Customer Experience Herd Mentality and the Fear of Missing Out

Image courtesy of claustral

I originally wrote today’s post for Intradiem. It was published on their blog on September 17, 2015. 

Are you following the herd or defining your own path to success?

In business and in life, there’s this crazy notion of the herd mentality. What is it? According to Wikipedia: herd mentality, or mob mentality, describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. This isn’t always a bad thing (e.g., think running away from a dangerous situation), but it certainly can be, especially when it results in erroneous decisions and other negative outcomes.

In business, when you’re trying to differentiate, when you’re trying to win and keep customers and employees, this mentality quickly commoditizes your business/product and, well, doesn’t really excite your customers or your employees. Employees can move in and out of employment from your company to your competitors, or customers can purchase your products or the next guy’s – and never feel or experience a difference. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter where they work or where they shop: one is the same as the next as the same as the next – and so on.

A few years ago, researchers at Leeds University did some research on herd mentality. Here’s how AdSavvy reports it:

Researchers at Leeds University, led by Prof Jens Krause, performed a series of experiments where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two people who appear to know where they’re going.  

The published results showed that it only takes 5% of what the scientists called “informed individuals” to influence the direction of a crowd of around 200 people. The remaining 95% follow without even realizing it.

95% will follow the 5%! Wow!

But that’s not really a surprise. Think about the top 5% of companies when it comes to customer experience. Which brands are cited consistently? Which brands does everyone want to be like? Amazon, Zappos, Apple, Nordstrom, Starbucks, The Ritz-Carlton, Disney, Harley-Davidson, Nike, etc. Good for them! Bad for you! That experience works for them, for their culture and for their customers. Design your own culture and your own customer experience – based on what your employees and your customers want, respectively.

For those 95%, what happens to innovation? What happens to greatness, in general? What happens to a differentiated or delightful customer experience? That all goes away.

Seth Godin stated: You cannot be remarkable by following someone else who’s remarkable.

So, why then is there a herd mentality? Those in a crowd tend to do what others are doing because, if they are doing it, then it must be worthwhile doing or they wouldn’t be doing it. Right? Or the crowd might go along with what others are doing so as to not be ridiculed or mocked for not being in the know. Or it might just be the safe route to take. Or we don’t know what we’re supposed to do. Or we have no vision. Or we have no desire to differentiate. Or we like to go along to get along. Or we don’t want to make a bad or wrong decision. Or we have a fear of missing out. Or we are risk averse.

The problem with herd mentality is that we think we know what success looks like because we base it on the industry leaders – because they must be doing something right to be leading the pack. But just because it works for one doesn’t mean it works for others. Just because the Zappos culture and business model work for Zappos doesn’t mean they will work for others.

How do you know you’re part of the herd mentality? Consider how you’d answer the following questions.

• Do you make decisions based on what others do?
• Or do you always look for a better way, a better solution?
• Are you listening to customers or just paying attention to competitors?
• Do you have a fear of missing out on what others are doing and achieving?
• Are you afraid to be different or to do something different?
• Do you dwell on what your competition is doing?
• Is your approach to designing products, services, and the customer experience fresh and innovative?
• Or did you take the Zappos tour and decide to replicate their model? 
• Are you looking for new and creative ways to meet customer needs or solve their problems?

How can companies stand out from the herd? Don’t they want to? What will help them win the war for talent? and for customers?

Not all experiences are created equal. When you design your customer experience strategy, good guidelines to live by include:

1. Define and communicate your brand promise
2. Develop a culture that fits your brand and what you stand for
3. Understand your customers: who are they? what do they buy? what problems are they trying to solve? why do or don’t they buy?
4. Define your moments of truth: think about your customer experience lifecycle and your various touchpoints and interactions
5. Map your customers’ journeys
6. Understand the marketplace: yes, be aware of competitors and what they’re doing, but don’t imitate
7. Listen to your customers and prospects
8. Define your customer experience: innovate, get creative, add value to the marketplace
9. Hire the right employees for your brand experience
10. Know your vision: stick to it
11. Know your purpose: stick to it
12. Know your value proposition: stick to it

Imitation is the death of innovation. When imitating, there’s no need for innovation, right? Last month, I wrote about four other voices to listen to in order to innovate. Listening to those four voices can not only help you drive innovation but also differentiation.

