In the interconnected world of today, reputation management has evolved from a luxury to an absolute necessity. This article delves deep into the critical role that reputation management plays in determining a brand’s success. We’ll explore how effectively managing public perception can significantly impact your brand’s credibility, consumer trust, and financial outcomes.
Understanding Reputation Management
Reputation management is the strategic approach to shaping the public’s perception of your brand by influencing the information available about it online. In today’s digital landscape, where consumers heavily rely on online reviews and social media feedback, the importance of reputation management cannot be overstated. A well-managed reputation not only fosters consumer trust but also encourages positive word-of-mouth marketing, which can be a powerful driver for brand success in today’s competitive market.
It’s essential to differentiate between brand image and brand reputation. While brand image is the way a brand presents itself to the world, brand reputation relates to brand reception and is how the world perceives the brand based on their experiences and the information available. Both are important, but reputation is built over time and is less controllable, making it even more crucial to manage effectively.
The Digital Landscape and Reputation Management
The advent of the internet and social media platforms has significantly amplified the need for effective reputation management. Information, both positive and negative, spreads like wildfire. A single tweet or a Facebook post can go viral, causing irreparable damage to a brand’s reputation. In such a volatile environment, brands must be vigilant and proactive in managing their online reputation to mitigate potential risks.
The Connection Between Customer Experience and Reputation
Customer experience is intrinsically linked to reputation management. A positive customer experience can significantly bolster your brand’s reputation. Reviews and feedback are instrumental in shaping public perception. According to various studies, 93% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchase decisions, and 84% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family.
Ignoring or failing to address negative reviews can have severe consequences. A single negative review can drive away approximately 22% of customers, while three negative reviews can deter 59% of potential customers. Therefore, monitoring and addressing negative reviews and feedback should be a cornerstone of your reputation management strategy.
Key Strategies for Effective Reputation Management
Managing your brand’s reputation is an ongoing effort that requires a well-rounded approach. In this section, we’ll outline key strategies that can help you effectively shape public perception, from monitoring online mentions to handling customer feedback.
Proactive Monitoring
One of the first steps in effective reputation management is proactive monitoring. Utilize tools and techniques like predictive analytics to keep an eye on brand mentions, reviews, and social media conversations. Social listening tools can provide real-time alerts for brand mentions, allowing you to address issues before they escalate.
Swift Response and Redressal
Time is of the essence when it comes to addressing customer concerns and complaints. About 53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week. Having a well-defined process for handling criticism can not only mitigate damage but also turn detractors into promoters. Read more on the importance of addressing concerns and closing the feedback loop here.
Transparency and Authenticity
In today’s world, consumers value transparency and authenticity. Being upfront about your business practices, and admitting when you’re wrong, can go a long way in building a strong reputation. Authenticity should not just be a buzzword but a core value that informs all your interactions with customers.
Content Creation and Management
Content is a powerful tool in shaping public perception. High-quality, relevant content not only provides value but also positions your brand as an industry leader. Regularly update your blog, social media channels, and other platforms with content that aligns with your brand values and speaks to your audience’s needs and concerns.
Employee Advocacy
Employees often serve as the first touchpoint between your brand and the public, making them crucial players in managing your reputation. To leverage this, businesses should invest in creating a positive work environment for their staff and providing a great employee experience. Training programs can be enhanced with guidelines on managing customer interactions, both online and offline. By encouraging employees to share good news and positive experiences about the company on social media, you can turn them into effective brand ambassadors.
Regular Reputation Audits
Conducting regular reputation audits can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your reputation management strategies. Use analytics tools to track key performance indicators like customer satisfaction scores, online review ratings, and social media engagement levels. This data can help you fine-tune your approach and identify areas for improvement.
Common Pitfalls in Reputation Management and How to Avoid Them
Even the best brands can make mistakes in reputation management. Some common pitfalls include not responding to negative reviews, being defensive, or providing generic responses. Avoid these mistakes by training your customer service team in empathetic communication and problem-solving. Always strive for a personalized approach to show customers that you value their feedback and are committed to improving.
In conclusion, the importance of reputation management in today’s digital age cannot be overstated. A well-managed reputation can be your brand’s most valuable asset, driving customer loyalty and long-term success. By implementing effective strategies for monitoring, response, transparency, content management, and employee advocacy, you can not only protect but also enhance your brand’s reputation. As we’ve seen, the link between public perception and brand success is undeniable. Therefore, prioritizing reputation management is not just a good business practice; it’s a critical requirement for long-term success.
