Best Practices

If you follow the Pearl-Plaza blog, you know that we believe loyalty is the end all be all of customer experience efforts. If customers are loyal to your brand, it means they spend money with you, interact with you, and give you feedback—even better, they do so consistently. This means plenty of benefits for your organization, but it also requires quite a bit of consistency on your part.

A consistent experience is widely recognized as one of the major contributors to overall customer loyalty. Take it from Footlocker’s Director of Customer Experience Tyler Saxey, who had this to say on the subject: “That’s how you drive loyalty the most in my perspective: value and consistency. Think about Amazon. You are almost shocked if your product doesn’t arrive in 2 days, and you are willing to give them a break if it happens. If you consistently succeed, you will drive revenue. If you consistently fail, people will find other places to spend their money.”

To break it down even more, memorable experiences that happen consistently lead to loyalty, which increases a customer’s lifetime value, which increases revenue. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

In order to get to the benefits, however, it’s vital to understand why a uniform brand experience means so much to your customers. Here are three reasons why consistency drives loyalty:

Consistency makes you reliable.

This might sound a little weird, but stick with me here. Think about your favorite comfort food. There’s a reason why that mac and cheese, fried chicken, or pizza is more than just a dish you like. The difference between it and any old salad is that your comfort food elicits an emotional response. No matter where you are in life, you can rely on that simple meal to give you a sense of comfort.

In the same way, a customer should be able to rely on you to create a certain feeling for them. Maybe they’re excited because they know you will always ship their purchases quickly or that when they call you, they’ll be met with a happy and helpful representative. No matter what, that dependability gives your customer a sense of confidence and trust because they know you can be relied upon. If they can rely upon you to deliver every time, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Consistency makes you recognizable.

In today’s crowded market, everyone is looking for a way to stand out. Everywhere you look there are new, more interesting ways that brands are marketing or re-branding themselves to differentiate from the competition.

I would like to suggest that one of the best ways to stand out is consistency. By keeping your color schemes, messaging, product presentation, and any other detail uniform across your organization, your brand will be instantly recognizable to customers. Whenever they have a need for a product or service in your industry, they will automatically think of you if you keep it consistent.

Consistency makes you a part of their lifestyle.

Because you are a consistency rockstar, customers now think of you whenever they think of the industry you’re in. Because of that simple association, whenever they need a new pair of shoes, a new car, or a vacation, they will automatically google your brand first. If they’ve bought from you before and had a great experience, they are likely to come back the next time they’re in the market for your services.

Take Starbucks as an example. I bet you can think of at least one person in your life that is a “Starbucks person.” Whenever they’re out and about and in need of coffee, they pop right over to the nearest drive thru. This is because their experience with the coffee giant has been so consistent that they don’t even need to think of where to go when they need caffeine. The brand has become so embedded in their lifestyle that the customer is guaranteed to be a regular.

If you look at it from this perspective, consistency really is key to driving customer loyalty. It helps customers form emotional attachments and automatic associations with your brand, as well as making brand a part of their routine as a consumer. In short, consistency helps you create a solid relationship with customers, and that’s a pretty big win for your customer experience and your bottom line.

Looking to become a consistency rockstar? Pearl-Plaza’s CX Intelligence Cloud empowers you to identify customer pain points both on a larger scale and at a location level. To learn how this solution can be tailored to your brand, schedule a demo with one of our CX strategists today!

Becoming customer-centric doesn’t just happen. It begins with a vision which, over time, becomes a fully-immersive reason for and way of doing business. It’s more than an initiative—it’s a business discipline—a way of life within a brand. Here are five key areas that serve as building blocks for infusing customer centricity into your brand.

Vision: A vision is not simply a mission statement; it should specifically tie to your brand’s promise and guiding values. It should be clearly defined and communicated to employees and understood—and expected—by customers. When you have a clear vision, you’re more likely to follow through, and more importantly, you’re motivated to improve.

Executive Commitment: In an ideal world, customer-centric culture and business practices begin at the top. In fact, researchers and analysts believe that if the CEO is not leading the CX conversation, then a company will never become a CX leader and reap the related benefits. CX professionals need to build a compelling business case that supports executive goals so that the relationship between CX success and the bottom line is evident.

People: Once you define your vision, it must be infused across hiring, training, coaching, and professional development to build and nurture a customer-centric culture for the long run. Your vision should help define the specific behaviors and traits of employees required to deliver on the brand promise. This means shifting hiring practices from a skill-based to a personality-fit mindset so you can hire within the scope of your company’s customer experience vision.

