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Destructive data mistakes in customer experience

CX Network looks at two data mistakes that hinder customer experiences: Data silos and the big data myth.

It is a fact of business that poor data practices have the ability to do real damage to customer relationships. After all, as Emmanuel Obadia , VP of Marketing at Oracle, states: “Data is the foundation upon which you can build the entire customer experience (CX) effort. It’s blood to CX. If you don’t have data, you can’t go anywhere.”

When customer data resides in several isolated pockets in a portfolio, the conflicted customer view can trip up multiplay providers when they attempt to identify a customer across multiple lines of a business. If a brand fails to recognise that a customer is simultaneously subscribed to various products they could send communications that are anything but targeted: For instance, sending a customer an enticing offer for a product they already have at a lower price point than they paid for it. During a time where people expect convenience and personalisation, this sort of insulting mistake can do real damage to a customer’s perception of a brand and even push them to switch to a competitor company.

It’s not just a lack of data integration that can be harmful; too much integration can be damaging when you have several groups in a company capturing data. Flimsy governance procedures could result in customers suffering from “creepy” experiences where they are unsettled by unexpected preemptive actions. This can occur when data is borrowed or cross-referenced between divisions in a company. Safeguarding procedures are needed to ensure that customers retain control.

Poor data practices like these will hold companies back from progressing to providing sophisticated predictive customer experiences. A truly unified view of customer data is integral to unleashing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), or more specifically, machine learning in a compliant manner.

In this article we look at two data mistakes that are hindering customer experiences: Data silos and the big data myth.


Data silos

Data silos were labelled as the top customer experience challenge by CX Network members in our latest research. Many organisations across the world struggle to bring innovation into their businesses because of legacy systems. A lack of interoperability between systems results in data being trapped within individual sections of the tech stack. This forces companies to compromise on the quality of the end product and experience due to antiquated (but well-embedded) technology. Despite it being a tall challenge, especially in larger companies, it is a mistake for brands to ignore the value of breaking down data silos.

 

How to overcome silos 

Betty Chuah, senior manager of EMEA retailer consumer insights at Volvo Cars, notes the importance of having a global CX team with the global responsibility to govern the CX vision and battle silos.

“In many companies the IT department was founded many years ago to handle all the information from customers and today they are in separate departments,” she explains. “I [have] seen some companies have combined digital and customer experience departments and are striving towards having one customer dataset to have the complete customer journey map out and control all the data.”

Darya Vselubsky customer success manager at travel software start-up Triptease, agrees that transparency is vital to defeating data silos and innovation blocks.

“Transparency is the key to overcoming any data silos and listening to the customer needs,” Vselubsky remarks. “Customer success teams in general are really crucial as they’re the glue that will connect customers to data to product.

“Product teams may have an idea of customer needs and some of the things that they can do with data. But unless there is transparent communication, which is of course nurtured by customer success teams, there will be misunderstandings that could lead to product development that’s not easy to use or necessary, which will lead to churn and product failure.”

 

Overcoming silos 

In the eyes of James Alexander, Decisioning Director at London based media company Sky, the key to enhancing the digital customer experience for connected customers starts around the concept of identity, gluing together all the different interactions as much as possible into an actionable profile.

Alexander explains: “First of all, it allows you to get much better visibility of what’s going on with your customers. In particular, how they interact with you on your websites, your apps, your call centre and other channels across all of those silos in the organisation. Combining this with key bits of core customer data provides an incredibly rich asset that allows you to really understand your customers.

“Typically, as you integrate the data and marketing technologies to construct the customer profile, it also allows you to go in the other direction and execute a tailored experience at the individual account level.”

 

Big data myth

Another data mistake that causes fragmented experiences is the misconception that quantity is more important than quality. ‘Big data’ as a phrase isn’t as prevalent as it was a few years ago. As mentioned by CX expert Shep Hyken in The Big Book of Customer Insight, Data and Analytics 2018: “Big data is really another way of saying too much data, and when you have too much it gets confusing.” In fact Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays, believes the quantity-over-quality viewpoint is perhaps the biggest data mistake a company can make.

Mityas says: “The biggest mistake is thinking you need to have all the data. When we first started TGI Fridays, everyone told us: ‘You have to collect all the data, create the data links and put all the data into one system.’ There was the assumption that more data was better, but this is false. More data is just more noise; it’s not relevant and it’s expensive.

“Instead, it’s about collecting the right data, the data that will create a difference in the action you want to deliver. Data that will inform your AI tools to create a better, relevant and more personalised message.”

A blind focus on data quantity over quality could have damaging results when it comes to AI. Thierry Derungs, Chief Digital Officer at BNP Paribas Wealth Management, acknowledges that AI is always starving for data and “its hunger is gastronomic”, but he maintains that data quality is still compulsory.

“[The classic phrase is] garbage in = garbage out, but with AI it is even stronger because it’s garbage in = total mess out,” remarks Derungs. “You really need to understand what your intelligence is doing, especially if you have machine learning or deep learning. If you cannot be sure that your data at the entry is of the top quality, then understanding what your intelligence is indicating or building as a model will be very difficult.”

 

The power of data quality over quantity

Shep Hyken notes that the best people in marketing analytics will be aware that they only need a few select, but crucial, pieces of data to complete their objectives.

“You’ve got to look at who are we going after and what data is important, and recognise that you can’t be all things to all people,” Hyken explains.

“Systems today are more powerful than ever and have made it easier than ever to understand your different customer segments,” he adds. “Most companies typically have four to six main types of customers. When you understand what those four to six are, then you recognise you don’t need to be everything to everybody, but be as much as you can to those four to six groups of customers and split them up, market to them appropriately and service them appropriately.”

Interested in conquering your data mistakes? Join hundreds of other CX practitioners at CXN Live: Customer Insights and Analytics for exclusive data strategies from the likes of Paypal, TGI Fridays and start-up Triptease. 

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Want to Capitalize on Customer Service Excellence? These 14 Key CX Marketing Activities Can Help.

Of the three primary disciplines in business—marketing, sales, and service—customer service has the power to make your company stand out amongst the competition. After all, a recent American Express survey stresses that seven out of 10 U.S. consumers say they have spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service. Yet, while countless companies offer excellent service, few take the time to tout their CX strategy, thereby leaving them to blend with their competitors.

