Best Practices

In a world where e-commerce is constantly evolving, more and more traditional quality assessment strategies are becoming obsolete. Even though mystery shopping was once the standard approach to assessing service, new technology proves itself to be more effective and more reliable.

Your organization needs an all-encompassing customer experience (CX) strategy that grants you peripheral views of customer service shortcomings, as well as insights into the most critical lines of your business. Pearl-Plaza’s latest white paper, “Why a Customer Experience Program is More Powerful Than Mystery Shopping,” details what intelligent technology can do that mystery shopping simply cannot. 

The Benefits of Adopting a Holistic CX Program 

Improving the customer experience doesn’t just affect the customer. Your organization can leverage the insights gained from newly implemented technology to make meaningful, transformative business decisions. Here are a few improvements that a holistic approach to feedback can drive for your business: 

#1: You can more closely assess your CX program, and make strategy adjustments as needed.  

Reviews from mystery shopping companies and other traditional modes of quality assessment tend to accumulate over time. Without having direct and instant access to CX results and reviews, odds are your business will make the same mistakes over and over again, negatively impacting customer experiences. 

But with instant real-time access to results, your organization can quickly and efficiently assess information, making necessary strategy adjustments. Pearl-Plaza’s XI Platform is comprised of three clouds: the CX Cloud, the Employee Experience (EX) Cloud, and the Market Experience (MX) Cloud. The platform garners different types of data formats, including real-time survey responses, analytics, reporting and alerts that deliver immediate results. With this modern technology in place, these clouds can be used individually, or combined to deliver insights from the most critical lines of your business

#2 Your CX and performance data is carefully and optimally organized. 

Not all businesses are the same, so their CX strategies shouldn’t be either. You need a platform that is flexible enough to support all different types of executives within every area of your organization. With a scalable architecture, data can be obtained, stored, organized and distributed to the right people, at the right time, so that everyone gets the relevant insights they need in their roles—from executives to marketing, and HR. 

Additionally, intelligent automation tools can provide external and internal improvements for both customers and employees. For example, Pearl-Plaza’s XI Platform allows companies to incorporate tried-and-true feedback (like surveys) in a way that doesn’t complicate processes for customers. The insights and results are received in real-time, allowing companies to respond to feedback and implement changes much faster.

#3 You’ll increase your organization’s revenue and performance. 

Among all the other benefits, an intelligent CX strategy also increases the overall performance and reputation of your organization—and results in a better bottom line. Here are just a few notable numbers achieved through a holistic customer experience strategy: 

• $23 million in potential revenue one Pearl-Plaza client gained after implementing a closed-loop system. These kinds of customer improvements can help your company identify and retain at-risk customers, in addition to acquiring new ones.  
• 3.6x more money customers who have great experiences with a brand are more likely to spend with that brand. With the right CX strategy in place, the payoff will come quickly. 
• 3% increase in CX-fueled revenue. According to Forrester reports, happy customers account for about a 3% bump in revenue potential in most industries. 

Leveling up your customer experience strategy has both quantitative and qualitative benefits for the entire organization. In a highly competitive market, staying ahead is key to staying on top. To learn more about how our XI Platform can take your CX program to the next level, download our white paper, “Why a Customer Experience Program is More Powerful Than Mystery Shopping” here.

In the evolving e-commerce market, consumers have just as much power as brands, if not more. As a result, the demand for intelligent, user-friendly customer experience (CX) has only increased, with no signs of it slowing down.

 In a highly competitive market, traditional methods will no longer cut it. In order to create a meaningful experience that benefits everyone—brands, customers, employees, and the market—you need all-encompassing business intelligence tools that fill the gaps with insights that will drive impactful results. 

Pearl-Plaza puts the intelligence in intelligent automation. The XI Platform is comprised of three clouds, the CX Cloud, the Employee Experience (EX) Cloud, and the Market Experience (MX) Cloud. Built on a modernized technology stack, these clouds can be used individually or combined to deliver insights from the most critical lines of your business. 