Environment: Maintaining a customer-centered company takes a comprehensive commitment, and incentives that match those objectives. Find ways to recognize people for upholding the brand’s promise and reward those who continually strive to improve the customer experience. Also, design KPIs, track net promoter score, and establish communication and recognition programs to reinforce the message that you both hear and heed employee contributions.

Communication: A vision is only effective as the way it is communicated throughout the organization, and to the world. Internally, discuss expectations, listen to the voice of the customer, list challenges, and recognize successes constantly.. There must be continuous follow up and clear, consistent communication to all employees. Externally, publicly state and provide updates to investors, analysts, media, and other external stakeholders regarding CX efforts and their impact on the business. This not only brings you credit where it’s due and ensures future accountability, but helps attract the right kind of employees—and customers—to your business.

Cultivating CX-centric DNA is not only essential to creating lasting relationships with your customers, but it is also a foundational pillar for a successful CX Strategy.

At Pearl-Plaza, we believe that interacting or listening to your customer shouldn’t just take place at a single point; we believe that you should be listening to your customer whenever, wherever, and however they reach out to you. Because this is such a core belief of ours, we are always looking for new, valuable, and relevant ways for you to collect feedback.

In the recent history of customer experience (CX), speech-to-text has been a favorite talking point when it comes to giving your customers options. Speech-to-text is also known as automated speech transcription, or technology that automatically recognizes digitized speech wavelengths and then converts that speech to text. While this tech is great for translating comments that can then be run through text analytics, there’s a new player on the scene of CX feedback.

Voice feedback takes speech-to-text a level deeper, using AI to analyze a recording of a customer’s actual speech—and all of the detail that comes along with it. Also known as speech analysis, this technology is able to recognize customer tone, pitch, and volume to determine customer sentiment and emotion.

Essentially, voice feedback takes traditional text and speech-to-text feedback to the next level. Need more reasons why? Here are three specific ways that voice can enhance your CX feedback!

Emotional Context

There’s a reason why you shouldn’t have high-stakes or emotional conversations via text message: there are some things that just don’t translate in a text. The closest you can get to a change in tone is using ALL CAPS, and we all know that just makes it seem like you’re yelling at someone. When you analyze voice feedback, you aren’t missing out on those emotional indicators like tone, pitch, and volume. This gives a customer’s words emotional context, which in turn gives you much more data on how that customer is actually feeling (and as we all know, richer data means richer intelligence).

Convenient for Customers

Your customers are busy people, so it’s best that you give them feedback opportunities that fit easily into their daily routines. Traditional text or even speech-to-text is much more time consuming, requiring customers to type in or speak slowly and clearly in order for their comment to be translated correctly. Voice feedback gives them the ability to multitask and be completely hands-free when giving feedback. For instance, if you are using voice in a post-service survey at an auto shop, your customer can leave you feedback on their drive home. It’s quick, convenient, and doesn’t require your customer to set aside time to complete a survey.

Stay Current

Voice feedback is also compatible with the technological must-haves of today: voice assistants. To give you an idea of how many people will be able to leave you feedback via the Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft’s Cortana, here are some stats:

• In 2016, one of these devices existed in 4% of American households.
• In 2017, that number has grown almost 130%.
• Apple’s Siri handles over 2 billion commands a week.
• 20% of Google searches on Android-powered handsets are input by voice.

From these numbers, it’s clear that voice assistants are becoming a staple in your customers’ households. By equipping your CX program with voice analytic capabilities, you are giving your customers an opportunity to interact with you using a device that consumers are clearly excited about. Even better, they can leave you feedback handsfree and from their living room.

Of all the technologies to be excited about, voice feedback is definitely toward the top of the list. With the ability to provide better data and a more convenient, technologically advanced way to interact with customers, it has the ability to revolutionize the way you collect feedback and the quality of that feedback. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

To learn more about the technology that can help you interact with your customers whenever, wherever, and however, schedule a demo with an Pearl-Plaza CX Strategist today!

One of the most basic ingredients for successfully improving the customer experience is actually providing opportunities for interaction. It’s simple: You can have the most sophisticated analytics in the world, but if you have nothing to analyze, it will be impossible to unearth insights that will improve your customer experience.

Omnichannel touchpoints not only provide more customer data, but they encourage relationships and, therefore, brand loyalty. This is true for all industries, but research shows having multiple options for interaction can make all the difference for insurance providers in particular.

