Posts

Jim Tincher

CX Pros: Help Your Company & Your Customers Deal With COVID-19

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The jolt that nations, and communities, all over the world have experienced in the past few weeks due to the relentless spread of COVID-19 is enough to induce whiplash. While the situation is extremely fluid, all signs point to it getting a lot worse in the U.S. before it gets better.

I’m not going to presume to address what this means for the people, and their loved ones, who are directly impacted, and suffering or even dying as a result of contracting this virus. I am devastated for my fellow human beings all over the world and here at home.

But medicine isn’t my area of expertise and I can’t alleviate that suffering, beyond, of course, taking the recommended precautions to prevent further spread of this pandemic.

Customer experience, however, is my area of expertise. And in that arena, I might be able to be of service. And you probably can be, too – more than you may realize. Read more

Jim Tincher

Why Spirit Airlines’ and Ryan Air’s Customer Experience is Better than Yours

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I’m partway through a European holiday with my wife, celebrating 25 years of marriage. Okay, actually 26, but that’s a different story.

When a friend heard we were flying Ryan Air, she told me, “Uh oh. Pay attention to the experience you receive.” Interested, I did pay attention. And I realized that Ryan Air probably has one of the better CX programs out there.

Before you get ready with that hate email, first let me explain! Read more

Jim Tincher

What Wells Fargo (and the Rest of Us) Can Learn from Samsung

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  • “Who knows what happened to us two years ago?” Wells Fargo’s Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Moldafsky (I originally wrote about this here)
  • “Who’s heard of our product, the Note 7? [pause] Yes, pretty much everybody, in every plane trip, for about a year.” Michael Lawder, SVP, Customer Care, Samsung Electronics America

Both these speakers began their speech with a similar attempt at humor to grab the audience’s attention, referencing an event that happened in late 2016, but a small difference speaks volumes to their contrasting attitudes. This small difference shows why Samsung has fully recovered while Wells Fargo continues to falter.

Problems can happen in even the best-run company. Pixar, Amazon, GE – all have experienced problems. This post isn’t about preventing problems (although many of these – particularly Wells Fargo’s problems – should have been avoidable). Instead, it’s about what to do once it happens. Read more

Nicole Newton

Collecting Information About Your Customer’s Journey: What’s the Right Approach?

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Note: We’re celebrating the upcoming launch of our new book, “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Customer Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change,” by Mapper-In-Chief, Jim Tincher and B2B Practice Lead, Nicole Newton. In the book, we introduce five journey mapping questions to answer as you launch your customer journey mapping effort. 

Three weeks ago, Jim walked through “What’s the Business Problem or Opportunity?,” two weeks ago Nicole introduced the topic of “What is the Right Journey?” and last week Jim wrote about “Who’s the Right Customer?”

Interested in the five journey mapping questions? Watch the intro to our youtube series on the topic here.

Once you’ve defined the customer and the journey you would like to map, you will need to select the best approach to collect information about the experience. 

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Jim Tincher

Is Customer Experience a Missed Opportunity?

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My immediate answer to this is no – there’s a ton of good work happening to improve customers’ experience. But that’s a qualitative response, informed largely by the great work I see our clients doing.

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Jim Tincher

Stop Bribing Your Employees for Good NPS Scores

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We’re early in Customer Experience (CX) capability development, and I absolutely love it! We’re discovering the best practices that our successors will take for granted; “of course that’s how you do it.”

Unfortunately, being in this early stage means that some “best practices” aren’t. Some actually hinder the goal of improved CX – to create loyal customers who love your brand and come back time and again.

One “best practice” that can create a terrible customer experience is paying employees to achieve good NPS, or Customer Satisfaction, scores. This needs to stop.

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Jim Tincher

Move to the Top Levels of the Gartner CX Pyramid with Journey Mapping

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Last week I discussed Gartner’s CX Pyramid and its approach to evaluating your customer experience. Yesterday’s post discussed how to use journey mapping to help you move up the first three levels. Today, I’ll talk about using journey mapping to move to the top of the pyramid – the Proactive and Evolution levels.

Getting to these levels requires significantly more investment in both customer insights and design. Interviews – particularly in-person at your customer’s site – are good ways to help you in the lower stages, but here it requires deeper methodologies to truly understand your customers’ needs. Read more

Jim Tincher

A Successful B2C Engagement Tactic Applied to B2B

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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.

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