Furthermore, customers remember their good and bad experiences with brands. Having the right people in your customer experience team not only strengthens your relationship with your customers but also encourages them to become repeat customers of the brand. This means they will voluntarily advocate for your brand and promote your business by word of mouth.

Here’s your ultimate guide on how to build a customer experience department.

Preliminary Steps

Having the right people behind your customer experience department is vital. But when you’re looking for new people to fill roles your organization has never had, it can be quite a challenge.

We’ll walk you through the key steps to building a successful customer experience department in this guide. We will discuss topics such as defining the department’s goals and objectives, assessing the current state of customer service, and developing a strategy.

These preliminary steps will help you create a customer experience department that meets your customers’ needs and achieves your business goals. By implementing a structured approach with the help of a customer experience strategy template and conducting a thorough customer experience audit, you can lay a solid foundation for a department that not only understands but also enhances the customer journey at every touchpoint.

1. Identify the Company’s Goals

Before you start looking for people or draft your CX strategy, your first step should be to clarify and understand the wider objectives of your organization.

What does the company want to achieve? This is true both in terms of Customer Experience – e.g., are there strategic goals around CSat or NPS? -, and in terms of broader business objectives – e.g., increasing market share, reducing churn, cutting costs, etc.

Whether your company is using the Balanced Scorecard, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), SMART, or simple KPIs, this will help you align the work of your future customer experience department to goals everyone in the company cares about. And it will make it easier to build strong relationships and a strong culture of customer centricity.

What’s more, it will help you build a link between your CX team goals and the broader company goals. For example, you will be starting to ask questions like: how does a shorter average response time help us achieve better retention? How is NPS increase related to revenue increase or reduced churn? And so on.

2. Map Your Current Customer Journey

To gain a better understanding of how exactly your customers interact with your business, you will need to map out the current customer journey. A customer journey map provides a detailed visual representation of how your customer moves through each interaction with your brand and what experiences they have.

There are different ways to create a customer journey map, and it’s essential to keep in mind that the customer journey is not always linear. Different types of customers will interact with your brand in various ways, they might go back and forth between different touchpoints, and that’s why mapping can be quite the challenge.

One way or the other, mapping your customer journey means answering the following questions:

1. Who is the customer? – What are they like? What motivates them to buy? What are they concerned about?
   
2. How many different ideal customers (personas) do we have? – What are their key characteristics (pro tip: consider both demographics or psychographics)? Where do they hang out? What are their goals?
   
3. How do they get in touch with us? – Do different types of customers have a preferred way to buy? What are the key touchpoints for different personas?
   
4. How can we measure the interaction? – What’s the goal at the different stages? What’s something measurable that can tell how well we are doing?
   
5. How does the map look like? – To keep it simple, you can start with three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Then expand with Retention and Advocacy (if that’s relevant).
   

Without going too much into detail here, it’s also worth remembering that there are four ways to map customer journeys.

• Service Blueprint provides an organized visual representation of the customer journey, showing all the touchpoints between a customer and a company’s services in an easy-to-understand format. It’s an effective tool for uncovering potential pain points and identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Current state mapping helps organizations pinpoint where they are currently failing to meet customer expectations, as well as any areas that could benefit from further optimization. This type of mapping is useful for pinpointing gaps in customer service and uncovering areas of improvement.
• Future state mapping focuses on identifying the desired outcomes that an organization wishes to achieve as part of its customer experience strategy. It helps organizations create a roadmap for future development and determine what changes need to be made to reach those objectives.
• Day in the life mapping is an excellent tool for visualizing a customer’s journey through their entire experience with a company. By creating a detailed narrative of what the customer does and how they move throughout their journey, organizations can gain valuable insight into exactly where customers are getting stuck or where their experience could be improved.

Current State & Future State from cx-journey.com

3. Decide When and How to Collect Data and Feedback

Utilize your customer journey to its full potential by identifying the data you collect at each stage and determining what more information you need to gather.

Remember, not all data is created equal. Set clear start and endpoints for your data collection efforts.

Tracking website visitor data over a long period of time, for example, requires setting up the necessary tracking mechanisms.

In contrast, if you are running a specific campaign and need customer experience data for a limited time, then you should focus your efforts on that period. If you collect data intentionally and selectively, you will gain valuable insights that will help you improve the customer experience and drive business success.

4. Identify What Other Departments Need to Be Involved

Customer experience extends beyond a company’s customer-facing roles. In an organization, there are different employees handling customer data or interacting with customers at various points in their journey. To ensure customer satisfaction, key members of different departments who have direct contact with customers should be involved.

The departments may include customer-facing functions such as marketing and customer service, as well as internal functions such as product development, manufacturing, and fulfillment. They play an important role in shaping the overall customer experience, and it is crucial that they know what their role is in the customer experience strategy and how it impacts the brand.

