Last year, the CX management market was already worth $11.4 billion. With a 12.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), it is expected to reach $20.4 billion by 2028. 

Companies are investing serious money into CX because excellent CX is quickly becoming a key expectation of consumers. A survey by Gartner found CX drives 66% of customer loyalty, making it more influential in deciding where customers shop than price and brand name combined.

Whether you operate a physical or online store, developing a winning CX strategy is one of the best ways to ensure your business thrives. Grow your customer base and your company’s bottom line by delivering the best retail CX in your segment. And if you need a little help, you can always reach out to the experts.

What is Customer Experience in Retail, and Why is it Important?

The customer experience (CX) is a customer’s impression of an organization or brand based on their interactions with you. It is the sum of all customer interactions with a company or brand, from their first contact to post-purchase follow-up.

While customer experience is still important, the way someone interacts with you is different from what it was a decade ago. Technology, mainly eCommerce, has changed the way people shop. There are now multiple touchpoints for your customers–websites, apps, and newsletters in addition to your physical space (and they may never even set foot in your store!).

Because of this complexity, the retail customer journey must be consistent across all touchpoints (website design, apps, physical space, etc.). Consistency is what customers want and expect, providing them with a great experience. 

Customer experience can make or break relationships between companies and customers. A positive experience builds loyalty and trust, increases sales, and improves customer satisfaction. A bad CX can motivate customers to abandon the brand altogether.

Distinguishing Between CX and Customer Service

It’s common to think of CX and customer service as interchangeable concepts. But even though both fields are concerned with keeping customers happy while benefiting the brand, there are some important distinctions between the two. Knowing what falls under which category will help develop a CX strategy that adds real value to your business.

Customer service is the direct interaction between a company and its customers. Customer experience is about a customer’s perception or feeling of the company. Let’s put it another way. Customer service focuses on specific interactions, like resolving complaints or answering questions. You can think of customer service as a point on a timeline. 

Customer experience is the line itself. It takes into account all touchpoints during the purchasing process. CX includes product quality, ease of use, pricing, delivery speed, and more.

Impact of Global Events on Retail Customer Experience

The global pandemic of 2020 flipped the retail industry on its head. While the economy entered a collective recession, the eCommerce industry saw a boom as online shopping replaced physical purchases.

While the 2020 recession is the shortest on record, there is no doubt that inflation has become a major concern for consumers across all industries, including retail and retail accounting. Experts believe the modern retail industry will follow a similar pattern as it did during the 2009 recession. 

Even as the global economy recovers from the pandemic, certain consumer habits, like a newfound preference for shopping online, are here to stay. That means if brands want to retain the customers they’ve gained by growing their digital stores, it’s time to spend on CX. A post-pandemic report from 2021 by Forrester, a market research firm, found that satisfactory CX contributed to 2.4 times higher customer loyalty for brands.

Innovative Strategies to Enhance Customer Experience in Retail

It’s one thing to say, “We’ll give our customers a great experience!” It’s another to make a strategic plan and put it in place. Reaching your goals of customer loyalty and increased revenue requires a mix of proven strategies and experimental approaches.

Five Proven Techniques for CX Success

Here are a few reliable methods for creating the best CX possible:

• Know Your Customer

Understanding your customers is essential to any business’s success. Knowing who your customers are and what they want means you can create better products to meet their needs. When you meet their needs, they enjoy the experience. 

One of the most important ways to understand your customers is by collecting data about them. This could be data like demographics, sale history, website visits, and more, as this information provides businesses with valuable insights. Businesses can then tailor marketing strategies and product offerings for the greatest customer satisfaction.

• Create a Consistent Customer Journey

Consistent journeys allow retailers to ensure that customers have the same experience regardless of which touchpoint they interact with. This will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and help build trust between your brand and your customers. Retailers can create an environment where customers feel comfortable and valued through this process. This helps customers make purchases more often.

Increased conversion rates are another benefit of consistent customer journeys. Customers will more easily identify each step they take and are less likely to make a snap decision. This process creates new sales opportunities like up-selling, cross-selling, and impulse purchases. 

• Modernize Your Technology

Many exciting new developments in consumer technology have revolutionized the retail experience in 2024. Some notable features consumers are becoming used to interacting with are AI retail assistant chatbots and retail mobile apps, which provide personalized and interactive online shopping experiences, and augmented reality (AR) shopping.

• Measure Customer Satisfaction

Tracking key metrics is vital to improving your CX performance. This information helps improve the quality of service you provide, which, in turn, will lead to higher levels of customer loyalty and retention. Some important metrics that indicate how you well your CX is performing include:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction Rating (CSAT)
• Voice of Customer (VoC)

• Implement a Loyalty Program

Loyalty programs, as the name implies, are specifically designed to increase customer loyalty. And it’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to do so. A loyalty program can reward customers for their frequent purchases and encourage them to come back for more.

These programs can be used to reward customers with discounts, special offers, freebies, or other incentives that will make them feel appreciated. Additionally, loyalty programs can also help businesses track customer data so they can better understand their needs and provide tailored services accordingly.

New CX Strategies for the Digital Age

In one of Lumoa’s webinars – Transforming Customer Experience in Retail: From Insights to Actionable Metrics and Back, Matthieu Bonelli explores the power of integrating insights and actionable metrics to enhance customer experience in the retail sector. Highlighting the critical role of breaking down silos between digital and physical retail spaces, Bonelli provides practical examples of how unified team efforts and customer journey mapping can create consistent and memorable brand experiences.

This segment not only reinforces the importance of leveraging technology as outlined in the introduction but also exemplifies the application of these new CX strategies in a real-world context, offering a comprehensive roadmap for businesses aiming to thrive in the digital age.

Your business needs to use all the tools at its disposal. Using the latest technology and software solutions, your brand can build a next-generation CX that builds loyalty and drives sales. Here are some of the latest trends in CX that can have a positive impact on your business:

• Personalizing the Retail Experience

Giving customers a personalized shopping experience is one of the best ways to keep them returning to your store for more. A survey found that 88% of all online shoppers prefer buying from websites that offer a personalized experience. 

• Phygital Retail

Despite the rise in online shopping, some consumers still prefer buying from brick-and-mortar stores. Your company can enrich their retail experience by offering digital upgrades to their physical journey through the store, such as QR codes displaying product information, enabling online purchases through a digital catalog and store pick-ups, and contactless payment options.

• Measuring and Improving Customer Experience Across Channels

To deliver a seamless shopping experience, CX needs to remain consistent across channels. Your customers should be able to pursue their requests through whichever mode of communication, either on social media, the company website, or any other platform. Additionally, you can create an online FAQ page to provide readily available answers to common questions, reducing wait times and empowering customers to find solutions independently.  Alternatively, you can collect their email addresses and send a feedback form to gather their feedback.

Having a clear omnichannel messaging strategy also helps your business reach more consumers in different segments, bringing your brand greater exposure and the opportunity to see more sales conversions.

The Future of Customer Experience in Retail

The retail industry is changing rapidly, and customer experience is at the forefront of this transformation. Over 45% of companies believe customer experience will be their top priority for the next five years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that your future depends on your customer experience strategy.

As customers become more informed and demanding, retailers are turning to data-driven marketing strategies to deliver personalized experiences that keep customers coming back.

Customer experience analytics help retailers gain insights into their customers’ behavior and preferences. This data is powerful. It allows you to create targeted campaigns that get better engagement. Your customers will take more interest in these campaigns. And that’s more likely to drive sales and increase customer loyalty.

Having a CX strategy that works for your business is an ongoing process. And Lumoa is the perfect partner for your journey. Check out our cx solutions, and we’ll help you start managing your CX today.

The post Customer Experience in Retail Guide: Strategies and the Future of CX appeared first on Lumoa.

Gone are the days when businesses could afford to sit on piles of survey data, waiting for end-of-quarter reviews to make sense of them. Today, customer feedback is immediate, public, and powerful; not to mention louder. It’s out there shaping opinions about your brand before you’ve even had your first coffee of the day.

It’s true, collecting feedback is one hurdle, but analysing it? That’s another level. Because let’s face it, the volume of feedback is overwhelming. In this sea of opinions, valuable insights often slip through the cracks — the kind of insights that can steer your business in the right direction or send it off the cliff.

So, what’s the secret to analysing customer feedback in real time? How do we sift through the noise and spot the gems that can guide our next business move? Stick around. This isn’t just another article; it’s going to be your playbook for understanding the real value of real-time feedback analysis.

Why a Structured Approach Matters in Feedback Analysis

Before we jump into the ‘how,’ let’s talk about the ‘why.’ Why is it so crucial to have a structured approach to analysing customer feedback? Well, as mentioned earlier, opinions are formed in seconds and shared just as quickly; businesses can’t afford to be slow. But speed without strategy? That’s just noise without direction.

We found out in our research on the state of customer experience (CX) that more companies are focusing on CX than ever before. Primarily because customers now demand more from their brands. Astonishingly, 4 out of 5 customers today believe that the experience a business provides is as significant as its products and services.

Furthermore, 66% expect brands to understand their unique needs. However, there’s a gap: 54% feel companies fail at providing the right information, and a staggering 66% feel treated like mere statistics.

The challenges companies face in implementing a solid CX strategy are multifaceted:

• Budget and Profitability: Investing in a strategy, deploying solutions, monitoring metrics, and converting insights into actionable plans requires significant resources.
• Technical Variables: Overcoming ineffective data silos, outdated tools, and inadequate personalization options remain daunting tasks for CX-driven companies.
• Human Interactions: Instilling the value of consistent CX best practices in team members is challenging, irrespective of the budget size or advanced technical solutions.

Moreover, customer expectations are increasing: 76% anticipate consistent interactions across departments, 74% use multiple channels for transactions, 52% expect always-personalized offers, 88% want companies to speed up digital initiatives, and 61% feel they’ve lost control over their personal data.

Customer feedback is everywhere – in your survey responses, online reviews, social media comments, and more. You can find valuable insights, but only if you know what to look for. Without a clear, structured method, you’re not just missing out on valuable input; you’re potentially misinterpreting the feedback you do manage to catch. And let’s not even get started on the data overload!

That’s where a structured approach comes in. It’s not about collecting feedback for the sake of it; it’s about gathering insights you can act on. Insights that will not only meet but exceed the modern customer’s expectations, and in doing so, propel your business forward.

Timing is Everything: How to Collect Customer Feedback at the Perfect Moment

In understanding the ‘why’ behind real-time feedback analysis, we recognize the need for immediacy and relevance. Now, let’s explore the ‘how,’ starting with the element of timing. Customer stories, experiences, and what motivates them are the best ways to get to know them. And timing is everything.

How does this work in the real world? If you send out a feedback request long after the customer has interacted with your product or service, you’re not just getting stale news; you’re missing out on the heat-of-the-moment insights that could drive your business forward.

So, how do you nail the right timing? Here are some practical steps.

1. Be Proactive with Prompts: Implement systems that automatically ask for feedback after key customer interactions. Whether it’s a purchase, a customer support call, or a product return, that’s your cue to jump in and ask how it went.

2. Make it Easy and Immediate: Feedback tools should be a no-brainer to use. Think of one-click ratings, short surveys, or quick polls right on your app or website. The easier it is, the more likely customers will share their thoughts on the fly.

3. Keep it Relevant: Tailor your feedback questions to the specific interaction. Generic queries get generic answers. But ask about their recent experience? Now you’re getting the good stuff.

