When you think about customer experience, what comes to mind? For most people, the answer is likely that it’s an organization’s responsibility to provide customers with a great experience. This isn’t wrong, but there’s more to it. Your best-laid plans for customer experience go nowhere without invested and dedicated employees. To build a strong culture of employee engagement at your …
The world is changing, and customer expectations are evolving. So, innovation is the heartbeat of customer experience. But how do you innovate? Innovation, the late Peter Drucker points out in his landmark book, The Discipline of Innovation, is the “effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential.” He adds that it’s different than other disciplines. …
When developing a customer service strategy, the final step is to innovate and align. Where are the opportunities to get even better? How do you keep day-to-day operations and every decision aligned with your customer service vision? Learn more about two common and effective lenses to use when approaching innovation in this video from my LinkedIn Learning course “Customer Service …
The principles that guide effortless customer experiences seem basic. The truth is, it’s difficult to get customer service basics right, and many organizations don’t. While customer service catastrophes still make headlines, run-of-the-mill customer service annoyances are still maddeningly common.
Aren’t there a million and one nuances you could focus on when establishing quality standards for customer service employees? So how do you even get started? Here is an easy, yet effective, approach. A proven way to establish quality standards for individuals is to categorize them as either foundation or finesse. Learn more about foundation and finesse standards in this …
The most successful leaders are uneasy with depending on data alone to tell them what’s happening. They take steps to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. They want to deeply understand and experience the organization— and its products, employees and competitors—as customers do. I agree. Get out there and see what’s happening firsthand. Make it a habit. Learn as much …
An insurance company was eager to improve customer experience. They knew what was frustrating their customers, but customer satisfaction scores were stuck. They weren’t moving in the right direction. After speaking with their associates, I observed that everyone was being held responsible for customer experience at a general level, but it wasn’t clear how they were expected to support the …
Everything I’ve seen over the years — in both the organizations I’ve led and others I’ve worked with as an outside advisor — corroborates the importance of employee experience. It is indeed the cornerstone of customer experience. When you peel back the layers of any customer-centric organization, you’ll find a robust culture of honoring employees, encouraging their insight and ideas, …
When implementing your own customer advocacy initiatives, it can be helpful to learn what was worked well for others. This video explores ways organizations have structured their advocacy programs and five traits of successful initiatives. The video is from my LinkedIn Learning Course Customer Advocacy. Traits of successful customer advocacy initiatives from Customer Advocacy by Brad Cleveland
Customer experience is both far bigger—and much smaller—than many realize. In other words, customer experience is more than the product itself. It’s more than customer service. It’s more than your technology platform. It’s all-encompassing. It’s big. But it’s also the last interaction a customer had. Despite all of your effort—all of your processes, your work on products—just one interaction can …