Also, their understanding and engagement in the company’s customer experience strategy is vital to its success. Here’s when you can leverage your knowledge and understanding of the broader company goals.

Pro Tip: Building strong relationships with other departments is not a one-off thing. To ensure alignment between the strategy and the needs of these employees and their customers, regular feedback should also be collected from them and they should always be kept in the loop. It’s hard work, we know!

Building Your Customer Experience Department

Are you ready to kick customer experience up a notch? Sure, customer service is important, and that’s a fantastic first step for many companies. But what would your business look like if you set the bar even higher and started building an entire department that focused on creating great customer experiences?

Some think having a focused CX team can be expensive, yet they don’t realize that no matter what size of a business they are, having an effective CX strategy and team is essential. Dedicating time and resources to build out their customer experience isn’t just important now – it’s downright paramount for businesses who want to stay ahead of their competitors in our ever-evolving digital age. So, let’s get started!

Here’s what you need to keep in mind as you build a customer experience team.

Background and Expertise

The department’s role in implementing changes is crucial, so you’ll want to fill it with people who are up to the task. Your team must be skilled in market research and analysis, be the voice of your consumers, and be the driving force behind change and the elimination of pain points.

For these reasons, customer experience departments will benefit from people who have a background in:

• Market and customer research, to tackle the collection and analysis of data, that is essential to the success of CX.
• User experience design, to be able to apply concepts such as human-centered design to cross-functional projects.
• Project management, to ensure that projects are well organized, completed on time, and meet key metrics.
• Communication and problem-solving, to promote team initiatives and manage change within the organization.
  

A recent report on customer experience professionals supports the areas listed above by stressing how the people you hire for your CX department should be able to:

• Conduct and analyze market research
• Handle responsibilities related to VoC (Voice of Customer)
• Implement programs involving customers, employees, product, and brand experience

Ideally, you will hire people who have already worked in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Insights, and other related fields. But since that is not always possible, prioritize the skills we listed above, as those will ensure you have the right background in your newly formed customer experience department.

Pro tip: If your customer journey is mostly digital (e.g., website, apps, etc.), you may want to consider looking for people with relevant skills and experience. For example: website optimization, content marketing, and digital analytics.

Roles and Structure

The titles and the structure you will be giving to your CX team will of course depend on the size of it, and ultimately on the size of your organization.

Start-up and Small/Medium Businesses (CX teams of 3 to 5 people)

Compared to a large organization, a startup’s customer experience department may be smaller and less formal. Structures may be flatter and cross-functional, with employees wearing multiple hats and some of them also dedicating only half of their time to customer experience initiatives.

Here’s an example of how a startup’s customer experience department might be structured.

Customer Experience Manager / Director

This leadership role is responsible for overseeing the CX team, setting up the key processes and goals, establishing relationships with the rest of the organization, and reporting to executives and the board. They have responsibilities for both people management and project management.

Voice of Customer / Customer Insights Manager

This is the more analytical role, and it needs someone skilled at understanding data, customer experience analytics, taxonomies, conversational analytics, and in general customer feedback. They also need to be able to make sense of them, build reports, and recommend actions.

User Experience Specialist or Manager

This position is in charge of improving the customer experience through human-centered, design-thinking methodologies. Throughout all touchpoints and channels, the User Experience Specialist is responsible for creating an enjoyable, seamless, and intuitive customer experience. The role might need the support of a User Interface designer or a Digital designer if your company’s offering is mainly digital.

Customer Experience Specialists

Depending on your budget or company size, you might be able to hire additional Customer Experience Specialists to complete your Customer Experience Departments. Their duties are various, they have a supporting function, and they help implement the overall CX strategy. In this sense, it is good to look for junior people who can complement the skills of the other members of the team and can grow within the organization.

Larger Organizations and Enterprises (CX teams of 10 to 20 people)

Typically, a large organization’s customer experience department has a complex structure and is a significant part of the company. In addition, it may be composed of a number of teams and functions, each with a specific role and responsibilities.

Here’s an example of how an enterprise customer experience department might be structured.

Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

The Chief Experience Officer is the highest level and is responsible for promoting Customer Experience in the organization, while at the same time ensuring that the Customer Experience team has everything they need to achieve their targets and execute their strategy.

An organization’s Chief Experience Officer (CXO) is responsible for the organization’s overall customer experience strategy and direction. Typically, the CXO is a member of the senior leadership team and is responsible for ensuring the customer experience is integrated across the entire company. For that reason, a big part of their responsibility is to sell the value of customer experience to other stakeholders.

A CXO must develop a long-term vision for customer experience and ensure that it aligns with the organization’s overall goals and strategy.

Note that large organizations often also have a Chief Customer Officer (CCO), and their responsibility is mainly related to managing the customer service and customer support function of the company. In some cases, the two roles might be combined though.