4 Key Drivers in Experience Intelligence Automation

#1: Synthesize

Customer feedback is essential, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Data doesn’t come from just one source or even one format; experience data lives in every part of your business. Our approach widens your lens to a 360-degree view by mining and storing data from a variety of sources—your organization, its products, your market, and your competitors—to identify the most critical intersections of what creates meaningful experiences. With Pearl-Plaza, science is infused in every part of the XI Platform, which enables the extraction of more data in more formats for even more intelligent business insights.  

#2: Analyze 

Collecting and leveraging data through silos makes it difficult to piece all of the experiences together and even harder to create an effective CX strategy. But with the extraction of data in its original form combined with the unique fusion of sources, our platform easily compiles findings from the customer, employee, and market to take your analytics to the next level. By viewing metrics through the right lens, you can maximize the quality and relevance of the insights that your company receives to transform CX metrics into meaningful analysis, which in turn, gives your company the tools to execute an actionable, data-driven customer experience strategy. 

#3: Prioritize 

Every company strives for meaningful contribution but without the fundamental knowledge of your customers, employees, competition, and the market, you can never truly make informed decisions. Pearl-Plaza’s XI Platform allows you to customize and tailor the intelligence that users receive, ensuring everyone gets the relevant insights needed. This experience intelligence allows everyone to better understand feedback and prioritize the issues that require immediate action and solve those problems. Our solution is highly scalable to meet your company where you are now and get you where you want to go.

#4: Monetize 

With Pearl-Plaza’s XI Platform and a fully integrated CX strategy, your business can finally see the big picture. Better customer experience transparency allows your company to turn findings into action that produces more business value and profit. These purposefully designed, extraordinary experiences aid in fostering long-term, measurable growth. 

Want to learn more about how our XI Platform can take your CX program to the next level? Download Pearl-Plaza’s eBook “Designing Extraordinary Experiences: Combining the Power of Customer, Employee, and Market Experience Intelligence” today.

There’s a reputation problem facing the future of the telecom industry. 

Research shows that telecommunications companies consistently receive lower customer experience (CX) scores than any other industry. That’s partly because people tend to have much higher customer experience standards for telecoms than they might have for other businesses. But it’s also because many telecoms simply aren’t listening to their customers. And as the streaming war heats up and spurs major changes in the telecom industry, businesses can no longer afford to ignore their customers. 

Here are a few tips brands can use to improve the customer experience and ultimately customer retention in the telecom industry: 

Anticipate Common Problems Before They Occur

It doesn’t have to be a guessing game when it comes to understanding customer needs and problems. Common issues often plague telecom users, especially as they reach certain milestones along the customer journey. 

For example, our research shows that customers are less likely to recommend internet, mobile, or television services around the one-year mark with a provider. Respondents report common frustrations around staff ability, efficiency, and helpfulness, as well as issues with bill clarity and ease of payment. 

Given that this problem is by no means rare, telecom providers should be proactive and engage existing customers before they reach this milestone. Check in with customers about their points of concern and educate them to avoid any confusion that may create bigger problems down the line. 

Approach Efforts to Automate Wisely

Automation in the telecom industry has changed the game for many companies through the use of AI-enabled chatbots. AI can ease the burden on swamped customer service reps and provide more convenient options for customers to engage with businesses. But no matter how helpful this technology can be, it can never fully replace human interaction.

Poor customer service is a top contributing factor to user dissatisfaction. As a result, telecom companies must review all problems that occur and make sure their chatbots are not used at the wrong times and making issues worse. Every customer resolution strategy should blend automation options with the possibility of intervention by a human customer service rep. This should be a seamless process; that way, if problems are escalated from bots then service reps have all the data and information needed to avoid wasting customer time. 