4. Respect Their Time: Don’t bombard customers with requests. You need to be strategic about when and how often you reach out. You will lose their attention if you do it too much. Not enough, and you’re flying blind.

Word of advice: there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy here. The best approach is the one that fits your customers’ journey. Additionally, there are various customer feedback practices that you can follow. Practicing it will grant you actionable feedback. This strategic approach is a significant step towards achieving success.

Data to Action: Efficient Strategies for Analysing Customer Feedback

After establishing the importance of timely feedback collection, we must address another core challenge: transforming this abundance of data into actionable insights.

Picture this: you’ve just rolled out a new product or service, and you’re on pins and needles waiting for the feedback to roll in. But we already know that collecting feedback is only half the battle. Sifting through it all and figuring out your next move fast is the real deal.

Here’s our game plan for this part:

1. Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize: Not all feedback is created equal. You can use text analytics tools to identify trends and urgent issues. That way, you’re not just putting out fires; you’re making strategic improvements that matter.

2. Empower Your Team: Build a CX team that has access to real-time feedback and the authority to act on it. Whether it’s a customer service rep who can offer an instant apology discount or a product manager who can fast-track a bug fix, immediate action can turn a critic into a fan.

3. Measure the Impact: Be aware of how your changes will impact customer satisfaction, retention, and profitability. Remember, the goal here is strategic growth.

4. Choose the Right Tools: Invest in CX platforms that don’t just collect feedback but analyse it in real time, providing clear, actionable insights that your whole team can access and act on.

Before we move on: Don’t (and shouldn’t) react to every piece of feedback whether you’re doing it manually or not. Build a system that helps you filter out the noise and find the critical insights. That’s how you stay agile, informed, and ahead of the curve.

Beyond Listening: How to Effectively Respond and Act on Customer Feedback

We’ve all been there — a bad experience leads to a complaint, which sometimes disappears into the void, followed by a generic apology way too late.

It’s not just about haircuts gone wrong; this applies to any customer experience, from downloading software to waiting on a service technician. The point is, a delayed or insincere response can turn a small hiccup into a deal-breaker.

So, how do you ensure feedback doesn’t just get collected but gets acted on in a way that wins back hearts? Check out these 4 points to remember:

1. Personalize the Follow-Up: A generic apology won’t cut it. Personalize your responses based on the issue and the customer’s history with your company. Make sure they know you care about them.

2. Take Action and Communicate: Fix the issue, of course, but also let the customer know what you’ve done. This communication is important; it turns a closed loop into a continuing conversation.

3. Check Back: Don’t be afraid to follow up again later to confirm the customer is satisfied or to ask for more feedback. It shows your personality and commitment.

4. Learn and Improve: Use this feedback to make systemic changes in your product or service to reduce the likelihood of the problem recurring.

Closing the feedback loop isn’t just damage control; it’s an opportunity. Handle it right, and you’ll retain customers and possibly turn them into your biggest advocates.

Methods in Analysing Customer Feedback

There are multiple ways to analyse customer feedback. And with these methods, you can uncover trends, emotions, and quantify your customers’ expectations. Let’s look at the top ways in analysing customer feedback:

1. Sentiment Analysis: It’s the emotional tone behind the words. Using AI, it interprets feedback to categorize responses like happiness, frustration, and disappointment. It’s like having a mood ring for your customer reviews, but way more accurate.

2. Text Analytics: Go beyond surface-level responses. This technique examines open-ended feedback, identifying common keywords, phrases, and topics. It’s about seeing the forest and the trees, understanding not just what terms are popping up, but also how they’re interconnected.

3. Conversation Analysis: Look into customer conversations. This allows you to see the entire dialogue, helping you understand the customer’s journey and experience. By focusing on keywords and categorizing feedback, you can identify patterns and issues that need immediate attention. What an excellent way to listen to your customers!

Automation for Real time Analysis

Generative AI exploded like a bomb this year and is rapidly branching out. With 4 out of 5 customers demanding more personalized, immediate interactions, businesses are scrambling to adapt.

The rise of self-service and automated customer processes reflects more than a trend; it’s a loud and clear message from consumers craving efficiency and authenticity. Generative AI tools like GPT don’t just process feedback; they understand it, diving into the emotional undertones and subtle hints hidden in your customers’ words.

Considering the world is racing toward deeper, more meaningful customer experiences, you have to ask yourself: are you keeping up, or are you lagging behind?

Conclusion

Okay, let’s wrap this up: Analysing customer feedback in real time will level-up your customer experience. Imagine knowing what your customer thinks right at the moment they’re thinking about it. That’s powerful stuff.

With customer experience analytics tools today, you can sort through this feedback fast. This process helps you determine what requires immediate attention and what can wait.

But remember, collecting feedback is just the beginning. Start engaging in a dialogue with your customers. Had a hiccup with a customer? Reach out, extend a genuine apology, and address the issue. You’d be surprised how a simple, sincere ‘we’re on it!’ can turn a critic into a fan. In fact, studies, like the one from Carey School of Business, show that a heartfelt apology can skyrocket customer satisfaction by up to 74%.

Sure, you’ll receive an array of feedback, and while it’s tempting to dive into action mode, the real art lies in stepping back, pausing, and connecting the dots. You have to look at the big picture, discerning patterns, and understand what’s enhancing the customer experience and what’s pulling it down.

Setting up a real-time customer feedback system seems daunting, and yes, it does require resources. But consider this: the insights you’ll gain aren’t just about fixing what’s broken; they’re also about forging stronger, more meaningful connections with your customers. And the beauty of it? You’re not in this alone.

There’s a whole arsenal of guides and tools designed to help you design your CX strategy. The bottom line is that analysing customer feedback in real time doesn’t just fix problems; it develops communities around your brand. Get it right, and your customers won’t just stick around; they’ll become your most powerful advocates.

The post How to Analyse Customer Feedback: A Real-Time Approach appeared first on Lumoa.

Customer Experience (CX) hinges upon customers’ sentiments. Happy customers are satisfied customers who will return to help your business. One surefire way to deliver happiness to customers is to create a culture of happiness within the company.

This article addresses the importance of happiness in customer experience, explains how happiness can drive growth and become a competitive advantage, and is inspired by the fireside chat “How can we use the science of happiness in CX?” that Carlos Del Corral, Lumoa CEO, had with Rosaria Cirillo, a renowned customer experience professional and a certified happiness expert.

Happiness and Customer Experience

Weaving happiness into your company’s customer experience strategy requires a change in perspective and leadership. Rather than being purely transactional, your strategy and leadership should focus on the following three elements that Rosaria defines as the basis of HCX (the future of CX) and Happiness Driven Growth:

• Human-Centered Experiences: Build a business model that acknowledges and encourages the desires of customers and employees to live a peaceful and sustainable life.
• Happiness-Contributing Experiences: Create and deliver meaningful and life-enriching products and services that make customers and employees feel empowered.
• Heart-Connecting Experiences: Since people tend to make decisions driven by emotion before justifying them with logic, find ways to connect emotionally with customers and create a work culture that allows them to lead from the heart.

When your approach to customer experience incorporates these three elements, customers and employees come away feeling pleasant and enriching emotions. Understanding emotions and what triggers them is at the core of every customer experience strategy.

Based on the learning from Marshall Rosenberg NVC, Rosaria invited us to see (customer) emotions as the consequence of meeting needs or not and to simply see emotions as “pleasant/enriching” or “unpleasant/depleting”, instead of labeling them as positive or negative, which includes judgment and is less empowering.

When considering that “unpleasant” emotions are mainly a result of unmet needs, your customer experience strategy can promote happiness by proactively meeting your customers’ needs and by empowering your employees to address these needs.

Linking Happiness and Customer Needs

American psychologist Abraham Maslow introduced the concept of the “Hierarchy of Needs,” a pyramid with five levels that lead to human fulfillment and are foundational to customer understanding.

A customer experience that focuses on cultivating happiness needs to follow a similar model. It starts with recognizing that customers also have a hierarchy of needs in their dealings with a company. We will look at consumers’ hierarchy of needs in more detail below.

• Level 1 Basic Needs: Involves giving customers access to a company representative who can understand their requests and take steps to solve them.
• Level 2 Safety Needs: Taking steps to ensure customers can easily access the company’s representatives, like having a toll-free number, prominently displayed contact information, and being transparent with customers.
• Level 3 Efficiency and Consistency Needs: Being able to meet customers’ requests in a short amount of time and maintaining the same level of service across all company touchpoints.
• Level 4 Attention and Cooperation Needs: Enter the realm of personalization with agents who can recognize customers and recall what issues they’ve experienced earlier.
• Level 5 Proactive, Self-Actualization, and Connection Needs: Forge a connection based on empathy between company agents and customers, where customer needs can be anticipated and met even before an issue arises.

A company should set out to meet each level of consumer needs in ascending order to build a happiness-centric customer experience. As you climb the ladder to higher levels, you might also notice metrics like your NPS rising in synchrony, as there is a correlation between Net Promoter Score and Maslow’s needs hierarchy.

Exceeding Customer Needs to Achieve Happiness

Our emotions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are in a constant flow state, moving from pleasant to unpleasant and back again. It would be foolish and exhausting to expect an individual to be happy all the time. Instead, we should link our emotional state to how we feel when our needs are being met versus when they are not being met.

This allows us to act on unpleasant emotions by identifying unmet needs and taking steps to meet them.

In customer experience, this is a practical piece of advice that can help companies reduce customers’ pain points. Angry or difficult customers usually have urgent needs that need to be met, and companies can adapt their approach to address those needs proactively.

When you understand your customers’ needs, you can focus on adding value to their experience and making them happy, and sprinkle your customer understanding with the knowledge from the science of happiness to reach the top of the pyramid and proactively contribute to both customers’ and employees’ happiness.

The Nine Factors of Happiness

Happiness in customer experience is not limited to just the customers. Employees play an equally important role in creating a product or service that spreads happiness. Happiness trainer, educational speaker, and author of Yellow Factor: Happiness in Business, Rosaria has put forth a simple model for companies to apply the science of happiness to exceed both customer and employee expectations and achieve happiness-driven growth.

Based on the analysis of over 300 trailblazers cases and findings from neuroscience and positive psychology, Cirillo’s “Sunflower of Happiness” nine factors we can nurture to design and deliver HCX experiences. Let’s break down each of the nine petals, which conveniently fit the acronymous HAPPINESS.

Health

Being in good physical and mental health is the bedrock of happiness. Promoting practices that prioritize the health of employees and customers alike is essential for every company, not just those that work in healthcare.

Autonomy

Giving employees a degree of control over their actions lets them feel empowered. Having a say over their work-life balance and responsibilities makes employees feel positive about their role in a company.

Purpose

Working toward a worthwhile goal makes people feel happy about putting in effort. Companies should give employees a chance to contribute to something larger than themselves and help meaningfully. Customers can also be brought on board by offering them the chance to participate in company initiatives for the greater good.

Play

Cultivating a sense of fun is vital in a culture of happiness. Qualities like creativity and adventurousness should be encouraged in an environment that is free of any judgments. Play can extend beyond the workspace to customers as well, engaging them in activities that stimulate their sense of fun.

Integrity

In order to create a positive customer experience, companies need to make a positive impact on society. Employees feel proud, and customers feel comfortable being associated with businesses that take steps to improve communities, contribute to society, and protect the environment.

Nature

Being connected to nature promotes a feeling of holistic well-being. This could be as simple as allowing natural light into workspaces and creating experiences that simulate the sense of being in nature. Companies can also commit to preserving nature and allowing their customers and employees to enjoy their bounties by promoting initiatives that protect the environment.