Customer Experience Operations Manager (CXOM)

Data and methods of data gathering can vary per department, which can create silos. The CX operations manager’s role is to unify everyone involved and guide the team in the best ways to use the tools available to the company. These tools can be automation software, communication apps, or help desk suites.

While the CXO is responsible for the overall customer experience strategy, the CXOM is responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the customer experience team. The two positions work closely together to ensure that the customer experience is aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and goals.

Customer Experience Analysts / Voice of Customer Managers / Customer Insights Managers

This role utilizes advanced analytics and research techniques to analyze customer feedback to identify areas for improvement. They also monitor customer behavior and trends to inform product decisions and track changes in customer sentiment over time.

Additionally, they use surveys, focus groups, and other methods of soliciting direct customer input to create actionable plans that drive better experiences for customers. Ultimately, their goal is to provide strategic recommendations based on meaningful insights that will help shape the future growth of the business.

As we are addressing the needs of a larger organization, there might be 4 to 8 such professionals in customer experience departments, each one responsible for a specific business unit, or part of the offering.

Service Design Managers and/or UI Managers

They are responsible for creating and maintaining a customer-centric service design process, as well as managing, monitoring, and evaluating the performance of services and products against set goals.

With the help of analysts in the team, they research and analyze current trends in the market and in service design, and then identify areas for improvement within the existing products and services. Additionally, they are responsible for working with cross-functional teams to ensure cohesive delivery.

Customer Experience Managers and Customer Experience Specialists

They are in charge of executing against the overall strategy and implementing initiatives that translate data and insights coming from the analysts into concrete actions. They manage projects of different complexity, often involving other stakeholders and departments.

Their primary goal is to ensure that customer experience is alive within the organization and that customers actually perceive the company and brand as active and proactive in understanding their needs and wants.

Customer Support

In some cases, the customer support function might be part of the larger customer experience department. When this happens, the size of the department increases exponentially, including roles such as Head of Customer Support, Customer Support Managers, Technical Support Specialists, Customer Support Representatives, Head of Quality Assurance, Quality Assurance Specialists, and more.

It is worth noting that most companies keep customer experience and customer support separated, each one of them reporting to different executives. This is mainly because the customer support function can be extremely complex. The overall goal is nonetheless the same: creating experiences for customers that exceed their expectations and make them want to come back for more.

The difference between a small and large organization

Designing Customer Experience Processes

​​Crafting the customer experience is a combination of many different processes that need to be in place. These processes are:

1) Feedback and Data Collection

Having processes in place to facilitate consumer feedback collection is essential. You can collect feedback through customer interviews, polls, reviews, surveys, or installing the proper customer feedback tools. It’s important to remember that your organization probably already has a lot of customer data available, so starting with an assessment of what is there and what instead might be missing is a good first step.

2) Feedback and Data Analysis

The next question is, how do you make sense of all the data you’ve gathered? For the team to derive insights from the data, it must first be organized and compartmentalized. It requires the expertise of a data analyst, an agency, or an automation tool.

3) Feedback and Data Reporting

This stage is about developing methods for translating the insights into a digestible format that makes sense to those consuming it. You will soon realize that there is no one-size-fits-all report that you can distribute to everyone.

This is why it is important to establish relationships with the different stakeholders and clearly understand their goals and motivations. Build this aspect into your processes.

4) Closing the Loop and Measuring Success

Data collection, analysis, and reporting are nothing without action. When you build a customer experience department, make sure you have processes in place to translate data into actions, and actions into successes, both for your team and for the company.

Tech Stack For Your Customer Experience Department

Another crucial step as you build a customer experience department is to figure out what tools and software your customer experience department needs to implement its strategy.

Depending on the maturity of your company, you or other colleagues might already be using some of the following tools, so even in this case it is worth it to start with an assessment of what tools and systems are already in use.

Before we get to the different categories of tools you might consider, be aware that there are solutions that aim to cover the full spectrum of needs of a customer experience department.

Platforms such as Lumoa allow customers to:

• collect feedback via surveys or import customer data from different sources
• analyze customer feedback, categorize it, assess the impact on key metrics, and make sense of it
• assign tasks to colleagues throughout the organization
• and report on the results

The real benefit of these customer experience platforms is that they consolidate customer data in one place, therefore making it easier to establish a real customer-centric culture that goes beyond the customer experience department.

Now that you know how to look at customer experience tools holistically, here is a brief review of the main areas where tools are available.

Survey or Feedback Collection Tools

Survey tools are used to collect and analyze data. They allow users to create surveys, polls, and questionnaires that can be distributed online or via print. They also typically provide basic reporting capabilities. Some of the most popular tools are:

• SurveyMonkey
• SurveyHero
• QuestBack
• SurveyPal

Image from PC Mag

Feedback Analytics Tools

The importance of feedback analytics tools lies in the fact that they allow organizations to collect and analyze customer feedback in a systematic and efficient manner. Moreover, they can identify patterns and trends in customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and preferences, thereby improving their products, services, and overall customer experience.