Take your inspiration from other industries, if you have to. Get motivated by what your competitors are doing, but don’t dwell on them. Competition drives innovation, and vice versa. And innovation drives success, simply because it allows you and your competitors to offer a variety of products to meet your customers’ needs. When that happens, the customer wins. And then you do, too.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. -George S. Patton Jr.

SOURCE: customerTHINK

How to Increase Customer Loyalty

Increasing the base of loyal customers is the most important and difficult question that is faced by businesses these days. Even the biggest of brands which claim to have highest recall value amongst its customers find it difficult to retain the customer loyalty and increase their base of loyal customers.

More often than not, companies especially the ones which are in the service industry where customer interface with the business is very high, tend to carry out numerous customer feedback surveys, without actually introspecting whether their processes and policies are customer friendly or not. Whether the employees are being groomed keeping in mind the need to provide the customers with the best and the most enthralling experience. Generally, there is a lack of focus towards getting into the nitty gritty’s of providing the customers an exceptional experience and providing the end users a ‘wow’ experience just remains a topic of discussion in meeting and training rooms. When it comes to actual implementation of all these things, all this talk of customer service goes out of the window.

The business houses need to realize that in today’s times, there are various alternatives which are available to a prospective customer, and with the advent of technology and innovation shifting of loyalties from one brand to the other can happen with a simple few clicks of the mouse. Keeping an existing customer happy is relatively easier and cheaper as compared to procuring or winning a new and loyal customer. In order to keep a check on the situation and ensure that there is minimum loss of existing and loyal customer base, exhaustive introspection of each and every minute detail must be carried out. Right from devising customer focused and friendly processes and policies to hiring the employees with a friendly and customer centric attitude and mindset, each and every aspect should be looked at with an eagle’s eye and an intention to correct the situation.

People leading these service organizations should realize that 8 out of 10 people would not take the hassle of complaining or pointing out a particular service issue to the management or people responsible for running the show. They would simply stop utilizing the services and shift their loyalties to another service provider. If one tends to come across feedback which points out that the service levels and product offerings are fine, then there seems to be trouble brewing behind the curtains. Since most of the people would not walk up to a service provider and point of their shortcomings or what he expects and where they have felt let down, they would simply try and divert or finish the matter with ‘fine’ remark.

This would mean that more often than not, the customer will not come back. Therefore, in an effort to increase customer loyalty; organizations should design their business plans and performance parameters by being in the customer shoes and try and analyze the customer’s needs and want and what are their expectations from them. Honest and an appropriate introspection would help in highlighting deficiencies which should be rectified in order to keep the existing base of loyal customers by providing them with an immaculate and ‘wow’ experience and alternatively also continuously strive to increase their base of loyal and satisfied customers.

SOURCE: businesslightsideas

Social media customer service presents new challenges

The adoption of social media has empowered customers to have a "louder" voice when they speak to an organization. Customer complaints are no longer restricted to phone-based communication between customer and company. Instead, customer frustrations can be aired on social media and be displayed for all to see.

Organizations have to be ready for the new challenges that social media customer service presents, including deciding how the organization should interact with customers on social media, which sector of the company should handle those communications and what kinds of skills customer service representatives should have to effectively handle issues on social media platforms.

Companies must determine whether a separate, standalone group should handle social media-based communication or whether agents in the contact center should take on the responsibility. Deciding on a division of labor in this way comes with its own requirements and special challenges. Regardless of where social customer service lives in your organization, you must make sure whoever is handling it has the right skill set and tools to ensure the quality of service mirrors that of every other channel the company is present on.

Challenge No.1: Where does social customer service live?