Engage Customers on Their Own Terms 

It’s hard to understand all of the unique problems your customers face if they can’t easily provide insightful feedback. And given that customer needs and preferences vary, one size does not fit all when it comes to the options for soliciting this feedback. Customers should be able to choose from a diverse range of channels to solve their problems in the ways that are easiest and most productive for them. 

Give customers opportunities to engage via interactive methods—through voice, video, image, and more—beyond just the standard survey. This provides more meaningful and insightful data with details that matter so you can easily improve your CX. Regardless of how your customers choose to engage, make sure their transition from survey to video chat or phone call with a rep is seamless and consistent. 

There are no guarantees in the future of telecom. But your survival in an increasingly competitive space depends on your ability to step in the shoes of your customers and understand their needs and issues. If you can harness the voice of the customer to improve your customer experience, you’re already ahead. 

For more information, download our “CX in the Telecom Industry“ eBook today. 

To leverage a third-party delivery company, or to go it alone? That’s the question facing many franchise and independent restaurants. Today’s diners love meal delivery services; the average person has two food delivery apps on their phone and uses them three times a month. More than half (54%) of users start their meal search with a specific restaurant in mind, then look for it in an app. So if your restaurant isn’t available on food delivery apps, guests may move on to your competition. 

But those wary of jumping on board with a restaurant delivery brand like Grubhub and DoorDash worry about putting their guests’ experience—from the state of the food at arrival to the speed at which it arrives—in someone else’s hands. (There’s also the startling fact that one-fourth of delivery drivers admit to sneaking a bite of a guest’s food.)

Restaurants that do decide third-party delivery services are worth the risk need a way to measure the full effect that these offerings are having on their brand. That means engaging tools within your guest experience management platform to give your brand the opportunity to connect with diners as if you were delivering their meals yourself.

In our latest report, “How to Measure the Effect of Third-party Delivery on Your Brand,” we delve into a few ways your restaurant can leverage guest experience solutions to make sure your diners are getting the quality delivery experience they expect. 

Leverage Email Surveys

While guests may be able to gain instant access to your brand’s online surveys via their food receipts, there’s no guarantee with third-party delivery services that those receipts will even reach guests’ hands. 

To combat this potential gap, restaurants can shift their tactics away from receipt feedback requests to follow-up emails. This leverages a key benefit of food delivery services—access to your guests’ personal data, including email addresses—and allows you to personalize emails based on when and what a guest orders. 

When setting up your email surveys, don’t forget to factor in relevance. Since guests who received delivery orders weren’t served in your restaurant (this time), you won’t want to ask questions about your servers or cleanliness. Instead, focus on the flavor, temperature and quality of the food. Asking the right questions shows guests you’re paying attention and are truly invested in their overall experience.

Contrast Guests’ Experiences

One of the many advantages of a leading guest experience management platform is that it can measure multiple touchpoints. While your goal may be to gather feedback on guests’ food delivery experience, you can also compare and benchmark that data against their dine-in visits. You can even go so far as to break down those third-party experiences by brand (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, etc.) to see which is best representing your restaurant—and which one could be doing damage.

Your most important benchmarking data, however, will come from crunching some numbers. Work with your guest experience team to find an average spend for each guest in a variety of groups (dining-in versus delivery, one third-party brand versus another, etc.). When you multiply that number by the amount of negative experiences in each group, you’ll gain a window into your potential losses if those guests leave your brand—and the numbers show exactly where you need to improve. 

Find Out What’s Really Important to Your Guests

At its core, the ultimate goal behind guest feedback is to maintain a quality experience, improve your service based on wants and needs, then maintain guest loyalty. We already know that more than two-thirds of guests report that “staff interaction” highly influences their ongoing brand decision making. But what about guests who receive your food via third-party delivery services? We can’t assume they’re influenced by the same factors.

That’s where follow-up email surveys can prove a gold mine. Nearly one-third of diners say they buy more food when ordering delivery versus dining in. Why is that? What extras are they ordering? Additionally, you can gain feedback about the delivery experience beyond food. More than one-third (36%) of guests say they would pay more for eco-friendly packaging—do yours feel the same? Do they prioritize friendly drivers and speedy delivery? Your survey can reveal answers to all these questions.

