For the first time in three years, growth in marketing budgets has decreased, placing marketers on the hook to justify financial investments and demonstrate solid ROI for existing activity. In this more restrictive environment, Gartner finds marketers are increasingly turning their focus to existing customers, with a spending ratio of 2-to-1 in favor of retention over acquisition. Because of those trends, chief marketing officers are keeping customer experience (CX) programs at the top of their priority lists and they are expecting such initiatives to deliver measurable returns.
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/transforming-listening-into-action/
Customer journey mapping is a popular tool for visualizing a customer’s experience. These maps provide a visual outline of various interactions that the purchaser has with a brand. It’s become a must for businesses as it allows managers to spot potential problems, going a long way in ensuring that the customer experience is satisfactory and hassle-free. When the customers’ road to conversion is straightforward, they’re more likely to stick with that brand.
In fact, taking advantage of the benefits of journey mapping, according to research published by Aberdeen Group, “Customer Journey Mapping: Lead The Way To Advocacy” the ROI for doing so is 200% greater employee engagement and 350% more revenue from customer referrals. Just imagine the profits and the ability to relocate toward bigger tech cities, such as Austin or San Francisco.
But, for successful customer journey mapping, it must be a collaborative process, with brand managers, markets and customers are included, allowing a manager or owner to form a complete perspective of what’s going on, from the moment the customer first discovers the brand through the buying stage.
In order to get a clear picture of this journey, there are four essential components of journey mapping.
http://customerthink.com/four-essential-components-of-customer-journey-mapping/
Everybody is talking about customer experience (CX), but like many other hot industry terms, it can mean different things to different people. I like the Wikipedia definition: “Customer experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. This interaction is made up of three parts: the customer journey, the brand touchpoints the customer interacts with, and the environments the customer experiences during their experience.”
Marketing definitely has a significant role in supporting each of these components. But the old adage that marketing gets the customer and customer service keeps the customer is overstated. A reputation for great service can help the company get customers and marketing has an important role in keeping them.
http://customerthink.com/7-ways-marketing-can-boost-your-cx-performance/
I once wrote that to be joyful we must capture the natural occurring humor of reality. Extrapolating the idea of seizing natural occurring opportunities, I’m a fan of gleaning customer experience lessons from news headlines.
Here are three quick examples of customer experience lessons just waiting to be plucked from recent news stories:
+Only one Blockbuster Video store remains
+Papa John’s Pizza removes likeness of the company’s founder in the aftermath of his use of a racially offensive word
+Voice search is on the rise
http://customerthink.com/so-many-customer-experience-lessons-so-little-time/
As the influence of social media continues to proliferate, so does the volume of online consumer insights available to companies.
The ability to successfully filter, capture and analyze actionable data is extremely lucrative for data-driven organizations. According to a 2017 McKinsey study, organizations that leverage consumer behaviorial insights outperform their competitors by 85 percent in terms of sales growth and by more than 25 percent in total profits.
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/the-customer-voice-bringing-value-to-online-data/
Customer engagement and customer experience (CX) are too often used as buzzwords without a company making a true effort to shape their strategy and the way they do business around the customer. Moreover, companies feel that simply installing a technology product will be a silver bullet to providing better customer engagement. This shortsightedness creates an unsustainable environment that gives customers the sense of a disjointed company and employees left confused on how they can provide the best experience for their customers.
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/9-challenges-to-successful-voice-of-the-customer-strategies/
2018 has been declared as a year of reckoning by Forrester. At the top of Forrester’s 2018 prediction is the claim that Customer Experience (CX) programs have hit a wall. Practitioners have generated a great deal of activity around journey mapping, voice-of-customer programs, and implementing quick wins.
But this is where they hit a wall. The latest Forrester CX Index demonstrated that, for some companies, scores actually declined and others reached a plateau. In a word, CX programs are “stuck.”
So, how can we unstick our CX programs and generate greater momentum in what was once declared a centerpiece of the CEO’s agenda? Here are seven tips to help move your CX program in the right direction.
http://customerthink.com/your-cx-is-stuck-now-what-7-tips-to-get-moving-in-the-right-direction/
Sir Richard Branson once said “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”
Is Employee experience (EX) and Customer experience (CX) linked? I would emphatically say a YES to that question. Ideally, the EX should reflect the same experience that we are trying to provide to our clients. It is becoming increasingly evident that the two experiences are so very closely linked, that one affects the other in every level. It is also common sense. Without employees we will not be able to provide any sort of CX and if the employees are not happy and committed they certainly will not be able to provide client delight to our valuable clients.
https://www.dqindia.com/customer-experience-employee-experience/
Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs have become a strategic asset for the most forward thinking and customer-centric CEOs, CMOs and customer experience leaders. In fact, in the most recent Best Practices of the Best Marketers Research Report, Chief Marketing Officers whose performance ranked them in the top quartile used VoC programs a whopping 48% more often than their lower performing peers.
It’s been my experience that most companies think they know what their customers’ want—and more often than not they are either partially correct or incomplete. Either scenario results with a cascading effect that degrades product R&D, marketing communications, sales effectiveness, services delivery and customer experience (CX) objectives. The negative financial impact incurred in any one of these areas is a significant hidden loss than goes unrecognized by most business leaders.
http://www.crmsearch.com/voc.php/
The method used to engage with customers for their feedback can have a significant impact on the nature of the feedback you collect and, consequently, the metrics you report.
Engaging with customers and collecting their feedback is a competitive edge available to any enterprise willing to invest in data management, process optimisation, and creative design. Insights from customers collected through surveys and other feedback mechanisms are the backbone of Customer Experience (CX) management.
https://www.mycustomer.com/experience/voice-of-the-customer/customer-feedback-how-collection-methods-skew-results/
Bookmarks on this page are managed by an admin user. 
