringing together the CX community, he’s also in an in-house CX practitioner role, on the front lines of driving CX change, so he’s here to bring a great balance of theory and practice. You can follow Nate on Twitter using handle @CustomerIsFirst or LinkedIn. His CX Primer is an excellent resource for those looking to learn more about CX. Nate's CX Accelerator is is the kindest, most helpful digital community of CX professionals in the world.  Join them be encouraged, learn new things, and meet fantastic people who share a common bond of creating exceptional experiences!   Nate Brown   CX change through the lens of the Kotter model Nate shared his perspective on the practical application of change management with John Kotter's 8-step model. This is one of the most popular change management models out there, and a model highlighted by Diane Magers in episode 44 (a great overview of change management theory for anyone looking to learn more about this topic). Nate took listeners through each step of change, highlighting practical ideas and actions: Create a sense of urgency - brands that lead in CX are gobbling up market share across sectors. This can be used to help galvanize leaders and teams to move towards change. Build a guiding coalition - for CX it's important to build a guiding coalition with representation from across the organization's business functions. CX doesn't work in isolation, so the guiding coalition should be cross-functional. CX change makers should also pay close attention to where their organization's power core sits - that's the first place you should look to foster buy in and support. Form a strategic vision and initiatives - Don't let Voice of Customer (VOC) efforts become a false finish line. VOC can help inform strategy, but it's not the strategy itself. CX teams need to take customer insights and then translate these into real changes within the organization. Enlist a volunteer army - CX should be a movement, not a project. Let's be honest, it's difficult to rally a volunteer army around a project. Focus on the purpose of CX. Helping people is something that teams can support. Enable action by removing barriers - CX leaders should be looking at opportunities to reduce effort for customers and employees. When was the last time your organization looked at employee effort? Generate short terms wins - CX movements don't always focus on short term wins, but these are key for gaining momentum. Customer insights can be a great place to start if you want to identify the low hanging fruit. Sustain acceleration - Define your milestones to keep teams engaged and excited about the CX movement. CX leaders need to strike the balance between recognizing short term wins and not proclaiming victory too early. Institute change - CX change needs to be embedded in employee experience in order for it to become sustainable. If you do this,

Matt Prowse, director of Customer Experience at IAG, Australia's largest insurer, shares his experience leveraging positivity to rally teams around the customer. Matt (aka "the happiest man in insurance") and show host, Julia Ahlfeldt discuss the power of positivity, what it takes to get leadership support and how shifting a team's mindset can gear an organization to deliver exceptional customer experience. If you’re seeking inspiration about how team positivity, customer insights and good news stories can be harnessed to create real change, then this episode is for you.       The happiest man in insurance I met Matt at a conference last year. We were both speakers, and listening to him recount his work, I was struck by both his innovative approaches, as well as his energy and dedication to the customer experience profession. It can be easy for customer experience teams to get mired in the negativity of what's not working with the customer journey. But it's just as important to focus on the positive...and that's exactly what Matt has done. Matt may be known as the happiest man in insurance, but do not be mistaken, Matt is all about substance. He is a seasoned customer experience professional, with a degree in marketing and a diverse, cross-functional professional background that he can pull from. Matt is a Customer Experience evangelist charged with bringing the voices of customers and colleagues into organisations through stories. In his current role he is helping Australia’s largest general insurer IAG to be customer-led and data-driven through the creation of customer-centred routines, rhythms and resources. He has managed Customer Connection programs at organisations like FOXTEL, Rolling Stone Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald and most recently IAG. Throughout his career, he’s been a champion for the customer, and more recently he’s become an advocate for positivity as a means to foster customer-centric change. Connect with Matt here:  www.linkedin.com/in/mattprowse   Matt Prowse – Customer Experience Director, IAG   Shrugging off negativity After working at FOXTEL, one of Australia's major media brands and being bombarded on a daily basis with negative news, Matt decided to turn a 180 and focus on the positivity, both in his personal and professional life. As Matt has written about, our brains are hard-wired to seek out negative messaging. But this negative messaging also suppresses our creativity, problem solving and ability to connect with others. To unlock the power of positivity, we have to change the way we communicate, and this extends to how we talk about customer experience. Most Voice of Customer (VOC) programs are geared around opportunities for experience improvement. It's important for teams to understand which aspects of the customer journey need to be improved, but that doesn't mean those are the only messages that teams should focus on. To balance the positive with the negative, Matt started a program called "IAG with thanks", inviting senior leaders to call customers who had reported a positive experience and then engage with them about their recent interactions with the brand. Senior leaders can then send a personalized thank you to the front line team members.   You need engaged teams to deliver exceptional experiences As Matt's "IAG with thanks" program gained momentum, it also opened up other opportunities for back office teams to connect with customers and teams directly supporting the customer. Rather than sending PowerPoint slides with survey results, Matt invites cross functional teams to see customer feedback firsthand and engage with the employees who are at the coalface of customer experience. This approach has helped rally all teams around the customer and get everyone thinking about their contribution to the customer experience, regardless of how many degrees they may be removed from the actual experience. If you want to enable teams to design and delive...