A standalone social media-focused group. Many organizations, especially those new to social media customer service, have decided to isolate the handling of social media communications. With this avenue, the organization recognizes that social customer service requires a focused approach and, therefore, must incur an additional cost of staffing a separate entity in order to get it right.

Social media communications provide another set of data points supporting a voice of the customer program.

Social media customer service is a relatively new practice that companies are still trying to figure out, so many companies see the value of isolating the work to a separate group. This allows for extensive oversight and management and may be a good course of action for companies that are just instituting social customer service.

Handling customer issues on social media is much different from interacting through traditional channels, such as phone or email. It oftentimes requires the agent to have specific skills and it may be more effective to hire staff that has these specific skill sets. Social media is a volatile channel that can build or harm your company's brand and reputation and, thus, needs "white glove" attention.

Contact center. Many organizations have handed the social media reins over to their contact centers, which is a method that has its own benefits and challenges. If an organization wants to ensure their service is consistent, regardless of channel, it makes sense to put the responsibility for all channels under the same roof.

In their ongoing battle against employee attrition, contact center managers are continually trying to provide exciting career paths to entice agents to stay. Since social media customer service may require additional skill sets from agents, managers can set up a structure that rewards agents who learn new skills. In this way, contact centers create incentives for agents to develop new abilities and reap the rewards of a workforce of agents who can multitask and are adept at multichannel customer service.

Social media communications provide another set of data points supporting a voice of the customer program. Having a single place for the collection of data helps to assure the data is collected in a consistent manner.

Challenge No.2: What tools/skills are needed for social customer service?

Regardless of where social media interactions are handled, a set of common practices and tools are required to provide the best customer experience.

Agent attitude and skills. The first requirement is to have agents with the right demeanors and communications skills handling social customer service. Agents should be empathetic, able to deal with complicated customer issues and can interact with customers through a variety of communication methods. Agents handling social communications often deal with harsh criticism of the company that can spiral out of control if it isn't resolved -- or at least responded to -- in a timely and efficient manner. A good agent will be alert, quick to identify the posts that need the most attention and choose his words carefully when corresponding with customers.

Invest in a knowledge base. Even the best agents need a place to refresh their memories on key skills and workflows, which is why a knowledge database that contains a "single version of the truth" is critical so that all agents, regardless of which department they work in, have access to the most up-to-date and accurate information for resolving customer issues. The knowledge base should contain relevant articles and training documents that agents can access whenever they have questions on how to handle an inquiry.

Integration with CRM, other systems. Embarking on social customer service means nothing if a company can't connect consumer exchanges to other key customer data, which is why having a CRM system where all customer interactions are recorded is critical to any organization. Companies must have a history of each customer's journey throughout the entire relationship to improve marketing and customer retention practices. Companies might even invest in a business intelligence (BI) tool to support the compilations of data from various sources, such as CRM data, surveys, etc. Investing in a BI tool can provide data-driven insight into key issues and process breakdowns to improve customer satisfaction.

Social media has empowered customers to have an influential voice in how the public perceives a company. It is up to organizations to address customer concerns on this channel and control the conversation so their reputations aren't damaged and provide a consistent customer experience. For some companies, this might mean a complete re-evaluation of their customer service infrastructure and technology investment in order to do it right.

SOURCE: SearchCRM

Journey Mapping the Customer Experience

“‘We’re going to solve the customer experience problem’ is a hard sell to the C-suite,” said Miguel Quiroga, executive director of customer experience at Verizon. He went on to advise the audience at the Clarabridge C3 Conference on how to overcome that resistance.

His advice? Identify which experiences matter the most in balancing customer satisfaction with profitability. 

Fix those experiences that are at the “root of the strongest customer pain points and are linked to the most profit.” 

Sound advice since the language of the C-suite is profit, revenue and growth. 

Despite all the rhetoric, the truth is the religion of the customer has not been embraced by the C-Suite as fervently as we’d all like to believe – despite Gartner’s claim that “89 percent of companies surveyed plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016.”