A study of 2,000 health insurance customers found that “interaction options” is one of the three most important factors to customers when it came to choosing a health insurance provider. This finding is impressive on its own, but what’s even more surprising  is that “interaction options” out-ranked “brand” in terms of differentiators.

Additionally, the study found that customers are even willing to pay more for additional interaction options. I found this to be both validating and shocking for a few reasons. First, it confirms a belief that we have at Pearl-Plaza: you need to make it easy for your customers to interact with you whenever, wherever, and however they want.

Second, there has been a lot of talk recently that digital is taking over. While that may be true to a certain extent, this study found that in actuality, customers still want the choice between digital and traditional interaction options, because they prefer different touchpoints for different conversations. For example, customers said they generally prefer digital touchpoints for simple interactions like changing contact information, but they prefer a telephone call to address larger and more complex concerns.

Of course, providing all these touchpoints can get down-right expensive and it can be challenging to provide the same level of service across a variety of touchpoints.

This is a legitimate business concern, but in light of these recent findings, it is clear that having multiple methods of interaction is a differentiator for health insurance customers. Touchpoints can be costly, but failing to provide customers with the service they want is even more risky.

Healthcare is an incredibly personal industry and choosing a health insurance provider can be especially stressful for customers. Therefore, it’s even more important to make customers feel heard and cared for, while also allowing them to reach out in the way they feel most comfortable.

To learn more about what customers want from their customer experience, check out the 2018 CX Trends Report!

As a customer success manager at Pearl-Plaza, I’m always looking for new ways to help my clients optimize their customer experience. Luckily, I hit the insights jackpot when I was able to attend the Marketing Executives Group (MEG) conference earlier this month!

As a part of this conference, my colleagues and other restaurant marketing professionals were able to listen in on some of the latest and greatest industry research, thought leadership, and best practices for the food services industry. 

Here are my top three takeaways from the 2018 MEG conference that will help improve restaurant customer experience:

Food is more culturally relevant than ever.

One of the first sessions I attended was “Culture in the Digital Age” with author and food culture expert Eve Turow Paul of ETG Insights. This presentation discussed the millennial generation’s relationship with food and how it is influenced by social media. Millennials are especially invested in food, and by that I mean that they are spending more money on food than ever before. Yes, this is partially because they eat out, but they also care about the quality of food.

In the new age of social media, food has become identity and a part of self-branding. When millennials post pictures of their food online, they are trying to present a version of themselves that shows they are educated, well-traveled, and environmentally conscious. In short, the food they want to be seen consuming is food that helps them present an idealized version of themselves.

Off-premise dining is the new frontier.

Another session I attended, “New Dynamics of Off-Premise Dining” with Melissa Wilson and Donna Hood Crecca of Technomic Inc., discussed the incredible growth we’re seeing in off-premise dining. Here are just a few stats: Of the 519 billion dollars that restaurants make, off-premise restaurants account for 228 billion (44%) of those dollars. This huge percentage is understandable, especially considering that people are ordering delivery 28% more than they were just a year ago.

Food kits contribute to the off-premise trend, but the real game changer has been third-party delivery. This option is great for restaurants, but it also means that a few adjustments need to be made. Users blame the restaurant—not the third party—for negative experiences, meaning that restaurants need to take special care with takeaway packaging, creating dedicated systems for third-party pickup, and maintaining customer connection.

Employees MUST be empowered to solve problems.

I think we’ve all had an experience with a company where we have hit some sort of road block and the frontline employee who has been working with us says, “this is company policy; let me talk to my manager.” Turns out this is the worst possible thing to say according to Scott Stratten, President of Un-Marketing. His session “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing and Start Engaging,” addressed how you can build relationships with your target audience so they become loyal customers.

My favorite takeaway from this session is that your employees need to be able to make things right immediately; in other words they need to be empowered. Stratten suggested that today’s brands should attempt to improve the bottom line by improving the front line because branding isn’t about the logo, it’s about the guest’s last experience with you. If you want guest experiences to be positive so they create a positive perception of your brand, your employees need to be able to fix problems immediately wherever they are. This ensures that a customer leaves validated, knowing that their issue was important to your brand.

Hopefully these takeaways are as inspiring to you as they are to me. With restaurant customer experience advancing at what seems to be the speed of light, it is more important than ever to stay up-to-date with the latest best practices so you can differentiate your brand.

For more tips, check out this Pearl-Plaza case study that highlights how our client, Pizza Hut, leverages employee stories to improve their guest experience!

