Improving Customer Experience

For senior executives the traditional balanced scorecard provides insights for steering the corporation or initiative in the right direction. However, these high level metrics may appear out of reach for most employees. Hear practical methods for engaging employees in balanced scorecards. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Delivering Your Brand Promise. (5:36) Mevio {Mevio-df44d696b0fbde8457e21482896839fa}

Open your mind to new ideas for improving customer experience. It's a fast-paced highly competitive world, so continual improvement -- and occasional breakthroughs -- are imperatives for consistently delivering superior customer experience. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (4:10)

'Customer-focus is important for certain job roles, but for other roles, we rely on our own wisdom.’ This is poisonous thinking when some parts of your company are excused from customer-focus. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (2:47)

Examples of customer engagement using Twitter, wikis, online communities, social network sites, and customer testimonials on flip phones. Examples from Comcast, Microsoft, Blackbaud, 3PAR, Intuit, Fox, Dell. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: and the webcast Customer Retention Strategies (18:37).

Over-focus on customer acquisition teaches customers to switch brands. For example, the brand switching rate, called customer churn, is 40% for the mobile phone industry, compared to a 7% customer churn rate for the insurance and financial services industries. Some good advice is to quit training your customers to switch – get off the churn bandwagon. Example from Orange / France Telecom. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customerexperience.vox.com (3:06).

Customer Centricity by Discerning Satisfaction Outcomes vs Enablers. What’s the difference between the way customers volunteer feedback versus the way they’re requested to give feedback? One revolves around outcomes in the customer’s world, whereas the other revolves around customer satisfaction enablers in the company’s world. True customer-centricity requires primary focus and decision motivations be centered on the customer’s world, rather than the company’s. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (7:06).

Beyond customer surveys and rhetoric, an organization has to do things uniquely to lead its industry peers in superior customer experience. Examples from IBM, Toyota, Intuit, JetBlue, Enterprise. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (3:48).

Do you want to gain an in-depth understanding of customer experience? More information can be obtained from five customers than from 50 focus groups, according to Larry Huston, former Vice President of Knowledge and Innovation at Procter & Gamble: "Map a holistic experience and spend 12 hours with one consumer over a one-month period instead of running 50 focus groups where you have eight minutes with an individual consumer." From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (2:31).

Anytime customers share feedback — whether solicited via survey or unsolicited via complaint or casual comments to front-line employees — it’s important to acknowledge the customers’ view and thank them, with assurance you’re working on solutions. Don’t let them feel like they’re hanging on a cliff waiting for advice they offered to make a difference! Examples from Boeing & Motorola. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (2:54).

Go after the gold in your customer data, avoid fool’s gold, and refine your customer data gold to make a difference in your business growth and profitability. Untapped opportunities exist in: *Making use of unstructured data, such as customer inquiries. *Connecting data systems such as order-entry and sales. *Helping Sales, Service, Finance, and the whole company see the customer in totality. *Allowing customer-facing people easy access to combined customer/company data. *And more. Examples from Cisco Systems. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (5:13).

It’s popular to tout customer-centricity, yet it’s very difficult to consistently demonstrate. The word centric means having a specific thing as the focus of attention and efforts. Customer-centric means that concerns other than the customer’s well-being are in the background while the customer stays in the foreground. That may seem simple enough, yet reality proves the elusiveness of customer-centricity. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (5:00).

Social media introduces excellent tools and customer feedback data streams for companies to monitor perceptions and trends. Best practices in customer experience management: a) Use social media listening first to determine how best to interact with customers; b) Recognize the importance of making emotional connections with customers via social media; c) Blend social media with other voice of the customer sources to create a holistic view of customer priorities; and d) Leverage customer stories from social media to energize employees enterprise-wide in continual improvement of customer experience. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (6:14).

What Does it Mean to be Customer-centric? To have the customer’s best interests as the focus of your attention — not to be pre-occupied in your own interests at the customer’s expense. To do this, you need to: 1) Really know the customer in order to anticipate their best interests. 2) Differentiate between primary and secondary motives. How Marketing and Customer Reference Managers can help build customer-centricity enterprise-wide. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (3:48).