Quiroga’s advice is to pick your battles: Prioritize the experiences to fix; be clear on how to measure improvement; set expectations internally and externally; then scale across the customer lifecycle and the organization. 

Keep in mind that the last experience the customer has defines his or her expectations going forward.

Understanding Customer Experience

Before you can actually fix any experience, you need to understand it. 

That's where most companies get stuck  – not because the work is hard, but rather because there is a multitude of approaches without a clear consensus, and companies lack the requisite skills. 

The challenge with most approaches is twofold: They must provide a complete picture of the journey and they must invoke the viewpoint of the customer.

Most approaches advocate focusing on a few customer touchpoints, which are often defined from a company’s “inside-out” perspective, not by customers. 

This approach does not result in significant, profit-impacting improvement because it lacks context. It’s like looking at a handful of puzzle pieces and guessing what the whole picture looks like.

The objective of journey mapping is to reduce complexity and make all the aspects of the customers’ experience understandable and accessible to everyone in the organization. The best way to do journey mapping is to interview your customers face-to-face — qualitative research — and document, in detail, their entire experience through their eyes.

Start with the trigger event that causes your customers to realize they have a problem or opportunity. Then map their decisions, actions and emotions all the way through purchase and implementation to the point of renewal or retirement. 

Done correctly by someone experienced in conducting and interpreting the qualitative research, the results will enhance the company’s success far beyond simply highlighting key experiences that need to be addressed. In fact, there are 30 uses for journey maps.

Creating the Map

Let’s talk about how to journey map, since that is where companies are getting stuck. One process, as defined in the Sellers’ Compass methodology, includes five steps, which can often be completed in 45 days:

Step 1: Data Breadcrumbs

• Identify sample size (industry, region, product) and roles to be interviewed
• Analyze trends
• Conduct internal journey mapping session with cross-functional team

Step 2: Interview Customers

• Conduct 45- to 60-minute interviews with two roles per company
• Transcribe and anonymize interviews
• Complete 15 to 20 interviews per sample

Step 3: Journey Map

• Plot detailed patterns of behavior as well as outliers
• For each journey step define the 5 “W”s
• Define interaction channels, emotion evokers, content and other drivers

Step 4: Tollgating and Content

• List tollgates by step
• Define buyers’ process for passing tollgates
• Define content/channel/source for each tollgate

Step 5: Gap Analysis

• Conduct gap analysis on content, interactions, CTA, channels, etc.
• Define “needle move” action plan and timeline for fast results

Using the Map

According to Jeff Freund, CEO and co-founder of Akoonu, “Your journey maps need to capture four core dimensions at each buying stage for each of your buyer personas: The buyer’s participation level (driver, participant, gate-keeper), the buyer’s informational and internals needs, the buyer’s activities to fulfill those needs, and the buyer’s content preferences.”

Koren Stucki, Vice President, CEM Consulting for Clarabridge, believes journey maps “should be a catalyst for change.” Stucki has observed the following common pitfalls of journey mapping:

• No clear scope and objective
• Lack of qualitative research
• No executive sponsor
• Engaging the wrong stakeholder
• “Inside-out” design
• Activity treated as a one-and-done
• Failing to make journeys practicable

“Although all buyers, regardless of industry and company size, go through roughly the same basic steps, different personas will engage in different activities and have different needs, participation levels, and content preferences throughout their decision-making process,” said Freund. 

“And on top of that, these constantly evolve throughout the journey and over time. By integrating personas and journey maps, you can capture these evolving roles, needs, activities, and preferences for each persona at each step of the way.” 

Journey mapping has been in use now for almost a decade and best-practices are emerging. Stucki recommends that companies:

• Bring VOC (Voice of Consumer) into journey maps
• Bring any recordings (from call centers, etc.) and customer quotes into journeys
• The journey mapping team should be cross-functional
• The same team needs to be involved from journey mapping through building the new experience and measuring the result
• Identify listening posts at key points in the journey
• Obtain input from customers on their current and future states
• Measure journey success based on how customers measure performance
• Refresh journey maps annually
• Build a Center of Excellence (COE) around customer experience

“At the foundation of engaging content, inspiring marketing, and effective selling is deep audience understanding – truly knowing your buyers and how they buy,” stated Freund. “That’s why in-depth buyer personas and journey maps are the necessary foundation every company needs.”

