#85 | DCX - Perspectives and insights on digital customer experience
Value-Driven CX Strategies; The Power of Proactivity; DCX Poll; Links to Industry news and the DCX Thought Leader Profile of the Week
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Value-Driven CX Strategies
(Presentation starts at :48 and is best watched at 1.25x speed)
I recently had the opportunity to kick off the CX/UX Leadership Forum: Next Generation Customer Experience event organized by Argyle Forum. I discussed the importance of Value-Driven CX strategies to help businesses create exceptional customer experiences and shared nine essential strategies that can be applied to any industry.
Customers have rising expectations for personalization, convenience, and delight. Exceeding expectations builds fierce loyalty.
Use nostalgia and radical transparency to make customers feel comfortable and trust you more.
Be responsive and consistent to build a reputation for reliability. Prioritize speed, simplicity, and sweating the small stuff.
Blend AI efficiency with a human touch to create tailored, effortless experiences.
Craft lifestyle-oriented brands that foster connections and community, not just products.
Refuse inertia - eliminate friction points and revolutionize experiences through innovation.
Invest in compelling storytelling and small personalized touches to make customers feel special.
Support local communities to spotlight values beyond just sales.
Continuously learn from blogs, events, and peers to stay updated on CX best practices.
I also shared a resource document listing my favorite CX Podcasts, Books, and more. You can access it for free at www.tinyurl.com/dcxargyle.
Love to hear your thoughts.
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The Power of Proactivity
Uh oh. You wince as an email from the CEO pops up in your inbox with the subject line "Significant Onboarding Issues." As you open the forwarded chain, you read a lengthy, all-capped rant from a customer fuming about an order error that has yet to be resolved, now escalated all the way to the top. The CEO asks you to "Please handle this ASAP and see what we can do to rectify!"
Situations like this are all too familiar for many customer experience teams stuck in reactive mode. Being reactive means waiting for customers to come to you with complaints before jumping into problem-solving mode. It's a stressful cycle of putting out fires rather than preventing them. The result? Plummeting customer satisfaction and strained team morale.
The better path is embracing proactivity. When you anticipate customer needs ahead of time and take the initiative to add value, you deliver next-level service. Proactivity transforms customer experience from frustrating and transactional to effortless and relational. Instead of dreading that complaint call, you’re having relaxed and productive conversations where customers feel genuinely heard and helped.
So what does “proactive” really mean?
Proactive customer experience is about creating a customer-centric culture where every interaction with the customer is viewed as an opportunity to build a long-term relationship.
It’s taking the initiative to identify potential customer issues and opportunities and then making the first move to add value without waiting to be asked. Being proactive shapes better experiences before, during, and after sales.
5 Ways to Be More Proactive
Here are five impactful yet simple ways to exercise proactive customer experiences:
Regularly study customer data for insights - Detect early warning signs and monitor at-risk accounts with analytics. Invest in journey and text analytics to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and improve your customer experience. With aggregated analytics tools, you can understand the sentiment of customer interactions, identify common pain points, and even detect potential fraud or compliance breaches across channels across time.
Set up listening posts - Actively monitor social media channels and review sites for mentions of your brand and industry discussions. Take note of rising concerns or service gaps experienced across customer segments, following up quickly on negative reviews.
Establish a customer advisory panel - customer insight and relationships. Identify a diverse mix of 10-15 ideal existing customers representing your target personas and segments. Extend invites to participate in regular panels, surveys, and discussions to provide open feedback on your brand, products, and services.
Proactively test customer journeys in production - Take an outside-in view by directly experiencing your customer's journey with the same tools they would use. Walk through the complete end-to-end process of engaging your brand across channels from the customer's shoes. Sign up as a new prospect, place test orders, submit support tickets, and attempt self-service for common needs. Take note of pain points and bright spots to address opportunities and enhance touchpoints before issues negatively impact customers at scale.
Build proactive touches into journeys - Identify key moments when a proactive nudge would make the customer’s life easier, whether it’s a personalized usage tip after a first purchase or an automated reminder about renewing a subscription. These proactive touches help build a stronger relationship with your customers and show them that you are considering their needs.
Making Progress with Proactivity
Being proactive allows you to provide more personalized and timely solutions, driving greater customer satisfaction. Other business benefits include:
Increased customer retention and loyalty - Customers appreciate when you’re one step ahead, making their lives easier through recommendations and support specific to their needs. This VIP treatment earns their repeat business and referrals.
Higher efficiency - Nipping issues in the bud eliminates back-and-forth communications later to understand and solve problems. It also reduces repeat questions.
Improved brand reputation - Customers remember how you made them feel. If they associate your brand with positive experiences of feeling heard and helped, that shapes a strong reputation that attracts new business.