Empathy

Shared connections bring people closer in business and their personal lives. Companies should convey their sense of empathy through their communications with clients, offering assurances that they understand their problems. Fostering better working relationships between employees also contributes to a culture of happiness.

Simplicity

Customers and employees alike would like to conserve their energy. Reducing the amount of demands on them and simplifying their transactions lets them remain energetic and happy.

Smiles

Our brain responds to our body’s signals, and smiles signify happiness. Turn milestones into moments of celebration, and share the joy with customers to spread happiness all around.

Achieving Lasting Growth with Happiness

Investing in a culture of happiness can yield positive returns for a company. Promoter scores, sales, and revenue all go up when your customer base is happy and satisfied. Learning about the benefits of happiness is only the first step.

Through repetition and consistency, you can hardwire happiness into your customer experience, which builds customer loyalty and employee motivation. And it all starts with nurturing your very own happiness to blossom like a sunflower. Turn happiness into your business (and personal) superpower!

As a special gift for Lumoa’s attendees in the fireside chat between Carlos and Rosaria and the readers (YOU), she has provided a free extract of her book “Yellow Factor: Happiness in Business” Enjoy.

The post Happiness in Customer Experience: A Competitive Advantage appeared first on Lumoa.

So how do you ensure that all your customer experience (CX) initiatives are successful? In this article, Here are some practical tips to ensure that your CX initiatives successfully build strong relationships with customers.

Avoid Siloed Working

“The experience that a customer has with any organization is ultimately delivered by everyone in that organization,” shares certified CX Consultant Ian Golding. This means that everyone in the company is a critical component of customer experience, whether they work in support, sales, marketing, or any other department.

Siloed working negatively impacts both customers and employees, leading to the following:

• Higher operational costs
• Negative brand reputation
• Bad customer experience
• High acquisition costs
• High churn rates

It’s essential to avoid silos and ensure that all departments are working together cohesively and have a clear understanding of the overall customer journey. By breaking down silos, companies can understand what customers are going through and make sure their experience is consistent across channels.

Revisit Organizational Culture

Gaps in organizational culture often regrettably stem from a less-than-ideal leadership style. Some leaders can single-mindedly focus on numbers and goals, overlooking the essential role of customer experience in business success.

Employees are stretched thin, especially post-pandemic layoffs that left most teams lean. As such, most departments are pressured to meet goal after goal, often leaving CX as a mere afterthought.

Leaders should look at the big picture and recognize that customer experience is a priority rather than an afterthought. Leadership needs to focus on building an organizational culture where customer-centricity is at its core.

As such, leaders should emphasize the importance of providing exceptional service by investing in team training, creating a positive work environment, and empowering employees to make decisions that are best for customers.

Make Customer-centricity Everyone’s Responsibility

This is a common question that CX consultants always encounter: Who owns CX? Does the responsibility fall with sales, customer support, marketing, or another team?

The answer is simple: Everyone. Customer experience should be owned by everyone in the organization, from top to bottom. It’s not just a marketing or support issue – it’s something that every single team needs to focus on.

Ultimately, everyone is responsible for the customer experience. At the end of the day, no one team or person (even the CEO) can take charge of a customer’s end-to-end experience. 

It’s not just about having a CX department or a CX manager, too—it’s about empowering other departments to understand customer needs and ensure that their actions reflect customer-centricity.

Assess the Current CX Landscape and Address Key Issues

We often get so caught up behind the scenes that we forget to look closely at how things are for our customers. So if you feel your customer experience initiatives are not working, maybe it’s time to take a step back and assess the current CX landscape.

First, you need to identify any critical issues impacting your customer experience. This could include anything- from long wait times for support inquiries to confusing navigation on your website.

Encouraging collaboration and feedback between teams is also crucial at this stage so that everyone can provide their insights and ensure that the customer experience is tailored to customers’ needs.

From there, you can create an actionable plan that addresses these key issues and helps ensure that your CX initiatives are achievable and are making a difference. To help you keep track of everything, you might want to make use of a customer experience audit checklist.

Leverage Data and Analytics to Inform Your CX Strategy

Data and analytics should be leveraged to inform your CX strategy and ensure you are making data-driven decisions. Having access to customer insights can help you understand how customers interact with your brand, as well as any areas for improvement in the customer journey.

You can use these insights to create personalized experiences and stay ahead of the curve to anticipate customer needs and offer tailored experiences. 

By combining data with customer feedback, companies can more effectively identify opportunities for improvement in their CX initiatives and create a better experience for customers.

CX leaders may often encounter other leaders or teams that distrust data or do not see its value, especially if the insights run counter to what they’re used to. In such instances, it might be helpful to highlight that these insights are not based on emotion, insight, or conjecture—they’re based on facts.

It’s also essential to make sure that data is accessible and understandable for everyone in the organization so that they can use it to inform the decisions they make. Ultimately, demonstrating how data helps teams provide better customer experiences can help build trust in its value and encourage more collaboration across departments on CX initiatives.

Here’s a pro tip for CX professionals: Keep a library of resources (articles, studies, blogs, journals, etc.) that support the data-based insights that you have so that they can be readily accessed when needed. This can also help others get a better understanding of how data can be used to improve customer experience.

Conclusion

Creating an exceptional customer experience can be challenging, but it can be successfully done with the right strategies and leadership in place. By breaking down silos and revisiting organizational culture, companies can ensure that everyone works together to provide the best possible CX. 

Additionally, by assessing your current CX landscape and leveraging data and analytics, you can create a strategy that is tailored to customer needs. It may take some time to get the ball rolling, but the effort will be worth it when customers are happier and more loyal to your brand. 

The post Building Relationships Across Departments for Customer Experience Success appeared first on Lumoa.

Customer empathy is at the heart of Lush’s approach to building trust with its customers. By understanding that their customers care deeply about the products they buy and how they are created, Lush has taken steps to address these concerns.

The release of the “How It’s Made” videos is a perfect example of this. The videos provide customers with a behind-the-scenes look at the sourcing and manufacturing process of Lush’s products, giving them a sense of transparency and openness that is rare in the beauty industry.

This level of transparency shows that Lush is willing to go the extra mile to demonstrate to their customers that they care about what they care about. Lush’s approach is a great way to build customer trust through authenticity and empathy.

By understanding their customers’ needs and concerns, Lush is able to connect with them on a deeper level and create a loyal customer base that values the company’s commitment to ethical and sustainable practices.

Moreover, through its “How It’s Made” videos, Lush is able to showcase their commitment to transparency and ethical practices, making it clear to its customers that they are a company that values customer empathy.

So, how exactly does customer empathy impact the customer experience?

The relationship between customer empathy and customer experience

Empathy is a common term to hear in customer success, but it’s not always incredibly clear what empathy exactly is. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: 

“Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner”

If you think back on your best experiences as a customer they probably all have one thing in common: you felt in synch with the rep, or agent, you were working with. They understood your needs and you didn’t have to expend extra energy trying to explain the issue. 

The main way to be in sync with someone, and by extension provide a great customer experience, is through customer empathy. When you’re able to get to the core of what someone needs, you’re able to provide the best customer experience possible. 

Benefits of Customer Empathy

Did you know the Apple Genius Training Manual includes a basic guide to empathy? In some ways, that should come as no surprise. Apple’s customer experience is highly regarded and their focus on the details, like taking empathy into account, is a big reason for that. 

Since empathy is a soft skill, there are those quick to write off its importance. And, in fairness, it’s easy to do that. There’s no objective measure of empathy. Though that may be true, that doesn’t mean that empathy’s impact can’t be felt in other ways.

Stronger customer bonds 

Customer empathy creates stronger customer bonds because it encourages deep and meaningful connections between customers and businesses. By taking the time to genuinely listen, understand, and empathize with customers’ needs and concerns, businesses can create an emotional bond that goes beyond just a transaction. To further enhance this relationship, learning how to build a Customer Success process can be a crucial step.

This way, customers feel heard, valued, and appreciated—all of which are key elements in creating trust and loyalty with customers. For example, talking about that experience gives your customer the idea that you get their pain points and you’re the person they can rely on.

Studies have revealed that we tend to gravitate toward individuals who share similar qualities as ourselves. This is where highlighting your similarities with your customers can be advantageous in creating a stronger bond and enhancing their overall experience. Furthermore, when a customer develops a liking for you, they are more inclined to perceive you positively. This can prove to be a powerful asset in shaping the customer experience.

Additionally, studies have shown that customers who believe their needs are being understood and responded to in a timely manner are more likely to make repeat purchases from a business.

Customer empathy has also been linked to increased sales, customer engagement levels, customer satisfaction scores, positive brand recognition, employee motivation, improved customer service response times, and reduced costs associated with customer complaints. All of these benefits demonstrate why investing the time to practice customer empathy can produce long-term success for any business.

Solve Problems Faster

Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to read customers’ minds? Things would go quicker and long back-and-forths could be eliminated. It would drastically improve the experience for everyone involved. 

Though having empathy doesn’t imbue you with the power to read minds, it does get you on the right path. When you have empathy, you’re more able to understand where a customer is coming from, which should help you understand their problem quicker. 

Let’s take a look at Buffer, a social media management company as an example. Buffer prioritizes customer empathy in their approach to customer service. They understand that managing social media can be stressful and time-consuming, and they aim to make the process as easy and enjoyable as possible for their customers.

Buffer sets the bar high when it comes to customer service – they don’t just sit back and wait for questions and issues, but instead demonstrate their empathy by proactively checking in on customers. They’re always ready with a friendly greeting around the clock, while clear communication allows customers to stay up-to-date on account developments or potential problems.

What’s more, is that this focus isn’t one-sided; through building strong relationships with their clients, an uplifting atmosphere of mutual support is created. And I believe that’s what’s called a win-win!

Better Insights

Did you know the better someone gets along with their doctor, the better health outcomes they have? On the surface, how well someone gets along with their doctor may seem trivial but if you think about it more, the more it makes sense. 

The real reason it improves health outcomes is that, the more someone likes and trusts their physician, the more likely they are to be open about any health issues they’re facing. Though most of us aren’t dealing with life-and-death situations, there’s still a lot of benefit to getting deeper insights from customers. 

When you employ customer empathy, just like with physicians, you’re showing you’re trustworthy. It doesn’t take a grand gesture either. Asking specific questions about their life and relating your own experiences back to them is a great way to start. 

Gaining more specific customer feedback means we can build better features and solve more of the issues that customers have. Both of which improve the overall customer experience. 

Empathy leads to understanding

We all want to feel understood. Though that’s true, when you’re in the day-to-day trenches of helping out customers, it can be easy to forget. When we show customers empathy it not only benefits them, but us as well. 

Empathy allows us to solve problems faster, build stronger bonds, and get better insights from customers. All of those add up to us being able to provide an overall better customer experience, which positively impacts us and our companies in many ways. 

The post The Power of Customer Empathy in Supercharging Your Customer Experience appeared first on Lumoa.

You probably know this. But where do you start? One of the best analysis techniques available is the voice of customer (VoC) template. It will help you gather valuable feedback, identify customer pain points, and work towards better solutions.

This article will explain what VoC is, how to use it, and tips on creating your own voice of customer template for your business.

Ready to dive in?

What is Voice of Customer(VoC) and Why Is It Important?

A voice of the customer (VoC) is the process of gathering customer feedback to discover what they need, want, and expect from you.