Restaurants that use third-party delivery know they’ve already opened up a variety of new revenue streams. But there’s plenty they don’t know about food delivery experiences. Guest experience management platforms deliver the tools to clear up these mysteries, and help restaurants maintain great diner experiences, no matter where they’re eating. 

To learn more about how you can use your guest experience management platform to guarantee great experiences with third-party delivery, check out our latest eBook, “How to Measure the Effect of Third-party Delivery on Your Brand.”

For brands looking to gain a competitive edge in a customer-centric, digital-first era, quality customer experience (CX) separates the companies that excel from those that fall behind. 

Despite valiant efforts from brands to make customer experience strategies a core part of their business, 70% of CX initiatives risk losing funding—and failing altogether—by not providing enough business value. And while roughly 80% of brands want to compete based on customer experience, only 7% of CX strategies result in competitive differentiation.

However, these numbers aren’t cause for panic. The good news is there are simple measures you can take to ensure your CX strategy is not only effective, but fosters relationships with buyers to increase customer satisfaction—and most importantly, retention. 

3 Steps You Can Take to Improve the Lifespan of Your CX Strategy 

Good CX strategies involve more than occasional customer surveys and scoring systems. They need to be actionable, iterative plans that evolve with customer habits and expectations. 

Simon Fraser, VP of XI Strategy, discussed CX challenges facing brands in the webinar “Delights, Customers, Action”, where they uncover what you can do to overcome CX strategy-related challenges, and develop a plan for success:

Step 1: Take time to ask questions before you roll out a strategy.

It’s difficult to thoughtfully execute CX initiatives when you don’t take the time to ask yourself, “What do we want to accomplish?” Before implementing a full CX strategy, work with your team to compile answers to a few key questions. What is your desired outcome? What obstacles can you anticipate? Who needs to be involved? Once these questions have been asked you can get to work on answering each one, and ensure your strategy addresses any preemptive concerns. 

Step 2: Don’t be afraid to test and reimagine your strategies.

Brands often get caught up in early CX success and become complacent, instead of focusing on how they can continue to improve. It’s important to remember that successful CX strategies should involve ongoing testing, validation and iteration. Factors like buyer expectations constantly shift—and you’ll want your strategy to adjust accordingly. 

Step 3: Make customer sentiment a part of your CX strategy.

Great customer experiences involve fully listening to customer stories. And when you go beyond quantitative customer experience metrics, you unlock customer intelligence that allows you to understand and identify the actions to take based on what creates those meaningful, memorable experiences. Take this information and integrate it into your CX approach. That way, you can not only continuously improve, but you can also iterate your strategies based an actionable, first-hand data. 

Customer experience shouldn’t trip up organizations. It should be an opportunity to understand your core buyers, drive ROI and gain an edge on competitors. And by taking a careful, comprehensive approach to developing your CX strategy, the chance of sustained success only improves. 

From meeting sales quotas to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, incentivizing employees is commonplace for organizations aiming to increase performance within their workforce.

Customer experience leaders are no different. According to Forrester, 85% of companies tie CX to compensation. But the same report also details why linking customer experience performance to financial rewards (and other incentives) actually results in less-than-favorable employee behaviors that can negatively impact employers.  

The Downside of Tying CX to Incentives for Employees

Tying compensation and incentives to customer experience might provide a short-term bump in employee performance, but it may do more harm than good in the long run. Pearl-Plaza’s “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” resource highlights the pitfalls associated with CX incentives for employees, including:

• Bad Employee Behaviors – Most companies that offer incentives use a pay-for-performance or “variable” pay structure, directly tying incentives to individual employee performance. But according to Forrester, this model encourages more troublesome employee behavior, like submitting fraudulent customer reviews and questioning the authenticity of CX data.
• Bad Customer Experiences – When employees feel the weight of incentives – especially relating to their pay – you run the risk of shifting their focus from top-quality customer service to worrying only about achieving rewards. As a result, employees might start pestering customers to submit positive reviews or high survey scores, leaving customers feeling under pressure and uncomfortable.