Journey mapping enables companies to build an internal common understanding about the truth of business performance. It’s not a patch or something that applies to marketing or sales but not to finance. 

Customer alignment is the new normal, and journey mapping is the first step to competing on experience.

SOURCE: CMSWiRE

Post-sale interaction helps to build customer relationships

Companies want to build customer relationships and craft an experience that keeps customers and prospects coming back.

For many organizations, that means not treating customers like simple financial transactions and instead showing them that their interactions are valued. Developing rich online experiences and offering special perks and discounts are key elements of a well-rounded customer experience management (CEM) strategy. But with companies spending time and resources on pre-sale marketing and other activities, it pays to emphasize post-sale engagement to build customer relationships.

Voice of Customer research findings from Ernan Roman Direct Marketing Corp., indicates that customers who have already bought something welcome ongoing communication with brands, but only if those interactions are relevant and reciprocal. When characterizing post-sale relationships with companies, deeper levels of personalization and targeted offers top customers' wish lists. Here are three types of company-customer conversations that research identified as critical:

Reviews as conversations

Customer reviews should always be seen as conversation starters. The customer is proactively communicating with your business. Whether the tone is good or bad, it should not go unnoticed or without at least saying "thank you" or responding with a full reply.

According to the annual Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal, nearly nine in 10 consumers have read online reviews and 88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family. Research from Bazaarvoice indicates that companies can reverse the negative effects a bad customer experience can have on their brands, as 95% of dissatisfied buyers said they'll buy from a brand again if a complaint is resolved quickly.

Customer reviews should always be seen as conversation starters.

For paint manufacturer Valspar, swiftly responding to online reviews is a top priority and helps it connect with customers and resolve issues before they develop into problems for the brand. The company responds to reviews, comments and questions within 12 hours and trains all customer service representatives on "brand voice guidance," which includes answers to common questions and concerns.

Social media interactions as conversations

Social media interaction is perhaps the most important two-way conversation companies can have with both prospects and existing customers. People go out of their way to find your business on social media and comment on your pages, an action that deserves both respect and a timely response.

Moving equipment and storage rental company U-Haul uses social media to connect with customers and inject itself into conversations to improve the customer experience and resolve issues quickly. "It's extremely important for us to have an open dialogue with our customers and potential customers online," said Toni Jones, U-Haul International's social media director. "When our customers are talking directly to us about our products and services, we find those to be the most important to engage in -- immediately … We have escalation cues … [and] we're going to address those quickly because we're able to track those messages."

The company categorizes common topics of discussion on social media with tags -- or subject codes. During operational hours, U-Haul's marketing team responds to complaints and comments on social media within 30 minutes. The company reports that about 70% of all issues are resolved in that time frame and about 49% get a response in fewer than 15 minutes.

Seamless cross-channel conversations

Consumers rarely use a single channel to exclusively communicate with a company and often mix their interactions across multiple different channels. Companies must be available to converse with customers on multiple media platforms, letting consumers know that they are making the effort to be accessible.

The Accenture report "The Secrets of Seamless Retailing Success" advises that companies need to rethink their approach to CEM if they are struggling to provide a seamless, cross-channel experience. The report indicates that shoppers are both researching products online, then buying in stores, as well as researching in-store before buying online. Consumers value the ability to reserve a product online before trying it in-store and they want the ability to check product availability across channels in real time, according to the report.

Beauty retailer Sephora employs a cross-channel strategy that uses its online experience to enhance the in-store one. With its ColorIQ program, consumers in stores can interact with sales reps using a digital facial wand that provides personalized feedback on the consumer's skin tone to assist in product recommendations. Sephora stores this information online where customers can access it anytime for shopping online or in-store.