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. From Google’s Arts & Culture App—which uses facial recognition technology to match selfies to thousands of artworks—to Pizza Hut’s plans for driverless pizza delivery.

The application of Artificial Intelligence to improve the customer experience is on the rise. In fact, this year the Consumer Electronic Show featured its first ever Artificial Intelligence Marketplace to showcase the latest innovations designed to perform human tasks. Products ranged from big data analytics to speech recognition to advanced decision-making to predictive technology. Many of these solutions are already being leveraged by great companies to add a magic touch to their services.

Are you taking advantage? If not, here are three ways you can apply Artificial Intelligence to improve your customer experience.

1. Automate Simple Customer Interactions

There’s nothing less efficient than bogging down highly-skilled, highly-paid employees with basic tasks. Emerging technology in artificial intelligence can automate simple interactions, allowing your people to focus on more complex and nuanced customer interactions. Gartner predicts that 95 percent of customer interactions will be driven by Artificial Intelligence by 2025, leveraging chatbots and mobile messaging to complete simple tasks (e.g., the reminder call from your doctor’s office or paying your tab using Ziosk, a pay-at-the-table tablet for restaurants).

Recently, Kroger announced its new Kroger Edge technology, which, among other things, will enable the grocer to instantly change prices and activate promotions on digital displays, freeing up employees who would otherwise change prices by hand. This sort of automation can deliver a more a consistent experience and a huge financial impact according to Juniper Research, who estimates cost savings of more than $8 billion annually by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017.

2. Augment Your Service Employees

Another powerful application of AI is within your own organization. By leveraging solutions that enable you to proactively listen to the voice of the customer and engage on an emotional level, customer experiences will shift from mundane to exceptional.

Recently, TD Bank acquired artificial intelligence startup, Layer 6. While it’s still uncertain exactly how the technology will be applied, Michael Rhodes, group head of innovation, technology, and shared services for TD Bank said the company would be able to do things such as detect spending patterns that indicate a customer may be looking to purchase a home, and then offer that customer a mortgage. This type of intelligence enables you to be proactive, engaging, and in-tune with your customers’ needs.

3. Enrich the Data You Already Have

Finally, you can take all the data you have, such as customer feedback and net promoter score, and put it to new use. As Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, notes, “There are a lot of places where AI simply lets companies use their data better, and AI usage is largely invisible to the customer. Retail sites, for instance, can observe the products people are viewing, and use that data to begin suggesting other, more relevant products to them than was previously possible.” Recently, in addition to making targeted content suggestions, Netflix began tailoring the “cover art” associated with a recommended movie or TV show, based on the user’s viewing history.

For example: the image displayed for a romantic comedy (I’m partial to The Truth About Cats and Dogs), will either play to the “romance” or the “comedy” of the film. Or, it may feature the image of an actor who starred in other movies you’ve watched. For what it’s worth, Stranger Things has nine different cover art options (check to see which one appears on your stream!).

There’s more need—and competition—than ever to deliver meaningful and powerful customer experiences. Fortunately, technology like artificial intelligence is helping bridge the gap, creating more value for both companies and customers, and allowing brands the opportunity to truly differentiate on customer experience.

It’s common knowledge in the CX community that your efforts can’t just sit in a silo; the entire organization needs to be invested in the customer and play a part in the greater scheme of things.

In a previous article, I discussed the three C’s brands should consider when guiding their entire organization to a great customer experience: culture/capacity (an organization’s overall framework, culture, and essence), competence (the knowledge, skills, attributes, mindsets and behaviors an organization offers), and capability (what makes a brand unique, or what the brand is known for when it’s at its best).

These three areas are essential for awareness (the bedrock of organization wide transformation), but what do CX efforts look like when attempting to involve different areas of your organization? The fact is that getting c-suite buy-in for your CX program is going to look completely different from engaging your front of line employees. Where the c-suite and leadership may assess the three C’s in the boardroom, there needs to be another approach for the breakroom.

Here are four tips to inspire and engage employees in your CX program starting in the breakroom:

1. Hire and Retain Customer Centric Talent

Placing customer experience at front-of-mind starts at the very beginning of the employee journey. Make sure that your hiring process assesses candidates based on their ability to provide the kind of positive experiences your company strives for. If you make it obvious from the start that your company culture emphasizes the value of your customers, your employees will know that they have to keep up with the needs of the customer in order to meet their job requirements.

There is a misconception around the value of industry experience vs. customer centric attributes when evaluating candidates. Those brands that are winning in customer experience have recruited beyond the talent pool in their particular industries and have sought after individuals who have the right mix of personality characteristics and skills; regardless of the their industry of origin.