Ready to improve your brand’s reputation? Watch our webinar to learn practical tips that can make a real difference.
In today’s cut-throat market, differentiating your brand is more important than ever. What better way to outsmart your competitors than to understand them intimately? Competitive analysis offers you this lens. This article will walk you through how to conduct an effective competitive analysis, interpret the results, and turn those insights into actionable strategies.
Understanding the Basics of Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis involves systematically evaluating your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses relative to your own business. Why is this important? Whether you’re a startup or a market leader, understanding your competitors helps you make informed decisions, from product development to marketing strategies.
Preparing for a Comprehensive Competitive Analysis
Before diving in, define clear objectives for your analysis. What do you want to discover? Next, identify your primary competitors. They could be businesses offering similar products or targeting similar audiences. Collect preliminary data on these competitors to provide a basis for more in-depth analysis.
Key Components of an Effective Competitive Analysis
Product Analysis:
Compare product features, advantages, and disadvantages among competitors. This will help you understand what makes your product unique and identify areas for improvement.
Market Position and Brand Analysis:
How do consumers perceive your competitors? Evaluate their branding strategies and messages to identify their market positioning. Is it consistent with their target demographics?
Sales and Marketing Strategy Analysis:
Break down competitors’ sales funnels and marketing campaigns. What channels are they utilizing? Who is their target audience? This information can inform your own strategies.
Operational and Financial Analysis:
Look into operational efficiencies, production costs, and pricing structures of competitors. This financial foresight is vital for strategic planning.
Tools and Techniques for Competitive Analysis
In today’s fast-paced, technology-rich environment, competitive analysis has undergone a transformation. Gone are the days when spreadsheets and casual market observations sufficed. With an abundance of specialized tools at your disposal, competitive analysis has entered a new era—one deeply anchored in data-driven methodologies.
The Importance of CRM Databases in Competitive Analysis
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) databases are essential tools for storing and tracking customer information, interactions, and sales history. When used in competitive analysis, these databases can help you understand how your competitors are succeeding in areas like customer retention and loyalty programs.
The Role of Data Analytics in Competitive Analysis
Data analytics tools are crucial for turning raw data into actionable insights. These tools help you transition from merely collecting data to intelligently analyzing it. Data analytics can help you identify weaknesses in your strategy, spot emerging market trends, and even model potential future scenarios.
Interpreting the Results of a Competitive Analysis
Data collection is an important first step, but the crucial part is analyzing that data to make informed decisions. While having the right tools can provide you with valuable information about the competition, the ability to interpret this data effectively is what sets successful businesses apart from the rest.
Identifying Market Gaps
Identifying gaps in the market is not just about finding areas where no products or services exist; it’s about recognizing opportunities that meet unmet consumer needs. These could be features that no current products offer, service needs that are not adequately addressed, or new ways to engage customers. These are areas where you have the opportunity to differentiate your business and gain a competitive advantage.
Capitalizing on Competitor Weaknesses
Studying your competitors’ strategies through competitor analysis will expose their strengths, but more importantly, their weaknesses. These are not just points for consideration; they are potential goldmines for strategic advantage. For example, if you find that a competitor has high customer churn rates due to poor customer service, this isn’t just a point to mull over—it’s an actionable insight. Could your company fill this void with exceptional customer service and thereby win over disenchanted consumers? In the world of business, one company’s weakness could become your stepping stone to market leadership.
Turning Competitor Insights into Action
The ultimate goal is to take action based on your analyses and data collection. After you’ve gathered and interpreted all the necessary information, the next step is to implement real-world strategies. This is the stage where your planning and insights become tangible actions that impact your business.
Strategic Adaptation: Make Informed Changes
The key to this phase is making informed adjustments to your business plans based on the data you’ve gathered. Use the insights from your analysis to identify what’s working well in your operations. Focus on these strong points, whether they are product features, service quality, or brand image, to differentiate yourself from competitors.
Addressing Weaknesses: Improve and Balance
The next step is to identify and improve areas where your business is lacking. For example, if your marketing campaigns are not delivering the expected return on investment, or if your customer service is inefficient, these are issues that need to be addressed. By reallocating resources like staff, time, or budget, you can turn these weaknesses into new strengths.
