conference Archives

For B2C, Cleanliness Is the New Black

October 29, 2020/0 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Surveys & Feedback /by Jim Tincher

Let’s not beat around the bush: $#@&*%! coronavirus trashed your journeys.

Prior to the pandemic, organizations had clear strategies on how to serve their customers, working to deliver an ever-improving experience to earn loyalty.

A better experience is still required…but how we go about providing it – and what “it” even is – has completely changed, particularly for B2C companies, where among other things, face-to-face interactions now take place mask-to-mask.

When I hosted a fireside chat earlier this month with Alison Circle, the Chief Customer Experience Officer for the Columbus Library system, she told me how difficult new protocols necessitated by the pandemic have made it to forge personal connections between staff and customers. But safety just has to come first. Read more

What are the World’s CX Leaders Doing? Lessons from Medallia’s Exchange ‘19

June 5, 2019/in CX Program Strategy /by Jim Tincher

I attended Medallia’s annual conference for the first time and was impressed with the quality of both the keynotes and the breakouts. While I captured many pages of notes, four findings really stuck out to me:

There is no one “right” metric. Despite having NPS inventor Fred Reichheld speak the first day, participants used a variety of measurements to track their CX program. While there were certainly NPS fans, I was intrigued by other measurement systems. Bank of America didn’t share their question but did share that they only report on the % of 9s and 10s. Scotia Bank uses a multi-tiered sentiment system, while the VA uses Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Emotion (from Forrester’s model), but also adds “Trust,” which is their most important metric.
Measurement isn’t restricted to metrics. Volvo Trucking discussed how they incorporate warnings from their trucks’ sensors into their programs; Bank of America incorporates product additions and subtractions, and others included calls to the call center and other business metrics that provided color to the measurement. As one breakout leader shared, “A 3 [in a 5-point scale] can mean everything’s fine, or that there’s high risk. So we bring in behavioral data to provide more meaning.”
ROI can be tracked. We’ve found many CX programs shy away from tying to business metrics. Which is a huge mistake, because that’s what your cross-functional partners care about. The leaders find business problems that they can solve through CX, whether that’s client attrition, dropping of products, calls to the call center or even stock price, it is possible (and should be mandatory) to tie your work to what the business cares about.
Frontline employees are starting to be incorporated. I’ve been wondering about this. CX fans have seen Bruce Temkin move from talking about CX to EX. In talks with attendees at the CXPA Insight Exchange, very few had a mandate to focus on the employee experience. But the leading brands who presented (and were likely hand-selected by Medallia) spoke elegantly about how they are engaging their front lines in the customer experience, sharing customer scores with them, as well as expanding the measurement tool to include employee engagement.

Two Days to Journey Mapping Mastery

May 9, 2019/in Customer Journey Mapping, CX Program Strategy, Minneapolis CX /by Nicole Newton

The Heart of the Customer blog is a place where we share our insights on journey mapping, offer best practices based on our experiences, and share CX practitioner interviews – and we don’t normally place promotional items here. We are making an exception this week; as Jim Tincher and I prepare to release our journey mapping book this month, we want to get the word out about a new Heart of the Customer offering: a two-day, hands-on journey mapping workshop that will provide all you need to map journeys that drive action in your own organization.
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Customer Immersion Phase for Journey Mapping

May is (Journey) Mapping Month!

April 25, 2019/in Customer Experience Vision, Customer Journey Mapping, CX Program Strategy /by Jim Tincher

We’re celebrating Mapping Month in a big way, and I hope you can join us. We’ll have events both in-person and online, to share the journey mapping best practices outlined in our book, How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change.

Brainstorming: Design Thinking vs. Science

October 3, 2018/1 Comment/in Customer Experience Vision, CX Program Strategy, Employee Experience /by Jim Tincher

This may not seem like a CX-related post, but bear with me a minute.

I attended a fabulous CXPA event on CX Day this week. Laurie Englert (full disclosure: she’s a client), the VP of Customer Experience at Legrand’s AV Division, shared how her team uses design thinking. We then applied those skills to strategize for Bike.MN. Nearly 100 CX enthusiasts focused together on helping Bike.MN build more business partnerships.

That said, there’s a central component to design thinking that bugs me: its brainstorming approach. As the facilitator (who wasn’t Laurie) shared, brainstorming in design thinking is an active exercise where you quickly put out ideas on Post-It Notes and then build on them with more ideas. This isn’t unique to last night’s presentation – whenever I encounter design thinking it involves this traditional out-loud approach to brainstorming.

Trust: I Don’t Think Wells Fargo Gets it Yet

September 21, 2018/1 Comment/in Customer Experience Vision, Driving CX Culture Change, Employee Experience, Minneapolis CX /by Jim Tincher

I attended an excellent conference today. The Carlson School of Management sponsored their second annual Ignite Conference which focused on “Protecting Trust in Today’s Consumer Journey.”

The opening speaker gave some great stats about trust, including research that 73% of the variance in how customers have trust with you is predicted by team members’ trust of the organization.

At the end of the day, Wells Fargo’s Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Moldafsky spoke on their journey to regain trust. It was a well-crafted speech, showcasing all that Wells Fargo was doing to admit wrong-doing and earn back the trust earned over 150+ years in business.

All in all, it was impressive. But two warning signs have me concerned that they have further to go than they think. Read more

Journey Mapping Best Practices

March 8, 2018/0 Comments/in Customer Journey Mapping /by Jim Tincher

The Twin Cities Research Group (TCRG) asked Jean Fasching and I to present on Journey Mapping Best Practices. Jean is a HoC engagement lead with a strong research background, perfect for this audience.

The agenda:

Who we are
Why journey mapping?
What makes journey mapping successful?
Case study: Meridian Health

The presentation was given in-person, but the audio and slides were captured below (warning: the sound quality isn’t ideal):

You can also download the PDF of the slides here.

Enjoy!

Don’t Forget to Map the Employee Journey

February 7, 2017/in Customer Journey Mapping, CX Program Strategy, Employee Experience /by Jim Tincher

A while ago I led a journey mapping workshop at the ICMI conference. It was a ton of fun, as we mapped out how Amanda chooses her new health insurance plan. We looked at how and when to use journey mapping (answers: frequently, and in partnership with customers).

During a break, one call center director asked me whether journey mapping can be used to map out employee journeys. That’s when I realized my mistake. I’m so passionate about mapping the customer journeys that I completely forgot to talk about how journey mapping is also a great tool to use for employee journeys.

Connecting with Employees

Employee journeys are critically important to your customer experience. As Bruce Temkin says, you can’t create an engaged customer with disengaged employees. Journey mapping is a great tool to understand the friction your employees face as they serve your customers.
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