The goal is to better understand your customers, earn their trust, and improve customer experience. The voice of the customer can also help you identify and address any issues preventing you from achieving key goals.

Additionally, the voice of the customer encompasses both positive and negative feedback on a variety of topics. It could cover products, services, prices, and brand perception. In recent years, VoC has gained popularity as new technologies have expanded how companies receive and process customer feedback.

We’ll say it here – It’s impossible to overemphasize how important customer feedback is. Without it, you’ll never know what a customer wants or expects. Business owners have always sought out customer opinions. But in our digital age, receiving feedback has never been easier. Thanks to the Internet, customer feedback has never been so accessible. 

Learning what your customers think about your products or services isn’t difficult. Customer experience templates, customer survey templates, or customer satisfaction survey templates allow you to make informed decisions on improving the customer journey.

Without customers, there is no business. That’s why the voice of the customer is an essential part of any successful business strategy. 

By understanding what your customers want and need you can ensure that you are providing them with the best possible service or product which will help you stay ahead in an ever-changing market.

When to Use Voice of Customer

Before we cover building your own VoC template, let’s talk about when to use this type of analysis. Remember, you should always care about what your customers say. Using the voice of the customer isn’t something you only use once and never turn to it again. It should be a regular part of your customer experience strategy.

Instead, you should see VoC as a tool to gain unique insights. Let’s look at several reasons you should consider using VoC.

• Verifying customer feedback. Use VoC to verify customer feedback, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions based on actual customer experiences. In addition, VoC can provide insights into customer preferences, allowing companies to tailor their communication, featured items, or other offerings. 
• Quantifying customer feedback. It might feel impossible to put a number by feedback. How do you “rate” an emotional response complaining about a problem with your website? The good news is that you can assign a rating or score based on the relevance and importance of each insight. These insights can help you make better decisions. They will also help you train your customer service reps in de-escalation.
• Launching new initiatives. Insights from data analytics can help create new product designs or services. Data can also inform pricing strategies for a better return on investment.
• Keeping up with industry standards or new trends. You need to remain competitive in the market and make a profit. But you also need to maintain relationships with your customers. Continue to create meaningful connections with customers while still keeping your business profitable.
• Improving brand perception. This can include analyzing customer reviews and surveys, understanding what customers are saying about the brand online, and taking steps to address any issues that may be affecting your reputation. By doing this, businesses can ensure that their brand is well-regarded by customers and potential customers alike.
• Increasing customer loyalty. Feedback will reveal what customers want and how you can improve your products or services. This information helps create targeted campaigns that will help increase customer retention rates and build long-term relationships with customers.

How to Create a Voice of Customer Template

A voice-of-customer template helps you collect and interpret customer feedback. The template is a framework for setting goals, involving the right people, identifying solutions, and tracking progress throughout the process. 

While a VoC template may be different depending on the company profile and industry, each template should have the following elements.

Setting Your Goal

By gathering customer feedback, you’ll gain a better understanding of where your customers are coming from and what they want. Use this data to identify opportunities for improvement and insights so you can better meet their needs. In the end, you want to see increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Everyone involved in the VoC process must understand how important it is for the success of the business. 

Identifying Key Stakeholders

When it comes to collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback, involve every key stakeholder. This includes departments such as customer service, marketing, product development, sales, and even executive leadership. 

Each department will bring its own unique perspective to the table. You want as many valuable insights as possible to inform decisions that will improve the customer experience.

Gathering Direct Feedback

Obtaining feedback from customers is essential. But how do you get well-rounded data? Only if you get direct feedback using every possible medium. With an omnichannel approach, you’ll gather feedback from the following:

• Online surveys
• In-App surveys/rating request
• Chatbots
• Customer interviews
• Your Net Promoter Score
• Online product reviews
• Social Media mentions and DMs

You’ll gain deeper insights into a customer’s behavior and preferences by collecting their direct feedback. Being proactive here will help you get ahead of the curve by measuring customer satisfaction. 

As you work through the template, you’ll see that this collected feedback will be used to identify areas for improvement in service delivery, product design, and more.

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Finding the Primary Request

Every piece of customer feedback, no matter how lengthy or detailed, can boil down to a primary request. To do this well, customer feedback must be carefully analyzed and interpreted to identify the underlying issue that needs a customer has. 

This might mean some translation work on your part. Not every customer will state explicitly what their main problem is. It’s important to read between the lines to find any hidden issues.

Providing Solutions

In certain cases, large feature updates may be needed to successfully resolve an issue while in other scenarios, smaller bug fixes and modifications as well as ensuring that customers have the right information about a product or service. The choice of which fix to use depends on the complexity of the problem, availability of resources, and time constraints.

When trying to enact changes in your organization, it is important to rank them based on your resources and the time available. This is where prioritization comes into play.

Prioritizing the Needs

After completing the preceding steps, rank each solution based on its potential value and return on investment. Due to limited resources and bandwidth, you should focus on those initiatives that will have the greatest impact. Which need would benefit the largest number of customers in the shortest amount of time?

You’ll want to consider the main project goal as you do this. If not, you’ll spend time, energy, and money on priorities that won’t help reach your desired outcomes or increase the bottom line.

Here’s a visual representation of what a template could look like:

Using this template will help you act quickly and efficiently when customers provide feedback. It is valuable for short-term and long-term feedback strategies. And it will help your company stay agile amidst changing customer needs. 

Voice of Customer Best Practices

Now that you have a framework for creating your own VoC template, here are five best practices to help keep in mind.

1. Personalize the Questions You Ask

Customers expect to receive personalized attention. Companies that wish to cultivate loyalty and strong communication should focus on providing more personalized interactions with their customers. This can help them to build a better relationship with their customers.

Your goal is to build stronger relationships and customer loyalty. How you phrase questions can help you do this. Craft questions that put the customer at the center of attention. The way to do that is to help them feel like an individual. Not a number or someone lost in the crowd. This helps the customer feel valued in communication and it creates a more positive customer experience.

2. Gather Feedback at the Right Time

Best practices for obtaining customer feedback involve not only determining which platform they feel most comfortable providing their opinion on, but also the timing of the request. It is usually best to ask them immediately after their experience so that you will receive more accurate responses.

Even as you gather feedback, you want to enhance the customer experience. So try to time interactions with customers according to their individual journeys. Great moments to engage are when a customer’s behavior changes or when an already-purchased product is upgraded or bought again.

3. Share Feedback with Your Whole Company

The success of any business depends on all employees functioning efficiently and effectively together. Though some team members may not have direct interaction with customers, their roles still contribute to the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction.  A comprehensive business plan template serves as a guiding framework to align these collective efforts toward achieving organizational objectives. All departments must work as one for a company to thrive.

So that customer feedback is maximized, it should be made available to every employee in the company. The customer success team can create a detailed profile of customers which includes their demographic information, buying preferences, past purchases, as well as other relevant data which can then be shared with every department. 

This will enable each department to have better insights into the needs and wants of their target customers. Most importantly, it will help the business as a whole make informed decisions about product offerings.

4. Continue to Listen to VoC

Fostering strong customer relationships often depends on recording their order history and online clicks. In an omnichannel Voice of the Customer (VoC) approach, customers can be asked to periodically answer questions about their lifestyles, routines, and preferences. This helps to deepen the understanding of their needs.

A continued conversation about the customer and their lifestyle, rather than just their immediate needs, can yield deeply useful data to help shape future engagement.

5. Always Respond to VoC

You want all customers to feel appreciated and valued. So it is critical to act quickly and meaningfully upon any feedback received–whether they’ve purchased a product or yelled at a customer service rep on the phone. 

Preparing for potential risks in advance is critical to any business’s success. It will help reduce the damage and allow for timely and efficient decision-making.

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How to Analyze Your Voice of Customer Data and Generate Actionable Insights

You built your template, followed best practices, and gathered feedback. Exciting! Now, what do you do with the data?

Analyzing VoC data is just as critical as getting the data. It will help you develop strategies to improve customer pain points and satisfaction levels.

Here are three things to help analyze your VoC data.

1. Prepare and Structure Data

Unstructured data sources are pervasive in business and need to be effectively managed. You’ll likely pull data from many sources: text, audio, email surveys, in-person feedback, etc.

Audio recordings are a prime example of unstructured data. An audio file is would need to be manually transcribed for usability purposes. Speech analytics tools allow you to transform a voicemail into a transcription that is organized and searchable. Once you do that, you’ll have an accessible transcript of the message that allows you to convert your data into usable files.

2. Import Data into a Reporting Tool

So you’ve received all the data. And it could be a lot. You’ll need a tool to help you

The reports you end up generating should focus on answering these initial questions. For example, if you are the Director of Customer Experience at a call center, you will likely want to structure a report that highlights caller sentiment, call outcomes, time to resolution, and other customer-centric data points.

Thankfully, we’ve got you covered. You can import your data from a third-party tool. Or you can create your own survey directly with Lumoa and then get started analyzing. Get a free demo of our text analytics or survey analytics tools.

3. Gather Analytics Insights

Analyzing customer feedback is the most important part of the process. You can have data for days, but what’s the point if you don’t learn from it and make the data actionable?

Look for trends in your customers’ emotional and sentiment responses, positive or negative. These will give insight into why they bought something and if they’re likely to be a repeat customer. Don’t forget to focus on the big picture, too. How does the brand appeal to your customers? Do they recommend you to others? Do they leave feeling positive about your brand?

As you take action on these insights, you will make better decisions for your customers and the long-term health of your company.

Wrapping It Up

Creating a great voice of customer template is key to understanding customer feedback and making data-driven decisions. By following the tips outlined in this article, you can create a VoC template that will help your business capture the right information from customers and use it to make more informed decisions.

Your VoC template will lead to valuable insights into customer sentiment and preferences, allowing them to better serve their customers and improve their experience.

Lumoa’s call and voice analytics solution helps you automate the process of listening to your customers share what’s important to them. It automatically detects topics, sentiments, and insights so you can analyze calls at scale. Start your free trial today.

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• Ekaterina Mamonova – Global Lead, CX and Marketing, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
• Sarah Patel – Customer Success Expert (former Finastra)
• Jeremy Payne – Global Operational Lead, FX & Securities, OSTTRA
• Richard Jeffreys – CX Lead, Managing Director, Hartwell Buck

Together, the panel provided insightful viewpoints on CX’s evolution for current needs. Here are the main takeaways.

Why Financial Services Companies Should Focus on CX Now That a Recession is Approaching

According to Ekaterina Mamonova, when a brand makes a promise, and its CX delivers on it well, it produces a positive feedback loop that supports brand integrity and brand values. This does two things: First, it raises the brand’s perceived value in the eyes of the customer, and second, it increases customer loyalty.

She then discussed some core benefits related to delivering CX excellence. These are:

• Differentiating yourself from your competitors – especially across industries where the competition is fierce
• Getting greater customer loyalty and retention
• More effective acquisition of new customers
• A reduction in the cost of serving your existing customers

Mamonova added that one element that is getting more attention is the idea of staff motivation and talent retention. All of these things combined, in general, lead to greater shareholder value.

In the face of an impending recession, many financial services companies are turning to customer experience (CX) to attract and retain customers. And there’s a good reason for that: When you look from the customer’s point of view and balance that with business considerations and shareholder value, you can get less customer churn, more revenue, less risk, and more efficiency.

Instead of immediately deciding, “I want to cut costs with this program” or “I want to make a product that brings in more money,” viewing things through the CX lens forces you to look at all these business aspects. And that’s what makes it strong.