The Tactical Play: Make Data-Driven Decisions
Your strategies can take many forms, such as updating your product line or adjusting your marketing budget. The important thing is that these changes should be based on solid data and careful analysis. Each decision you make should be considered a smart, data-driven choice that contributes to your overall business goals.
The Importance of Customer Experience in Competitive Analysis
Customer experience is a critical factor for gaining a competitive edge. It’s more than just a metric; it’s central to your business’s success. Understanding and improving the customer experience can give you a significant advantage over your competitors.
Customer Feedback: A Valuable Source of Information
First, let’s discuss customer feedback. These aren’t just comments or ratings; they offer valuable insights into your business. Customer feedback can help you understand areas that may not be visible through analytics alone. This information can be used to improve your SWOT analysis, refine your market segmentation, and provide real-world examples for your strategy planning.
Enhancing the Customer Experience: A Key Differentiator
To create a memorable customer experience, focus on exceeding customer expectations at every interaction point. This is how you turn regular customers into loyal advocates for your brand. To do this effectively, identify what’s lacking in your competitor’s customer journey and aim to not only fill that gap but to excel in those areas.
The Added Value: A Unique Competitive Advantage
So, how does customer experience relate to competitive advantage? When two businesses offer similar quality and services, exceptional customer experience can set you apart. By incorporating customer experience into your competitive analysis, you gain an additional layer of valuable data, giving you an edge over your competitors.
Conclusion
An effective competitive analysis isn’t a one-off task but a continuous process. As the market landscape evolves, so should your strategies. This deep dive aims to equip you with the analytical tools you need to maintain a competitive edge.
Keen to stay competitive?
Learn how Pearl-Plaza can provide you with the tools and expertise you need to provide a customer experience better than the competition.
This year’s edition of the XI Forum Europe is making a triumphant return, promising an even more exceptional experience. We’d love for you to join us in London on the 4th & 5th October. This year’s event is jam-packed with hands-on demonstrations, workshops, and interactive opportunities to help you extract tangible value from our speakers, as well as gain applicable knowledge for your experience programme.
Here are five reasons why you should save your spot today:
Reason #1: Embrace ‘Integrated CX’ for Your Brand
Ever heard of integrated CX? It’s not just the central theme of our upcoming XI Forum in London, but also the driving philosophy at Pearl-Plaza. We’re all about assisting businesses in translating their customer experience initiatives into tangible, measurable business outcomes.
Integrated CX connects critical aspects of a successful customer experience, including:
Integrated Signals: Weaving together customer voices and potential customers’ perspectives throughout the entire customer journey, including surveys, chats, reviews, calls, and more.
Integrated Insights: Delivering both leading innovative technology and strategic expertise to deliver ROI.
Integrated Actions: The ultimate goal is to eliminate any and all silos that exist in many companies, facilitating a coordinated, data-driven approach to prioritising which action will get your business the best results.
Explore the transformative potential of integrated signals, insights, and actions for your experience programme.
Reason #2: Learn From Award-Winning Speakers
The 2023 speaker line up has been announced and the content is more practical than ever. Joining us on stage, we have CX Leaders from a variety of brands including, Metro Bank, Foot Locker, Quilter, Vue Cinema and MediaMarktSaturn to name a few! As well as leading CX experts from Pearl-Plaza, NPSx by Bain & Company and Forrester!
Joining us means tapping into a wealth of expertise and insights that you simply can’t afford to miss. Get ready to gain invaluable knowledge, gain fresh perspectives, and stay ahead of the curve. Your chance to learn from the best is here – seize it!
Reason #3: Network With Your Peers
Engage with over 200 seasoned CX professionals representing the foremost brands in the region. That’s right—there will be plenty of opportunities to meet new people and create new connections throughout the two days and learn from their unique experiences. Hear what our delegates had to say about last years’ event!
Reason #4: The Conference is More Practical Than Ever
The event has been crafted to provide you with an insider’s perspective on a selection of EMEA’s most successful experience programmes. You’ll glean insights from experts that can be directly integrated into your own programme right from the outset. Unveiling previously undisclosed CX resources, client stories, frameworks, and methodologies, this conference will offer delegates a unique opportunity to explore these valuable insights.
Reason #5: Hear from our Exclusive Partner, NPSx by Bain & Company!