2. Implement Consistent Rituals

Make sure to put specific steps and processes in place for employees to follow in specific customer interactions. This keeps your employees from feeling caught off guard and can also increase their confidence in customer-facing situations. Additionally, this creates a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints, which sets a standard of customer service upon which your customers can depend (and share with their friends).

3. Share Stories

When customers share an exceptional experience they had with one of your employees, pass it on! Institute a method for these exemplary staff members to be showcased, such as dedicating time in every team meeting to mention that person or posting those stories in the breakroom itself. This not only rewards the employee for their hard work, but it also inspires other employees to strive for the same excellence. Even more so, it takes your customer experience policies out of the employee handbook and into an everyday context that is more relatable for your employees.

4. Provide the Right Incentives

With the right incentives in place, you can go beyond just a pat on the back and provide tangible benefits for employees that are consistent CX allstars. A mistake that many organizations make is linking CX metrics to incentives (e.g. bonus for reaching an NPS target) rather than behaviors. Human nature suggests that individuals respond better to rewards based on things they can control (in this case, the way they act with customers) vs. a number which may be influenced by a number of exogenous factors.

A great example comes from one of our clients.  They approached incentives by creating a central system in which employees can receive points for embodying their company’s CX emphasis. These points can then be cashed for a plethora of prizes. Additionally, employees can recognize each other, adding to company comradery.

When you make inspiring your front-line employees a priority, you are powering your greatest tool in the the quest for CX excellence. Implementing these four tips into your company culture can contribute to morale, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, your bottom line.

To learn more about the importance of employee engagement, check out the Pearl-Plaza eBook, “Understanding the Power of Employee Engagement: The Employee-Customer Equation.”

I think we can all agree that the first step in measuring the customer experience is compiling your customer data, but not all data is equal (especially when it comes to customer feedback data). Why? Because the way you collect your customer feedback matters!

The means of collection often dictate the quality, depth, and helpfulness of the feedback. From there, it affects the quality of the insights you get when you analyze that same data.

If it all comes back to the “how,” then it’s clear that you need to be selective about your listening methods so you can get to the “why” behind your customer feedback.

One place where you need to be especially selective about your “how” is with the intercepts on your website. The ultimate goal of intercepts is to get valuable feedback about your website and user experience so you can innovate and improve. However, we are finding that the common intercept practice of a pop-up window appearing immediately upon entering a website is problematic; it could be disruptive and defeat the purpose of an intercept.

Here’s why this common practice could be harming your user experience:

It’s Intrusive

When a customer is casually perusing a site, a random pop up can feel intrusive to the overall experience; they can feel hassled or like their interaction with your site has been interrupted. Ultimately, what may have been meant as a well-intentioned prompt can feel invasive and could cause a customer to abandon your page to go elsewhere.

It’s Ill-timed

If a survey window pops up as soon as a customer arrives at your homepage, your customer has not been able to get a look at the full page, much less get an impression of how it functions or if they have any suggestions. Therefore, they most likely won’t have much feedback to give you —if they choose to participate in the survey at all.

It’s Irrelevant

Traditional practices with intercepts are one-size-fits-all; very rarely are they customized to ask the right questions at the right time. This lack of customization means the questions asked are not directly relevant to a customer’s individual experience, leaving the brand with shallow feedback that won’t make a real difference.

Long story short, if you’re collecting feedback using this intercept method, you could be stunting your CX efforts before they even start.

When your prompts feel intrusive, ill-timed, and irrelevant to a customer’s journey, customers could ignore the survey entirely or give low-quality feedback because they feel rushed or haven’t had enough time to really experience your brand. However, when intercepts are used correctly in a way that enhances user experience instead of interrupting it, they can prove to be a powerful tool.

To learn how you can create timely, customized, and inviting intercepts, download Pearl-Plazas newest eBook, “Digital Intercept: How to Collect Customer Feedback Without Ruining the Experience” today!

To say that the retail landscape is changing would be a complete and utter understatement. It seems like you can’t turn on the news or scroll through your smartphone without spotting another bankruptcy, downsizing, or complete shutdown of a brand that previously seemed untouchable.

Where some may see these shifts as intimidating, I think that they also present brands with an opportunity to step back and reanalyze their organization, especially when it comes to customer experience.

Customer experience is a key differentiator for all industries, but especially for retail. Our recent Retail Trends report found that positive interactions with staff increased customer satisfaction by 33% across industries and by a whopping 73% in the fashion industry. Because satisfied customers become loyal customers, emphasizing your CX efforts can really make a difference in your bottom line.

