You know we’ve always got your back, dear Reader. We’re continually exploring, expanding, reading, learning, asking questions, and sharing our insights. Trends are gonna trend and we’ll be here to bring you up to speed, challenge the status quo, and let you know what you need to know! With that mission in mind, we’re sharing five of the best articles we’ve discovered recently that are on the top of our minds.
Check them out– we’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics!
This Gartner article explores the top challenges of achieving a seamless customer experience through digital customer service – think website-based self-service, automation, AI and machine learning, big data, chatbots and Natural Language Processing, CRM capabilities. Essentially, this looks at all the pieces of the customer experience puzzle that extend around and beyond the human-to-human interactions that take place.
As more companies implement a wider array of digital solutions to meet customer needs, Gartner explores the common mistake of missing the big-picture strategy of how these solutions work together to deliver a holistic customer experience.
This Forrester article goes deep into the details of exactly how to tie customer experience to hard dollars. It’s a super interesting concept, especially considering how much we talk about the “intangible” value of CX – to see someone measure it in dollars requires a subtle shift in perspective. But this could be the key to gaining executive buy-in when looking for an outsourcer who focuses on the customer experience.
When we think about delivering on customer expectations, we tend to think first about things like empathy, emotional connection, and effective resolution as core elements of a great customer experience. And we tend to correlate the quality of that customer experience with customer loyalty. But this Forbes article from Shep Hyken explores how, actually, customer effort is a greater indicator of loyalty.
A customer’s experience of a specific service interaction may have checked all the boxes for emotional connection, empathy, and resolution, but if they were forced to jump through a number of unpleasant or difficult hoops before they ever spoke to an agent, their loyalty quite likely has been impacted. What does effort look like? It looks like this: channel-switching, agent transferring, repeating the same information over and over, searching for hard-to-find account details, and more.
When companies focus on reducing effort, they can reduce service costs by 37% and increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases by 88%. These are big number, suggesting that the overall customer experience is heavily impacted by the level of customer effort.
We’ve established that a positive customer experience is paramount. But the fact is, it’s simply not possible to deliver an amazing customer experience if you don’t also have a stellar employee experience.
This article from the Harvard Business Review provides valuable insight on what this combination looks like. Citing research from both Gallup and MIT, they make it clear that a really positive employee experience can result in 10% improved customer ratings and 100% increase in Net Promoter Score.
The article also explores the concept of a Chief Experience Officer (CXO), responsible for “creating a mutually reinforcing link” between customer and employee experience. The idea is if these two key elements are siloed under separate leadership, they risk becoming disconnected, losing the positive impact they have on each other. That’s a really cool/disruptive concept! Check it out!
Twenty years ago, issue resolution in the fastest time possible was pretty much the be-all-end-all of successful customer service. But as technology has increased customer expectations for service scenarios, the concept of customer experience has steadily become ever more important. In fact, Salesforce research says 84% of customers value the experience a company provides just as much as its products and services.
However, as customer experience evolves, it becomes ever more apparent that the exact definition of it shifts from one company to the next. That’s why we love this article from Salesforce.
This comprehensive article and infographic explore the ins and outs of customer experience, including its importance, examples of bad and great customer experience, the future of customer experience, and ways to improve it.
We’d love to hear your feedback on these articles and the topic of customer experience in general! Reach out here.