3 Things Brands Can Do Instead of Offering Incentives

Delivering exceptional customer experiences shouldn’t be contingent on whether there are incentives on the table. And CX leaders should regularly encourage employees to deliver their best work, without solely offering rewards.

Here’s how you can support employees while enabling them to provide memorable experiences that keep customers coming back for more:

• Share Positive Customer Feedback with Employees. Customer feedback typically circulates at a high level, with most employees completely unaware of how customers rate their experiences. When your company receives positive customer comments, share it across the organization. Highlighting great feedback helps to keep employees motivated and excited about their work.
• Identify More Opportunities to Coach Employees. Customer feedback presents an excellent opportunity to improve employee performance. Instead of reprimanding employees if they receive less-than-favorable feedback, use the comments as an opportunity to coach future performance. This turns an initially negative scenario into a positive career-growth moment.
• Focus on Impactful Metrics Employees Understand. Tracking metrics is the cornerstone of successful customer experience programs. Use data and information that’s meaningful to employees, and that they have a chance at impacting. It’s beneficial for your organization as a whole if employees have a better grasp on how their performance attributes to overall company success.

Bottom line: Incentives for CX don’t work. They can encourage bad behaviors and competitiveness in organizations, which may negatively impact your business. Instead of using monetary rewards, CX leaders should focus on supporting employees through coaching, metric sharing and more so they can continue to provide top-tier customer experiences.

To learn more about incentives and CX, check out “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” today!

Customer Experience (CX) intelligence is a necessity for brands competing for customer attention and loyalty. After all, how can you make sure your efforts to exceed customer expectations are successful if you can’t listen to or understand them?

This is why CX professionals rely on in-depth data to gain a more detailed, real-time look at their customers and their needs. They know that once you understand customers’ behaviors and preferences, you can craft business strategies that truly create positive, memorable experiences.

Three Ways to Find the Right Customer Experience Metrics for Your Business

The volume of CX data and metrics made available to brands is seemingly limitless. From NPS to OSAT and Customer Effort Score, effectively measuring customer experience boils down to focusing on the metrics that matter most to your business.

Not sure where to start? Pearl-Plaza’s latest eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” guides you through selecting metrics that fit into your overall customer experience program:

#1: Focus on the metrics that will drive the most change in your business.

Successful customer experience programs are built around understanding how you want your business to grow. Instead of narrowing in on a single focal point (like improving one CX score), look at the bigger business picture. Where do you envision your brand in five years? What revenue goals would you like to achieve? Think more about the endgame and choose the CX metrics that will help you get there.

#2: Consider points of view from across your organization.

It’s tempting to track customer experience metrics based solely on executive input, but it’s important to remember that your organization is made up of more than the C-suite. While your CFO might be interested in metrics related to ROI, your employees might want data that helps them sell more effectively.

Brands should also consider their customers’ point of view. Today’s customers expect brands to fully understand their needs. The CX metrics you track should work to support your company’s ability to more clearly grasp – and meet – customer expectations.

#3: Learn from historical data, but don’t rely on it.

Historical customer experience intelligence can provide excellent insights into business performance. However, you don’t want to hold your brand to a specific benchmark or metric you used in the past. Historical metrics are often revisited without context, making them irrelevant for the current state of your company. As your business continues to evolve, so should the framework for how you measure and track success.

It can be overwhelming to define your CX metric framework. But if you remember to put your company and its goals at the center of your efforts, you’re more likely to rely on the data that will have a positive, game-changing impact on your business.

To learn about choosing metrics with meaning, download Pearl-Plaza’s eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” today!

Each day, restaurants all over America serve tens of millions of guests. When they deliver great experiences, guests reward them with more frequent visits, larger orders, and positive word-of-mouth that drives revenue and growth.

