With rising customer expectations, the need to deliver an exceptional customer experience (CX) is at an all-time high. And frankly, the best way to achieve this superior level of CX is to visualise it – which is often done using a process called customer journey mapping. A customer journey map essentially tells the story of the customer’s experience – which starts at the initial point of contact all the way through to a long-term relationship – giving us critical information about key interactions along the way. For this process to be a successful one and because it can be quite complex, many business seek the assistance of customer journey mapping tools.
https://mopinion.com/top-20-customer-journey-mapping-tools-an-overview/
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/
Artificial Intelligence-powered virtual agents present significant potential to improve the customer experience (CX) in the contact center while reducing costs. Many companies are facing business challenges such as high customer expectations, limited automation options, difficulty in implementing and deploying new contact center technologies, and agent attrition. Fortunately, the opportunity for business leaders to address such challenges through cloud-based, AI-powered engagement is considerable.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/using-ai-powered-virtual-agents-to-optimize-the-customer-experience-of-your-contact-center-1027570822/
How are you getting insight on your customers that is deeper than your competitors? How well is it working? Are these insights allowing you to make changes that increase your market share and revenues?
You will already know where the trend is going. GDPR will create some volatility as the implications start to play out, but without doubt it will play out albeit with amended guidelines. What is also without doubt will be the explosive growth of passive data which will be harnessed to increasingly sophisticated analytics as a means of predicting customer behaviour. As data bandwidths increase and become cheaper, the sheer volume of data will explode as almost everything we do becomes monitored to a greater and ever granular degree.
Is it possible that we are relying too much on technology? Are companies now adapting their customer journeys, internal processes and products based on what the technology-driven analytics say alone? Or are there alternatives that will give you better insight?
https://nextten.media/voice-of-customer-and-big-data-will-never-be-your-key-differentiator/
When it comes to creating an outstanding customer experience, Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs are a top priority and area of differentiation for operations teams and CX leaders. According to Forrester, just 33% of CX professionals say their VoC program is effective at driving action to improve customer experience. This means there’s tremendous room for improvement in the implementation and execution of these programs.
VoC programs require a wide skill set, deep expertise, and a significant commitment from leadership within the company. As a result, it can be challenging to get these programs past the infancy stage. In many cases, leaders are looking for ROI, yet the programs don’t have what they need to impact business results. It’s time for strategies to evolve so that VoC programs can drive increased customer loyalty and proven ROI. For that to happen, there needs to be a fundamental shift where programs move from listening to customers to truly understanding them.
https://customerthink.com/voice-of-the-customer-programs-one-strategic-shift-you-need-to-make/
As the digital revolution expands the number of marketing channels, brands are seeing a tremendous blurring of the lines between traditional loyalty programs, digital transformations, and customer experience initiatives. In this new competitive landscape, all brands must adopt loyalty initiatives without traditional boundaries, shares, Guy CierzanManaging Partner, ICF Next.
No brand is perfect when it comes to loyalty these days, but Starbucks is doing a lot right.
For starters, their entire rewards program is housed on a mobile app that customers can also use to store payment info, purchase drinks, and order remotely. In this way, tangible customer interactions are seamlessly integrated in a digital ecosystem with the rewards they may reap from those interactions.
Contrary to several airlines — whose shift from distance to revenue-based loyalty programs have only made it harder, more expensive, and more complicated to achieve certain tier statuses than in the past — Starbucks rewards enrollment is friction-less, engrained in signing into the app itself. There’s a reason the app accounted for 30% of all transactions last year, and holds more consumer cash than many banks.
https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/customer-experience-2/what-brands-can-learn-from-starbucks-expansive-view-of-customer-loyalty/
Customer experience (CX) is not only a major priority, but also a game changer for businesses. To craft customer-centric business policies and meet customer needs, marketers first need to understand, what is customer experience? Let’s start with the basics.
Gen-Z is more aware, needs instant service and has rising expectations, and Millennials and Baby Boomers have their own unique needs. In this high-pressure situation, businesses need to be meticulous with their CX strategy. We have put together a comprehensive A-Z customer experience guide to help you optimize your business strategies.
https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/customer-experience-2/what-is-customer-experience-a-to-z-guide/
We hear companies throwing around common phrases like, ‘Customer centricity is at the heart of our organisation’ and ‘We’re very much in tune with the needs of our customers’. Not surprisingly, seeing as how according to a study carried out by Bain and company, 80% of organisations they surveyed believed that they were providing a superior customer experience to their customers. Meanwhile, just 8% of their customers shared this opinion. Only eight percent! This is a huge disconnect and gap in perception, one that is commonly referred to as the customer experience gap.
https://mopinion.com/what-is-the-customer-experience-gap/
As the customer experience profession matures, one thing has become clear: CX professionals can’t have a strong impact unless the surrounding culture is supportive. And creating such a culture is difficult.
In a forthcoming study by Walker, CX professionals listed “developing a customer-centric culture” as the most effective way to meet customers’ changing needs. Fewer than half, however, stated that customer focus has a significant influence on their company’s culture. In other words, CX professionals believe a culture focused on customers can make a big difference, but they don’t feel their colleagues are catching on.
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/Voice-of-the-Customer/Who-Makes-a-Company-Customer-Focused-120042.aspx/
When retail brands started measuring CX through emails or SMS, they thought they would be rewarded with several benefits. For one, they would constantly monitor the pulse of their CX and react quickly to solve customer problems. Besides, CX conversations would start to happen across the organization and brands would have access to a benchmark. Customers would also be rewarded as they would be offered a new way to highlight issues or pass compliments. And, to a certain extent, some of those benefits did materialize.
It was the time when some software vendors were claiming CX would improve if companies simply launched a CX measurement program (be it NPS or something else, as long as it used their software) that encompasses those metrics across the organization.
http://customerthink.com/why-customer-experience-measurement-is-biased-and-how-to-fix-it/
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