#59 | DCX - Perspectives and insights on digital customer experience
Creating an Unforgettable CX: Start, Stop, Continue; Beyond Digital Transformation: The Critical Role of Empathy in CX; Links to Industry news and the Thought Leader Profile of the Week
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Creating an Unforgettable CX: Start, Stop, Continue
Through my years in business, one framework has emerged as a powerful tool for guiding progress and fostering success - the "Start, Stop, Continue" exercise. Rooted in the principles of constructive feedback and continuous improvement, this simple yet effective approach has had profound implications for me and my teams, particularly in Customer Experience (CX).
The "Start, Stop, Continue" exercise works as its name implies. It requires leaders and their teams to systematically identify behaviors and practices that they need to "Start" - those that they should begin implementing; "Stop" - those that may be hindering progress and should therefore be discontinued; and "Continue" - those that are proving beneficial and should be maintained or even expanded.
In the context of CX, this exercise facilitates an in-depth assessment of strategies, clarifies effective and ineffective practices, and prompts targeted actions to enhance customer satisfaction. By segmenting the process into these three clear, actionable steps, you can prioritize efforts, streamline operations, and foster a culture of ongoing evolution and innovation.
Above all, the "Start, Stop, Continue" framework promotes continual learning and improvement, encouraging you to perpetually question, reflect, and optimize your strategies. This exercise's beauty lies in its simplicity and adaptability - it can be tailored to any organization or team, irrespective of size or industry.
By integrating this powerful exercise into your strategic approach, you can effectively steer your team toward continual growth and improvement, ensuring that your organization stays at the forefront of delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Let's start with what a CX leader should start doing:
1. Adopting Personalization: Discover the fantastic benefits of using customer data to create tailored experiences that will leave a lasting impression.
2. Investing in Employee Training: Unlock your team's potential by providing them with the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
3. Prioritizing Customer Feedback: Hear the authentic voice of your customers by not only collecting their feedback, analyzing it, and taking action to meet their needs.
4. Implementing Omnichannel Strategies: Break down the barriers between your brand and your customers by implementing strategies that provide a seamless experience across all touchpoints.
5. Using Predictive Analytics: Gain the ability to anticipate and meet your customers' needs by harnessing the power of predictive analytics, ensuring an unforgettable experience every time.
6. Embracing AI Technologies: Discuss how AI and automation can streamline operations and improve the customer experience.
7. Developing a Customer-Centric Culture: Foster a culture within your organization that puts the customer at the forefront, ensuring that every employee is committed to creating exceptional experiences.
8. Utilizing Social Media for Customer Service: Discover how social media can deliver exceptional customer support and gather valuable feedback.
9. Creating a CX Strategy Roadmap: Emphasize the need for a comprehensive, well-planned strategy to improve CX by creating a strategic roadmap that outlines clear steps and goals to guide your efforts in improving the customer experience.
10. Implementing Continuous Improvement: Embrace a continuous improvement mindset by using data and insights to make iterative changes along the customer journey, constantly elevating their experience.
Now, for what you should stop doing:
Reframing Approach: Stop These Practices to Enhance Your Customer Experience Strategy
Ignoring Negative Feedback: Stop disregarding critical feedback from customers. It's fundamental to harness unique insights gained by taking criticism on board.
Neglecting Employee Engagement: Cease overlooking the importance of employee morale, which can negatively sway the customers' experience. A happy workforce is essential for delivering a top-notch CX.
Working in Silos: Halt operating in isolated compartments. Ensuring a collaborative approach can lead to consistent and extraordinary customer experiences.
Undervaluing Customer Retention: Do not neglect the long-term importance of customer retention in favor of short-term acquisitions. Sustainable growth is better achieved by prioritizing customer loyalty.
Overcomplicating the Customer Journey: Refrain from unnecessarily intricate processes, as simple processes lead to happier and more engaged customers.
Relying Solely on Traditional Metrics: Stop relying solely on traditional metrics like CSAT and NPS for assessing CX. Go beyond these measures for a comprehensive understanding of your customer's experiences.