Furthermore, these tools can be used to identify areas for improvement in an organization’s business, as well as track progress over time.

Here are some examples of tools you may want to take into account:

• Lumoa
• Birdeye
• AnyRoad

Lumoa, for example, looks at any customer interaction, automates the analysis, and highlights the items with the biggest impact on your key KPIs. This is a huge help, not only when trying to take ownership of customer experience metrics such as NPS or CSat, but also when attempting to have customer experience impact business metrics.

Project Management Tools

Because of the sheer amount of tasks that will fall under the customer experience team‘s purview, a tool that helps you keep projects, tasks, milestones, and deadlines on track will be indispensable.

Here are a few stellar choices:

• Asana
• Basecamp
• Teamwork
• Trello
• Zoho Projects

Pro tip: While the mentioned project management workflow tools and task management software offer a range of features to streamline your workflow, consider incorporating AI-powered tools to enhance your project management capabilities. AI project management tools can automate repetitive tasks, provide real-time insights and analytics, and even predict potential roadblocks, empowering you to make informed decisions and keep your projects on track.

Reporting Tools

By presenting data insights visually appealingly, insights can be easily understood. Those who are less familiar with data analysis can benefit from this by making the data more accessible and engaging.

Here are some examples of tools you might consider:

• Qlik
• Zoho Analytics
• Tableau
• PowerBI

Pro tip: Remember also to determine whether there are any other company-wide tools (such as CRM systems or help desk software) where important customer data might be stored. Integrating CRM of helpdesk software with feedback analytics tools such as Lumoa, for example, will unlock the possibility of looking at insights by customer segment or customer value, therefore improving your chances of determining real business outcomes with your customer experience initiatives.

Evaluating the Results of Your Efforts

To measure customer experience efforts, Ed Thompson, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, recommends the following six categories and practices:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

This is a basic metric that gauges how well your company has satisfied- or met- the demands of its customers. CSAT can be obtained by surveying consumers and asking them to rate their degree of satisfaction with each item. For instance, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our service?”

To calculate your CSAT score, divide the positive replies by the total number of responses, then multiply by 100. Your answer should be in percentage.

Customer Loyalty/Retention/Churn

This considers how many customers come back and stay regular customers and how many stop using your company’s products or services over a certain period. Some measurements to use are purchase frequency, average order size, repeat orders, and the number of loyalty program members.

Advocacy/Reputation/Brand

This determines the customer’s willingness to recommend your products or services. Some metrics you can use are price sensitivity, social media sentiment scores, trust ratings, and event attendance.

Quality/Operations

This looks at how well your products or services meet customer standards and requirements. Thompson says that when a product or service fails to meet those standards, the customer experience will be terrible no matter what is done to fix it.

Employee Engagement

When employees see many failed attempts to improve customer experience or experience executives who only want quick results, they can get disengaged. Employee engagement then becomes a CX strategy challenge. 86% of organizations have cited employee engagement as having an equal or more significant impact than other CX challenges.

To the list by Thompson, we believe it is worth adding the Net Promoter Score, which many consider the gold standard to measure Customer Experience.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

If you’re a business looking for ways to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is your go-to metric. NPS relies on asking customers to rate their likelihood of recommending a business or product on a 0-10 scale. Ratings from 9-10 are considered “Promoters,” 7-8 are “Passives,” and 0-6 are “Detractors.” The Net Promoter Score is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. With this metric, you can gain insight into how satisfied customers are with your business or product.

Integrating text analytics and AI into the customer experience evaluation process enhances this metric’s value, enabling businesses to delve deeper into customer feedback. By analyzing open-ended responses associated with NPS surveys through text analysis, companies can uncover the reasons behind their scores, offering more nuanced insights into customer experience. This AI-driven approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of customer loyalty and satisfaction, transforming raw data into actionable intelligence for improving customer experience.

Tips For Leading a Customer Experience Department

Invest Time in Cross-functional Relationships

Collaboration among cross-functional team members can help the team flourish. For the team as a whole to succeed, members must learn to work and rely on each other. But first, the team should mutually respect each other’s contributions and place in the team.

A good strategy to foster these cross-functional relationships is to have team members regularly celebrate the successes of their colleagues. One approach is through the use of a communication platform that enables members to recognize one another publicly.

Train in Reporting and Story-telling

Data reporting is a crucial skill that entails gathering, evaluating, and structuring data into an understandable format. It is a process that helps analyze team performance and supports decision-making; thus, it must be done effectively. 