Our exclusive partner, NPSx℠ by Bain & Company, will host a workshop on day one of the XI Forum focused on why data is the key to building a successful business case for customer experience improvements; and a thrilling keynote presentation on day two, featuring Stanford Swinton presenting the battlegrounds of customer experience in 2024.
NPSx℠ brings together the best of Bain’s customer-first thinking and world class technologies, packaged in a simple and accessible way, for leaders around the world.
Choosing the right partner for your CX program is essential for creating a memorable customer experience and increasing customer loyalty. 73% of customers say that a good customer experience is one of the biggest deciding factors for brand loyalty.
It’s clear that creating memorable experiences can not be overlooked, which means choosing a partner for your CX program is one of the most important decisions you will make for your business.
Pearl-Plaza recently held a webinar featuring Forrester, an independent, research and advisory firm. Pearl-Plaza’s Principal CX Strategist Jim Katzman and guest speaker from Forrester, Senior Analyst Colleen Fazio discuss decision-making in regards to CX program initiatives, finding the right program size, proving ROI in your CX program, and more. Let’s dive into what we covered on our webinar.
Setting Up Your CX Program for Success
Whether you are a small startup or a large corporation, defining the right size for your CX program is the first step towards success. The scale of your CX program should align with your organization’s resources, goals, and customer base. If your program is too small, it may not move the needle at all. Conversely, an overly ambitious program can overwhelm your team and drain its resources.
The team designing your CX program plays a pivotal role here, as crafting a strategy that is neither too ambitious to execute nor too modest to make an impact. At Pearl-Plaza, we share a framework for success with our clients which we call the Continuous Improvement Framework. This framework consists of five steps, the first of which is design. When designing a CX program, we guide our clients to “design with the end in mind.”
It is necessary for you to set clear, measurable objectives from the outset, which can guide the design and implementation phases of your CX program and provide a clear way for evaluating success. The team designing your CX program should work closely with other departments, such as marketing and operations, to ensure that the CX teams in an organization are aligned and do not operate siloed from one another.
Proving the ROI of Your CX Program
In an era marked by economic challenges, it is important that you embark in designing, actioning, and proving an ROI focused experience program. In today’s competitive and financially constrained environment, organizations are under more pressure than ever to justify their investments in customer experience.
You need to develop a well-defined and quantifiable approach to measuring the ROI of CX initiatives, which is essential for securing ongoing support and funding from senior leadership.
But as any CX professional knows, tracking the performance of your CX program is only half the battle. It is important to vocalize and share the wins your business has achieved through your CX program. Pearl-Plaza believes that sharing your wins, whether that is increased sales, increased customer acquisition, or increased net promoter score, is the last step in how you prove the ROI of customer experience in your organization.
How to Find the Perfect Partner for your CX Program by Asking the Right Questions
At this point, you should have the skeleton of your CX program built because you have already determined its size, and Pearl-Plaza doesn’t think you need a huge team to be successful. Checkout how you can craft a max-impact CX strategy for a small CX team.
You should have also determined the metrics you are going to measure to track success and measure the ROI of your CX program.
Now, before choosing a partner for your CX program, there are questions that you need to ask yourself. It’s easy to get carried away here, so at Pearl-Plaza we’ve narrowed it down to five questions that you can’t miss.
1. What are you trying to achieve with this partnership?
Before selecting any vendor or partner, you need to know what you are trying to get out of it. As we talked about earlier, you need to have a definition of success, and clarity on your objectives.
You also need to think about what you want a vendor to help you with in regards to your CX program. Are you looking for a self-serve solution or a full-service solution? Not sure? Then, you should start by taking our quiz that will help you do just that! Take our self-serve vs. full-service CX quiz here!
2. What are your non-negotiables for your CX Program?
Defining your non-negotiables upfront is crucial in selecting a CX partner that aligns with your business values and priorities. These could include factors like data security standards, cultural alignment, or specific service offerings that are indispensable for your organization. By identifying these essentials, you ensure that your partnership is built on a solid foundation, minimizing potential conflicts down the line.
3. How will this partnership support our strategic objectives?
Choosing a CX partner isn’t just about finding a solution; it’s about finding a strategic collaborator. Understanding how the potential vendor’s capabilities align with your broader business goals ensures that the partnership contributes to your overall growth strategy. A vendor that complements your strategic objectives can bring fresh insights and innovation, enhancing your CX program’s impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
4. What is your budget, and how does this vendor align with it?
Budget considerations play a pivotal role in vendor selection. Before committing to a partnership, it’s essential to have a clear picture of your budget and how the vendor’s pricing structure fits within it.