You probably want to feel great more often! How can that happen? It’s up to you as a supplier to create excellent customer experiences that result in enthusiastic positive word-of-mouth and great business results. It’s up to you in all the decisions you make. Featuring the book I Love You MORE THAN My Dog: 5 Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times & Bad, by Jeanne Bliss. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (4:38).

'Too much information’ (TMI) can hurt customer experiences. It can be tempting to brag or complain about things as the customer waits for something. It can be easy to get long-winded telling a story to a customer. Be careful! Not only is TMI inappropriate and unprofessional, but it turns customers off. It can negate an otherwise stellar customer experience. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (3:10).

Social media contains a wealth of information about the customer experience, and savvy managers are paying attention. the social Web is full of customer comments, and engaging customers in conversations enables opportunities for building brand reputation, customer service, competitor analysis, sales leads, employee engagement, and new product development. From this perspective customer experience is 'the new marketing'. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (6:44).

You’ve probably heard of the blind men who touched part of an elephant and were adamant about their interpretations. Businesses are in the same predicament without customer data integration for a panoramic viewpoint. Examples from Hewlett-Packard. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (7:17).

For holistic customer experience management, the challenge is horizontal alignment to deliver intentional customer experiences. Keys to horizontal alignment, and what it takes to energize your customer experience strategy as a long-term journey enterprise-wide. Examples from Symantec. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (8:04).

Traditionally, Marketing takes the organization’s message to the customer base, but now equally important is Marketing’s potential to take the customer base’s message back to the organization. Marketing sets up the value proposition that the brand represents, but ultimately customers define what brand truly means to them. The way we actually deliver the value proposition is more relevant than what we tell customers. Examples from Aon Corporation. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (4:00).

A new understanding of innovation success factors is making traditional logic obsolete. Successful innovation has less to do with the best investment, technology, research and designers, according to Booz Allen Hamilton: “Unless their R&D efforts are driven by a thorough understanding of what their customers want, their performance may well fall short — at least compared to that of their more customer-driven competitors.” From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (4:12).

The hardest thing for competitors to copy is the customer experience you create. And engaged employees are the most dynamic and influential force in creating superior customer experiences. While 80% of executives say they want to use customer experience management (CEM) as a form of differentiation in 2010, only 11% would call their CEM approach “very disciplined”. This mis-match of intentions and capabilities reveals a huge opportunity for sustainable differentiation – if your company is one of the few that is willing to adopt a disciplined approach. Employee engagement correlates with customer engagement. Examples from JetBlue, Applied Materials, EMC. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (7:10).

One out of two companies (44%) acknowledge that high-profile negative customer experiences have at some time compromised their brand, yet only 29% have high ability to handle and resolve customer complaints. Many customer satisfaction managers emphasize the positive and de-emphasize the negative responses. A lack of processes and comfort levels for digesting and acting on constructive feedback can leave a company vulnerable to severe consequences. Differentiation opportunities for companies that decide to stand out from the crowd by implementing holistic, highly visible, and readily accessible measures of customer interaction quality in a concerted effort to prevent customer hassles. Examples from Virgin Mobile and Cisco Systems. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (5:36).

Humans, as well as all living things, align their behaviors with the rewards in their environment. For example, only 42% of companies agree that they can do what is right for customers despite the pressure to make current-period financial numbers. Interestingly, the same number of companies are actually using customer metrics to evaluate organizational performance. Examples from Applied Materials and Coca Cola Enterprises. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (5:38).

Please give us a 'highly satisfied' rating!?! Why do sales and service representatives feel compelled to tell customers how to answer a survey? Does the company want to know what the customers really think, or is the company trying to build positive publicity by claiming superior ratings? The answer to the second question exposes the company’s culture and customer experience management motives — whether they are striving to be customer centric (eager to know and act on what customers really think), or happy to be self centric (eager for positive publicity). The answer to the first question reveals weaknesses in the company’s performance management strategy — either imbalanced scorecards or poor training of employees. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (3:51).