Better employee satisfaction - Being proactive eliminates constant fire drills for your team. With smoother operations and happier customers, employees enjoy coming to work every day.
Improving customer experience is an ongoing journey of listening, learning, and enhancing touchpoints. However, being proactive breaks down communication barriers so you can provide support in the right place at the right time. Start identifying moments in your customer lifecycle that are ripe for delightful proactive outreach. Small steps make a big difference in earning lifelong customer trust and loyalty.
DCX LinkedIn Poll of the Week
This week, I asked our colleagues in the Customer Experience Professionals Group on Linkedin, Are you experimenting with GenAI?
It is evident from this snapshot that GenAI is gaining popularity in the CX industry. Many companies are either already using it in their operations or are keen to do so. This trend indicates that adopting GenAI could potentially set businesses apart in terms of providing superior customer service and experience.
The fact that only a small percentage of companies are not considering GenAI could indicate that many businesses recognize the potential benefits of this technology or are afraid of being left behind in terms of innovation. However, the significant number of companies in the "interested but not started" category could also suggest the existence of potential barriers such as resource constraints, lack of expertise, or uncertainty about how to implement GenAI effectively.
Overcoming the gap between being interested in Generative AI (GenAI) and actively experimenting with it can be challenging due to a variety of barriers:
Understanding and Expertise: Companies may lack the technical know-how to implement GenAI solutions effectively. They might need to invest in training or hiring skilled personnel.
Cost: Initial investment in GenAI can be significant. Budget constraints may prevent companies from adopting new technologies.
Data Privacy and Security: Concerns around handling customer data with AI systems can cause hesitancy.
Integration with Existing Systems: Ensuring that GenAI solutions work seamlessly with current IT infrastructure can be daunting.
Quantifying ROI: It may be difficult for businesses to predict the return on investment, which can delay the decision to start experimenting.
Resistance to Change: A company might face cultural resistance, where stakeholders are skeptical of new technologies replacing human elements in customer service.
Addressing these barriers requires a strategic approach that includes education on the benefits and functionality of GenAI, a clear cost-benefit analysis, robust data handling policies, a phased integration plan, and addressing cultural aspects within the organization.
How are you approaching GenAI?
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Industry News, Ideas, and Insights
Using the Peak-End Rule to Create Unforgettable CX (cmswire.com)
In this article, Sam Stern explains that if you want to improve your customer's experience, you must focus on creating positive moments throughout their journey. According to the Peak-End rule, people remember their experiences based on the peak moments and how they ended. To use this rule, you should improve the peak moments and smooth the transitions. You also need to understand what your customers consider the end of their experience.
Born Connected: The rise of the AI Generation(qustodio.com)
How do the younger generations perceive the digital world and its current challenges? What obstacles do families encounter as they try to keep their children safe in an online society?
This report explores global trends in screen time, entertainment, social media, gaming, and education for the year 2023 across five major markets.
Hume CEO Alan Cowen on Creating Emotionally Aware AI (youtube.com)
Meet Alan Cowen, CEO and Chief Scientist at Hume AI, an emotional intelligence startup working on creating emotionally aware AI. Hume AI focuses on teaching machines to understand human emotion better than humans do. They want to use this knowledge to predict how actions will affect people's well-being. This has the potential to have a huge impact on society.
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DCX Thought Leader Profile of the Week
Every week, I introduce you to another inspiring professional from LinkedIn who has the potential to make a significant difference in your life and career.
This week’s thought leader, while no longer with us, left a legacy of unique approaches to customer experience.
Start with the Customer Experience: Steve Jobs believed in starting with the customer experience and working backward to the technology, not the other way around. He believed that it was important to understand the needs and desires of the customer before creating a product.
Jobs often encouraged his team to think about how a product would be used and how it would make the customer feel. He believed that by focusing on the customer experience, Apple could create intuitive, easy-to-use, and aesthetically pleasing products.
“It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
Invisible Workings: Jobs understood that the workings behind a great customer experience should be invisible. He emphasized that a great customer experience involved a product people wanted to use, that accomplished its tasks reliably, and that confronted them with the underlying technology as little as possible.
In other words, customers should be able to use a product or service without thinking too much about how it works. This means the product's design should be intuitive and user-friendly, and any technical complexities should be hidden behind the scenes. By doing this, Jobs believed that companies could create a positive emotional connection with their customers, increasing loyalty and satisfaction.
"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves."
Jobs’ focus on customer experience has been a significant part of his legacy and continues to influence how companies approach product design and customer service. His lessons on customer experience are arguably more relevant today than ever before.
Thank you for reading this week.
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