While cost is a significant factor, it’s equally important to assess the value the CX partner provides relative to the investment. This ensures that you make an informed decision that balances financial feasibility with long-term gains.
5. What are the potential risks of a CX partner, and how can they be mitigated?
No partnership is without risks, and understanding potential pitfalls is a crucial step in vendor selection. Identifying risks, whether they pertain to data privacy, service disruptions, or misalignment with your organization’s values, allows you to put mitigation strategies in place. By addressing these concerns proactively, you can safeguard your CX program and establish contingency plans that ensure business continuity even in challenging situations.
By encouraging a thoughtful and rigorous questioning process, organizations can avoid common pitfalls and establish partnerships that are both fruitful and sustainable in the long term.
Pearl-Plaza CX Program Success Stories
Companies like Foot Locker and alphabroder are two companies that have chosen Pearl-Plaza as their CX program partner and have improved their metrics by focusing on the customer experience and employee experience. They have managed to align their CX strategies closely with their business goals, providing a roadmap for other organizations aiming for similar success.
When crafting a CX strategy for your own organization, remember to look at what industry leaders are doing to see if any of their strategies can be adapted for your own organization. Remember, the most successful companies are those that are willing to regularly reassess their strategies, learn from their experiences, and make data-driven adjustments as needed.
In Moment’s take on Finding CX Program Success in the Future
Crafting a successful CX program demands a thoughtful, strategic approach rooted in the unique needs and goals of an organization. It’s crucial to establish clear objectives, aligning CX initiatives with broader business goals that drive tangible value.
The right CX platform should empower teams with immediate, actionable insights. Maintaining momentum in a CX program requires ongoing governance, regular reassessments, and a willingness to adapt as the business landscape evolves. It’s about building a culture that puts the customer at the heart of every decision, every process, and every interaction.
One size doesn’t fit all, but knowing essential NPS best practices that can fit any program is a great place to start. In our latest report, State of Customer Experience: 2023 UK Consumer Study in partnership with NPSx by Bain & Company, we uncovered the differences between industries and brands and how each brand represents certain values. We learnt that there are multiple approaches to achieving success and that the true differentiators between leading and lagging companies are culture, capability, and execution.
In this blog, we have listed NPS best practices that will help you shape the course of your organisation into becoming a leader in customer satisfaction.
NPS Best Practices Tip #1: Listen To Your Customers
Understanding your customers is paramount in shaping your business strategy. While reports and data can offer valuable insights, the most authentic and relevant information comes directly from your customers. The strength of your organisation’s capability to listen, understand, and act upon customer feedback is crucial. By engaging with those who use your products or services, you gain unparalleled access to the truth about your brand’s perception and the experience you deliver.
Start by delving deep into your customers’ perspectives, their pain points, and their expectations. This knowledge will empower you to craft a customer experience (CX) approach tailored to your unique circumstances. Remember, customer feedback is a goldmine of actionable data that can steer your business towards delivering exceptional experiences and fostering lasting customer loyalty.
NPS Best Practices Tip #2: Build a Customer-Centric Culture
A customer-focused culture is essential, where processes align with customer-centricity, making it a systematic approach rather than mere aspiration. It requires alignment of processes and actions that prioritise customer satisfaction at every level; from the leadership team to front-line employees, everyone must understand their role in delivering for customers and comprehend the significant impact it has on the success of the business.
It is imperative that everyone across the organisation understands their role in delivering for customers and why crucially it makes great business sense. Companies that prioritise their customers and build a culture around their needs, tend to thrive and outperform their competitors and grow ahead of the market.
NPS Best Practices Tip #3: How You Execute is Key To Your Success
Effective execution determines success. Even if you have established listening posts and a customer-focused culture, poor execution will hinder your progress. The true value lies in taking decisive action based on the insights gathered from customers. Turning knowledge into action is the driving force behind real progress.
By actively listening, learning, and implementing changes based on customer feedback, customer-focused companies create a framework for continuous improvement. While knowledge is valuable, taking action based on customer insights is what drives progress. Simply knowing everything without implementing changes will hinder your advancement. Continuously evolving and adapting based on customer insights propels these businesses towards sustained success.