Key takeaways

All companies want to serve their constituents and build customer relationships, but this kind of goal needs to be reinforced constantly by organizations paying diligent attention to the timing and quality of their communications with customers.

Companies must monitor online reviews to gain insights about issues that must be addressed to improve brand image and consumer experience. Responding to consumer inquiries, questions, comments and complaints quickly demonstrates a high level of customer service. Being available to consumers online, via mobile devices and in physical stores promotes an easy and seamless customer journey. While there are countless ways to engage in meaningful conversations with your prospects and customers, make sure that you are having these three critical conversations daily and effectively.

SOURCE: SearchCRM

Messy processes – Messy customer experiences?

Yeah, I am sure you have heard it at least once in your life: “Sorry, it is against our policy”. Lately I have heard too many times “It is against regulations”. How is it against regulations when others are doing it? Nah, it is just a easy escape from offering bad customer experiences. How many companies actually mix bad internal processes with regulations? Quite many it seems!

Messy customer experiences

I hope that is not the case in your company. It is actually easy to test. Find out how many times your clients hear phrases like “I’m sorry, our system doesn’t allow us to do that.” Or “It doesn’t work like that. The way our process works is … blaa blaa …”. Those are clear indicators of messy processes leading to messy customer experiences.

Remove waste

And why would you care? Certainly not because more clients would spend more money in your business if those processes were functioning better? Or if your existing clients give you 60-70% higher profitability than the new ones? I’m sure you find those very good reasons to start aligning your processes to customer experiences. That will actually save you money, it is as simple as that. Removing waste from a Lean perspective is great, removing it from customer perspective is remarkable.

Outside-in focus

Too many companies have “inside-out” focus, that is focusing on themselves instead of “outside-in” focus which is about putting the customer in the centre of everything. Processes are a practical way of putting customers in the centre. They are the core of everything that is done in your business. Employees and systems follow processes. Now if you are thinking that you don’t have processes, you may be partly right. They are unstructured; ad-hoc processes that happen with high variation. But they still are processes.

Customer journey

So, what should you do? Most companies can start from the basics. That is to map out all the relevant processes and customer journeys. You can’t fix something you don’t understand first. Having a map of what is going on makes it easier to plan the desired future state that will respond to customer needs better. That leads to second point, which is using the customer journey maps in conjugation with process map to see where the biggest gaps and waste is. Then you can use Customer Experience Blueprint to define how those processes should work in the future and create a transformation project. Simple, right?

Summary 

Your customer experiences are outcomes of your processes. Messy processes will lead to messy customer experiences. To fix your customer experiences, you have to fix your processes. And that will take much more customer-centric approach than what traditional process methods can offer you (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, etc.). You need customer experience management aligned with business process management and IT strategies. That way you can be sure that there are no messy processes in your business.

Here are some reflective questions you can use to evaluate your current situation:

• Have you done process maps? Are they up to date? Are you using them to understand how they produce customer experiences?
• Have you done customer journey maps? Are they up to date? Are you using them to understand how they produce successful customer outcomes?
• Do you have a Customer Experience Blueprint in place that will direct the customer experience and process improvement efforts?
• Have you done a holistic map that aligns business processes to customer journeys?

Receive a complementary copy of my book on customer-centric process leadership! Please visit http://addvalueto.me/download-a-free-process-leadership-book/

SOURCE: BPMLeader

Customer experience management becomes a CIO priority

Nobody can ignore the importance of customer experience management - while the wave is hitting almost every industry, its amplitude varies from sector to sector

An increasing number of companies are moving away from product differentiation, and are instead focusing on customer experience as their key differentiator. Research firm Gartner has conducted surveys that indicate as many as 89% of companies think they will have to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2017.

This shift in focus not only changes the priorities of marketing managers, it also affects the CIO role. Many IT directors haven't yet felt the change because most organisations start out with CEM projects that don't involve IT. But after going through the initial phases where they conduct customer satisfaction surveys and analysis, companies tend to move into a phase where they look to attain multichannel consistency and a single customer view. That's where the CIO must get involved.