“Customer service is of critical importance to your business because it’s key to retaining the customers you close and extracting more value from them,” Swetha Amaresan writes for HubSpot. “By providing top-notch customer service, businesses can recoup customer acquisition costs and cultivate a loyal customer base that will refer friends and colleagues, serve as case studies and testimonials, and write customer reviews.”

Amaresan adds that, not only are happy customers more understanding and less sensitive, but they’re also your brand’s best advocates, as they can convince prospective new customers of your company’s merits more effectively that your own marketing materials and salespeople ever possibly could.

Customer service, therefore, plays an increasingly pivotal role in your company’s continued success, as today’s saturated, fast-paced market leaves little room for error (or modesty).

“With consumers facing so many choices with who to do business with, you need to set yourself apart from the rest,” R.L. Adams explains for Entrepreneur. “What makes you different? What added value do you bring to the table? Why should a customer work with you rather than your competitor? We’ve all heard the horror stories of people dealing with poor customer service. Yet, we seldom hear the raving-fan stories.”

But your brand has the power to highlight these stories and share its successes. By embracing these 14 key CX marketing activities, your team can use its own history of superior service to support its legacy of satisfaction and loyalty

 

 1.  Customer Satisfaction Annual Report

Much like your company’s annual fiscal report, this summary allows you to convey the results of your customer experience strategy with your stakeholders and customers.

 

2.  Voice of the Customer Video

Interview your top executives to provide the public with high-level insight into your CX strategy and what you are doing to sustain customer loyalty.

 

3.  Case Studies & Customer Testimonials

Allow your stakeholders and customers to shine the light on your success by sharing their own stories and experiences with your brand and expertise.

 

4.  CX Certified Report Card

By partnering with an outside analytics organization, your brand can provide customers and prospects with a third-party audit of your company’s exceptional customer satisfaction data.

 

5.  Intelligent Visual Communications

Project your CX content in real time via dynamic, multimedia LED dashboard displays and handheld devices to promote and improve transparency.

 

6.  CX Infographic

Share the story behind your CX strategy and how you serve your customers through engaging graphics that clearly highlight your brand’s continued efforts to satisfy and delight.

 

7.  Public Relations

Make sure customers and prospects are sufficiently informed by sharing your successes through news releases, newsletters, white papers, and other such collateral.

 

8.  Social Media

Connect with your customers and prospects where they live by tapping into social networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to share your wins and announcements.

 

9.  Live Video Streaming

Create an online event that captures your CX story as it happens and reach your customers and prospects by embracing today’s most engaging, fastest growing medium.

 

10.  CX Podcasts

Participate in or develop a branded podcast that highlights your CX story so customers and prospects can listen to at their convenience.

 

11.  CX Webcasts

Join an established webcast or develop your own series so your company can tout its successes and your top executives can demonstrate their expertise in their industry.

 

12.  Competitive Satisfaction/Loyalty Analytics

Demonstrate your CX strategy’s effectiveness by illustrating its measurable business impact through competitive satisfaction and loyalty analytics that reinforce your success.

 

13.  Customer Events

Invite customers and prospects to come together so you can simultaneously show your appreciation and highlight your company’s countless CX success stories.

 

14.  CX Awards

Leverage industry awards, such as CRMI’s NorthFace Scoreboard and CEMPRO, to demonstrate and reinforce your brand’s customer service excellence within its industry.

Not sure where to begin? Reach out to CRMI directly for quickstart tips and successful hints that will help your brand stand out amongst the fiercest competitors in your industry.

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You’ve Defined Your Brand’s Flaws and Foibles — Now You Need An Effective Corrective Action Plan

Much like your annual New Year’s Resolutions, the Corrective Action Plan (CAP) comes into play after you’ve taken stock of your brand’s faults and failures. After all, you’ve gathered business intelligence, implemented data analytics, and embraced the benchmark process throughout the past quarter, so you’re completely in-tune with what works (and what doesn’t) across your company. Now, however, it’s time to grab that metaphorical hammer so you can knock down what’s beyond repair and rebuild what needs to be fixed.

Whether you’re responding to direct customer feedback, or identifying weak spots within your strategy, corrective action plans empower your brand to restore customer service to its full potential. In return, these measures will ultimately influence your company’s preventive action plans, as you will be able to look ahead and remain aware of any problems that might be lurking underneath the surface of your present strategy.

According to OpenEI’s definition, both corrective and preventive action plans consist of improvements made to an organization’s processes in an effort to eliminate causes of non-conformities or other undesirable situations. “It is usually a set of actions that laws or regulations require an organization to take in manufacturing, documentation, procedures, or systems to rectify and eliminate recurring nonperformance.” While corrective actions are implemented in response to customer complaints, unacceptable levels of product non-conformance, issues identified during an internal audit, as well as adverse or unstable trends in product and process monitoring, preventive actions are implemented in response to the identification of potential sources of non-conformity.

But what goes into creating an effective corrective action plan exactly? Follow these five steps as you draft your strategy:

1.  Define the problem.

Before you can tackle the problem, you must define the problem. Be sure to remain clear and concise so all parties involved are on the same page. Once you understand what’s wrong, you can then begin to make it right. Determine what’s happening and how it contradicts your intention. From here, your team can develop a road map that leads your brand back to its ideal destination. If you can name the issue at hand, you can ultimately find its solution. Be sure to listen to your customers constantly, as they will be your most reliable source for insight into the issues that arise during their regular interactions with your company.

2.  Establish accountability.

Once you’ve determined the problem and developed the solution, you must establish accountability among those who are tasked with rectifying the issue. Each party must know what they’re responsible for in this scenario and how their actions contribute to the greater good of the project in question. They need to know the value of their role in detail to ensure that their performance remains consistent and strong. These team members must understand how to operate independently and jointly in order to comprehend how their specific role feeds into the bigger picture. By assigning small, more manageable tasks, you also empower more employees to become invested in the company’s overall success, as they now have the capacity to impact its future CX strategies.