Sarah Patel added that you’ll get the results and rewards you want if you use CX to figure out what will have the most significant impact. “It’s not about giving your customers a box of chocolates or a big hug. It’s mostly about how you can improve their experience in a very practical manner.”

How Can We Still Acquire Funding For CX Initiatives?

It’s always been a challenge to get CX budgets, even more now that we’re entering a recession. The question is, does this make CX an even more compelling investment that needs to be budgeted during times of recession? Or do we need to change our mentality since money is difficult to come by?

A new Gartner survey found that insurers’ initiatives in 2023 will shift towards improving customer experience and operational excellence instead of growth.

Source: Gartner 2023

While this isn’t surprising, Mamonova believes it’s a truly unique indicator of the value of customer experience initiatives that businesses are witnessing throughout the industry.

She added, “I think the economic stressors of the coming year are also making companies refocus and shift directions to fill gaps that have existed for many years.” From an insurer’s perspective, what is needed is more customer data, including more behavioral and preferential data, shared Mamonova further.

Using such data, we would be able to implement business strategies, including digital ones, upselling and cross-selling strategies, strategies for dynamic customer engagement, and, ideally, plans for revenue development through products and services.

Getting a budget is never an easy task. One needs to start identifying clear objectives and metrics. Before even starting a CX initiative, it is really important to identify the metrics that will be used to measure the success of that program. It can include metrics such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

The next step is to focus on tracking and measuring progress against those established metrics. You can use this to determine whether your initiative meets your expectations and has the desired impact.

The last but most critical step is to convey the results. It’s becoming increasingly important to understand business language and metrics. This will enable you to prioritize customer loyalty, and build trust to increase the likelihood of getting recommendations while focusing on customer satisfaction, retention, churn, and customer lifetime value.

How Do You Keep Focused on Supporting and Engaging Customers?

As CX can cover many areas, one might be inclined to ask, where do I begin?

Jeremy Payne shared that your end user is the first thing to focus on. They have to be the starting point of these conversations. Regarding your management information system (MIS), he said that your company should provide data to its support engineers or agents so that when a customer calls, they can help immediately.

The customer support team has an unrivaled view of how clients use your products. Understanding the trends, looking at how agents are being trained, how they use the system, and their internal processes can guide you toward your first step.

The next step is to create improvements that will save both your agents and the company money. In truth, clients need our help regularly, so we need to be proactive and put mechanisms in place to get them the support they need immediately.

For instance, when customers are dealing with credit card fraud, they are understandably anxious and frustrated. Instead of having to phone in and get through an agent, the company could ease their worries by saying, “We’ve just seen something, we’ve stopped it, don’t worry, we’re investigating it, we’ll call you in five minutes.”

Solutions like these can be put in place if you have the correct data to allow you to know what insights are actionable and give you the right results.

To create effective tools for consumers, you must first collect relevant data and conduct insightful analyses. Then, convey this information to product teams, the business, and the technology in meaningful ways related to costs and an understanding of those costs.

Finally, Payne emphasized the need for a customer service representative at every stage, from the first discussion, through deployment and beyond.

The post Why are We Still Talking About CX in Financial Services? appeared first on Lumoa.

If you want people in your organization to appreciate the value of customer experience, you need to learn how to sell customer experience (CX) to those who are not dealing with it day in and day out. It’s a rather simple idea to understand, but not an easy thing to do in practice. And that’s why CX is an area of business that’s often underappreciated, undervalued, and overlooked.

As a CX leader, it’s possible to feel a little demotivated by that.

You might get feedback from your team about their perception of not being taken seriously across your organization. Maybe they don’t get included in product decisions or informed when new marketing campaigns are run. They might feel frustrated and unhappy because they see huge opportunities for your company that isn’t being capitalized on.

The only way to change this is by tackling it head-on. You need to learn (and teach) how to sell customer experience to your whole organization. While this isn’t something you can achieve completely by yourself, you can do a lot to influence the perception of CX throughout your company.

You can become a driver of change.

Increasing the standing of the CX team across the company is also the best way to increase investment in your team. The more your company invests in CX systems and teams, the more you’ll feel the positive impact on your customers (and your business metrics).

The research on customer experience value speaks for itself: 

• Research from Dimension Data reports that 84% of companies who invest in customer experience report seeing an increase in revenue and 92% of them see an increase in customer loyalty. 
• Forrester found that CX leaders outperform laggards both on stock price growth and total return, and that has been even more valid in the past two challenging years.

In your quest to achieve those types of goals, it might be a great first step to start asking some questions regularly in your team meetings. For example:

• What do we do to promote the customer experience?
• How do we talk about the value of what we do?
• When is the right time to raise a specific CX issue and how?

And while this is a great place to start, mastering how to sell customer experience is not a trivial task.

Why selling customer experience is challenging

There are a few common challenges when trying to make customer experience value visible across your company:

1. Lack of good data
2. Contact rate
3. Competing priorities

Each of these challenges makes it harder for you to prove the ROI of customer experience and to sell other leaders on the importance of investing in CX.

Lack of good data

Many customer experience and customer insights teams suffer from a lack of good data.

Categorizing, analyzing, and quantifying different parts of the customer experience can be very time-consuming. Every CX team needs to figure out a reliable way to collect data before they can start providing meaningful insights to the company.

Messy and unreliable data makes it more complicated for you and your team to find how to sell customer experience. But fortunately, this is a relatively small hurdle to overcome. It’s often best to start with what you have—even if it’s not perfect—and begin building momentum. Over time, you can work to make that data more comprehensive and trustworthy.

Contact rate

Many people assume that customer experience refers to support tickets. That’s a limited view because your customers have many different touchpoints with your product and brand over time.

Support interactions are an important part of the customer experience you’re creating, but making them the main thing can hurt you. It creates one main challenge: Are the insights you gain from tickets representative of your customer base?

Only a very small proportion of your overall customers likely end up contacting you in a given month or quarter.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t use those insights or that they aren’t valuable. You just need to address this barrier proactively. You can either use data that shows these insights are representative or include other sources of feedback in your CX program to paint a fuller picture of your customer experience across different stages of the customer journey.

Competing strategic priorities

Let’s say you’ve managed to handle the other two challenges. You have some data and you can back it up well enough that it’s validated and taken seriously by other leaders in your organization.

Translating that data into meaningful action is your last and biggest hurdle.

Every company has a huge list of competing priorities. In the famous words of Steve Jobs, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

Every strategic decision comes down to deciding to focus on one thing over another. It’s on you to make the case that customer experience is one of the things that need to be prioritized.

How do you establish that customer experience brings a great return on investment? How can you even measure the impact of CX?

How to sell customer experience across your organization

There are three big things you can do to promote the customer experience across your company:

1. Measure the impact that CX has on financial or business metrics
2. Proactively advocate for CX across the company
3. Develop the CX team so that you can represent the voice of the customer

Measuring the impact of CX

It’s okay to start selling CX with generic stats about how valuable customer experience can be across industries. You can make a general case about how a great customer experience drives sales and loyalty. This will translate to financial and business metrics, which is the bottom-line impact you’re looking to have.

Moving from generic to company-specific arguments is much more powerful. 

That may sound like a huge and intimidating project. That’s why starting small is the best way to begin. This is much easier to do when you already have some buy-in. You can build a case for CX for your CEO first to justify an initial investment, then branch out from there. 

Another great approach is to prioritize projects within your team that will have the biggest impact on the company’s success. If your product is business-critical for some of your customers, maybe great incident detection and response is how the CX team contributes the most. If you run a B2B subscription model, maybe relationship-building and customer success are what you should focus on.

It’s easier to measure the impact of projects when you’re specific about what you’re prioritizing. Pick one area and make a change to the customer experience. Compare key metrics before and after the change to understand the impact. If possible, try segmenting your customer base and running A/B tests simultaneously to see the impact in real-time. 

Quantifying the business value and ROI of customer experience is tough, but it’s the foundation for mastering how to sell customer experience.

Advocating internally for the CX team

It’s easy to underestimate how much of an impact internal advocacy can have on changing the reputation of customer experience across your company. CX teams are often taken for granted and not given the attention of teams like Product or Sales.

As a CX leader, it’s your responsibility to figure out what to do to promote the customer experience and set the tone for how CX achievements and feedback are perceived across the company.

You can influence this in numerous ways:

1. Build relationships with leaders across your organization. Do you have a good understanding of how CX impacts Sales and Marketing? Does your Product team listen to your feedback? Do you understand other teams’ priorities and strategic goals? CX impacts every area of your company, which means you have a great opportunity to collaborate across the board.
2. Communicate your wins as a CX team. Find ways to track specific positive feedback from your customers. Are there situations where your team successfully retained a customer after a bad product experience? String together enough of these examples and you can make a much stronger case for customer experience value. 
3. Encourage others to shadow the CX team. Look for opportunities to enable senior management, QA testers, developers, and others to interact directly with customers. It’s easy for teams—especially senior leadership—to become separated from your customers. Every time you can draw them closer to your customers you’re building momentum for CX initiatives.

Internal advocacy is worth investing energy into across all parts of your organization. It’s tempting to get stuck on the leadership level. Get buy-in from the top and it will translate to results, right? 

Focusing your attention on one or two teams is great as a starting point, but customer insights can be valuable across all teams. Every team will need something slightly different from you, but tailoring your communication and data to each audience will make it far more impactful.

Representing the voice of the customer

Voice of the Customer (or VoC) is a methodology used to understand how your customers feel about and experience your business.

You can use every piece of feedback and interaction you have with a customer to build this understanding. The goal behind running a VoC program is to enable everyone across the company to know what your customers need and want.

The CX team is often uniquely positioned to collect and share this information. If you’re looking to master how to sell customer experience, getting your CX team involved in building a robust Voice of the Customer program is a great way to get started.

The outcome of our VoC program should be clear analytics and reports describing your customer experience. It will arm you with specific and actionable insights whenever someone in your organization needs them.

Your VoC program should also include regular opportunities to update your company on CX initiatives. How did your latest marketing effort or product change impact your customers? How is your price increase being received? 

Customer experience value lies in your ability to digest data and translate it into meaningful insights to share with other parts of your organization. 

Is The Organisation Sold on CX yet?

After all the effort you have done to learn (and to teach your team) how to sell customer experience across your organization, a final question is legit: how do you know if you’re being successful and all departments truly understand the value of CX? 

This is something you can probably figure out in the long term, but there are some early signs you should look out for. Those are:

• People across your organization proactively ask the CX team for input and feedback.
• More money and company investments are directed toward customer experience.
• Customer metrics and business KPIs, like customer loyalty and churn, see hand-in-hand improvements.

Remember that changing perception across an organization takes time and mastering how to sell customer experience is no trivial feat. And at the end of the day, the more people you get on your side and the more things they will do to promote the customer experience, the more empowered your CX team will be to help your company succeed.

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In the age of smartphones, where support is only a click away, consumers have massive expectations when it comes to customer service. In fact, it’s such a huge deal for customers today that it has overtaken price and product as the key brand differentiator.

While the proliferation of handheld devices has a lot to do with the inflated expectations of customers, it is also natural. In the past, contact centers could stay ahead of the curve as long as they ensured to utilize the right solutions and tools to service customers. However, as these contact centers that ran on legacy solutions and on-premise systems grow obsolete while the world hurtles to a cloud-hosted future expedited by the pandemic, the world has been witness to a new phenomenon called contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS).