A better way to conduct customer satisfaction surveys. If the customers’ jobs-to-be-done” concept is becoming embraced as essential for successful innovation, why is it largely ignored for monitoring of customer experience and satisfaction? Customers’ jobs-to-be-done (desired outcomes) are the customer’s viewpoint of functional and emotional needs to be fulfilled. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (3:38).

You never know someone so well as when they live with you! What better way to transform your culture to truly customer-centric ways of thinking and doing, than to invite your customer to attend all your discussions? This has long been a practice at Amazon, since founder Jeff Bezos once started an executive meeting by announcing that an empty chair at the table represented “the customer”. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (3:00).

Creativity is essential in our highly competitive business environment. As technology and options expand, customers’ expectations for higher value are always rising. Avoid the temptation to simply charge them for things that used to be free. And avoid the temptation to copy your competitors’ desperate moves. Look around with an open mind at what’s working well for other industries and disciplines. You may very well find lucrative paths to differentiate your customer experience in ways that delight customers. And you may also find some creative ways to add revenue streams that customers will gladly pay for, because of the additional value you’re providing. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (2:58).

Upgrading to a new model of any kind of product can be an exciting customer experience … but not if you as a supplier don’t set it up for success. All too often, upgrades cause too many surprises, wasted time and money, and frustration. It just doesn’t make any sense to spoil what could be a perfect opportunity to strengthen your fan base into brand evangelists. After all, buying an upgrade means customers are giving you a new revenue stream and market share. Show your appreciation for that with these keys. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (3:26).

Companies do a lot to encourage customer behavior that favors their brand. Yet, like most things in life, loyalty is a two-way street. Who are you loyal to? Features the book, Why Loyalty Matters. For the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (4:35).

If value is defined as benefits versus costs, what’s your company’s customer experience value ratio? Superior value is the objective of customers and marketers alike. And since customers hold the purse strings, marketers are compelled to view value as customers do. In the customer experience value ratio, the numerator includes product and service value, as well as image and personal value. We may often overlook or be unaware of some of the cost dimensions in the denominator: money … plus time, energy and psychic costs. In managing customer experience, the challenge is not only to maximize the numerator, but also to minimize the denominator. For the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://clearaction.biz/blog (3:07).

When a customer asks you a question, do you double-check your assumptions about their intended outcome? So often we take customer inquiries at face value, or simply assume we know what is meant. No matter what your job, you have customers, and clarifying your customers’ intended outcome is smart business. For the blog Customer Experience Optimization:, at http://customer.ology.com (3:50).

Curiosity is the key to great listening skills that improve customer experience. When you’re truly curious about your customer’s opinions, expectations and requests, you’ll find the customer to be more pleasant, interesting and fulfilling to you as well. 5 tips for customer-focused listening skills. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: at http://customer.ology.com (3:26).

Everything that external customers receive is the result of business processes. a business process involves a value chain of internal suppliers and internal customers. Help your internal suppliers help you deliver better customer experiences. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization:, at http://customer.ology.com (2:47).

Every person in an organization is needed for customer experience innovation. That’s because customer expectations and competitive offerings are always on the rise. Here are 10 tips ANY organization can benefit from. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization:, at http://customer.ology.com (5:00).

The absolute most important aspect of customer retention is culture. Culture is the way things are thought about, talked about, and done. If TRUST is the basis for any long-term relationship, then a culture of trust is essential to customer retention. Two great examples are Kimpton – a boutique hotel chain, and Cisco Systems. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Living Your Brand Promise, at http://customerexperience.vox.com (2:02).

Customer experience is the result of combined efforts from a vast array of people, from top management to front-line employees, to channel partners. When management creates and reinforces techniques to inspire outside-in thinking and behaviors, employees are likely to "live" the brand promise -- this is called internal branding. Examples from Publix Supermarkets, Cabela's, EMC, Dell, Altera. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Living Your Brand Promise, at http://customerexperience.vox.com (4:42).