Whether you are relatively new to customer experience, or if you’ve had a program for a while, it’s important to make sure that you are covering all your bases with your customer experience program. I’ve put together a list of three CX basics that you can consider (or revisit) in order to make sure your customer experience is keeping you ahead of the game.

Efficiency

We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” and it’s true (especially in the checkout line)! Everyone has been in a situation where they are in a hurry and need to pick up an item last minute, only to be greeted with one open register and a seemingly never ending line. That is a guaranteed recipe for a negative experience that may even result in a customer abandoning their items and heading out the door.

With this in mind, it is incredibly important to keep wait times to a minimal. The latest CX technology can deploy data science to calculate when you have historically had the highest traffic, so you can schedule more employees accordingly. This tech can also leverage unstructured comments to get more specific feedback on your checkout process.

Convenience

For superior customer experience, you also need to be aware of how easy it is for customers to interact with your brand at every touchpoint. Convenience goes beyond the location of a physical store and self checkout stations; today, user experience is under the convenience umbrella as well. From the moment a customer enters your site or opens your app, it should be simple and easy for them to find a product, place it in their cart, and checkout.

If you are curious as to the convenience of your user experience, the simplest way to find out more is just to ask! Many web retailers have deployed intercept surveys in the past, but you want to be careful about how you use these. Make sure intercept questions aren’t one-size-fits-all and are relevant to a customer’s specific journey.

Friendly, Knowledgeable Service

If you’re looking to make a positive impression on your customers, your people are still your best weapon. This can be surprising seeing as we live in a world where automation is becoming the norm and in person interactions are becoming more rare, but retail employees still make a difference to customers. When you’re looking for new shoes, getting a second opinion or informed suggestion from a knowledgeable employee can make your day.

With this in mind, it is more important than ever to invest in your employees. You can hold frequent customer-centric or new product trainings to keep those on the front line informed. This enables them to provide consistent experiences and answer customer questions with ease and authority.

With so much change going on in the retail industry, it’s important to go back to the basics of your customer experience and make sure that you are proving the sort of interactions that will set your brand apart in the best way.

For more information on the current retail landscape, check out Pearl-Plaza’s “2017 Retail Trends Report!”

In the last several years, there is no doubt that improving the customer experience (CX) has been a top priority for any company looking to improve employee performance, drive customer value, and grow their bottom line. Yet there remains a gap between those CX leaders who successfully lead their organization in effecting CX change and those who do not. What makes the difference?

CX leaders know how to do these five things successfully:

Align the Vision

CX leaders know that driving a common purpose starts with having consistent language and definitions across their organization. How else would everyone in an organization know what makes up an effective customer experience without first having a clear, agreed on definition?

CX leaders also constantly connect specific customer feedback to each customer touchpoint to bring life to this definition of an effective customer experience. Ultimately, these CX leaders line up the overarching brand promise, employee experience, and internal training across the various key CX touchpoints.

Intentionally Enable Connections

CX leaders know that aligning a vision does not happen on an island. They use their leadership skills of kindness, credibility, and telling a compelling story to build an army of passionate individuals within their organization who rally around making their customers’ lives better. They purposefully network within their organization to get buy-in from key stakeholders who have power, influence, passion, budget, direct access to customers, or other essential tangible or intangible resources across all departments.

Additionally, they take a good look at the various projects stakeholders are initiating to see if they would truly make customers’ lives better. CX leaders then humbly help these key stakeholders champion these projects to successful outcomes. They further enable internal connections by breaking up silos and supporting cross-functional teams. In the end, they know that intentionally investing in trust pays dividends in the end.

CX leaders also know the importance of connecting their employees with customers. At the top of the house, CX leaders know that sometimes a few executives become “hard of hearing” when it comes to listening to the voice of the customer. They encourage these and all executives to periodically work alongside customer-facing employees to keep their customer listening muscles from atrophying. In the field and with customer-facing employees, CX leaders, along with the training team, use various forms of customer feedback to give these employees vivid descriptions of what a great customer experience is (and what it is not).

Maintain Relentless Focus

CX leaders know their customer listening programs inside and out. This empowers them to know which key areas need to be improved within their organization. CX leaders maintain relentless focus on these key areas and are not distracted by the “side projects of the few” or on things that matter less. They know how to say “no” which frees them up to work on only those things that will truly drive improvement. Importantly, they know the “why” behind what they measure and don’t lose sight of it.