NPS Best Practices Tip #4: Listen Outside of Your Industry
Often, brands focus solely on their own industry, and while it’s natural to focus on your own industry for inspiration and benchmarking, looking beyond those boundaries can yield valuable insights and a competitive edge.
Analysing similar structures in different industries can provide valuable insights that may not be apparent when only examining your own category’s performance. For instance, in this study, we observed that the automotive industry can learn valuable lessons from other industries, such as energy. Even in relatively narrow categories like insurance, there are opportunities to gain inspiration and insights from unexpected sources. Embracing ideas from different industries can lead to groundbreaking strategies and a forward-thinking mindset.
NPS Best Practices Tip #5: Don’t Ignore Low NPS Drivers
It is interesting to note that sustainability ranked relatively low in terms of importance. However, upon closer examination, some leading brands do have robust sustainability charters and consider environmental impact in their operations. While it may not be a major driver, there is a subtle undercurrent of customers caring about how companies treat their employees (which manifests itself in the employee experience) and the origins of their products.
As customers become more conscious of corporate social responsibility, the significance of these factors may grow over time. By acknowledging and addressing low NPS drivers, businesses can stay ahead of evolving customer expectations and position themselves as responsible industry leaders.
If you are unsure whether your existing CX technology vendor can help you achieve these goals, we would be happy to talk to you about how we can assist you. Pearl-Plaza’s award-winning AI-based experience improvement technology and decades of industry expertise combined with NPSx market-leading training certification and communities for CX practitioners, and CX Roadmap & Assessments help organisations align and prioritise their CX investments, create customer-centric cultures and give clients a comprehensive set of solutions to support customer loyalty and business growth.
Take the initiative today and book your meeting to start your journey towards improved NPS and a remarkable customer experience. We look forward to discussing how we can support your growth and success.
In the modern consumer-led environment, the customer experience is of paramount importance. Whether you’re offering omnichannel contact center solutions like we do at RingCentral or work in online retail, you must go the extra mile to ensure that your customers enjoy the best possible client experience. Because if you don’t improve customer experience, you can rest assured that your competitors will.
Where once the emphasis might have been on clever publicity schemes or B2B affiliate marketing, now businesses recognize that these methods – though they remain hugely important and valuable—need to be complemented by a laser-like focus on customer experience. Without that focus, you’ll find that consumers explore other options, and take their business where they feel it’s more valued.
Delivering exceptional customer experiences requires a wholehearted commitment across your company. That’s from the most senior management at the top, to the staff dealing directly with customers on the shop floor (or in the call center). It also requires a willingness to ask awkward questions about your own business, and a preparedness to confront – and address – any failings you might identify.
To improve customer experience and make your client encounters the best they can possibly be, you need to ensure that each interaction a consumer has with your business is smooth, consistent, and straightforward. You must also attend to their needs and concerns. Whether you’re showing customers how to record a webinar or helping them find the right furniture for their home, the same fundamental principles apply.
With all this in mind, then, it should be apparent that customer experience is vitally important to scaling a business. But what particular customer experience competencies can boost your business’s growth? This is what we’ll discuss in this guide, but first, we’ll look in more detail at exactly why the customer experience is of such overwhelming importance.
Furthermore, it is important to note that these expectations have changed quite dramatically in a relatively short period of time. The sheer choice available online has made it easier for consumers to shop around and explore alternative options. It’s no longer a matter of competing with businesses in your local vicinity, as there is (almost literally) a world of options out there for people to choose from.
Offering an exceptional customer experience, then, can have all sorts of welcome consequences. As we’ve discussed, it’s essential to ensuring long-term customer loyalty, thereby putting your whole business on a firmer footing. In addition, it also encourages positive word of mouth. Customers promoting your business to their friends and colleagues, and thereby (hopefully) bringing more custom your way.
The most important thing to remember with regard to customer experience is that the power these days lies with the consumer. No longer is it possible to pull the wool over their eyes with sub-standard products and services. The bar has been substantially raised, and this is the reality you must adapt yourself to.
Understanding Customer Expectations
Understanding customer expectations is crucial for businesses seeking to improve customer experience. It begins with identifying customer needs and desires, diving deep into what truly matters to them. By actively listening and gathering feedback, businesses can uncover valuable insights to tailor their products and services accordingly. Recognizing key touchpoints, such as initial contact, purchase, and post-sales support, allows businesses to focus their efforts and resources where it matters most. Mapping the customer journey provides a holistic view of the entire customer experience, enabling businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. By thoroughly understanding customer expectations, businesses can deliver personalized and exceptional experiences that leave a lasting positive impression.
