Jim Tincher

The Bots are Coming!

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Actually, they’re already here. But are you aware of them?

Today, I’m flying back from the CCW’s Executive Exchange. I not only enjoyed speaking at the event, but also the opportunity to attend its presentations. The audience was primarily made up of contact center leaders, each having a lot to say– and do –about the overall customer experience. Based on the silence at the CX conferences I attended, I’m not sure CX has a seat at the bot design table–and this is something you should be thinking about. Read more

Jim Tincher

Reduct: A Great Tool for Sharing Your Customers’ Videos

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I wrote last week about the importance of video in sharing your customers’ experience (Video Interviews=CX Impact).

A major limitation of working with video is the task of managing all of that content. Historically, our process for working with video involved:

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Jim Tincher

Video Interviews=CX Impact

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I’m returning from a two-day Action Workshop, wrapping up a four-month journey mapping project. In the first day, we shared the literal voice of the customer, collected through 46 video interviews with customers. These video interviews shared the power of when the customer experience goes right, as well as the ramifications of when it goes wrong. At one point, there were audible gasps from the attendees after one former customer shared his experience with our client. Read more

Creepy Google Maps Email
Jim Tincher

Google is Creepy

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Creepy Google Maps EmailMy wife forwarded me an email from Google. It showed her everywhere she had visited in the last month, which creeped her out. So she removed all the tracking she could from her phone. It didn’t work – she received a similar email the following month.

I received a similar email (see a part of mine above, where they show two restaurants I visited). I agree it’s creepy. Why does Google go out of their way to remind customers they’re tracking their movements? It comes down to a core CX principle of understanding customer needs. Employees focus on what they think is cool, rather than what customers want. Read more

Jim Tincher

What Makes a Great Customer Experience Leader

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Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to interview dozens of CX leaders, and still more as we wrote our book. Combining that knowledge with some of the industry research, such as CustomerThink’s report on winning CX programs, we’ve identified three traits that separate the best customer experience leaders from the rest.

For too many, CX has fallen into a rhythm:

  1. Conduct an NPS survey
  2. Analyze the results
  3. Share the results with anybody who will listen
  4. Implement some quick wins
  5. Repeat the NPS survey
  6. Wonder why things haven’t changed

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Jim Tincher

Measuring “ROE” – Return on Ease

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ROI is the Holy Grail for customer experience (CX) programs – an elusive target that can validate your program and lead to greater influence.  Unfortunately, focusing on that big goal can be overwhelming. So for today, let’s target our efforts a bit more modestly, focusing on gains made through making it easier to be your customer.

Ease is the second key to a Game-Changing CX, along with Effectiveness and Emotion. While Emotion has the greatest long-term impact, don’t neglect Ease.

Return on Ease (ROE) is easier (hah!) to track and to impact than emotion. Whereas different personas have different emotional drivers, their appreciation for simplicity is more consistent. It also helps that there are some great examples to lead the way: Read more

Jim Tincher

Stop Playing CX Whack-A-Mole

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“All happy customers are alike; each unhappy customer is unhappy in its own way.”

Okay, that wasn’t really my quote – I’m paraphrasing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, where he wrote “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But it does fit at least some companies’ experiences.

This is especially true with a client we’re working with right now. The happy customers sound so similar that it’s almost boring. Almost. They like the people; the product does what it’s supposed to do, and customer expectations are set appropriately. Unfortunately, that description only applies to half their customers. Read more

Jim Tincher

Epilogue to “Is Your Customer Experience Program Making Your Customer Experience Worse?”

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I ran across a friend of mine on Tuesday who read my last post Is Your Customer Experience Program Making Your Customer Experience Worse? and she asked me, “Whatever happened?” Did you get your books?

One of the most basic rules of story-telling is that you have to finish your story! Which I didn’t. So, what happened?

We went to the book launch event without knowing where the books were, although we did have a few to display. We held drawings for attendees, and promised to get them the books the next day, then went home to figure out exactly how we were going to do that. At 3:30 in the morning I woke up and realized, “I know where the books are!” Then I went back to sleep. That next morning I went to the hotel’s front desk and asked them. Sure enough, they had the books! And proceeded to charge me $10 a box ($30 total) to get them for me. But at least had them so we were able to hand them out.

A day after that, as the conference was wrapping up, I received a call from the local post office asking if they could help me with my issue… A case of too little, too late.

How Hard is it to Be Your Customer Book
Jim Tincher

Is Your Customer Experience Program Making Your Customer Experience Worse?

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How Hard is it to Be Your Customer Book

We launched our book at this year’s CXPA Insight Exchange. We’d shipped them to the hotel ahead of time, but when I arrived, they were nowhere to be found. My tracking information showed they had been delivered, but nobody knew where they were.

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Learn Customer Journey Mapping
Jim Tincher

What You “Know” about Your Customers Probably Isn’t True

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I received a call from a CX leader wanting to drive action in her program. I discussed how we use the voice of the customer to create an organizational drive to act, and she stopped me to say “We don’t need more voice of the customer. We know what customers want.” I asked her what […]

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