According to a survey, CCaaS will grow to be the favored adoption model by 50% of contact centers by 2022. Moreover, the sector has been forecast to surpass a gross addressable market of $50 billion by 2025. Furthermore, Gartner has stated that CCaaS solutions will function similarly to on-premise contact centers, with a few notable differences.

While these solutions will have the same ambition, CCaaS will focus on managing customer interactions intelligently by connecting to cloud-based applications that are chargeable on a monthly basis. It further predicts that CCaaS solutions will comprise the following features:

• Universal call queuing and call routing
• Intelligent virtual assistants to service customer queries
• Secure storage and access of customer data
• Interactive voice response (IVR) and automatic call distribution (ACD)

What’s more, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and their subsequent penetration into business processes is considered to impact CCaaS greatly. Here, we will look at the trends that look set to shape the future of CCaaS in the coming years.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Ever since 2016, the continuous advancements in technology have culminated in a disruption of contact centers on an industrial scale. This meteoric pace of innovation birthed new and innovative solutions for modern contact centers, finally coming to a crescendo with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has made it possible for human capabilities to be undertaken by software inexpensively and at scale. Its impact has been so massive that 55% of organizations have begun investing in it, according to Gartner research. 

What’s more, the pandemic hasn’t been shown to halt or even inconvenience the development of AI, with 30% of businesses planning to invest more in it.

The denouement of Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for AI shows how AI-powered contact center technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), chatbots, and machine learning (ML) have recently begun to lose their magnetism, ending up in the Trough of Disillusionment. However, experts predict that they will develop into the Plateau of Productivity within 2-5 years, making the following use cases more functional:

• Smart call routing: AI will be able to determine services that best fit the client’s profile according to their communication history and accordingly route their call to an agent
• Multichannel support: AI-powered support systems will become complex enough to direct customers to other channels when their issues can’t be solved using traditional approaches

2. Advanced Self-Service Tools

According to studies, consumers are increasingly becoming self-reliant, preferring to use self-service channels such as live chat (42%) and chatbots (86%) rather than contacting customer support.

These developments are in keeping with Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Customer Service and Support Technologies, which identified five solutions that would take customer experience in the future. These include customer service analytics, engagement hubs, the voice of the customer, virtual agents (live chat), and chatbots.

These pieces of evidence just go to show how customers’ deep penchant for convenience has led to the evolution of the aforementioned self-service solutions, which are all expected to mature in 2-5 years. Of these technologies, chatbots are the most ubiquitous and propitious and are already being used to service routine queries, automate menial tasks, and route sophisticated support tasks to human agents via live chat.

Live chat software is among the leading contact methods for online customers, with 46% of them preferring it over social media and email. This recent increase in its favor has much to do with consumers’ fondness of soliciting personalized support. Courtesy of it, they can now chat directly with human agents instead of calling or emailing them. Because these customers are only redirected to live chat when the chatbot hasn’t been able to service their issues satisfactorily, chat queues are negligibly short.

What’s more, these tools have also proven to improve the support team’s efficiency. So it’s no surprise CX leaders will continue to increase their investments in it this year.

3. Migration to the Cloud

Buoyed by the COVID-19 outbreak, cloud migration dramatically increased during the steepest economic contraction since the 2008 financial crisis. So much so that a survey of 50 CIOs found that respondents expected their on-premise workload to drop by 41% this year.

Cloud computing’s growth since then has been a megatrend, with 68% of respondents from the above survey claiming “migrating to the public cloud and/or expanding private cloud” as the biggest driver of IT expenditure. The technology’s growth in the current year has been coming for some time now and is expected to influence contact centers massively.

Today, organizations are implementing cloud contact centers that let remote agents engage consumers in the same way as they did in physical centers. Migration to the cloud will enable these businesses and others to access the requisite software to provide customer service via the internet as a service. This will allow your support staff to access the contact center system from any location and at any time to connect with customers.

As cloud migration advances, businesses will slowly start shifting to it because of its aforementioned benefits. According to a Deloitte survey, 55% of business executives are of the unanimous opinion that moving certain parts of their contact center capabilities to the cloud is a “sound technology strategy”. Furthermore, 57% of companies have already migrated or are planning to migrate their customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities to the cloud.

However, despite its obvious advantages, as many as 60% of companies are cynical when it comes to the cloud, citing it as an unstable solution as it can render contact centers inaccessible in the event of a failure. However, experts believe that these opinions will be quashed, and the dynamic between these organizations and their legacy solutions will be uprooted as soon as omnichannel communications become the norm, essentially becoming central to the contact center model.

For people that are still unsure about breaking away from legacy solutions, mentioned below are a few benefits that migrating to the cloud will hold for contact centers.

• Functionality: Emerging cloud solutions come with APIs that let you sync your data with business systems like KM, CRM, and ERP, among others, while effectively enabling you to conduct outbound campaigns, manage users, gain detailed stats, etc.
• Reduced costs: Maintaining and running legacy, on-premise infrastructure is very expensive. Cloud computing, in turn, presents a simpler solution where you just have to pay a monthly subscription for the services that you desire.
• Flexibility: Cloud computing allows you to work remotely by moving your entire workload from its on-premise location to the cloud.
• Data security: Storing important data on the cloud is extremely safe and does away with dangers usually associated with the on-premise location of data, such as data theft, damage to the data center, etc.

4. Interactive Voice Response

The Interactive Voice Response (IVR) feature in contact centers is bound to see an uprise in adoption owing to its facility of allowing callers to choose the type of service they want. Additionally, utilizing voice-enabled support enhances the human experience by providing a personal touch. An IVR can be used to capitalize on this sentiment by asking callers relevant queries based on historical customer data.

IVR(s) are among the most powerful channels for generating the best ROI for deflecting inquiries to contact centers. Moreover, it can be coupled with the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) feature to supply the customer’s information to the support agent, thus invariably improving the customer experience by providing a relevant experience and shortening the call duration for the customer.

What’s more, as AI and machine learning capabilities develop further, call processing solutions like IVR will be able to harness their capabilities to make decisions and take steps on the basis of the knowledge learned about the customer from previous meetings with them. For instance, the software will be able to determine the language that the caller prefers and ascertain the right agent to route the caller to, thus fostering an environment for a more natural interaction for customers.

5. Omnichannel Communication

While omnichannel communication has been around for a while, it only caught on in the decade gone by, thanks to a proliferation of handheld devices.

The soaring expectations of consumers today and the number of channels they could solicit customer service from led to an indelible striving among them for freedom of communication with brands. This further caused brands to capitalize on channels such as social media, SMS, text, etc., to provide a consistent and personalized experience to them and reach them where they are.

Courtesy of it, as many as 90% of companies have hopped on the omnichannel bandwagon in hopes of providing a uniform experience across channels. They are doing this by reevaluating omnichannel experience through change management activities, advanced journey mapping, and the application of analytics.

Omnichannel also allows organizations to better understand their customers, thus prompting a greater investment in it on their part. According to Invesp, omnichannel customer engagement strategies also enable companies to retain 89% of their consumers, making it evident to see why omnichannel will rise in the coming year.

Conclusion

CCaaS is where the future of contact centers is at, and it is a plausible solution that all organizations with contact centers need to get on board with sooner rather than later. As businesses slowly migrate to the cloud, it will become easier for them to deploy the tantalizing solutions of CCaaS and capitalize on them for improved business continuity and enhanced customer experience.

The post CCaaS Trends: The Evolution of Cloud Contact Centres appeared first on Lumoa.

You want to keep your customers happy. This has been true since human beings began trading currency for services. And while the means by which we market and serve our customers has undergone a number of changes in the past, the concept of the customer journey has remained important. 

One of the places in which the customer journey rises or falls is customer service. Your support staff acts as the face and voice of your brand and, to many customers, this is the only direct interaction they will ever have with your company. 

That being said, poor customer service can lead to disastrous results. Why is it so important? What can be done to ensure your customer service department enriches the customer journey? 

Read on and see. 

What is the Customer Journey?

When developing a marketing plan you’ll hear a lot of people talk about the customer journey, and with good reason. It is one of the most important and valuable sources of information that you’ll need to properly engage your customers. 

The customer journey is a map that shows how a customer goes from their initial awareness of your product to an eventual conversion. 

It covers all interactions between the customer and your business, creating a veritable sum of experiences that pave the road toward a successful sale. The need for a customer journey map is simple to understand. By properly gaining an understanding of how your customers go from point A to point B, you can coordinate your marketing plan to urge them through the entire process. 

A customer journey gives you a full view of what it’s like to be one of your customers. Oftentimes the decision makers of a business might be out of touch with what their base thinks, feels, and expects. This window into the lives of your customers can be helpful in establishing an understanding and crafting marketing methods that are more in keeping with the desires of your audience. 

A positive customer journey is all about nurturing the customer experience. The two are closely tied and are directly related to customer service in many ways. Enriching the customer experience allows for increased levels of not only brand awareness, but also that all important brand loyalty. 

Your loyal customers are your best customers. That’s why it’s so important to make the customer experience as seamless as it can be. And the best way to do that is through a complete view of the customer journey. 

Having a helpdesk ticketing software goes a long way in helping you through your customer journey. A free helpdesk ticketing system will keep track of customer data and present it to you at the right time. 

The connection between the customer journey and customer service becomes evident when you think about it. Customer service is one of the defining factors that dictate the customer experience which, in turn, impacts the customer journey. 

Do you want to read more about customer journey maps?
Check out this article: The Best Way to Create a Customer Journey Map

Bad Customer Service Turns Customers Away

It’s a fact that poor customer service will drive people away from your product. In terms of retention efforts, positive customer service interactions are just as important as the functionality of your product or service. 

You can have the greatest product in the world at the greatest price. But if you have slow, ineffective, and rude customer service representatives, you’re going to see people abandoning your company in droves. 

That’s because customer service is one of the key areas which can determine if a customer is happy or not. Unhappy customers lead to a plummeting customer experience, which ends the customer journey before it even has a chance to truly begin. 

Bottom line, if a company does not respect its customers, the customers will not respect the company. Their need for the service you offer will not go away. Instead of giving over money to you, they will instead seek out competitors with similar products. 

Don’t take our word for it. These facts are backed by numbers. 

Studies have shown that 70% of consumers say that they support brands that deliver on great customer service (American Express 2017 Customer Service Barometer). That’s easy to believe. Positive support builds brand loyalty, which in turn leads to increased retention, upselling, and referrals. 

Americans will pay 17% more for companies that have reputations for quality customer service (American Express 2017 Customer Service Barometer). Brand awareness can be both good and bad. If you have a reputation for heinous service, you’re going to see less prospects walk through your door. Control the narrative and keep those reviews positive. 

With retention being as important as it is, it should be noted that 73% of customers stick with brands that have friendly employees and customer support agents. Kindness goes a long way, even in the B2B marketing world. If your representatives can’t provide a pleasant support experience, customers will not stick with you. Efficiency is only half of the equation. 

This becomes more evident when you consider that more than one-third of customers would consider switching brands after just one negative support experience. People don’t react well to poor customer service. That’s why it’s important to hit the nail on the head every single time. You might not get a second chance. 

This issue is highly prevalent in the United States as the majority of Americans have declined to make a purchase because of poor customer service. We are a service based society and if your company isn’t willing to put in the work to provide excellent customer support, then the customer journey ends right there with no conversion.

Whether it’s a rude sales person, a support representative that was ill informed, or a request that got lost in the shuffle, the fact of the matter is that poor service will cost you sales. 

On the other side of the coin, great service will keep your customers coming back for more. Studies have shown that resolving customer support issues effectively the first time prevents 67% of customer churn. 