So, now that we’ve clarified just why customer experience is so vital, we need to discuss the competencies that can transform your business for the better and send its growth soaring into the stratosphere, as well as creating a healthier business environment for everybody involved.
Here are five customer experience competencies which you must be continually focused upon:
1) Prioritize the Customer
It might seem like an obvious point to make, but to deliver the best possible customer experience, you need to genuinely prioritize the needs of the customer. This is of the utmost importance whether you’re promoting a video hosting platform or trying to tempt people to try a new restaurant.
The exact experiences that people expect differ from sector to sector, of course, but prioritizing the customer must remain constant across the board.
Customers need to feel that they are the focus of your attention at all times. They need to feel valued at all times. This needs to involve more than just rhetoric or platitudes. Your plan to improve customer experience must be backed with a plan for action, including the resources necessary to back it up. Set clear metrics and use hard data to measure customer experience management.
2) Be Prepared to Engage
Another point that needs to be kept in mind is that customer engagement is an integral part of delivering exceptional experiences. Consumers these days love to give their opinions, and most of the time they don’t require much prompting to do so. This is something your business has to be properly prepared for. Customer engagement, therefore, needs to be a leading priority for your business.
It’s best to take the initiative yourself. Be proactive in your efforts to seek customers’ opinions, and provide your own outlets where clients can offer them. Of course, people will use social media too, so be alert to any discussion of your business there. Also, when customers provide feedback, listen to it. They may highlight issues of which you were previously unaware, and it’s always frustrating for customers to feel their views aren’t taken seriously.
3) Demonstrate Firm and Open Leadership
Much is often made of the importance of purposeful and strong leadership in business, and there’s little doubt that this can make a huge difference. The value of entrepreneurialism has been proven over many years, from the largest multinational corporations to the smallest mom-and-pop retail outlets. But when it comes to customer experience, business leaders themselves must be prepared to be led by customers.
Business leadership must, therefore, accept the necessity of customer-centric growth. This involves heeding the views of consumers and maintaining an intimate understanding of exactly what they’re looking for. This doesn’t mean following the whims of customers blindly, however. It’s a question of distinguishing the good ideas, ones that can genuinely advance your business, from the fly-by-night suggestions.
4) Get Employee Buy-in
Following on from the previous point, leadership isn’t about dictating from on high and then leaving everybody else to make sense of the latest diktat. If we’re working to improve customer experience, we need to make sure that an ethos of prioritizing the consumer’s needs saturates the whole business. This means that the entire team, from top to bottom, needs to buy into the idea.
Employees must be provided with the resources, tools, and training they need to provide customers with outstanding experiences. They could be helping a customer find the perfect holiday gift or undertaking a Google Analytics health check for a client. Either way, they need to be supported and encouraged in their efforts to enhance customer experiences.
5) Build Strong Brand Values
We’ve touched upon the importance of having a clear and compelling ethos. This also needs to inform the general values of your brand. You have to remember that customers will hold you accountable if your business, its products, and services don’t live up to the various values you espouse. Whether it be a commitment to attentive customer service, unbeatable value for money, or simply a pledge of consistent quality in all areas.
Also, it’s crucial that your values aren’t just hot air. They have to relate in a concrete way to what your business is doing. Your team must understand how the work they do ties into the broader values your business has articulated. It’s not enough to reel off some superficial platitudes and then try to present these as a mission statement. They have to actually mean something, and what’s more, they have to be seen to mean something by customers.
6) Designing Intuitive User Interfaces
Designing intuitive user interfaces is essential for creating a seamless and satisfying digital customer experience. One key aspect is simplifying website navigation, ensuring that users can effortlessly find the information or products they are looking for. By organizing content in a logical and user-friendly manner, businesses can reduce frustration and improve engagement, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Optimizing mobile responsiveness is another crucial element in today’s mobile-centric world. With more users accessing websites through smartphones and tablets, it is imperative to provide a seamless and enjoyable mobile experience. Responsive design ensures that websites adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions, allowing users to easily navigate and interact with the content. By prioritizing mobile responsiveness, businesses can cater to the needs and preferences of their mobile users, enhancing their overall satisfaction.