However, while there are so many of these opportunities for restaurants, Technomic recently noted  traffic ranges from flat to down year-over-year, restaurant growth is outpacing population growth, and on top of that, fewer consumers are spending money away from home—down 7% from 2000.

While these statistics may seem grim, focusing on guest experience can help to revitalize the numbers. It is more important than ever for brands to deliver a great experience to ensure that they keep (and hopefully grow) their share of the market and keep guests coming back visit after visit—even though they have countless dining options.

Recently, I attended the 2019 Restaurant Leadership Conference, where I had the opportunity to listen to industry leaders talk about what helps their brands to go beyond run-of-the-mill interactions to create extraordinary guest experience success. As the conference went on, I noticed four trending topics in their presentations:

Trend #1: The Influence of Frontline Employees

The first trend that stood out was how important frontline employees continue to be in the guest experience.

Despite all the advancements in technology—including developments in artificial intelligence—people are still central to an elevated guest experience and delivering on a restaurant’s brand promise.

Here’s the truth that all brands need to recognize and act on: successful brands invest in their employees.

A leader of a large Mississippi-based franchise group noted: “we have two businesses: people and pizza.”

This leader said his brand’s employees are empowered with standard operating procedures that are designed specifically to deliver an excellent guest experience.

Tech Tip: Pearl-Plaza’s front-line coaching application allows brands to integrate their standard operating procedures and best practices into the platform, which applies predictive analytic models to create “focus areas” based on each restaurant location. The brand’s unique SOPs automatically populate the Action Plan section, encouraging restaurant managers to train and emphasize the brand’s best practices with the employees who are on the front lines of the guest experience.

Trend #2: The Importance of Engaged Employees

Another trending topic was the importance of having engaged front line employees.   

The vice president of operations for a large franchisee with 330 restaurants across 10 states said: “We’re in a different climate of employee. They often ask, ‘What else are you going to do for me?’”

Another franchise leader chimed in: “The happier our employees are, the better they’re going to do at their job.”

This franchise said they don’t just provide restaurant-related training to keep employees happy, they also provide training on how to live a better life.

Tech Tip: In addition to capturing guest feedback, Pearl-Plaza offers brands the chance to gather feedback from their employees about their own experience. The results are delivered through dashboards and reports alongside guest experience insights, providing a side-by-side view of the impact employees experience is having on the guest experience.

Trend #3: The Growth of Third Party Delivery

The third trend I noticed was the continued growth of third party delivery.

One main stage speaker joked they were required to mention delivery services at least once in every presentation.

Third party delivery is an $8 billion a year industry—which would make it among the top restaurant chains in the world.

With such growth, it’s imperative restaurateurs capture feedback from their guests in these delivery situations so they can continue to enhance the off-premise experience for their brand.

Another main stage speaker singled out Texas Roadhouse—a guest experience leader— has taken another approach, opting out of the third party delivery movement to ensure they are able to deliver on their brand promise of great food.

CEO Kent Taylor, famously stated: “We encourage all our competitors to do as much delivery as they can, so they can deliver lukewarm food to the people who order it. We’ll stick to our guns on this.”

Tech Tip: Pearl-Plaza offers restaurants the ability to listen to their guests across all touchpoints, including online, in-store, and even delivery.  

Trend #4: Personalizing for Success

The last theme that stood out to me was that of personalizing the guest experience.

One speaker defined personalization as simply: “Taking care of the guest.”

With so many ways to engage guests these days—whether through email, text, loyalty programs, mobile apps and so on—brands need to be able to give their guests only what they want to see, because as another speaker said, “the consumer has gotten really good at tuning things out.”

That being said, guests still want to engage with restaurants and know they are being listened to by the brands they love. It’s all about tailoring the right message through the right channel to the right person.

Tech Tip: Pearl-Plaza allows restaurants to listen to their guests through a range of multimedia feedback channels, including surveys, social reviews, contact us forms, mobile app integrations, image and video feedback, and website intercepts.