Organizations that are centered around their customers know that it's not a part-time role. To truly be customer-centric, everyone company-wide needs to have a deep understanding of the customer's world. And beyond this sharp awareness, everyone needs to be constant in their personal alignment with the customer's world, exemplified by their decision-making and behaviors. Here are some great examples of companies whose customers agree are doing a superior job at being customer-centric: Amazon.com, USAA. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Living Your Brand Promise, at http://customerexperience.vox.com (3:54).

When customer experience requirements guide the hiring process, a company is practicing outside-in thinking. In fact, most companies that are consistently listed as top customer service providers have very deliberate methods for choosing the right people who will properly represent the company's brand promise. Examples from Southwest Airlines, Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Living Your Brand Promise, at http://customerexperience.vox.com (3:54).

See also Customer Experience Management webcast version. True customer focus is elusive, as internal realities often overshadow customer considerations in day-to-day decisions and behaviors. To get beyond lip-service, a major shift in company culture is necessary. Learn how to channel leadership and employee engagement to intersect with expectations and long-term well-being of customers. See blog at Customer Experience Optimization. (25:18)

See also Customer Experience Innovation webcast version. Customers in the information age are savvy, discerning and demanding of solutions that address their full spectrum of needs. A key to cracking the code for superior market positioning is innovation of the customer experience. Beat your competition in ways that are hard for them to copy. See blog at Customer Experience Optimization: (24:09)

Any innovation needs to be a winner in customer experience, or it will be short-lived. Here are 10 essential steps to hitting the mark. See Customer Experience Radio Show, Customer Experience Optimization:, and Customer.ology.com. (13:54)

Interview with Anu Ranganath, Cisco Systems Global Customer Engagement Program Manager for Quality Initiatives. Definitions and examples of Customer Experience, Brand Promise, Customer Touchpoints and Loyalty Value. From www.blogtalkradio.com/customerexperience. Related information at Customer Experience Optimization: Sign-up for ClearAction newsletter. (12:59)

Trust is the foundation for long-term productive customer relationships. Customer involvement is essential, yet prevention of customer hassles is even more important. See presentation slides at http://www.slideshare.net/clearaction, and blog at Customer Experience Optimization: Customer Experience Optimization for related resources. (18:37)

Why is it that only 12% of customers judge specific leading suppliers as extremely customer-centric? Internal branding is a multi-faceted cultural journey guiding everyone company-wide in managing their personal impact on customer experience. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Delivering Your Brand Promise http://clearaction.biz/blog. (4:09)

Whether you’ve got external or internal customers, they expect you to ‘do the whole job’! Do the whole job and you’ll enjoy more secure customer relationships. You’ll benefit not only in the short-run, but also in the long-run as you build customer equity, lifetime value and reliable profit streams. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (3:40)

You probably hear lots of “customer …” phrases that seem interchangeable. In reality, there are big differences in these terms, although they are related. Includes in-depth definition of CEM - customer experience management. From the blog Improve Customer Experience http://customer.ology.com. (4:51)

If CEM execution is broken, examine the foundation rather than fill potholes. Gain company-wide cooperation for customer experience strategies. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: Delivering Your Brand Promise at http://clearaction.biz/blog. (4:48) -- Sign-up for ClearAction Customer Experience Optimization:

"What everyone in a company does can be reduced to one of two functions: to serve the customer or serve someone who does." (Quote from Dr. W. Edwards Deming). From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (2:56)-- Sign-up for ClearAction Newsletter.

Customers automatically use 50 or more metrics for any customer experience. We may be re-inventing the wheel as we strive to come up with customer metrics that spell success. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (3:14) - Sign-up for ClearAction Newsletter.

2 essential tips for keeping any initiative on track: #3 Predictive, #4 Sustained. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (4:54) - Sign-up for ClearAction Newsletter.

2 essential tips for keeping any initiative on track: #1 Connected, #2 Actionable. From the blog Customer Experience Optimization: (3:55) - Sign-up for ClearAction Newsletter.