Resisting New Technologies: Do not resist embracing cutting-edge CX technologies in today's digital-first world. Adaptation is the key to stay ahead.
Overlooking Data Security: Stop taking data security lightly. Safeguarding customer data is imperative in maintaining trust, loyalty, and a robust CX.
Lack of Adaptability: Quit being rigid in your CX strategies. Flexibility and adapting to changing customer needs are prerequisites for long-term success.
One-Size-Fits-All Approach: Discontinue a one-size-fits-all approach and understand the power of catering to individual customer segments. Recognize the importance of serving specific customer needs.
Finally, what you should continue doing:
Listening to Customers: Continuing to value direct customer feedback facilitates a better understanding of customer needs, enabling personalized service provision.
Building Emotional Connections: Empathizing with and comprehending customers' emotions results in loyal customers, paving the way for a broader customer base through recommendations.
Fostering a Positive Company Culture: Maintaining a positive work environment translates into higher employee satisfaction and productivity, contributing to a superior customer experience.
Measuring and Acting on CX Metrics: Keeping data-driven decisions at the core of your strategy leads to more efficient strategies through better decision-making.
Investing in Technology: Consistently investing in technologies that improve customer experience puts your business at the forefront of industry advancements, offering superior experiences to customers.
Maintaining Transparency: Upholding honest and transparent communication builds customer trust, fostering long-term customer relationships.
Striving for Seamless Customer Journeys: Continually simplifying and enhancing the customer journey ensures customer satisfaction and reduces customer churn, escalating customer retention.
Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction: Keeping customer satisfaction central to your strategy creates a positive brand image and increases the likelihood of referrals, fostering overall growth.
Rewarding and Recognizing Employees: Regularly appreciating employees' efforts boosts morale and productivity within the company, ultimately reflecting an enhanced customer experience.
Continually Innovating: Embracing constant evolution and improvements maintains a competitive edge in the market, keeping customers interested and engaged.
I hope you enjoyed this dive into the "Start, Stop, Continue" exercise. It is a practical, adaptable, straightforward tool that drives CX improvement by instilling a perpetual learning and evolution culture. Integrating this exercise into your strategic approach ensures your organization's continual growth and sustained delivery of exceptional customer experiences.
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Beyond Digital Transformation: The Critical Role of Empathy in CX
Let's talk briefly about the digital world we're living in today. You know, businesses always seek cutting-edge tech and new strategies to get a leg up, right? But, amid all this innovation, we’ve got to remember one thing—empathy.
Blending Digital and Human Connection
In today's fast-paced world, we are surrounded by flashy buzzwords like 'innovation', 'digital transformation', and 'efficiency'. With all this noise, it's no wonder that empathy often gets lost in the shuffle. But let me tell you; it's an ingredient that's just as essential as the rest.
Empathy isn't just about feeling sorry for someone; it's about genuinely stepping into their shoes and experiencing their emotions. It adds that unique human touch to our interactions, something that's becoming increasingly rare in our automated and disconnected digital age. When we approach customers with empathy, we create genuine connections that make them feel truly valued and understood.
How can we make it happen?
So, how can you make your business more empathetic? Let's break it down into these three simple steps: active listening, personalization, and humanization.
1. Active Listening: This isn’t just tuning into what your customers say. It's diving deep into their sentiments and needs and then using that understanding to respond more effectively. This way, you're hearing them out and acting as their ally.
2. Personalization: Here's the deal—when you tailor your approach to fit each customer's needs, it shows that you care, and they notice. A customized experience for every customer improves their overall satisfaction and strengthens their bond with your business.
3. Humanization: Despite living in an increasingly automated world, nothing beats the warmth of genuine human touch. Being compassionate and open with your customers can make a huge difference in their experience, creating a unique bond they will appreciate.
Empathy: The Key to Lasting Success
To sum it up, empathy in customer experience is priceless. It strengthens bonds, ensures customer satisfaction, and cultivates unwavering loyalty. Even in this rapidly advancing digital era, let us never underestimate the significance of adding a personal touch.