I had a great time and learned so much about improving the guest experience during my three days at the 2019 Restaurant Leadership Conference. I can’t wait for next year!

Want to learn more about what’s next for Food Service brands and their guest experience? Check out this new eBook, “Three Steps for Future-Proofing the Guest Experience in Food Service: From Operational, Experiential, to a Truly Loyal Guest Relationship!”

If you’re in the food service industry, then you’re no stranger to the guest experience. In fact, the customer experience (CX) and food service industries have evolved together overtime.

What do I mean by this? Well, the food service industry was one of the first to embrace the idea of customer experience. Some experts even believe that restaurants’ need to gather guest feedback to improve their operations pushed the customer experience (CX) industry to where it is today.

Now, CX solutions are more advanced than ever; the leading vendors can offer their clients actionable intelligence that actually impacts their bottom line. As customer experience has evolved, so has the food service industry. Brands today are facing even more complex challenges like:

• How do I attract the new wave of Millennials and Gen Z’ers to choose my restaurant over others?
• What new items should I incorporate into my menu?
• How do I protect my brand when using a third-party delivery service like UberEats or DoorDash?
• How do I improve efficiency to manage rising labor costs?

To rise to the challenge, food service brands need to evolve their approach to guest experience from operational, to experiential, to relational. Here’s the difference between these three approaches:

The Operational Approach

The operational approach to guest experience is pretty straightforward. It means that your guest experience program is largely focused on answering questions about staffing, stock, and cleanliness. This is how food service brands have historically utilized guest experience.

The Experiential Approach

The experiential approach takes it a step further by focusing on consistent experiences for guests and then understanding why guests have the experience they do. This approach answers questions about how to turn negative experiences into positive ones and incorporating employee feedback to improve the guest experience.

The Relational Approach

The relational approach is the holy grail for guest experience: it focuses all program efforts on creating loyal guest relationships. Creating this level of loyalty requires creating high quality, consistent experiences not just in-location, but at every touchpoint guests have with your brand (online, customer experience, in app, etc.)

By evolving your approach to guest experience, you can utilize your program to create what every brand dreams of: loyal guest relationships. And because loyal customers will spend more, more frequently, your guest experience program can positively impact your bottom line more than ever before!

To read more about the specific CX solutions you can master to move from operational, to experiential, to loyal guest relationships, read the full “Three Steps to Future Proofing the Guest Experience in Food Service” eBook here!

We all know it takes a village to drive improvements in customer experience (CX) within an organization. Creating that sense of purpose and collective responsibility requires great communication. Well, the latest research shows that using storytelling in presentations allows you to be a knowledgeable and convincing leader who will influence key audiences in the CX process.

A Stanford Research study shows that statistics alone have a retention rate between 5 and 10%; when coupled with anecdotes, the retention rate rises to 65-70%. Storytelling is relatable and makes data easy to understand. Put simply, you will increase memorability for your audience by creating stories around your data.

If that wasn’t enough evidence for you, Forrester says that “data storytelling not only persuades the analytical part of the brain; it also uses emotion, a key driver of decision making.” Humans are emotionally driven, so impact and action come from stories, not just the facts.

For CX leaders, I believe that applying the following three key elements will make creating an effective story for your audience simple.

Understand Your Audience

As a CX professional, you work hand in hand with various key contributors to the customer experience. This means that you could be presenting to anyone from the C Suite to a regional manager. Identifying the specific audience’s needs, and addressing what is important to them is critical when crafting a story for your presentations.

When customizing a story, you should highlight the key benefits that are most relevant for your audience. What do they care about? For example, you can show the C Suite how your work boosts customer satisfaction and key metrics, increases demand for their product, expands their market, and benefits the bottomline. By outlining the central benefits, you are building increased value for your audience.