As statistics and data can become dull over time, more and more businesses are turning to storytelling to improve employee engagement. When the speaker can elicit emotion from their audience, they can present the report more effectively. People will remember the insights better if they can relate to them than if the information was just read to them.

Develop Career Paths For Your Team Members

To keep the team motivated, you need to invest in their growth. Please keep track of your team’s progress by establishing clear career paths that will help them move up in their positions. This means giving members goals to work toward and telling them what skills, knowledge, and experience they need to move forward.

Let Them Hang Out Where Your Customers are

While data is the backbone of building a successful customer experience strategy, letting the team experience firsthand what customers do can be an eye-opener. To give them a real-world experience they can learn from, encourage members to assume the role of the consumer and make a purchase or inquiry.

This should enable them to identify any room for growth and areas where the company thrives.

Conclusion

A customer experience department is essential for any company that wants to retain happy and loyal consumers.

To develop and implement a customer experience strategy, a company must understand its goals and current status to build a customer experience department.

As a result of the investment in customer experience, customers will develop brand loyalty, act as brand ambassadors, and advocate for the company, increasing customer retention and overall business success.

Finally, remember that it’s important for companies to understand that investing in building a customer experience department is not only a cost but also an investment in long-term growth and success.

The post The Ultimate Guide: How to Build a Customer Experience Department appeared first on Lumoa.

Not only are online retailers enjoying massive revenue from their customers (expected to be over $6 trillion in 2022), but the platforms themselves are also becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Now, technologies such as AI and machine learning are driving highly personalized customer experiences. They can also be used for experience mapping, which is a detailed visualization of a customer’s experiences with your product or services over time. This is beneficial because it puts you in the customer’s shoes and helps you to better understand how customers feel at various touchpoints throughout the customer journey. 

Naturally, this is setting a new benchmark for E-commerce stores, since customers are choosing to shop at only the best websites in the competitive space.

The question for online retailers is: how can we embrace this trend and deliver for our customers?

For many, the answer is found in conversational AI.

Are you new to the world of conversational AI, or are you an expert simply looking to brush up on your knowledge? Well, this article will cover everything you need to know; from the benefits of the tech to the drawbacks, as well as several real-life use cases to inspire you.

What is conversational AI and why is it important for customer experience in retail?

Conversational AI is a browser-based messaging service that connects customers with the platforms they use. Typically, you would see this in the form of a ‘Live Chat’ pop-up that provides automated responses to customer queries.

To go further, modern chatbots are now pre-empting the moments when customers require their assistance. For example, by only appearing at customer pain points, like a hesitation on a particular product page or at the checkout.

With conversational AI put into play, providing a great customer experience in retail becomes easier. For example, it elevates customer engagement, customer service efforts become more efficient, and it brings more personalized experiences.

So, to sum it up, conversational AI seeks to deliver a more pleasant shopping experience by providing customers with relevant information at the most crucial sales cycle stages.

How to amplify customer experience in retail with conversational AI

This section will cover how the top E-commerce companies implement their conversational AI strategies successfully.

Incorporate a digital sales agent

The most common feature of a conversational AI strategy is the use of a virtual sales agent.

This is essentially a software program that uses scripted rules and AI to provide human customers with relevant guidance. Normally, you will see this in the corner of the screen during the shopping process, such as on your website’s homepage.

You might expect this digital sales agent to provide links to useful resources on your website. Some common options include:

• About us
• Explore our products/services
• An FAQs section
• Your orders or shopping history
• Your last viewed item
• Customer support
• Help with delivery/payments

Provide voice-enabled search queries

Accessibility should be at the core of your conversational AI strategy.

For starters, your virtual sales agent should be a) visible and b) obvious as to its purpose. A simple message will do the trick, such as “Hey, I’m [chatbot name], may I help you with your shopping today?”

Another great idea to explore is offering a digital sales agent that is voice-enabled.

Ideally, this would allow for customer voice recognition, meaning that users may speak their request rather than type it. In turn, the virtual agent may respond with talk-back capability, allowing seamless B2C interaction. This may be especially useful for your young, elderly, or disabled customer demographic.

Beyond this, you should provide multiple language options so that your customers can use the service no matter where they are in the world.

Set up chatbots for a 24/7 contact center

Of course, you should also integrate conversational AI into your customer service strategy.

Your virtual sales agent is already well-equipped to deal with this. Firstly, the digital assistant should offer customer service in its welcome messages. E.g. “Ask me for help with…”

From here, your customers can directly ask questions and the AI can learn to recognize what is being asked of it. This allows for an automated response system where customers are given the correct information, rather than bogging down your human customer service reps with repetitive tasks.

Furthermore, your chatbot can be linked to any number of client portal solutions. This allows customers to track their inquiries on a self-service platform. Definitely provide an option for customers to reach a human rep (such as a text option “I want to speak to a human…”), as this will expedite the process and reduce frustration.