Drive Consistent Improvement

CX leaders know the organizational weaknesses at each customer touchpoint and support the person or team in charge of championing the projects that will improve their customers’ lives in these areas. They constantly push for executive ownership and stakeholder accountability. If internal incentives are used, CX leaders know that tying incentives to desired behaviors (not scores) brings about the greatest change.

CX leaders know they are playing the long game and patiently pursue the most effective path for sustainability within their organization. This may mean connecting with specific people within their organization, upgrading needed tools or resources, getting buy-in from a certain department, or discovering the real reason of what turned the last “program of promise” into a “program of the month” where enthusiasm for the program quickly waned.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

The old real estate adage is “location, location, location.”  CX leaders know that “communication, communication, communication” is vital to the success of any customer experience improvement strategy.  In the early stages of their CX journey, CX leaders employed various internal awareness campaigns. Later in their journey, they continue the conversation by discussing success stories, citing specific examples from customer feedback of employees who have demonstrated effective improvements to the customer experience.  They publish these successes in internal newsletters, their intranet, in employee paychecks, and anywhere else they can keep the message top-of-mind. CX leaders also work with the marketing department to communicate with customers when they have improved a product or process.

Ultimately, CX leaders know that knowledge is only a means to an end. They know that it is the “doing” that keeps the flame of knowledge from burning out. They work hard on these five skills, constantly practicing and refining them because they know the purpose inspiring those actions will make all the difference for their employees, customers, and bottom line.

Nobody likes roadkill.

It’s gruesome to see and certainly even more horrible to become—literally or metaphorically. That’s why Andrew Park, Pearl-Plaza VP, CX Strategy, and I recently hosted a webinar entitled, “How to Avoid Becoming Roadkill on Your Customer Experience Journey” with our partner, CustomerThink.com.

According to CustomerThink research, a mere 7% of CX initiatives have created competitive differentiation while only 23% of brands have realized tangible benefits. So less than one-third of CX initiatives can claim the clear “win” that CEOs demand: ROI as evidenced by measurable business impact. This inability to prove impact has caused CX programs to stall.

Regardless of industry, CX programs are no longer a nice to have, but instead, a must have business discipline. However, there’s no “one size fits all” approach to CX and strategies will differ based on budget, organizational structure, CX maturity, and more. But that’s no reason to become discouraged.

Pulling from Pearl-Plaza’s white paper on Customer Experience Strategy—and based on our experience working with hundreds of brands from across the world for over 15 years—Andrew and I discussed five areas companies can take action on immediately.

Create and Prove Value

This is where brands are struggling the most. Improving CX metrics—such as NPS and OSAT—is admirable, but companies must link CX results specifically and thoughtfully to business-wide KPIs and financial results. During the webinar, Andrew discussed a global retailer which tied financial performance and workforce data to customer feedback. By doing so, customer experience became a scorecard for the front line: a way to show the effect of specific staff behaviors on OSAT, conversion, and sales per associate. The company found that the top 10% of locations achieved a 3% higher conversion rate—which equated to a cool $67 million annually. We can assure you this CX program is not getting cut any time soon.

Infuse CX in Everything

Often viewed as a fluffy concept, this CX mindset is anything but. And it’s not something that simply happens; it takes work, is purposeful, and strategic. In fact, according to Andrew, “Best-in-class CX companies—if you listen to their earnings calls—the executive teams are talking about customer experience.” He continued by referencing a CX executive at a global athletic apparel retailer who—over many years—has successfully developed a CX-centric culture within the brand. This kind of achievement does not necessarily happen organically and certainly not by accident; by weaving CX into hiring and training practices, and “coaching up” other executives—across all departments—he has infused the Voice of the Customer throughout the organization.

Organize for Success

Most brands are not born CX-centric. This means organizations must be agile; they must shift and flex with emerging trends and customer needs. Luckily, one of our energy clients wrote the book on this topic. In a regulated industry with literally zero competitors, safety and “keeping the lights on” have always been the company’s priorities—not customer experience. However, when the J.D. Power rankings came in and the energy provider found itself sitting in last place, the executive team knew it was time to make a change. The company called upon a cross-functional team of influencers—from powerline technicians to accountants to customer service agents—to craft a customer experience intent statement and tackle customer pain points head on. The results: entirely new departments, improved operational efficiencies, and policies that make sense for customers and the bottom line.