3.  Create quantifiable solutions.

There’s no way to prove your actions will have the desired impact if you don’t create solutions that can be measured over time. You want to fix the problem for good, after all. However, companies have been known to implement changes they assume will remedy the issue, only to find that the problem persists. They neglect to map their approach and assess their progress. They believe they know what’s best and what will work even though their prior failures prove otherwise. Thus, when you finally decide to put the CAP into action, you need to understand which key performance indicators (KPIs) you plan to observe and measure so you can regularly evaluate its impact on CX.

4.  Set attainable deadlines.

While problems certainly don’t adhere to any sort of calendar, your solutions should. When you choose to implement your solution, you must also set up a timeline in order to measure your corrective action plan’s effectiveness. Some issues might take longer to resolve than others, so your deadline must allow your team enough time to address the problem and implement the solution. Each solution might also require multiple steps on the path to complete implementation, so your employees might benefit from a series of deadlines that afford them the freedom to proceed with diligence and care. Deadlines serve as check-ins, essentially, so these instances will provide your team with ample opportunity to examine its progress and realign their approach, if necessary.

5.  Monitor progress regularly.

Because the aforementioned deadlines give you and your team numerous opportunities to review your progress, everyone involved can easily monitor the solution’s success in real time. While it’s important to establish the baseline concept for the solution to your problem, the hypothesis driving your team’s work might not prove accurate over time. Customers can be unpredictable and how they react to your response might not be what you expected. Thus, it’s critical to continually monitor how the changes you’ve enacted are performing under the scrutiny of those for whom it was intended all along. How you feel about the solution and how customers feel about the solution don’t always align, so your CAP must account for their perspectives at every stage.

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Geo-specific game-plans: North America

When crafting a customer experience game-plan CX practitioners should consider the geographic location of their target audience if they want to fully meet expectations and delight customers.

As mentioned by Martin Ortlieb, User Experience Researcher at Google, humans are more similar than they are different. However, an awareness of what those differences are and how culture contributes to them could be the key to having a competitive edge with customers in a certain location.

Murray Goodwin, Director, CX Advisory, IPSOS MORI Customer Experience notes: “Understanding how your customers interact with your products and services within different cultures can make or break your commercial successes.”

He adds: “We recently helped a global CPG manufacturer interpret the role that laundry fragrance plays around the globe. Our research revealed a whole host of interesting quirks, but in the US in particular, we learned that having clean-smelling clothes plays a far more important role than it does across Europe, as people were more likely to greet one another with a hug in the west and therefore the way you smell has more significant implications for peoples’ perceptions of your social status.”

He urges brands to remember that people give different NPS scores in different countries. “Selling new cars in the US? We’ve shown that your customers will be far more likely to recommend you to others than if you were selling the same cars in Italy.”

Market consensus agrees that the United States is the most advanced region for brand experience and customer segmentation in most industries, with trends emerging first in the US and then spreading to other countries a few weeks later. As these customers have a higher chance of exposure to world-leading experiences, people based in the US are likely to have higher expectations than their global counterparts.

Support for this argument was witnessed in Microsoft’s State of Global Customer Service report which polled 5,000 individuals across Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of the US customers surveyed:

 

  • 62% have stopped doing business with a brand due to a poor customer service experience *
  • 43% have done this in the last 12 months *
  • 42% feel the quality of customer service is getting worse *
  • 56% have higher expectations for customer service now than they had a year ago 

 

*This rate exceeded the global average.

Here, CX Network looks at how CX practitioners in North America are reacting to industry trends in their mission to impress US customers and prospects.  This piece will delve into exclusive insights from a research group of US CX professionals from the 2019 Global State of Customer Experience Report to map out key localised customer engagement trends and pain-points.

Top trends for US CX practitioners

Omni-channel: The omni-channel model and the notion of meeting customers in their channel of choice appears to be a much higher priority for US practitioners than their international peers.

If they want to field the omni-channel set-up, brands need to have the correct resourcing in place. In regards to the offline vs digital prioritisation, in one of the recent CX Network Advisory Board calls, Board member Claire Hill, Customer Experience Director of Studio Retail Limited noted: “In previous years there was a laser focus on being digital first – but now we are no longer talking about the online vs offline piece. We are shifting away from just going digital for the sake of it. Internal operational changes are in place so we aren’t pushing the digital agenda forward – we very clearly display phone numbers for customer contact or live chat. We are allowing the customer to interact with us via the channel they choose.”

To inform the operational strategy that would ensure their resourcing was flexible enough to respond to different channels, Claire recalls: “….we turned to historical data to spot trends to inform decisions about having resourcing in the right areas. When a new channel is introduced there may be a spike where take-up is higher than expected – this will even out and help to inform future decisions.”

Human-centred design: Human-centered design centres on providing an experience that solves the needs of a target audience. US practitioners seem to have more interest in this area than the global average, which is encouraging as customer-first cultures need to be nurtured and these exercises contribute to the foundations needed to roll-out more predictive customer service efforts. According to Microsoft’s report, US customers appreciate proactive customer service notifications. Therefore, brands which can pre-empt the needs of their US customers place themselves in a strong position to win loyalty.

At the Omnichannel Exec Forum, Steve Kato-Spyrou – UX Manager, John Lewis highlighted the importance of validating concepts using design thinking approaches. The process of 6 Up-sketching in workshops was discussed – coming up with as many ideas as humanly possible, as hearing ideas from peers can spark creativity. He noted that John Lewis puts ideas generated from workshops in front of its customers to see which ones are popular. In fact, customers visit the John Lewis Customer Hub in person four times a week to inform the validation cycle followed by researchers.

Investment priorities 

Customer acquisition and contact centre solutions seem to have attracted more budget from this section of customer experience practitioners in comparison to their global counterparts.

Customer acquisition:  Healthy lines of new business are critical in the US as customers may be at a high risk of churn. According to Microsoft’s research, the number of US customers that have left a brand because of poor customer service in the last 12 months exceeds the global average.  Businesses should capitalise on this switching economy by making their brand desirable to their competitor’s neglected high-lifetime value customers. Advocates should be empowered to entice new customers and brands should turn themselves into digital listeners offering multiple options for conversion.

Contact centre solutions & Customer insight: It is logical that this batch of CX professionals are investing in bolstering contact centres with more training and equipment with the strong emphasis from the region on knowledgeable customer service representatives.  

A holistic and, if possible, 360° view of the customer will helpful to brands as the majority of US customers surveyed agreed that customer service representatives should know their contact, product and service information/history. This dashboard view provides agents and frontline staff with a more intimate understanding of customers, the services they are subscribed to, their past behaviours and real-time preferences. This rich, relevant insight and real time visualisation of data can be leveraged to proactively engage with customers’ needs in real-time when it really matters.

Key Challenges 

Building a customer-first culture: Similar to practitioners based in countries outside of the US, it appears difficult for businesses to fully tear away from a business-first, product focused end-to-end business mind-set in order to live and breathe a customer-first culture. Customer-centric validation techniques are crucial for educating researchers on improving products and processes. This is especially important in the US as customers in this region seem to be more willing to switch brands after a bad experience.

Linking CX initiatives to ROI:  ROI and board buy-in are significant challenges for all CX practitioners. Both areas are crucial for unlocking future CX investments. CX has a strong influence on business success hence the strong level of investment going into CX, but this of course triggers a desire from senior management for results. The inability to communicate the financial business case can jeopardize the future of a finely crafted CX program.

Final Remark 

In order to win market-share in a certain location, brands should arm themselves with any insights that will give them the edge over their competitors.  A few of these game-changing strategies may be hidden in the regionally influenced preferences of your customers. To capture these preferences, companies should mine their Voice of the Customer data and use it to inform their personalisation methodologies going forward.

For this region in particular, businesses would be well placed to remember that US customers appear to be ready and willing to leave a company because of bad customer experiences. Therefore, when servicing these customers in this area a conscious effort should be made to provide a solid service and recover experiences as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If you want more detail on these findings click here

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Top 5 Customer experience trends in Retail

Customer experience has gained respect from various verticals as findings signal that experience will soon be the key decision-maker for consumers, above product and price.

Here we look at five customer experience trends in retail highlighted in our recent research.

 
1. Customer experience is a good revival strategy

Retailers are finding themselves in the position of having to do more with less. Many are reacting by making cuts.  Closing stores, reducing staffing levels or hours according to store size projected sales and ignoring location surrounding facilities and competitors and turning to tech to deliver services at scale.

However, a recent Wharton University study looking at the relationship between staff levels and store performance has shown that it’s a big mistake to react this way to the retail apocalypse. Their study states that well-trained staff are the long-term solution for stable profits. “Understaffing stores and undertraining workers was never a good idea, but it’s especially bad now, because it takes away the biggest advantage traditional stores have over e-tailers: a live person a customer can talk with face-to-face”, said the study’s authors.

In the study after boosting staffing levels at certain outlets over six months, the stores in question made over $8.9m in extra profit even after accounting for additional labour costs. Around 6% more revenue was provided by staff who had received an hour per month in training that empowered them to solve problems for the customer.

Customers are utilising stores now as experiences, Steve Kato-Spyrou – UX Manager, John Lewis notes: “They visit to do fun things and spend the whole day out, not just to simply purchase something. So that’s where we’ve got to head in the next 12 months with in-store: the experience.”

 
2. Utility is key 

Serious investment into CRM, customer insight and analytics represents investment into a robust CX framework for a brand to provide value to clients.

In regards to adding value for customers, Steve Szymczyk, Director Digital Marketing, Adidas (Retail) says: “[A CX trailblazer is] anyone that can capture a consumer’s imagination and use data to combine the two to provide a great consumer experience.”

“What Nordstrom Men’s is doing in the US with the virtual store, that’s a really interesting model. Obviously it’s one store, so we don’t know if it’s working yet.

“There are so many things happening in this space and we’re going to see a lot of ‘trailblazers’ that will have some phenomenal successes and some will have pretty spectacular failures. What is important is to test things, listen to the consumer and they will vote with their wallet, they will tell us what they want.

“As brands, it is our job to provide new levels of comfort, convenience and be thinking about things that the consumer doesn’t know they want yet. In reality, the things that will work are the ones that will be edgy enough for the consumer to have fun with and add value to them in a real way.

“If you’re not adding value and not looking at it from a consumer-centric point of view, then it’s probably not going to work, no matter how much you want to make it happen.

“The one piece of advice is to really put yourself in the shoes (pun intended…) of a consumer to see how they experience your brand, spot where their touchpoints are and work out whether you control them or not. Because let’s face it, a viral video from a 16-year-old on YouTube giving an opinion on your brand counts as a brand interaction, whether you like it or not.”

 
3. Customer-first culture 

Highlighted as the main challenge for CX practitioners in retail, a customer centric or CX centric culture is fundamental to creating an organisation that embeds customer experience into all of its decisions and activities. CX must be a framework for business activity, just as profitability, efficiency and marketability have been embedded previously.

Steve Kato-Spyrou, UX Manager of John Lewis notes that the key retailer battles with breaking down business silos. “We have the knowledge in the building; it’s getting every human into the right place at the right time to disseminate that knowledge and talk to each other to come up with the product or service or experience that works.”

There is no such thing as stand-alone product development, marketing, or digital strategy. Those disciplines are all, essentially, feed into the same purpose; they are the customer’s interaction with the brand or organisation.

 
4. More consistency needed with actioning customer data

Data and analytics dominate as the most important, impactful trend for retailers. Although they recognise actionable insights as a challenge, research from CX Network indicates that many in retail are indeed actioning customer feedback in someway. This has had strategic benefits for the research group involved regarding customising products or packaging and new tactics to improve delivery speed.

However, the research did signal that there is a need for more consistency as many insights fall through the cracks and aren’t fed back to relevant business units.

Retailers should continue to aim to consistently close the loop with the voice of the customer. In a sector increasingly reliant upon social proof it is logical that consumers need to recognise the power of their feedback and contributions. This closure will also encourage the customer to keep the channels of communication open with retail firms, thereby helping the brand to improve their products and processes.

 
5. Omnichannel 

Businesses are struggling to make the omnichannel ecosystem a reality. Minor progression has been made year-on-year according to these stats.

However, businesses must press on in this journey, as omnichannel customers are thought to have more lifetime value than single channel customers. Also, the more your competition progresses with omnichannel the higher expectations will rise from your prospects.

Steve Kato-Spyrou – UX Manager, John Lewis said: “We heard today there are infinite touchpoints. So as far as omnichannel: you should be everywhere your customer is. If you’re saying: ‘we need to look into mobile or we need to look into in-store’, that’s correct, you need to go where the customer is.

“As far as the baseline, I would say look at your strongest competitor – that’s the expectation. It’s a case of: ‘Amazon do X, Y and Z – so, why don’t you do it?’.”

 

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Why Your Brand Needs to Embrace a Periodic Benchmark Process

Imagine your brand’s struggling in some capacity. Perhaps sales have plummeted in the last quarter, or employee turnover has skyrocketed over the past year. You’re not sure what you’re doing wrong, but you need to find the root of the problem as soon as possible to avoid catastrophic consequences. As a leader within your industry, you’re aware that one or more of your competitors consistently excel in this particular area, and you’d love to transform their secrets into your success. What should you do now?

Brands that are looking for the “quick fix” might opt for competitive analysis or research, which IMPACT defines as the “field of strategic research that specializes in the collection and review of information about rival firms.” However, despite the notion that it’s crucial to establish what type of financial threat the competition might pose in both the short and long term, analysis and research often comes across as shady and deceptive to others throughout your given industry, putting your company’s reputation on the line. Instead of copying or mirroring brands that are making all the right moves, leaders should use benchmarking to improve obvious weaknesses and identify latent strengths in an effort to adapt and grow according to market demands.

According to the Business Dictionary, “benchmarking” can be defined as the “measurement of the quality of an organization’s policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., and their comparison with standard measurements, or similar measurements of its peers.” Essentially, benchmarking empowers the executives at leading companies to develop a barometer that allows them to gauge how their organization compares with others across the industry. Benchmarking serves as a valuable “reality check” that enables leaders to grasp how their organization stacks up against their direct competitors and adjacent industries in general.

Similarly, its primary objectives are:

  1. To determine what and where improvements are called for throughout the organization.
  2. To analyze how other organizations achieve their high performance levels.
  3. To use this information to improve performance and procedure.

Benchmarking reveals how your company measures up when compared to the industry standard and highlights ways in which your brand can grow over time. Not only can this process uncover issues that have gone overlooked, but it can also provide proof that improvements need to be made immediately, as C-suite executives often fail to allocate the necessary funds and resources until it’s too late.

As iSixSigma indicates, there are three basic classifications of benchmarking: internal, competitive, and strategic.

Internal — Used when a company already has established and proven best practices and they simply need to share them.

Competitive — Used when a company wants to evaluate its position within its industry or needs to identify industry leadership performance targets.

Strategic — Used when identifying and analyzing world-class performance in times when a company needs to go outside of its own industry.

“For innovation professionals who do want to take action, benchmarking best practices can provide ammunition to break internal log jams and convince the C-suite that risk can potentially be mitigated when undertaking new initiatives,” Scott Lenet, co-founder and president at Touchdown Ventures, writes for Forbes. “For those with existing programs who are struggling to communicate value, benchmarking is an opportunity to articulate strengths and address areas for improvement. No one likes to be audited or visit the doctor for an annual physical, but those practices exist for a reason, too.”

He adds, “Innovation programs aligning with industry standards may be more likely to build a positive reputation in the ecosystem, provide ongoing value to parent corporations, and avoid shut down.”

“Benchmarking by specific industry allows you to stack yourself up against other companies and improve your organization,” Berni Hollinger writes for CH Consulting Group. “Who has the best sales per salesperson and how do you stack against them? Which company has the most efficient customer service department and how did it happen?

“In a simplistic sense, it allows you to compare your company against others – not financially, but in best practices,” she adds. “Don’t get me wrong, better processes results in higher profit to the bottom line. How can it not? Each time you improve upon a process or procedure, it saves time, equipment or supplies. Less time spent on the operational end means more time available to increase revenue.”

Periodic benchmarking allows companies to continuously audit their standing within their industry and make changes as necessary in order to preserve their competitive advantage. Because the customer experience remains at the heart of each decision an organization makes, it’s in everyone’s best interest to be up-to-date on industry standards and expectations at all times. Companies that refrain from the benchmarking process until issues arise will find themselves at a disadvantage, as it’s best to be aware of the current and emerging trends throughout the industry.

In the end, your company will reap an array of benefits, including improved quality and performance because, as an organization that’s constantly in-tune with the current industry standard, your brand will continuously strive to bring its products and services up to par with—and inevitably surpass—the norm. Doing so will also remove the tendency to become complacent, as you and your employees will have the insight and incentive necessary to push performance beyond the industry standard to remain competitive in an increasingly saturated market.

Consistent benchmarking will reveal weak spots early, allowing your organization to initiate proactive measures that reinforce your leadership and dedication to the overall customer experience.

 

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In Business, Data Analytics Will Always Be Critical to Gain the Competitive Advantage

It’s an adage as old as capitalism: to know the customer, one must become the customer. It’s imperative that companies keep up with customer sentiment in order to remain one step ahead of any complaints or concerns that might arise. Business analytics, however, enable organizations to collect customer feedback in an effort to provide structure amongst the unstructured data that pours in continuously. But when there’s so much chatter to weed through and decipher, it’s not always easy to decide what your brand’s next steps should be.

That’s why customer data plays an important role.

Business Analytics (BA), of course, refers to the data-driven practices, skills, tools, and techniques for continually analyzing business performance and exploring new ways of gaining a competitive advantage. BA provides actionable insight relative to decision makers, recommenders, and influencers according to loyalty and satisfaction scores. BA also makes it possible to combine satisfaction and operational data to gain further insight into purchase behavior by nature of the job or role within a customer organization.

Yet, despite countless years of data talk, many organizations have yet to master the analytics walk.

In an article that preceded his groundbreaking 2007 book, “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning,” Tom Davenport explored the importance of analytics when describing the future of business. More than a decade has passed since its publication, but Davenport’s wise words still ring true.

“Organizations are competing on analytics not just because they can—business today is awash in data and data crunchers—but also because they should,” the Babson College professor of Information Technology and Management, and independent senior advisor for Deloitte Analytics, wrote for Harvard Business Review. “At a time when firms in many industries offer similar products and use comparable technologies, business processes are among the last remaining points of differentiation. Aand analytics competitors wring every last drop of value from those processes. So, like other companies, they know what products their customers want, but they also know what prices those customers will pay, how many items each will buy in a lifetime, and what triggers will make people buy more.”

Modern companies now recognize, without a doubt, that business analytics can differentiate them from the competition, but many are still behind when it comes to bringing the data to action. They’ve instituted the technology necessary to collect customer information, but they have yet to establish processes for parsing the data and using it to fine-tune operations. Instead of sitting on this data and allowing it to go to waste, they must develop a team that can transform said information into actionable insight.

Davenport also noted that the companywide embrace of analytics requires changes in culture, processes, behaviors, and skills for many employees. Thus, as with any major transition, this requires leadership from executives at the top who “have a passion for the quantitative approach.” Ideally, this advocate will be the CEO, as top-down buy-in provides the entire organization with a solid foundation on which to build its evolving analytics initiatives.

“Culture is a soft concept; analytics is a hard discipline,” Davenport explained, noting how the two aspects might clash upon introduction. “Nonetheless, analytics competitors must instill a companywide respect for measuring, testing, and evaluating quantitative evidence. Employees are urged to base decisions on hard facts. And they know that their performance is gauged the same way. Human resource organizations within analytics competitors are rigorous about applying metrics to compensation and rewards.”

Teams that effectively learn how to bring the mounting data to action will ultimately be able to predict how customers might react to impending updates or upcoming campaigns. Such insight will allow these employees to curb any issues before they arise, resulting in peak performance and peak results. Predictive analytics also serves as an important differentiator in today’s competitive landscape, as employees can detect what consumers want from their customer experience and make these dreams into reality before other companies can target weaknesses within the industry and lure the consumer to their rival brand.

However, as Davenport emphasized, not all decisions should be grounded in analytics. When it comes to building an effective team, it’s often best to let your conscience be your guide.

“Personnel matters, in particular, are often well and appropriately informed by instinct and anecdote,” he added. “More organizations are subjecting recruiting and hiring decisions to statistical analysis. But research shows that human beings can make quick, surprisingly accurate assessments of personality and character based on simple observations. For analytics-minded leaders, then, the challenge boils down to knowing when to run with the numbers and when to run with their guts.”

Successful leaders understand that success requires both instinct and intuition. While it’s essential for all employees to have the technical skills necessary to execute the company’s mission, it’s also important to create a team of people who can make the connection between facts and feelings. Customer relationship soft skills training for your frontline is a key ingredient to enable this balance. These are the people who will advance your business analytics strategy to the next level and develop an indomitable customer experience that excels far beyond anything the competition has to offer.

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CRMI Honors 35 Companies for Delivering ‘World-Class’ Customer Service; 3 Cited for Certification in Employee Customer Relationship Training

CRMI Honors 35 Companies for Delivering ‘World-Class’ Customer Service; 3 Cited for Certification in Employee Customer Relationship Training

-Recipients of CRMI’s 2018 NorthFace ScoreBoard Award? and CEMPRO Award? have consistently exceeded customers’ expectations with highly engaged employees-

Chelmsford, MA: April 30, 2019, – Customer Relationship Management Institute LLC (CRMI), specialists in driving companies’ revenues and profits by implementing Customer Experience (CX) strategies that increase customer satisfaction and employee engagement, announced today that 35 companies have qualified to receive its NorthFace ScoreBoard Award 2018 for superior customer service.

Also, CRMI recognized 3 companies for meeting the rigorous employee customer relationship training requirements needed for CEMPRO Award certification. The Certified CEM Professional (CEMPRO) program was established in 2010 to provide best-in-class training curricula for organizations who want to ensure that their customer-facing groups (CFG) have mastered the skills needed to deliver consistently exceptional customer service. The award criteria requires the entire applicable CFG to receive the training and 90% must achieve a minimum test score of 80% within a calendar year.

Now in its 19th year, the NorthFace ScoreBoard (NFSB) award is presented annually to companies who, as rated solely by their own customers, achieved excellence in customer service during the calendar year.

“The NorthFace ScoreBoard Award is widely recognized as the most prestigious award for customer service excellence due to its unique customer only vote criteria. The award recognizes organizations that not only offer exemplary customer service but those who have chosen to make their CX Strategy a key component of their company’s DNA”, said John Alexander Maraganis, President & CEO of CRMI. Each year thousands of companies, both domestic and international, are invited to apply for the NFSB Award. In 2018, more than 1000 companies were invited to participate in NFSB Audit Program – over 300 projects, many international in scope, were audited. CRMI conducts a review/confirmation of CSAT survey results and requires written verification of CSAT survey results by the company’s CX executive management. The majority of NFSB award and CEMPRO award companies are repeat recipients, which confirms that investing in a CX strategy is a reliable, proven way to achieve business success.

CRMI methodology measures customer satisfaction with services on a 5-point scale (or an equivalent rating system) in such categories as technical support, field service, customer service, account management and professional services. The 35 companies achieved a 4.0 or above out of a possible 5.0 or an equivalent rating system.

Due to its unique ‘customer-only vote’ criteria, the NorthFace ScoreBoard Award has been viewed from its inception in 2000 as the only objective benchmark for excellence in customer service,” Maraganis said. “CRMI defines ultra-customer loyalty as customers who continuously purchase from the same vendor – even though other choices may offer significantly better pricing – because the vendor consistently exceeds its customers’ expectations via team of engaged employees.”

CRMI will formally present the NFSB and CEMPRO awards to recipients during ceremonies at its SCORE Conference 2019, scheduled to be held at the Seaport Boston Hotel & World Trade Center during Q4. Now in its 19th year, SCORE remains the only event in the customer service industry focused on CX best practices to acquire, retain, grow and win-back customers. SCORE speakers also explain how CX principles can be applied to customer-facing operations such as contact centers, field service, professional services, help desks and technical support. Thousands of service, support, sales, marketing and human resources executives from the country’s leading firms have attended the past conferences.

 

NFSB Award 2018 Recipients:

Nineteen-time recipients:
Haemonetics Corporation: Braintree, MA
Kronos Incorporated: Lowell, MA

Eighteen-time recipients:
ZOLL Medical Technical Service: Chelmsford, MA

Seventeen-time recipients:
Alfa Wassermann LLC: West Caldwell, NJ

Sixteen-time recipients:
Boston Scientific Corporation: Natick, MA

Fifteen-time recipients:
None

Fourteen-time recipients:
KVH Industries Inc: Middletown, RI

Thirteen-time recipients:
None

Twelve-time recipients:
None

Eleven-time recipients:
None

Ten-time recipients:
ACIST Medical Systems Inc: Eden Prairie, MN

Nine-time recipients:
NETSCOUT: Westford, MA

Eight-time recipients:
Diagnostica Stago Inc: Parsippany, NJ
Pitney Bowes Software, Worldwide Software Support: Troy, NY
Wolters Kluwer Health, Learning, Research & Practice: Norwood, MA
Wolters Kluwer – UpToDate: Waltham, MA
ZOLL Medical Customer Support: Chelmsford, MA

Seven-time recipients:
Broadcom Inc: Washington DC
ERT: Philadelphia, PA
Yaskawa America Inc: Waukegan, IL

Six-time recipients:
Avaya Inc: Coppell, TX
Illumina Service: San Diego, CA
Nutanix Inc Support Services: San Jose, CA

Five-time recipients:
Alfresco Software Inc: San Mateo, CA

Four-time recipients:
Bruker BioSpin Group: Billerica, MA
Citrix Systems Inc: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Deltek Inc: Herndon, VA
Fresenius Kabi USA LLC: Lake Zurich, IL
Wolters Kluwer Health Individual Member: Hagerstown, MD

Three-time recipients:
Rubrik Inc: Palo Alto, CA
Kongsberg Digital Inc: Asker, Norway
Cohesity Inc: Santa Clara, CA

Two-time recipients:
Cengage Learning Inc: Independence, KY
Corning Optical Communications LLC: Hickory, NC
Hologic Domestic Customer Support: Marlborough, MA
Hologic Domestic Service: Marlborough, MA
Hologic Technical Service EMEA: Manchester, UK
InterVision Systems LLC: Chesterfield, MO
Nutanix Inc Consulting Services: San Jose, CA
Veritas Technologies LLC: Santa Clara, CA
Zeus Industrial Products Inc: Orangeburg, NC

First-time recipients:
Braze Inc: New York, NY
Druva Inc: Sunnyvale, CA
Hologic Customer Support EMEA: Manchester, UK
Illumina Technical Support: San Diego, CA
REPLIGEN Corporation: Waltham, MA
Thycotic Software Inc: Washington DC

CEMPRO Award 2018 Recipients:

First-time recipients:
Rapiscan Systems: Torrance, CA

Second- time recipients:
Rubrik Inc: Palo Alto, CA

Third- time recipients:
Fresenisus Kabi USA LLC: Lake Zurich, IL

Note to Editors: City and state denotes either company headquarters or principal location where CX strategy work was conducted.

About CRMI

Since 1999, the Customer Relationship Management Institute LLC (CRMI) has promoted that CX is the most critical component of company’s’ DNA. Further, that consistently exceeding customers’ expectations builds customer loyalty and requires competent-engaged employees. As a membership-based resource, we provide “One-Stop Shop” for “everything CX”. Whether you are new to CX strategies or a veteran practitioner, you will join thousands of like-minded professionals eager to share their CX experiences.

For more information on how to qualify for the NorthFace ScoreBoard Award – CEMPRO Award or to attend SCORE Conference 2019, visit www.CRMIREWARDS.com or call (978) 710-3269 and ask for Diane Rivera, drivera@crmirewards.com.

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How to Draft a ‘Customer Bill of Rights’ That Puts Power in the People’s Hands

Without loyal customers, most companies would crumble within years, if not months. Thus, it’s become increasingly important for leaders to constantly prove that said customers are valued and respected at each touchpoint along their journey. In many cases, this means establishing an internal Customer Bill of Rights (CBoR) that dictates precisely what perks and services customers are entitled to and how to maintain these agreements to enhance CX.

Years ago, for instance, in the aftermath of an unavoidable February storm, JetBlue instituted its own Customer Bill of Rights to repair subsequent damage to its reputation. From compensation to cancellations, this document outlines the company’s ongoing promises to its client base in the event that another inevitably uncontrollable situation should arise in the future.

Yet, while many companies embark upon creating a CBoR with the best of intentions, they don’t always have the capacity to uphold the promises they inevitably make. Here are three elements to consider when drafting your CBoR that’ll help your company maintain focus on the customer and establish the foundation for future business success:

  1. Ensure that every article has the customer’s best interest at its core.

When drafting your company’s CBoR, every single article established must have the customer in mind, first and foremost. Customers, after all, are the reason why your brand continues to excel and they are the key to future success. Thus, their best interest must be top of mind at all times. To develop a solid foundation, you must think like the customer and apply the Golden Rule. By adopting this “Do Unto Others” mindset, you’ll be able to approach your CBoR with the correct perspective. What do you expect from other companies? We are all customers in our own right, so treat your base the way you’d like to be treated.

  1. Guarantee that all employees understand your CBoR and are dedicated to advancing CX.

Once you’ve drafted your CBoR, you must obtain buy-in from employees at every level within the organization. Customer service must be an enterprisewide effort to succeed, so everyone—from the C-Suite to the frontline—must adopt the articles of the CBoR and bring them to action in all that they do each day. Frontline employees, in particular, must adhere to the CBoR across all interactions, as they are typically the customer’s first point of contact. These employees are essentially the face of the company and they have the delicate responsibility of making sure all customers walk away satisfied and delighted with their overall brand experience.