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer "Moments of Truth". Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares where the concept came from, and how you can use your understanding of Moments of Truth to improve customer journeys and foster loyalty. These moments can make or break a customer journey, so if you’ve heard this term used as a buzzword, but want to learn how to translate jargon into business results, then this episode is for you.     Moments of Truth Just like the term “touchpoint”, "Moment of Truth" (MOT) is another one of the super popular CX buzzwords. I hear it used to describe all sort of things, often incorrectly. (Check out Episode 16 for an overview of what touchpoints really are!) The good news is that the concept of the Moment of Truth is one that has been around for a while and has a pretty clearly documented meaning. This concept was coined by Jan Carlzon, the former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines. He spoke of these as “any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression.” Within this broad definition there are especially crucial moments of truth along the journey. These crucial moments happen when a customer has invested a lot of time, energy, money or emotion in a particular outcome, and that outcome is about to come to fruition. MOTs have a significant impact on customer sentiment or satisfaction. We can even think of them as a sort of “tipping point” for the journey. Within the airline example, the check-in counter experience is a quintessential crucial moment of truth. There are so many steps that lead up to the day of travel. From booking tickets to packing bags, customers typically invest a lot of time, energy and money in their trip before they even get to the airport. All this time, expectations and emotions are mounting. If the customer is greeted at check in with a friendly smile and a complementary upgrade because they are a frequent flier, they’ll be floating on cloud 9 all the way to their final destination. If, on the other hand, the check in agent scowls at the customer and informs them they've been bounced because the flight was oversold, it would set a horrible tone for their trip. The interactions at the check in counter take just an instant, but it’s so much more than that to the customer.   Identifying the MOTs Journeys can have multiple moments of truth. To identify the most important MOTs, start by mapping the customer journey and evaluating the accumulation of customer effort along the way, searching for those points when the effort crescendos into an outcome. Another way to look at this is in terms of “jobs to be done”. Most customer journeys involve little achievements along the way to fulfilling some greater need. Look for these smaller achievements, and you’ll also probably find the moments of truth. In the airline travel journey there are a good handful of key MOTs. Arriving in your seat on the plane and retrieving your bags upon arrival are two other examples of key moments of truth. Each of these moments presents an important emotional fork in the road. The outcomes could reaffirm the customer's brand loyalty and make their effort seem worth it, or it could leave them upset and erode their relationship with the brand.   Designing key memorable moments Once CX professionals identify those crucial moments of truth, it’s time to define what good looks like. Organizations should assess the moments through the lens of what they know customers like or dislike, as well as through the lens of their brand’s aspirations. The Virgin branded airlines have really nailed this balance. Their check in experience is seamless, modern and highly digitized with friendly service staff on hand to assist. These are the building blocks of a good check-in experience, but they’ve also added great branded touches like sleek kiosks, red carpets and mood lighting to all of their check...

This CX Mini Masterclass makes the case for why CX practitioners need to help flip the script on how organizations think about customers. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum provides practical tips on how to influence the way that teams regard customers.       Insights from a special guest Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP   Why we need to think about customers differently Historically, businesses and government agencies have viewed customers as a source of business risk. These themes can easily take center stage in leadership and management discussions, positioning customers as adversaries. Stephanie shares that while it's important to recognize and manage risk, organizations must also view customers for what they are: real people. Through humanizing customers, organizations can position customers as partners and remind themselves of who and what they are working for.   How to influence the mindset shift Making that change, however, is easier said than done. Fortunately, Stephanie has shared some practical and engaging ways to initiate the shift:   Democratize the data - share customer experience data in a widespread manner throughout your organization in a way that creates a reaction from people. Even if the reactions aren't what you had hoped for, the purpose is to get people regularly talking about customers, as they would profit, staffing, technology, etc. There are endless ways of sharing data, such as circulating survey results or playing a call recording at a team meeting and then troubleshooting experience solutions. Start a conversation through a story - share stories about real customer experiences. Storytelling has been a part of the human experience since time immemorial. Customer anecdotes not only humanize quantitative data, they also help people relate back to their own personal customer experiences. Include customers in the business - bring customers into your organization's activities. Customers aren't outsiders to your business, they are part of it. Look for opportunities to include customers in advisory boards, speak at company events or attend customer appreciation days. This will bridge the divide between employees and customers, and may help surface ideas on how to improve products or experiences.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including customer insights, CX measurement,