Retention is Part of Customer Journey

Retaining your existing customers is the key to running a profitable business. There’s no bones about it and it’s a subject that we try to hammer home as much as possible. That’s because good customer service is the key to retaining customers. 

Great customer service improves the overall customer experience. That in turn pushes customers through the customer journey, which includes retention. 

A lot of people assume that the customer journey ends at a purchase, but that is not true. Upselling and repeat purchases are also vital components that make up a complete customer journey map. 

In that way, the customer journey never truly ends. Your existing customers continue supporting you and using your product or service. That cycle continues itself until they drop off. 

So, how important is retention? According to certain studies, increasing retention rates by only 5% can lead to a 25% increase in profits. That’s a massive number. Boosting your retention by less than one-tenth could lead to profit increases of more than one fourth. 

That’s because repeat customers are 67% more likely to spend more money when doing business with your brand. That comes from trust and loyalty. Two key factors that are forged through positive customer support.  

It’s not difficult to see why retaining existing customers is so attractive for businesses of all sizes. Especially when you factor in that attracting new customers can be up to seven times more expensive than retaining existing customers.  

When you have a strong retention rate you save a lot of money in external prospecting because the need to bring in a new audience isn’t nearly as severe. But if you have high customer churn year after year you’re constantly grinding and spending to bring in new customers.

In turn, your profit margin will be much worse because you’re putting seven times more money out there to replace all of the customers that were lost as a result of poor service, an issue which could normally be prevented. 

How effective is good customer service at moving people into the retention phase of the customer journey? Well, 52% of consumers have made additional purchases from companies that have provided positive customer service experiences, meaning that this is a major player in the retention game and hugely important to the continued profitability of a company. 

To summarize, through effective and polite customer service you could stand to decrease the customer churn rate of your company while also decreasing the amount you have to spend on bringing on new customer acquisitions. 

The end result is increased profits and an uptick in both brand awareness and loyalty. 

Brand Awareness & Loyalty

Brand awareness and brand loyalty. They are highly sought after in the business world. And believe it or not, customer service is closely tied with both of these essential steps in the buyer’s journey. 

One of the most interesting and important facts about brand awareness and brand loyalty is that they effectively bookend the entire journey. Brand awareness is the first stage of the customer journey, where the customer first realizes that you exist. They could come upon you as a result of personal research into a series of pain points associated with your product or service. Or perhaps they found you because a friend or colleague recommended you.

A lot of the awareness phase of the customer journey has to do with reputation. Once a brand becomes aware of you, they will move into the next phase, which involves research into your brand and its overall reputation. 

Brands develop a reputation from their customer support. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Nothing spreads faster than tales of poor customer service. In fact, the average American tells 15 people about a bad customer service experience. 

Not only that, but most customers will read reviews before deciding that company they will do business with. If you have a history of unresponsive, ineffective, or rude customer service interactions, it is something that will come up in the prospect’s research. 

They could be instantly turned off if you have a bad service reputation online. That’s the beauty and the danger of brand awareness. There is the good kind of awareness, wherein you have carved out a name for your business that’s associated with quality. There’s also the bad kind of awareness, where the mention of your company is accompanied by eye rolls and negative stories. It all boils down to the difference between being famous and being infamous. 

Remember, positive reviews and a good reputation are bred from positive experiences. By addressing customer concerns quickly, with the right answers, and in a friendly manner, you will earn a reputation as being a company that is a genuine pleasure to deal with. 

It’s one thing to have problems with your service. But if those problems are addressed pleasantly and efficiently your reputation won’t suffer from it. Once your company’s overall awareness has increased, you will start getting more and more prospects looking for information.

It is possible to bring happiness to those prospects through customer service. Happiness creates a sense of brand loyalty. Customer loyalty is what ultimately drives retention efforts. 

If you can breed a sense of loyalty into your customers, your efforts to retain their business become infinitely easier. At that point, customers would think of switching to another brand as a form of betrayal after all of the positive experiences they’ve had with you. Even if your competitors are offering lower pricing, a strong sense of loyalty will keep your customers coming back for more. . 

In Conclusion

Having a well functioning and efficient product or service is one of the key elements to creating a positive customer journey, but it is only one element. 

Friendly, fast, and efficient customer service is the key to developing a positive customer experience that will improve brand awareness and loyalty, drive retention efforts and reduce the amount you have to spend on acquiring new customers. 

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Would you enjoy interacting with your company? Think from their perspective by analyzing the customer journey. Bring your customer service department up to where it needs to be in order to meet the needs of that journey. 

Investing in an automated artificial intelligence platform to manage your customer service is a great way to improve its overall effectiveness. Automation services drive retention efforts by routing requests quickly, fielding simple support issues 24 hours per day, and freeing up your human representatives to handle some of the more complicated matters that plague your customers. 

The post The Importance of Customer Service to the Customer Journey appeared first on Lumoa.

Customer experience (CX) plays a crucial role in business success, with 99% of CX leaders acknowledging its positive impact. However, only 3% of companies are truly customer-obsessed. Businesses that prioritize CX are more likely to be relevant, profitable, and successful.

Unhappy customers can have significant consequences, as they are more likely to switch to competitors and share their negative experiences. Consumer demand for better service continues to rise, and trust in brands is influenced by quality, personal experiences, and consistency.

Customer feedback analytics are essential for understanding and improving CX, yet many companies fail to regularly collect and analyze customer feedback. Metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) are commonly used to measure CX.

Organizations with a customer-centric approach outperform their competitors, but there is a need for improved CX skills and cross-team collaboration. Customer service and support channels, such as email and phone calls, are critical for delivering a seamless experience.

In summary, customer experience and feedback analytics are vital for businesses to thrive and retain customers in today’s competitive landscape.

Find the latest stats on customer experience trends

• 99% of Customer Experience and Success leaders believe CEM has a positive impact on their business. (Lumoa, 2018)
• In 2019, customer experience will continue as a major factor in how companies do business. (Forrester, 2018)
• Over 80% of organizations expect to compete mainly based on CX, meaning that the skill of realizing benefits will be in high demand. (Gartner, 2018)
• According to customers, in 2022, only 3% of companies are customer-obsessed — putting customers at the center of their leadership, strategy, and operations — a decrease of 7 percentage points from the prior year. (Forrester, 2022)
• 80% of CEOs believe they deliver superior customer experience. Only 8% of their customers agreed. (Bain, 2005)
• 87% of marketers say they are delivering engaging customer experiences. (Acquia, 2019)
• 78.5% of CMOs agree or strongly agree that amazing customer experiences provide a powerful competitive advantage. (Martech Alliance, 2021)
• Nearly half (48%) of survey respondents said the customer experience they deliver falls below or significantly below their customers’ expectations. Just 31.5% believe they are exceeding expectations. (Martech Alliance, 2021)
• Customer-obsessed businesses expect to be 7x more relevant to customers, 5x more likely a top provider of products, and 4x more profitable. (Forrester, 2016)
• 55% of CX professionals believe their companies will be too slow and face disruption from more innovative, nimble, and customer-focused competitors. (Oracle, 2018)
• Optimizing customer experience is the most exciting opportunity for 19% of businesses, ahead of data-driven marketing that focuses on individuals (16%) and content marketing (14%). (Econsultancy, 2018)
• 91% of senior executives agree/strongly agree that the C-suite recognizes the importance of the digital experience for growth. (Adobe, 2022)
• 75% of marketing & CX practitioners have observed a surge in existing customers using digital channels (Adobe, 2022)
• 74% of CX professionals say creating a seamless customer journey across assisted and self-service channels is “important” or “very important.” (Gartner, 2021)
• 8 in 10 consumers report that businesses are meeting or exceeding their expectations for service, compared to 67 percent in 2014. In fact, 40% say businesses have increased their focus and attention on service, a significant increase in just three years (up from 29% in 2014). (AmericanExpress, 2017)
• Only 43% of CX executives are highly confident in their company’s CX proficiencies and preparedness for the future. (Oracle, 2018)
• 53% of organizations don’t believe they make it easy for customers to handle their issues/requests. (Gartner, 2022)
• 87% of organizations agree that traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers. (Accenture, 2018)
• By industry, supermarket chains provide the best customer experience, while TV and Internet service providers provide the worst. (Temkin, 2018)
• Just 34% of respondents report they have three or more years of experience developing end-to-end journey maps, and 83% report their organization struggles to use customer journey maps to identify and prioritize CX efforts. (Gartner, 2022)
• CX programs that exceed management expectations are 2.3 times more likely to have CX efforts in marketing not primarily focused on the path to purchase but on the journey after acquisition. (Gartner, 2022)
• Customer experience is a ‘significant’ or ‘critical’ priority for 69% of organizations. 77% have a centralized customer experience group, and 68% have a senior executive in charge of customer experience across products and channels. (Qualtrics, 2022)

Happy vs. Unhappy Customers

Learn how promoters differ from detractors

• 86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience. (Oracle, 2011)
• Businesses have a 60 to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20%. (Marketing Metrics, 2010)
• Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits anywhere from 25% to 95%. (Bain, 2014)
• 54% shared bad experiences with more than five people and 33% shared good experiences with more than five people. (Zendesk, 2013)
• 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. (Oracle, 2011)
• Customers who had a very good experience are 3.5x more likely to repurchase and 5x more likely to recommend the company to friends and relatives than if they had a very poor experience. (Temkin, 2018)
• After a bad experience, 22% cut their spending with the company and 19% stopped their relationships with the company completely. (Temkin, 2017)
• After a bad experience, 30% of consumers tell the company, 50% tell their friends, and 15% provide feedback online. (Temkin, 2017)
• 48% of consumers expect specialized treatment for being good customers. (Accenture, 2017)

Consumer demand better service from companies

• More than 60% of customers say they now have higher customer service standards. (Zendesk, 2022)
• 54% of customers who report positive emotions like feeling happy, valued, and appreciated are willing to forgive brands that make mistakes. (Forrester, 2022)
• In 2022, an average of 59% of customers trust the brands they interact with, 2 percentage points higher than the 57% of customers who trusted brands in 2020. (Forrester, 2022)
• Nearly half of consumers say brands don’t meet their expectations. (Acquia, 2019)
• 78% of people believe brands can do more to deliver happiness to their customers and 91% said they preferred brands to be funny; this number increased among Gen Z (94%) and Millennials (94%). (Oracle, 2022)
• The top three reasons a consumer would trust a brand are the quality of the product (66%), personal experience with the brand (53%), and consistency (32%). (Forbes Insights, 2020)
• Two-thirds of customers could not recall when a brand exceeded expectations. (Acquia, 2019)
• It’s a high-stakes game—61 percent of customers would now defect to a competitor after just one bad experience. Make it two negative experiences, and 76 percent of customers are out the door. (Zendesk, 2022)
• The large majority of consumers said they would switch to a competitor after three poor experiences or fewer. UK consumers are slightly more likely to leave a brand (90%) than their US counterparts (81%). (Emplifi, 2021)

Want more data?

We asked 100+ CX leaders about the future of customer experience.

Check the latest State of Customer Experience Report.