Drawbacks of conversational AI

All new technologies bring with them challenges and drawbacks. It’s useful to consider these in the context of your overall strategy.

Data privacy issues

A major concern for customers is the privacy of their data. For an AI to work effectively, it must gather data on customer behavior (e.g., their viewing history, purchase history, or browser cookies). However, this may overstep a boundary for some customers, who may feel like they are being spied on.

As such, it’s important to reassure your customers that your privacy policy is secure and transparent. You should communicate clearly how their data is protected, where it is being collected, and provide an option to delete data if they wish to do so.

Additionally, if your services involve integrating with platforms like Google, it’s crucial to inform customers about how they can delete data from Google as well. It may be a good idea to provide a link to change these options or to delete data, both from your service and from Google, inside your chatbot AI interface. This approach ensures that customers have full control over their personal information and enhances their trust in your services.

Lack of human empathy

While conversational AI is very sophisticated these days, there are some areas where it falls short of genuine human interaction.

The main shortfall is the lack of human empathy. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves—chatbots are emotionless and won’t understand the effect that their words have on your customers.

As such, human oversight and evaluation are absolutely necessary. You want your conversational AI to use broadly positive and empathetic language, even if it’s merely an illusion. This is especially important to maintain your customer lifecycle value. Consider how your chatbot should speak to customers at different stages of the sales process, like asking “How was your recent order?…” to a returning customer.

Additional tips include showing a human avatar next to the virtual agent to give the impression they are speaking with a real person. You should also provide an outlet for receiving feedback from your customer’s experience, such as a “How did I do?…” prompt.

Unidentified customer inputs and questions

Another concern is that AI chatbots are not always capable of understanding what is being asked of them.

Common hiccups include where a customer has made a spelling mistake, used incorrect grammar, or otherwise recorded their input incorrectly. It’s all too easy for the AI to get mixed up here and return the wrong answer, which may lead to a frustrating feedback loop for the customer.

As such, you need to make your AI chatbot intuitive. It should be simple to use and contain predefined statements in a list for your customers to choose from.

The benefits of conversation AI in Ecommerce

Now that we’ve covered the nitty-gritty stuff, we can talk more about why conversational AI is such a powerful tool.

Decreases the possibility of abandoned carts

As mentioned earlier, there are several pain points in the customer sales process.

The most significant of these comes at the checkout phase. This is natural, of course, as confirming the transaction is usually the point of most scrutiny from the customer. If they have any doubts or reservations, they will likely hold off on finalizing their order. As such, a tactically placed chatbot here will be well-equipped to convert your customers.

Addresses customer queries faster

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of conversational AI is its ability to drive faster customer interactions.

A chatbot can respond instantaneously, whereas a human must type. A chatbot can also speak to thousands of customers at once, whereas a human can only manage one at a time. This makes chatbot AI a highly effective option for delivering a basic customer service solution. You can use a ready-made AI prompt library to speed up your work.

When you consider how cheap some of these chatbot programs come, it’s easy to see their worth as some of the best apps for sales reps.

Easy order processing with chatbots

Beyond simply providing information or shortcuts around your website, a virtual assistant may also perform basic functions on the customer’s behalf. When integrated into your eCommerce CMS, chatbots streamline the entire order process, making it efficient for customers.

For example, a customer may ask a chatbot to “Add 3 quesadillas to my basket to be delivered to home for 18:30”. The AI can then work out what the customer wants, and when/where they want it sent. Consequently, a pre-filled order may be created in a matter of seconds, saving your customer precious time.

Real-time order status updates

Another useful feature is for chatbot AIs to fetch personalized information on request.

A common example of this is recurring customers checking in on their delivery updates. Well, rather than navigating to this part of the website manually, a chatbot AI could navigate for the customer. It could present the information in an easy-to-read format, and tell them the basics such as whether it will be early, late, or running on time.

Lead generation

We usually think of conversational AI as assisting in the eCommerce conversion process. That is the point at which an attracted site visitor spends money to become a customer.

However, as chatbots become more sophisticated, they are now also being used for different roles in the customer lifecycle journey. Namely, for contacting prospective customer leads.

To give an example, imagine a small business that doesn’t have time to respond to all of its social media inquiries. That business may choose to implement a chatbot that replies to the questions and leads the prospect in the right direction. This would likely boost lead generation for the website’s sales funnel for relatively little expenditure.

Wrap-Up and Key Takeaways

To conclude, conversational AI is an innovative solution for driving positive customer experiences. For a low upfront cost, it relieves your customer service team of many arduous tasks. It makes it easier for customers to navigate your site, and can consequently boost the ecommerce conversion funnel, increasing customer conversion and loyalty.”