Leverage the Voice of the Customer

More than ever, customer feedback must be an ongoing dialogue as opposed to a one-time interrogation. This means moving beyond traditional surveys and listening to your customers wherever, whenever, and however—and in a way that makes sense for them. We’re seeing brands leverage mobile voice feedback, video, and even image recognition which allows customers to leave more authentic, rich feedback. Others brands are bringing in contextual data such as social reviews, CRM, and transactional metrics. One of Pearl-Plaza’s airline clients appends up to 300 pieces of customer-specific data points to each customer feedback response. This means the company understands the impact that seat location, aircraft, food, staff, weather, travel history, departure time, and more have on customer satisfaction. VoC data becomes infinitely more valuable with this kind of detailed context.

Empower Employees

The old CX adage is that employees are either serving the customer, or serving someone who is. In other words: everyone has an impact on customer experience. Andrew shared a quintessential example of this from one of our healthcare clients. An 80-something-year-old man had an appointment at a hospital and received an exceptional experience from his care team. Yet, when he returned to his car, he found that the valet had changed the radio station. This turned a 5-star care experience into a 3-star overall experience. In a complex healthcare setting, a valet, receptionist, or cafeteria worker might not think they have an impact on customer experience, but in today’s CX-driven world, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This teachable moment proved that everyone—regardless of position—plays a role in CX. And if companies are not making their employees a part of the conversation and solution, they’re missing a major opportunity to improve the customer experience.

Taking the next (or first) step isn’t each always easy. Andrew urged webinar participants to avoid waiting for a perfect strategy, to get started today and continually refine over time, and to take pride in your incremental achievements along the way. Each “win” will help you garner more support and further prove the value of your efforts.

No matter the initiative or project, every effort you make to better your customer experience (CX) starts with data. Whether it’s omnichannel, transactional, relationship, loyalty, or feedback data, you need data to make informed decisions that positively impact your business.

Given it’s all-important status, it’s vital for your data to be accessible and stored in a way that enables your team to unearth insights efficiently and effectively. As with all things, however, this is easier said than done.

Unfortunately many companies still house customer data in silos, or in separate warehouses depending on data type or what vendor, app, or platform it was collected in. This practice can complicate your view of customer data, resulting in an incomplete, distorted, or even inaccurate view of your customer.

In the big picture of customer experience, this distorted view of data can be devastating, but there are even more ways that data silos can put your CX program in danger. In this post, I will break down six problems that stem from data silos, as well as the challenges they present.

1. Inability to Scale Your CX Program

As an organization grows, one would hope that their CX program would be able to scale with them. Unfortunately, if that organization is using multiple silos to store their customer data, this isn’t possible. Each silo would scale independently of the others, making navigating the CX program more and more complex as the company evolves.

2. Time-Consuming Process

The more silos, the more time it takes to compile and regulate data. In fact, a recent study showed that data scientists spend approximately 80% of their time preparing and managing data for analysis. This means that data scientists are using most of their time compiling data and only 20% of their time analyzing it for the insights that could make a big difference to their organization.

3. Excessive Costs

Multiple vendors require greater headcount to manage and operate those platforms. When the average enterprise marketing department uses 91 applications (even though many of those may not be CX-specific) supporting multiple vendors and their data silos can be costly.

4. Difficulty Sharing Information

A successful CX program depends on the ability to share data. Unfortunately, the evolving nature of CX software causes compatibility issues between different data platforms. Furthermore, any attempt at combined analysis of data silos can be difficult at best.

5. Disparate View of Customer

To get the best possible understanding of your customer and to understand how they experience your brand, it’s important to get a holistic view of your customer data. When your data is siloed, however, the insights you get will be specific to only one type of customer, area of the organization, or chapter of the customer journey, limiting the effectiveness and actionability of the insights. This segmented approach can then create a disconnected understanding of your customer journey.

6. Can’t Identify Higher Priority Issues

The segmented nature of data housed in silos also creates an inability to distinguish higher priority issues across the organization as a whole. It may be possible to determine the problems that need to be addressed within each silo, but any insights revealing issues will only represent issues for one type of customer or area of the business, not the higher order issues that affect the organization as a whole.

When it comes down to it, data silos can do more than complicate operations for your CX program. They can undermine your efforts by giving you ineffective “insights” that do not address the overarching concerns of your customer. It takes a company-wide initiative to refocus on what your customers need, and that means unifying your customer data so you have the best foundation possible for your CX vision.

To learn more about data silos, the complications that come along with them, and how a unified approach to CX could combat them, download Pearl-Plaza’s newest white paper, “Customer Experience Management: The Danger of Data Silos.”