The nature of the CEM trend

Nobody can ignore the importance of customer experience management (CEM). While the wave is hitting almost every industry, its amplitude varies from sector to sector. In general, wherever it's easy for the customer to switch, CEM has a large impact.

As we have already seen, where customers can easily change supplier, upstarts are disrupting well-established industries. Teleco is the perfect example of this phenomenon, with WhatsApp and Viber threating established companies like Telefónica. Retail is another good example, with startup e-businesses like Farfetch overtaking established brick and mortar stores.

In the midst of all the turmoil, one thing that's interesting to note is that while some companies are able to quickly attract and retain large customer bases, others are losing paying customers in droves. The difference lies in customer experience.

The crux of the matter is that shoppers make decisions differently than they did 10 years ago. Customers have access to price and a lot of other information. Customers can easily educate themselves on the differences between products and services. Vendors no longer hold the power they used to enjoy by simply hiding knowledge from customers.

Because customers now have power to get comparative information on products and services, the emphasis has switched to total customer experience. Vendors that treat their customers well tend to retain customers. Even though the customer knows that in some instances competitive products and services are less expensive or of superior quality, the customer develops a loyalty towards the vendor that provides the best overall experience.

The difference in customer experience can be felt in terms of revenue growth. According to Harley Manning who conducted a study with colleagues at Forrester Research, in industries where customers can easily change suppliers, companies with superior customer experience enjoy superior revenue growth as compared to direct competitors.

In industries with a higher switching cost, customers tend to stick with the same suppliers, but only because they have too. As soon as the switching barriers are lowered (as we've seen happen in the telecom sector of the last fifteen years), customers run away like a long-suffering spouse, bad-mouthing previous partners at every opportunity.

How IT gets involved

Differentiating oneself on total customer experience implies a coordinated multi-channel approach. The same messages need to come across each channel—and this includes the good old-fashioned face-to-face channel. Information needs to be collected from each interaction and stored in a common repository for use at other touch points.

That brings us to the discussion about the CIO. CEM projects can be as simple as collecting and analysing customer feedback, but the ones with the biggest impact are those aimed at improving consistency across channels. That's where the CIO needs to get involved.

Improving consistency means implementing (or improving) content repositories so that all users get the same view of the customer and the customer's most recent interactions. Improving consistency also means implementing (or improving) interfaces between enterprise application to consolidate data and to have more timely information on customers as they interact with different parts of your company.

Finally, improving consistency means thinking through how you use your different channels. One should pass consistent messages across the different channels, but one should certainly not refrain from using the unique features inherent to each channel. After all, video communication is inherently different from email communication, and one should benefit fully from the advantages of each.

The following is a list of technologies IT directors should think about before starting a CEM project:

• Dedicated CEM platforms: Many vendors are offering CEM platforms, in the form of cloud-based or on-premises solutions to help manage customer interactions, similarly to CRM. If you already have CRM, you should first see if your CRM will do the trick.

• Personalisation technologies: Personalisation technologies that help provide product recommendations can also be used to improve the customer experience. Automated product recommendations are not just appropriate for web interactions. They are also useful when provided on a mobile device to help the sales force come up with product recommendations while talking to customers.

• Enterprise content management tools: Some of the enterprise content management (ECM) platforms provide tools that can be used to improve collaboration across channels. Such tools might improve collaboration internally, and they might help track customer feedback externally on social media platforms.

• Customer service and contact center software: CEM may also involve changes to customer service and contact center solutions. If these platforms do not yet handle multiple channels, they'll need to start doing so.

Establish how you'll measure results before you start

As is the case with any IT project, the proactive CIO will sit down with business partners and agree on how they will measure benefits before implementing the change. There are a variety of metrics that indicate positive results of a CEM project – things like, customer satisfaction scores, competitive benchmarks, and brand value. But while it's always good to track changes in customer satisfaction, what you really want to achieve are changes in the following three metrics: customer lifetime value, repeat orders, and churn rates.

SOURCE: CIO.co.uk