By 2020, customers will manage an estimated 85% of brand interactions without speaking to a human. The prevalence and richness of digital touchpoints means that companies are accumulating a huge volume of measurable information about their customers.
This information is power, and leaders are using it to learn from their customers and provide outstanding experiences. This is digital transformation, and those retailers wanting to emulate the success of industry leaders need to implement a digital Customer Experience (CX) strategy to get there.
https://www.retailsector.co.uk/3944-how-retailers-can-embrace-the-power-of-digital/
In recent years, after the first quarter, I try my hardest to publish the top trends of the current year. One of those trends I’d like to focus on here and now is how having a strong CX (Customer Experience) philosophy is vital, critical to achieving growth. For both Brick and Mortar and Online.
The following are trends that should be of interest to businesses who aim to listen to the Voice of the Customer (VOC); the goal being to implement the technology needed to respond to that voice, boosting the customer experience, and the bottom line.
If you’ve only been talking about CX, Here are 6 2018 Trends that will inspire you to take action:
https://www.business2community.com/consumer-marketing/take-businesss-cx-next-level-2018-6-trends-02041477/
The rise of new digital tools (like mobile, live chat, omnichannel support, self-service, social media) and a broad array of IoT devices (like activity monitors, beacons, smartwatches) and emerging technologies (like AI, AR, Machine Learning, VR, 3D printing and so on), has exponentially increased the number of customer touchpoints available to marketers.
On the other hand, chats, stories, and statistics grab today’s customer’s attention, and they get influenced by other people’s reviews and opinions and feel compelled to share their experiences of encounters with brands. Also, the customer experiences often trickle over from one industry to an entirely different sector, termed as “liquid expectations.” The rise of “always – connected” customers and their liquid expectations, has led to a common misunderstanding that businesses must rush to adapt themselves as “digital first.”
https://customerthink.com/reshape-customer-experience-by-leveraging-digital-trends-and-design-thinking/
Customer experience surveys are a vital part of every business strategy, intended to provide valuable feedback for e-commerce businesses, but difficult to master.
The trick to customer experience surveys and getting people to actually fill them out is to know their purpose, vary the question types, ask questions clearly and consistently, automate wherever possible and offer an incentive.
https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/xsellco/customer-experience-surveys-need-actionable-feedback-02042312/
You’ve got your feedback, but what does it really mean? More often than not, an organisation will analyse customer feedback, pick the most common denominator and seek to fix the problem quickly. If this is you, unfortunately, you are doing it wrong.
Implementing the insight from research into your Customer Experience strategy and acting accordingly is a different story. Just because your satisfaction levels have fallen may not be due to a faulty product as first predicted – you might need to look a bit deeper to discover that actually, the customer service hasn’t been satisfactory or the website is too confusing when purchasing items.
Whatever it may be, the common denominator doesn’t always mean it’s right. So, the data is in front of you, but what next?
http://customerthink.com/how-to-understand-the-truth-behind-customer-feedback/
When customers have a bad experience, they’re often more connected to how they FEEL about it, than the issue itself. And in the age of social media, it’s a good bet they’ll vent those feelings publicly and create a ripple effect you want to avoid. That’s why it’s business-critical to pay close attention to every touch point. If you can spot negative impacts early on and come to the rescue quickly, you have an opportunity to turn painful customer experiences into loyalty moments.
Consider human nature… When customers have a negative experience, what may resonate most is helping them feel heard, reassured, and valued. The more you do that, the more their frustration may dissolve into relief and even delight.
So, how do you do it?
https://customerthink.com/transforming-negative-customer-experience-into-loyalty-moments/
Surveys might be undermining every customer experience improvement you’re trying to implement. While that may sound counterintuitive, according to a 2016 study of customer perceptions by CEB (now Gartner), 75% of customers agree that their survey experience influences their overall impression of a company ("Closing the Customer Feedback Loop," Gartner's CEB Leadership Council). In short, customers see their survey experience as a component of their customer experience; it’s another touchpoint that impacts their overall relationship. Yet, the increasing ease with which surveys can be created (sometimes without regard for best practices or sound research methods) has led to an ever-increasing number of feedback requests — threatening the quality of those survey experiences and potentially eroding companies’ brand image or increasing customer friction. As a result, organizations must reflect on their survey practices and ask, “How do we adapt to effectively capture customer feedback while improving the customer experience?”
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/03/how-salesforce-is-leading-customer-feedback.html/
In today’s podcast episode, you’ll hear from six customer experience leaders in the B2B industry who share advice about the things they know now, that they wish they knew before they started their work. When it came to these particular CX experts, I noticed a common theme — realize that customer experience implementation isn’t just a program, it’s a cultural shift that requires patience and understanding. Take the time to learn how all of the various departments and leaders will be impacted by the overhaul. You’ll need allies as you continue to spearhead an organizational transformation.
http://www.customerexperienceupdate.com/?open-article-id=8025797&article-title=cx-wisdom-you-need-to-know-from-6-leaders-in-b2b-organizations&blog-domain=customerbliss.com&blog-title=customer-bliss/
I think McDonald’s approach is to be admired and the company’s commitment to its customers is unquestionable. However, like so many areas of business, technology offers new approaches today. Why not collect direct, honest and real world customer feedback about each branch? That’s a line of development we’ve been pursuing at Trustpilot for some time now. It’s possible for consumers to leave a review on our platform and for it to be tagged back to the store or branch where that service experience took place. In some industries, such as estate agency, a handful of our pioneering customers have gone a stage further constructing integrations that map reviews back to the individual estate agent serving that customer.
https://cxm.co.uk/getting-granular-customer-feedback/
Measuring the omni-channel customer experience starts with installing listening posts across all the different touchpoints and throughout the entire customer journey.
What is a Listening Post?
A structured approach to collecting customer feedback on individual touchpoints from the website to the in-store experience to the call center. Each listening post includes a research map, an engagement method and the destination of where the feedback will be actioned such as in a report or integrating with other systems.
This customer feedback allows you to uncover customer needs, wants and expectations across the website, contact center, brick-and-mortar locations and other channels on which your brand is present. When gathered, organized and leveraged correctly, this data provides you with a roadmap to launch more targeted and effective campaigns, eliminating much of the guesswork in optimizing the customer experience.
https://customerthink.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-omni-channel-customer-experience/