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the role of change management in customer-centric business transformation, and why CX practitioners need to hone their skills in this competency. Special guest and CX thought leader Diane Magers provides an overview of change management and some of the most popular frameworks. Julia shares her plans for future topics and more guest experts.       Insights from a special guest Diane has been part of the CX movement since the get-go. She was one of the founding members of the CXPA, and served for 3 years as the association’s interim CEO. After guiding the association through a critical time in its evolution, she announced that the would be moving on to focus on her CX advisory practice, Experience Catalysts. Leveraging expertise gained through holding senior CX roles at blue chip organizations such at AT&T and Sysco Foods, she helps organizations realize customer-centric transformation. To learn more about Diane's work as an expert business advisor, speaker and facilitator, connect with her via LinkedIn.   Diane Magers CCXP   CX is change management Organizations are ill equipped and unprepared to make the changes needed for customer-centric transformation to be successful. For established businesses, the scale of change is massive. Diane speaks about this as a "level 3" change, which is more akin to transformation than a simple process change (aka "level 1"). CX professionals need to be thinking about the intention and planning of CX initiatives, as well as the bigger picture of sustaining change to core structures within the operating model. Within this context, CX professional must become adept at change management, but this is a new discipline for many. The good news is that change management is an established field of work and there are many models that CX professionals can call on. Diane shared a few of these change management models with listeners: Kurt Lewin's model - This approach suggests change through specific phases involving, "unfreezing", changing and then "re-freezing" John Kotter's model - This popular approach involves 8 steps to change, starting with creating a sense of urgency and ending with instituting change Prosci's ADKAR model - This approach includes 5 steps for facilitating change: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' model - Best known for her work on death and dying, Kuber-Ross' approach can also be applied to how we understand the emotional response to change Diane stresses that regardless of which model you chose to use, just be sure to have a plan. Focus on the "why" and accept that change needs to be intentionally managed or it won't stick. Change plans should be living. As organizations evolve, the change plans should also adapt.   Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including customer insights, CX measurement, leadership alignment and CX change implementation) or get in touch via email.   

CMO of TymeBank, Luisa Mazinter shares insights on how her organization is shaking up consumer banking. Luisa and show host, Julia Ahlfeldt discuss how TymeBank is looking at customer needs differently, what it means to build a value proposition that appeals to attitudes rather than demographic market segments, and how passion and purpose have been the leadership team’s guiding light. If you’re seeking inspiration about the power of looking at customer-centricity with fresh eyes, then this episode is for you.       Digital customer experience as a catalyst for change As is the case in many markets around the world, the South African banking sector is amid a significant time of change. Episode 9 featured an interview with Charl Nel and Shaun Ray form Capitec Bank (check out part 1 here and part 2 here). Until recently, Capitec has been the new kid on the block, challenging the status quo of banking with a value proposition focused on ease and simplicity. Capitec has grown steadily since their launch in 2001 but during the course of the last year, an even newer breed of banks have come knocking at the door, ready to nip a the heels of Capitec and the established banking brands. Leading the change has been TymeBank, South Africa’s first digital bank which officially launched in early 2019. TymeBank has no branches and its core banking system is hosted securely in the Cloud. This reduces its overheads and delivers significant cost-savings that are passed on to its customers. Through a distribution partnership with retailers Pick n Pay and Boxer, TymeBank has kiosks located at stores across the South Africa. Customers can open an account at these kiosks in under five minutes. An important part of Tyme’s value proposition is their combination of low banking fees paired with competitive interest returns, something their lean operations enable them to do.   A CMO's perspective A digital bank without a traditional branch network certainly represents a paradigm shift in the world of banking, and the leadership team at TymeBank has put the customer at the center of everything since day one. No one is better positioned to share insights about this than Luisa Mazinter. Luisa is the Chief Marketing Officer of TymeBank. She’s been with them since 2017, and her professional background has certainly primed her for this unique job. She has had a vast and diverse career including being the Chief Innovation Officer at Mortimer Harvey, an adjunct faculty member at GIBS Business School, and consultant on strategy and change to some of Africa’s biggest brands.   Luisa Mazinter, CMO of TymeBank   Key takeaways Luisa shared a lot of insights about how the team at TymeBank has approached things differently. And the great thing is that these can be applied to nearly any industry context.   Look at customer needs, not products Create a CVP that appeals to attitudes, don't get hung up on demographic segments Ensure that as you grow the business, you hire people with a shared passion for the purpose and values If you are a small/agile company, look for simple ways to maintain the culture Keep a pulse on customer interactions through data, report back on this and act accordingly Think not only about how customers benefit form your products, but how they benefit from your impact in the marketplace     Episode Sponsor   This episode was sponsored by CX University, a CX training company offering a broad array of CX learning options, including e-learning modules and CCXP practice exams. CXU is an accredited resource and training provider and their resources and they offer a flexible and affordable monthly subscription model. Listeners of this CX podcast can get 10% off their first month's subscription by entering the discount code PODCAST10 at checkout. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist,