At the core of every successful business is a strong focus on customer experience. The voice of the customer is one of the most important things to a business, yet it is too often overlooked. Learn below how to channel the voice of the customer into your business and how to really listen to what they’re saying by using industry-leading analytics.
I regularly receive emails that go something like this:
I have almost completed my organization’s journey map! Can you give me some design suggestions before I share it with my company?
This request comes from a good place, a desire to educate the company about the customer’s journey, but after a few questions, it quickly falls apart. There are at least three problems with this request.
I recently purchased a new phone, so of course, I need a new case. I’ve loved my Carved wooden phone case, so I ordered another, but this time they did something new.
When my new case came, it included something special. In addition to sending the standard packing and instructions, Carved included a “trading card” with information about the designer, Cayla. This created an instant impact. I was no longer a customer of some company. Cayla designed my case! After reading her bio, I liked my case even more.
Have you taken a look at our latest whitepaper? Also accessible from the resources page, it details strategies and insights for ensuring that your next CX initiative is a successful one that will pay for itself with opportunities for profit and growth.
Access it here: How to Select a CX Platform for Maximum Impact
Interested in workshops? Read more here.
Interested in journey mapping? Read more here.
Interested in improving your CX? Read more here.
I was talking with a prospective customer last week, and I walked through our customer journey mapping process – first you collect companies’ hypothesis and existing data, then go out to their customers to interview them in their places of work (they’re a B2B company), and finally bring that voice of the customer back to your teams to drive change.
He had attended a journey mapping training class and truly drank the Kool-Aid. He talked about how he put together a workshop and wanted to expand the methodology. Then, at the end of the conversation, he asked: “Jim, I trust you; you do this professionally, but why exactly do you need to talk to customers in journey mapping?” Read more
Jim Tincher joins Shiftonomics to break down the customers’ journey, and how strongly it is impacted by corporate culture and the effort the company puts into empowering its frontline teams.
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Taylor Pipes, an industry specialist from Branch Messenger, is joined by Jim Tincher to talk about the customer and employee experience. With a lifelong passion for customer experience, Jim founded Heart of the Customer to help companies of all sizes increase customer engagement.
Reserve your spot here.
Interested in workshops? Read more here.
Interested in journey mapping? Read more here.
Interested in improving your CX? Read more here.
Jean Fasching, Lead Consultant
This is a guest post written by one of our very own Lead Consultants, Jean Fasching
Recently, I ran across a Yahoo Finance post that announced the closure of a plant that produces high fructose corn syrup and industrial starch. In it, an executive mentioned that the closure would help improve Customer Experience commitments. It was a technical and financially dense PR release. But, I wondered, how can a plant closure improve Customer Experience commitments? With a plant closure, production capacity is reduced. This means turn-around-time may increase and trigger an increase in cost. Impacts like this typically don’t lead to an improved customer experience. Just who is this customer? Read more
You probably don’t view Amazon as a competitor. That’s where you’re mistaken.
When we look to build a better CX, it’s natural to focus on our people. After all, they are often the heart of our customer experience.
However, while we need to ensure a strong person-to-person experience, we also need to make sure the experience is strong even when customers don’t want to talk to our people. The research shows that we’re not doing so well there. Read more
We all like to talk. It’s part of being human. We like to share ideas and concepts. It’s natural.
It’s also a terrible way to learn from your customers.
This may seem obvious. But then why do so many do this wrong?
I was reminded of this in a journey mapping round table I recently led. About 15 to 20 practitioners and vendors participated, going over journey mapping practices, and sharing how we all went about the process. Unfortunately, not all methodologies are created equally.
Dawn Mergenthaler has been leading CRM marketing teams for healthcare, retail, and Software-as-a-Service companies for over a decade. She works closely with customer experience (CX) professionals to understand the insights gained that can be leveraged for CRM. She’s well-known for partnering cross-functionally to improve the customer’s communication experience across an organization, ultimately working to improve customer experiences and increase sales for an organization.
We caught up with Dawn to provide her insights into how CRM and CX best fit together in an organization.
CRM can mean different things to different organizations. To start off, could you give us a quick explanation how you describe CRM?
Sure. It stands for Customer Relationship Management, and like customer experience, it’s a strategy. CRM uses different initiatives and methodologies than CX to achieve the goals of improving customer experience and increasing sales.
Similar to CX, it involves collecting customer information and data that’s used in a variety of functional areas across an organization to provide a cohesive customer experience. Read more
Steve Eagon is the Director of In-Clinic success at Unitron. In his role, he works directly with clinics to directly help them improve their patient experience. Steve and Jim have co-presented at multiple conferences, so we asked him to explain his approach towards building an improved patient experience.
As someone who is very patient-focused in the hearing care industry, what do you see as the most import focus points in building more patient-focused experiences in hearing care?
Hearing care professionals have a ton of knowledge at their fingertips—they have a great deal of education and experience in the field, and know a lot about hearing care. This is a great thing—except when it leads them to overcomplicate matters when they communicate to the patient about their hearing care.
This is a common symptom of the biggest customer experience issue in the hearing care profession today: hearing care professionals do what they think is best without looking through the patients’ eyes to really see their point of view. They’re projecting their own values onto the patient—you hear a lot of “I think the patient this” and “I was always taught that,” a lot of “I” statements. But you can’t truly help the patient until you’ve stepped outside that mindset, and started seeing things through the lens of the patient. Read more