By prioritizing empathy, you guarantee that your customer experience strategy remains pertinent, impactful, and deeply resonant with your valued customers. After all, who wouldn't want a thriving business that leaves clients beaming with delight?
This week I asked our colleagues in the Customer Experience Professionals Group on Linkedin whether they think CX is all hype or crucial for business success. A lively discussion ensued.
Based on the poll results and comments, there seems to be a general consensus that CX (customer experience) is critical for business success, though some feel it has also become a bit of a buzzword.
CX Expert Insights
Customer experience (CX) is clearly a hot topic, but some worry it's becoming more of a buzzword than a real business strategy. In this week’s DCX poll, 92% said CX is critical for success, while only 8% called it a passing buzzword. To dig deeper, I analyzed responses from CX Professionals on whether CX is substance or just jargon.
Some clear themes emerged:
Focus on Customers, Not Metrics
While CX lends itself to dashboards of metrics, real change comes from interpreting the data to improve experiences, not chasing scores. As Mark Michelson put it, "Many don't truly understand what CX is and are more focused on managing metrics than improving experiences."
Look Beyond Service and Surveys
Jeff Toister explained CX is often narrowly associated with customer service and surveys. But it encompasses all customer touchpoints across the organization. This larger perspective is key.
Walk the Walk, Don't Just Talk the Talk
Martin Hoffmitz cut to the heart of it - real CX requires execution, not just terminology. It needs senior leaders modeling customer obsession in words and deeds.
Strategic, Not Just Tactical
As Jamie Easton-Wise emphasized, understanding your customers is vital for CX success. With that insight, both tactical and strategic initiatives can improve CX across customer journeys.
Essentially, almost all agree CX is critical when done right, with customer focus driving business decisions. But superficial CX programs risk tarnishing its reputation. The experts provide sage guidance for avoiding the buzzword trap and making CX a competitive advantage.
What's your take - has CX become an overused buzzword or is it a must-have business strategy? Share your thoughts below!
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Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers (hbr.org)
As true today as it was in 2010. A study of 75,000 people interacting with contact centers and self-service found that customers want a satisfactory solution to their service issue, not above-and-beyond customer service.
Companies should focus on reducing customer effort, addressing the emotional side of interactions, minimizing the need to switch service channels, and focusing on problem-solving, not speed. Satisfaction does not necessarily lead to loyalty, and customer service can often lead to customers being disloyal.
Six customer experience pitfalls to avoid | McKinsey
Companies are now focusing on delivering best-in-class customer experiences to stay competitive. To achieve this, organizations must cultivate a customer-centric culture, focus on agility and design thinking, and consider the customer in all decisions.
Building organizational capabilities and culture to plan, execute, and sustain the transformation is critical, and avoiding pitfalls such as failing to link CX to business value, fragmentation, and focusing on touchpoints instead of the customer journey is essential.
Customer Service Compilation - YouTube
A little fun to add to your day. Enjoy!
Each week, I share a profile of a person from LinkedIn whom I believe can positively impact your life and career.
This week, meet Nate Brown, Senior Director of CX at Arise, a gig service outsourced customer service solution and Co-Founder of CX Accelerator. This non-profit community exists to equip, encourage, and connect Customer Experience professionals at every stage in their journey.
Nate Brown is an influential CX leader and innovator. With a passion for transforming relationships between companies and customers, Nate has established himself as one of the industry’s prominent voices.
Armed with a degree in Business Management, Nate embarked on a career that has seen him work with esteemed organizations across different sectors. He co-founded CX Accelerator, a virtual community of customer experience professionals while serving as a top-ranking CX executive in diverse roles. His contributions to the industry have been recognized widely, including being named a "Top 50 Thought Leader" by ICMI.
You can learn more about Nate's work or follow him on LinkedIn. When you do, you’ll be signing up for a unique blend of expertise, insight, and inspiration.
Thank you for reading this week.
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