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 Improve Customer Experience. (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 Best Practices at http://customerexperience.vox.com (3:22) 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 Best Practices 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 Best Practices (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 Best Practices (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 Best Practices (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 at http://clearaction.biz/blog (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 Improve Customer Experience 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 Improve Customer Experience 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 Improve Customer Experience at http://customer.ology.com (3:10).

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