But it is not all about the head and facts, make sure you think about how you want your audience to feel. You want to use stories that specifically pertain to them and motivate them —as well as appeal to the heart. As you build trust, you need to be aware of what you want to happen next. Are you looking for more funding? Do you want increased support? Are you trying to expand your CX program?

Don’t forget to tune your story to address the outcome you want. Understanding your audience is crucial in storytelling if you want to have a relevant presentation.

Remember Your Central Question

As you use a story to present to your target audience, make sure you remember to anchor your presentation around a central question; what are you asking for?

When you think of a story it follows a familiar pattern. There is always a rise to a climax and then a fall to a resolution. It is important that you remember to structure your story with the identified theme or idea that you are addressing in mind. You want to have a rise in story that introduces the main question you are addressing for the audience. Then as you finish the story you can propose a resolution to take action on.

People like familiarity. Just as your audience knows a story rises and falls, you should pose a question and then resolve it. You will enhance your CX presentation by following this pattern and remembering your central question.

Create a Checklist for Your Presentation

Finally, it’s not just about what you present, it’s how you present it. There are a few checklist items you need to fulfill when presenting to make sure your delivery is pristine.

Firstly, make sure you are providing an organized map that is well paced and logical. Your audience needs to be able to follow your story effortlessly while recognizing the key points. This also helps you to spend more time on the points that really matter to your narrative instead of spending time on tangents that won’t get you where you want to go.

Secondly, a story is nothing without evidence. Stakeholders are looking for a reason to support you. Without anything backing up your claims, it’s hard for decision makers to commit. Providing solutions to their problems and proof that those solutions are viable creates trust that is crucial.

Lastly, recognize that questions and concerns will arise during your presentation. We will all agree that one of the best moments in a presentation is when you’re asked a question and the next slide addresses that specific ask. In that moment, you’re able to show that you get the audience, and know how they will be thinking. To accomplish this, you want to have additional, relevant stories on hand that can provide solutions to potential asks in a memorable and actionable way.

Applying these three key elements of storytelling can help you rock your presentation. At the same time, being given the time to communicate is a gift that should never be taken lightly, so remember to identify the audience, their primary concerns, and tell a story that addresses concerns with a balance of emotion and facts. Use a story and your audience won’t be able to  forget your call to action!

I think in almost every industry, there is a sense of nostalgia for how things “used to be done.” I say “almost” because I know that for the customer experience (CX) industry, the way things used to be done brings one thing to mind: simple, single point customer surveys.

It’s an ugly truth, but surveys used to be the go-to method—or even the only method—for anyone looking to gather customer data. It may have worked at the time, but thankfully, we know better today.

The fact is that the modern customer doesn’t want to answer questions about what they bought and where they bought it. (After all, with all the technology available today, we should already have that information from transactional data.) Customers also don’t want to spend large amounts of their valuable time going through pages and pages of questions when they only wanted to comment on their experience.

So if the old methods aren’t creating a great feedback experience for your customers, what will work? Today, the key to creating a survey that will actually improve the customer experience is a simple shift in mindset:

Stop interrogating. Start conversations.

Whenever I think of interrogation, I think of the cliche police scene where a suspect is sitting at a table beneath a harsh spotlight while a serious looking detective drills them about what they already suspect the person has done.

There are a couple of things wrong with this interrogation picture when you apply it to customer experience. Firstly, you should never make your customer feel like they’re in the hot seat by firing question after question at them. Second, you should never ask a question that you already have the answer to. Third, interrogating the customer is not focusing on their experience, it’s focusing on what you want to know. Essentially, when your surveys feel like interrogations, they aren’t improving the customer experience. They’re taking away from it.

When you focus on starting a conversational survey, the picture completely changes because of one major fact: conversations are customer-focused. They are mindful of the customer’s time and don’t ask too many questions (they definitely don’t ask unnecessary questions.) Most importantly, they focus on what the customer wants, not what they want to get out of the customer.

So before you set out to create your next survey, think to yourself: Am I interrogating or am I starting a conversation?

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