Hopefully, by now, you have an idea of what features a good chatbot AI ought to include. As your expertise in conversational AI develops, you may choose to develop its application for business process software. For instance, using a chatbot for employee onboarding, time tracking, vacation requests, online invoicing, and much more.

The post Amplify Customer Experience in Retail with Conversational AI appeared first on Lumoa.

Recently, we organized a webinar about how to integrate public reviews using Lumoa where “that cool guy Garen” showed:

• How to bring public reviews in Lumoa within minutes
• The dashboard where you can monitor what customers say in real-time
• How to identify key pain points that you can immediately tackle to increase the score
• How to add your competitors’ public reviews to the mix, so you can get a reliable benchmark and win in the market.

There are many ways to use the integration function, and this is just one example. Lumoa has very clear open APIs and based on your goals, integrations can serve various purposes. By using this feature, you will learn much more than you ever thought possible and be more capable of “owning the market”.

The post How to use public reviews to improve customer experience appeared first on Lumoa.

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.

The post How to Sell Customer Experience to Your Organisation appeared first on Lumoa.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”  

Act 1

The Customer Support Blues

“Does Customer Support have enough of a mandate to drive improvements in customer satisfaction?”

When I started thinking about writing a piece on transforming customer support, this question immediately came to mind.

It was the most “liked” question during our recent webinar – “Using Insights to Hear Your Customers, Engage Your Employees, and Improve Your Profits”.

And it is a question that customer support professionals ask me most often.

Now, imagine that you are a company CEO and you are asked this very same question.

What will your answer be? I can almost picture the scene. You’ll say …

“Everyone in our company has a mandate to drive improvements in customer satisfaction”

And then you’ll continue …

“in the same way as everyone in our company has a mandate to contribute positively to shareholder value.”

That’s all very nice and as CEO that’s what you’ll be expected to say, and what you’ll want your people to hear.

But if you run a Customer Support function and you are trying to figure out how to transform it, the reality is very far from those nice words. Believe me, I’ve been there.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:

The Customer Support Blues 

I know I’m the foundation
The core
The nerve centre
But I don’t have a voice
I’m just a cheap, low-cost renter
Seen as a complainer
No-one wants to mentor a dissenter
Silly me
I’m just a lowly Cost Centre

Understaffed
No life raft
Just a ton of hard graft
“More headcount?”
Don’t be daft
Just crank the crankshaft

Managing all kinds of issues for things broken elsewhere
Is it really surprising I don’t have any hair!!
Measuring things that I know are internally focussed
Asked to swarm on all issues
Like a malnourished locust

I try to remain positive
See the tunnel, the light
Do the right things for my team
Excite. Show foresight
“Hello, can you hear me?”
I’ve got ideas. I’m an inventor
Is no-one listening?
Silly me
I’m just a lowly cost centre!!!

Act 2

The Cost Centre Shuffle

We know it’s hard, it’s really hard at times to see a light at the end of the tunnel. However, there is some really positive news coming out of the webinar I mentioned before.

People who lead Customer Support functions are very well aware of the challenges. 55% of you mentioned having to struggle with organisational silos and lack of common goals.

You are also very well aware of where you want to go;  RevOps, with 69% of you saying your primary reason for gathering customer insights is to increase revenue and reduce churn.

To me, that’s hugely positive.

And what’s even more positive is that Customer Support teams have a valuable asset in their hands. You have data. Masses of current, contextual, insightful data.

This changes the perspective and unlocks opportunities.

It gives you:

• A strong voice;
• A seat at the table;
• The platform to show everyone that you think RevOps (instead of CoreOps)

So, why not change the perspective on the initial question?

“Do I have a mandate?”

If we change it to “How might Customer Support drive shareholder value?”, it forces us to think differently. (Your CEO self is happy now).

It’s incredible what reframing the question can do.

It forces us to think differently. In a creative way. Not problems, but solutions.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you …

The Cost Centre Shuffle

Reframe the question
Bring a different outlook
Solutions not problems
Rewrite the Cost Centre book

Walk in the shoes of others. Ask
“What does Sales need?”
“How can I help Product?”
“What will make Customer Success succeed?”

Reduced churn
New opportunities
Satisfied customers
Bigger communities

Less complaints
More references
Understand other’s preferences

“Response time” 
“First call resolution”
Are these really insightful
Or just noise pollution?

Why waste so much time on internal measures
Just to prove you are ‘green’
Oh, you vain little treasures!

