Why is it that professional sports teams put so much focus on tracking statistics? They want to get better. They want to see trends and identify areas where they can make improvements. The same thing goes for quality standards. You will want to measure how things are going so that you can identify areas where your employees and your team …
The term “governance” might feel out of place in the context of customer experience innovation. In fact, to some, creating a governance process might sound limiting or even stifling. But as a customer experience consultant, I’ve found the opposite to be true. It’s the department-spanning nature of customer experience that is precisely why governance is so important to innovation. Opportunities …
Have you ever had a metric that drives the wrong behavior? A bus company in a city with a well established international and cosmopolitan flair, had a reputation for too often running late. Leaders decided to give drivers incentives for ending their routes on time. Several months later, passenger satisfaction scores were even worse, and they quickly learned why. When …
Many contact centers are grappling with labor shortages, surging workloads, or a brutal combination of both. The resource mismatches have resulted in long wait times and frustration for customers, and high occupancy and burnout for agents. More serious implications can include employee turnover, lost customers, and a hit to your organization’s reputation and results. We’ve been getting lots and lots …
Customer advocacy is most effective when the entire organization works together to do what’s best for customers. That’s great for customers, of course, and the organization benefits from their loyalty. But departments across the organization benefit as well. That’s a point that’s sometimes missed. When you harness customer advocacy to help identify and further improvements across functions, you have a …
With a clear vision and sound processes, the right technology solutions for your customer experience efforts tend to come into focus. Some improvements will be incremental — small wins here and there — and others will be more sweeping. In some cases, you might even use technology to create new markets. As you look for ways to leverage technology — …
There are vast differences in how organizations are collecting and using customer feedback, and some are far more effective than others. Your approach to managing customer feedback must be action-oriented. You must do something with it. Too often, organizations miss out on the full value of feedback. Why is that? I see six pitfalls that are easy to avoid if …
The most successful leaders don’t rely solely on data to tell them what’s happening. They take steps to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. They want to deeply understand the business—its products, employees, and competitors—and experience it as their customers do. I agree. Get out there and see what’s happening firsthand. Make it a habit. Learn as much as you …
As a leader you have to be able to motivate your team members. In fact you probably need to be able to motivate others well beyond those who formally report to you. You may be asking yourself, how on earth can I get people to do things they may not want to do? But that’s not motivation. That’s coercion. Motivation …
Customer advocacy is a hot topic in marketing and customer experience circles—and especially so following the economic upheavals of 2020 and 2021. Many of today’s most forward-thinking leaders—Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Emily Weiss, to name a few—see it as the only true and sustainable way to win customers and market share over the long term. I define customer advocacy …