Customer Feedback and Surveys

Find all about customer surveying and feedback

• 39% of companies don’t regularly ask customers for feedback about their interactions — the most basic form of CX measurement. (Forrester, 2016)
• The average email survey response rate is 24%. (Fluid Survey, 2014)
• 75% of people complete surveys on their mobile. (IMImobile, 2018)
• 77% of companies say that they don’t model the drivers of CX quality regularly, leaving them in the dark about what matters most to their customers. (Forrester, 2016)
• 60% don’t regularly track operational data that reveals what really happened during interactions to help explain why customers felt the way that they did. (Forrester, 2016)
• 63% of CX professionals use customer feedback to prioritize investment in better products, services, and customer experiences. (Oracle, 2018)
• 79% of consumers who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored. (Oracle, 2011)
• 79% of consumers who complained are still not happy with the way their complaints are handled. (CCMC, 2017)

Customer Experience Metrics and Data

Learn how to measure Customer Experience

• 21% of companies have developed their own KPIs to track customer experience. (Lumoa, 2018)
• Only 11% of companies have strong CX metrics programs and 62% of companies cite the lack of taking action based on CX metrics programs as the key problem. (Temkin, 2017)
• 78% of companies expect customer interaction history to become an increasingly important source of insights, and only 33% feel the same about multiple-choice survey questions. (Temkin, 2017)
• 65% of companies measure NPS compared with 44% that measure CSAT and 14% that measure CES. (Lumoa, 2018)
• Only 32% of CX professionals feel they have access to the information they need to understand customers’ needs and previous interactions, and can apply it to improve their experience. (Oracle, 2018)
• Industry leaders reported that they improved their customer satisfaction KPI metric target by 47.1% over the last two years, 2.4 times higher than lagging organizations, which improved their customer satisfaction KPI metric target by 19.4%. (IDC, 2022)

Net Promoter Score

Utilize your NPS Better

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the most popular customer experience metric and is measured in two-thirds of companies. (Lumoa, 2018)
• In 2022, that is still true as 69% of CX Leaders are using NPS as a core CX metric. (Qualtrics, 2022)
• 32 is the Net Promoter Score of the Net Promoter System. (Lumoa, 2018)
• Compared with the detractors, promoters are 4.2x more likely to buy again, 5.6x more likely to forgive a company after a mistake, and 7.2x more likely to try a new offering. (Temkin, 2017)
• 83% of customers would trust recommendations from the people they know: colleagues, family, friends, etc. and 66% would trust other consumer opinions posted online. (Nielsen, 2015)
• An average NPS increase by 7 points correlates with a 1% growth in revenue. (London School of Economics, 2005)

Customer Effort Score

Is CES worth your attention? Short answer: YES!

• 96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction are more disloyal, compared to only 9% with low-effort interactions. (Gartner, 2018)
• 94% of customers going through an effortless experience are likely to repurchase vs. only 4% of those who went through a high level of effort. (Gartner, 2018)
• 81% of customers going through a high level of effort are likely to share their bad experience with friends vs. only 1% of those who went through an effortless experience. (Gartner, 2018)
• 17% of CX Leaders are using CES as a core CX metric. (Qualtrics, 2022)

Business Impact of CX

Find out how customer experience can influence your business KPIs

• Organizations that lead in CX outperformed laggards on the S&P 500 index by nearly 80%. (Watermark Consulting, 2018)
• Only 14% of companies measure the ROI of Customer Experience. (Lumoa, 2018)
• 61% of consumers would pay at least 5% more if they knew they would receive outstanding CX. (Emplifi, 2021)
• Experience-driven businesses grew revenue 1.4 times faster and increased customer lifetime value 1.6x more than other companies in the past year. (Forrester, 2018)
• Companies embracing service as a value creator achieve 3.5 times more revenue growth than those managing it as a cost center. (Accenture, 2021)
• Companies receive 10X+ higher revenue growth when they  involve their service organization in the development of new products. (Accenture, 2021)
• 64% of business leaders say that customer service has a positive impact on their company’s growth. (Zendesk, 2022)
• Almost 20% of consumers say they usually (if not always) abandon a purchase because of a single poor customer experience. (Emplifi, 2021)
• Organizations with a cross-team approach with a customer at the heart of all initiatives are nearly twice as likely to exceed their business goal by a significant margin. (Econsultancy, 2018)
• 62% of CX leaders think that their organization needs to make major changes to the customer experience to meet their customer strategy. (PwC, 2017)
• 60% of CX leaders see larger returns from CX initiatives relative to other initiatives in their organization. (PwC, 2017)

Customer Centricity

Are you obsessed with your customers?

• 56% of CEOs and 66% of top managers are involved in Customer Experience activities according to the employees. (Lumoa, 2018)
• 26% of CX teams experience a lack of skills and are not sure how to deal with the new consumer mindset and constantly changing market. (Lumoa, 2018)
• Only 13% of companies believe that HR has an impact on Customer Experience activities in the company. (Lumoa, 2018)
• 90% of experience decision-makers agree that the CMO should be the internal advocate for their customers. (Accenture, 2018)
• Forty-five percent of businesses manage the customer experience through their customer care organization, while 30% have marketing manage customer experience. (Genesys, 2017)
• Only 19% of businesses report that they have a dedicated customer experience team to manage the experience. (Genesys, 2017)
• 55% of companies suffer from organizational silos, incl. slow internal processes, and unwillingness to change. (Lumoa, 2018)
• Getting buy-in from the executive team, knowing about available resources, and justifying the need for those resources are among the main challenges for the customer support teams. (Support Driven, 2018)
• 72% of companies don’t review customer experience metrics or share them with all employees regularly. (Forrester, 2016)
• 39% of companies don’t keep a documented list of customer experience projects that are currently underway. (Forrester, 2016)
• 79% of employees in CX leading companies are engaged, compared with 49% in the companies with CX below average. (Temkin, 2018)

Customer Service and Support

Customer experience can’t go without customer service.

Channels

• 54% of customers used email customer service channels making it the most commonly used digital customer service channel. (Forrester, 2018)
• 9 in 10 consumers want absolute omnichannel service – they expect a seamless experience when moving from one communication method to another, such as phone to text or chat to phone. (NICE inContact, 2018)
• 59% of customers had a conversation with a customer service representative or agent via telephone, making phone calls the most commonly used customer service channel. (Forrester, 2018)
• 87% of customers find it frustrating to repeat themselves in multiple channels, and 73% question doing business with that brand as a result. (Precisely, 2020)
• 93% of consumers will spend more with companies that offer their preferred option to reach customer service (ex: chat) (Zendesk, 2022)
• 89% of consumers will spend more with companies that allow them to find answers online without having to contact anyone. (Zendesk, 2022)
• More than 70% of customers expect agents to have access to all information relevant to their account and query. (Zendesk, 2022)
• 63% of customers are happy to be served by a chatbot if there is an option to escalate the conversation to a human. (Forrester, 2018)
• 90% of customers prefer to talk to a live service agent over a chatbot. (NICE inContact, 2018)
• Contact center performance drives both loyalty and churn. 90% of consumers said they are likely to stay loyal after a positive call center experience; 73.7% said they are likely to switch after a negative call center experience. (CallMiner, 2020)
• Approximately 50% of consumers will use mobile messaging apps for customer service and support. Another 28% are willing to give mobile messaging a chance.  (Genesys, 2018)
• 68% of customers worry their query gets lost or misunderstood by fully automated services. (Forrester, 2018)
• 76% of customers want human contact to remain part of customer service. (Forrester, 2018)

Speed

• Slow response time (37%) was rated as the leading contributor to a negative experience, followed by a lack of 24/7 customer service support (23%). (Emplifi, 2021)
• 52% of consumers said a fast response within one hour is expected. 1 in 10 consumers wants a response in less than 5 minutes. (Emplifi, 2021)
• Earlier, 50% of consumers give a brand only one week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them. (Oracle, 2010)
• 73% say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer service. (Forrester, 2016)
• 77% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent and consumers will wait on hold for an average of 11 minutes before hanging up. (RightNow, 2010)
• 69% attributed their good customer service experience to quick resolution of their problem. (Zendesk, 2013)
• 72% blamed their bad customer service interaction on having to explain their problem to multiple people. (Zendesk, 2013)

Relationships and Emotions

• 81% of consumers say that getting a satisfactory answer is a very important part of servicing satisfaction, and 74% want a knowledgeable professional. But nearly half also say that personalized service (47%) and appreciation for them as a customer (45%) are very important in providing excellent care. (AmericanExpress, 2017)
• Nine out of 10 consumers value when a business knows their account history and current activities with that company, and seven out of 10 value having the same representative or agent help them each time they interact with the company. (Genesys, 2017)
• 51% of consumers felt like they received nothing after a customer service interaction. (CCMC, 2017)
• 56% of customers with a problem experienced rage. (CCMC, 2017)
• Commonly used practices in customer service, that consumers hate: misuse of automated phone technology e.g. no live person option, outsourcing service abroad, upselling, having to repeat information already given and talking too fast. (CCMC, 2017)

Personalization

Learn how customers value the personalization of service

• 56% of customer experience professionals aim to improve and personalize the customer experience. (Lumoa, 2018)
• 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to enable a personalized experience. (Accenture, 2017)
• Personalization at scale can drive between 5 and 15% revenue growth for companies in the retail, travel, entertainment, telecom, and financial services sectors. (McKinsey, 2017)
• 33% of consumers who abandoned a business relationship in 2016 did so because personalization was lacking. (Accenture, 2017)
• 58% of consumers would switch half or more of their spending to a provider that excels at personalizing experiences without compromising trust. (Accenture, 2017)
• 64% of millennials value anticipation and customization of the experience using their transaction data over privacy concerns. 46% value personalization using preferences and contact info over privacy concerns. At the same time, 45% of baby boomers (age 55 and over) value privacy over personalization. (Genesys, 2018)

Customer Experience Technologies

Find out what technologies CX leaders use

• By 2021, 15% of all customer service interactions will be completely handled by AI, an increase of 400% from 2017. (Gartner, 2017)
• By 2019, over 85% of new packaged customer service and support software will be delivered on a cloud-based model. (Gartner, 2017)
• 48% of CX professionals said that although their companies embrace digital, they don’t think they’ll keep pace with the speed of technology change. (Oracle, 2018)
• 79% of contact center leaders plan to invest in greater AI capabilities in the next two years. (Deloitte, 2021)
• 80.1% of leaders fully automate their data validation, data access policies, and data set management processes, while only 3.2% of lagging organizations fully automate these processes. (IDC, 2021)
• 53% Of CMOs said a lack of skills/knowledge of the technology and/or data management was one of the biggest barriers to realizing their CX vision. (Martech Alliance, 2021)
• Nearly 70% agreed that customer experience would be drastically improved by introducing a customer data platform (or better managing an existing one). (Martech Alliance, 2021)
• 70.5% of CMOs say data compliance, privacy, and ethics are vital to achieving customer experience success. (Martech Alliance, 2021)
• More than 24% of companies report experiencing a lack of customer insights in marketing/customer experience organizations. (Adobe, 2022)
• Technology spend is expected to have substantial expected growth throughout 2022, with notably less spend expected for both facilities and T&E. (Gartner, 2022)
• Over 50% of CX professionals say their organization is planning to use predictive analytics and artificial intelligence ‘somewhat’ or ‘significantly’ more than they were doing so last year. 44% of respondents’ organizations plan to use journey analytics more, as well. (Qualtrics, 2022)
• 31% of organizations have already invested in technology like AI to outpace the competition. (Accenture, 2018)
• 76% of collaboration leaders are investing or expanding their emerging technology investment. (Accenture, 2018)
• 26% of companies leading financially use CX technologies, compared to 7% of laggards. (Bain, 2018)
• Predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence are in the most demand among CX professionals. (Bain, 2018)

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