Be bold
Shout out loud
“I’m amber and proud”

“I’m using the data 
To get key insights
The sentiment. The themes. 
The wrongs and the rights”

33% of customers say personalisation is lacking (1)
More customers are now complaining (2) 
Wow!
How nerve wracking!
The wrongs. So important
You got to stop churning
Listen to Bill Gates
“Your most unhappy clients are your greatest source of learning”(3)

Then proclaim with pride
“I’ve got the insights to guide”
Insights
Like flashlights
Shine the path. So bright

They’re the voice of your customer
So not controversial
And quickly you’ll realise
They’re extremely commercial 

You can monitor in real-time
Apply alerts
Show your value to your business
Make them converts

You can measure what matters
In real-time too
And … the best thing of all 
You can link to revenue

The Cost Centre Shuffle
Is quite a long rhyme
There’s a bit to be done
But all good things take time

The end justifies the means
A strange saying but true
Follow the Cost Centre Shuffle
AND BECOME REVENUE

Act 3

What a wonderful world

I hope you’re still with me.

Congratulations.

We can do this.

You can do this.

There is now customer insight technology that can, in real-time, identify sentiment, uncover insights, and determine trends. And once you are able to make the match between a “trend” – or call it an “emotion”, say for example “ease” – and an outcome, then you can measure it.

A simple example.

Assume that your Customer Insight technology tells you that:

• 8% of your calls can be categorised as “lack of transparency”, where customers contact you to find the status of a process or get an update on something (e.g., delivery, payment, application)

• 95% of these calls can be classified as dissatisfied customers

• 30% of these calls resulted in escalations or complaints

You might determine – and you would be right in doing so – that these are non-value adding customer calls. The information could become the basis for a conversation with product and for the development an ROI-positive self-service business case.

Once the plan is implemented, you will be able to measure the impact – e.g., reduced call volumes, increased customer satisfaction – and show that you have moved towards more value-adding customer contact.

But most significantly, you are  able to connect your Customer Story to your Money Story.

“Connect your Customer Story to your Money Story” 

This is the only phrase I’m repeating. You have to remember this phrase. It’s your passport to success.

It means that you can show that an increase in X delivers a commercial benefit of Y.

And it means that you have connected Customer Support to Customer Satisfaction to Shareholder Value.

CONGRATULATIONS

Now you have people’s full attention.

You can now start to emphasise your RevOps credentials, as the insights you’re providing are the foundation for so many things.

1. They help define customer journeys and emotions.
2. They establish a direction for your product.
3. They inform organisational design and cultural values.
4. They show you where you can enable other teams – for example, Sales – to be more productive.

And from there, you can democratise the data, empower people and hold them accountable.

And before we get to the closing, let me throw another couple of stats at you.

• 70% of consumers say they have already made a choice to support a company that delivers great customer service.
• For 73% of customers, friendly employees or customer service representatives are what make a memorable experience that causes consumers to stick with a brand.

By now, it should be clear that I like to do things a bit differently. I do think that, especially for those of us in Customer related roles, we need to challenge more and push the boundaries. We do have an obligation to represent the voice of our customers into our businesses. And the voice of our businesses out to our customers.

I’m not saying it’s easy. It needs determination, resilience, and a belief in what we are doing.

But so long as you connect the Customer Story to the Money Story, people will listen.

And your fellow Customer Support professionals (or more broadly Customer Experience professionals), the community we are building, is there to help you. You’re not alone.

I hope you’ve found this rather offbeat blog useful, and that it inspires you to believe that you do indeed have enough of a mandate to drive improvements in customer satisfaction.

My play in 3 acts obviously must have a happy ending.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you

It’s a Wonderful World 
(if you know the tune then sing along …)

I see dashboards of green
(OK - some amber too)
Customers are happier
Than I ever knew
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

I see a clear path ahead
Now I use insights
More satisfied customers
No more sleepless nights
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

The feedback from the customers
Is for everyone to see
We’ve linked ‘customer’ to money’
Hardwired A to B
I have a seat at the table
Where people ask for my view
They're also really saying
"Well done you"

My team is now excited
I watch them grow
They'll learn much more
Than I'll never know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world

(1)  Accenture: 33% of customers who abandoned a business relationship last year did so because personalisation was lacking
(2) Deloitte:Even though fewer customers may be experiencing problems, more customers are inclined to complain about customer service problems than ever before.
(3) Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Bill Gates Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999)

About Richard Jeffreys

Richard Jeffreys is a CX leader with significant experience gained from a variety of executive roles in FinTech, Investment and Corporate Banking. Richard, who is Human Centred Design Certified and a Six Sigma Black Belt, has lived and worked in US, Europe and Asia working with companies such as J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.

His impressive résumé also includes transforming a customer service function of 800 people and 40 locations (people, process and technology) and designing a new digital product from customer insights with >$25m revenues in Year 1. 

Richard founded CX All to bring these experiences to help companies design, embed and grow their Customer Experience, Customer Success, Customer Service and Digital capabilities, ultimately helping companies answer the question “How does Customer Experience directly drive shareholder value?” 

Richard can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardjeffreys1/.

The post How to Transform Customer Support – A Play in 3 Acts 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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