  1. Troubleshoot how to handle potential issues that might threaten your CBoR.

No matter how comprehensive your CBoR might seem, there will be rare instances when issues arise that aren’t explicitly addressed within the articles you have already developed. To prepare, you’ll need to sit down with your team and brainstorm various scenarios that might threaten the sanctity of your CBoR. Be sure to include frontline employees during this brainstorm session, as they are the first point of contact for most customers. They’ll have firsthand knowledge of the problems that occur most frequently and the challenges they present. By incorporating these varied perspectives, you’ll be able to institute safeguards that rectify latent issues, while also protecting the promises made within your CBoR.

Here are the 10 articles of CRMI’s NorthFace ScoreBoard Award:

Article I:
Companies agree to provide goods and services that will consistently exceed their customer’s expectations.

Article II:
Companies agree to provide their employees a workplace where employees are motivated, trained and skilled, customers are valued, and relationships are maximized.

Article III:
Companies agree to recognize and reward their employees who consistently exceed their customer’s expectations.

Article IV:
Companies agree to consistently measure the level of customer satisfaction with a company’s product and services.

Article V:
Companies agree to consistently report levels of customer satisfaction for products and services to executive management and the enterprise.

Article VI:
Companies agree to adopt change management strategy to consistently provide corrective action to poor performance in products and services.

Article VII:
Companies agree to consistently measure their performance versus industry standards and/or best in class company performers.

Article VIII:
Companies agree to consistently validate their customer satisfaction results via being recipients of industry awards-certifications and/or independent audit of their customer satisfaction results.

Article IX:
Companies agree to a chief customer advocate position, reporting to the President whose sole responsibility is the ombudsmen for customers, and who consistently reports the level of customer satisfaction on product and services and provides the corrective action plan to the executive management team.

Article X:
Companies agree to annual review of their customer experience management strategy (CX), which must include Article I thru Article IX.

Which elements apply to your business? Use these articles as your guide to establish an outline that demonstrates how much your company cares about its customers.

Not sure where to begin? Reach out to CRMI directly for some quickstart tips and successful hints that will help your brand secure customer loyalty and advocacy for years to come.

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Now and Later: How Present Business Intelligence Impacts Future CX Decisions

Companies are constantly inundated with data. Yet, despite regular advancements in analytical strategies, said information often pours in too quickly to comprehend. Business Intelligence (BI), however, offers leaders an effective way to generate actionable information about critical business operations, including company and customer experience management (CEM) specific data, in an effort to bring structure and meaning to the knowledge that would otherwise remain just slightly out of reach.

According to Mary K. Pratt’s definition for CIO, “Business intelligence (BI) leverages software and services to transform data into actionable intelligence that informs an organization’s strategic and tactical business decisions. BI tools access and analyze data sets and present analytical findings in reports, summaries, dashboards, graphs, charts and maps to provide users with detailed intelligence about the state of the business.”

Thus, before companies can understand and implement Business Intelligence reports and results to the fullest extent, leaders must lay the foundation necessary to bring the insights gleaned to action.

When it comes to segmenting business intelligence—an essential step when determining which data points to act upon first—leaders must break said information down into the two key fundamental, actionable components necessary to drive continued customer loyalty. Therefore, they must segment information by account type and contact type:

Account Type—

1.     Tier I: Accounts that provide the highest revenue and are strategic accounts (i.e. 80/20 rule—80 percent of your revenue, representing 20 percent of your customers)
2.      Tier II: Accounts representing the next 10 percent of revenue
3.      Tier III – Tier ‘N’: Your remaining accounts (last 10 percent of your revenue)

Contact Type—

1.      Identify the Decision Makers Title: – Executive Management
2.      Identify the Recommenders Title: – Middle Management
3.      Identify the Influencers Title: – Frontline (Select Key Employees only)

Business Intelligence reports, of course, are typically presented in dashboard format, as they are accessible to everyone across the organization. Dashboards include gauges, charts, and other graphical representations that deliver at-a-glance views of critical metrics. Dashboards also offer drill-downs, which enable leaders to take a more in-depth look at specific information regarding products, organization/function, and country/region/district/branch or individual. BI reports also include multi-dimensional cubes, which allow for correlated analysis by multiple areas, such as customer, product revenue, and timeframe. Other BI report types include:

  • Delta analysis
  • Vulnerability Index
  • Key driver analysis
  • CRMI ScoreBoard Index
  • Balanced ScoreCard
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

 

Leaders know that smart decisions require reliable data. But, before they can begin to consider the future, they must first analyze the actions of both the present and the past. That’s where BI comes into play.

“In its most basic form, business intelligence encompasses the analysis of a company’s raw data and analytics, to produce actionable takeaways,” Chris Lukasiak, senior vice president of MyHealthDirect, a health-tech company that offers a SaaS platform for online scheduling and digital care coordination, writes for Forbes. “Data analyzed might include current sales figures, customer shopping habits or operations costs. With more data at our hands, business intelligence is critical to making informed business decisions and can be a key component of forming predictive analyses for the future of a company.”

Business Intelligence reports provide companies with historical and present views of business operations, which subsequently inform their predictive views of the organization. Essentially, BI tells leaders what once was and what is in an effort to help them determine what will be down the road. Examining said data helps leaders understand pervasive trends and derive actionable insights that influence better business decisions in both the short and long term.

“Careful analysis of your data will help you understand customer behavior and even give you the power to better detect what your customers would like in the future,” Lukasiak adds. “From predictive analytics to data that reveals service or product gaps, business intelligence findings have the power to help companies stay ahead of the curveball.”

While brands across industries are decidedly enamored by the concept of predictive analytics, many lose sight of the importance of Business Intelligence and data that explores the past and present of their given organizations. Before companies can determine where they are headed, they need to establish where they have been. Countless organizations invest in analytics that forecast future moves or outcomes, yet leaders often neglect to recognize how past initiatives and present programs influence the customer experience. They need to pause and audit what’s worked and what hasn’t in an effort to proceed in the most lucrative way possible.

Business Intelligence ultimately empowers companies to focus on the ‘now’ so they can truly succeed when ‘later’ becomes the new normal. Leaders need to know where the organization has been if they hope to live up to their titles and adequately lead their companies toward the future they’ve predicted for themselves all along.