Streamlining the checkout and conversion processes is vital for minimizing cart abandonment and maximizing conversions. Long and complex checkout procedures often deter users from completing their purchase. By simplifying the steps, minimizing form fields, and offering convenient payment options, businesses can create a frictionless experience that encourages users to convert. Streamlining the conversion process not only improves the user experience but also increases the likelihood of repeat purchases and fosters customer loyalty.
Measuring and Analyzing Customer Experience
Measuring and analyzing customer experience is vital for businesses to understand and enhance their interactions with customers. Key metrics serve as valuable indicators of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) provide quantitative insights into the overall customer experience. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback through surveys, reviews, and social media monitoring allows businesses to gain qualitative insights into customer perceptions and identify areas for improvement. By actively listening to customers, businesses can address their pain points and meet their expectations more effectively. Additionally, utilizing customer journey analytics provides a holistic view of the customer’s end-to-end experience across multiple touchpoints. This helps businesses identify moments of friction or delight along the customer journey, enabling them to optimize each stage and enhance the overall experience. By measuring and analyzing customer experience, businesses can make data-driven decisions, implement targeted improvements, and ultimately deliver a more personalized and satisfying experience that fosters customer loyalty and drives business growth.
Conclusion
It’s very easy to tell customers how important they are and how concerned you are to ensure their happiness. There’s scarcely a business in the world that doesn’t tell its customers how important they are, and how valued their opinions are, and so on. But far fewer businesses actually uphold standards like these. The crucial test for your business is to prove to customers that their welfare and satisfaction is your number one concern.
That said, if you can prove your sincerity, then improving the customer experience is the natural result. After all, when clients know that you are on their side, then they’re likely to be much more willing to work with you to optimize all aspects of your business.
In this guide, we’ve listed some of the core competencies which your business will need if it is to make these commitments into an everyday reality. Of course, the exact steps your business has to take to improve customer experience will vary according to a number of factors. They include the resources at its disposal, what competitors are offering, the sector it’s competing in, and so on.
You should also remember that your focus will inevitably change as your business prospers and expands. Nevertheless, you must redouble your efforts to ensure that your customers remain at the heart of what you do, and that you don’t lose sight of your original mission and purpose.
John Allen is Director, Global SEO at RingCentral, a global UCaaS, VoIP, and cti software provider. He has over 14 years of experience and an extensive background in building and optimizing digital marketing programs. RingCentral is a Wootric customer.
Pearl-Plaza® assists alphabroder in improving the employee experience (EX) to ultimately improve customer experiences (CX) by establishing an action-based employee experience improvement program that focuses on communication, development, and acknowledgement.
alphabroder, an industry leader in the promotional products space, provides apparel and additional goods to promotional product distributors, athletic team dealers, and screen printers and employs thousands of associates throughout multiple facilities across North America.
“At alphabroder, we believe taking action on employee feedback demonstrates that the voice of the employee is valued, heard, and respected”, said Maria Koppy, VP of Organizational Development, alphabroder. “Above all, the greatest impact to our culture is the attitude of amazing associates, operating from a state of integrity while keeping both customers and coworkers top of mind in everything we do.”
The annual employee survey and engagement program is reaping many benefits for alphabroder. They have seen an increased employee satisfaction score by nearly 10% year-over-year, an increased survey completion rate to 86% employee survey completion, and after implementation of the program and feedback follow-up and action, 70% of those surveyed feel the company is providing good to very good corporate communications
Pearl-Plaza and alphabroder previously partnered on their customer NPS program and continued their goal of improving experiences with an employee engagement program targeted towards associates leveraging the Pearl-Plaza XI Platform and expert support team.
The approach of soliciting feedback at every level of the organization has yielded more valuable employee insights and actionable information than before. The employee responses and recommendations are in turn immediately shared with transparency companywide. The executive team and managers use the data to help them prioritize employee-based initiatives, create department-specific goals, and support short-and long-term business decisions that benefit both employees and customers.
Find out more about alphabroder’s employee engagement journey and how their approach is aligned with their strategic priorities of cultivating positive employee experience and customer experience by enhancing employee communication, development, and acknowledgement.
When it comes to starting a customer experience (CX) program, the right vendor (and solution) can make all the difference. Choosing the right vendor for your CX program can be a critical decision, as it can have a significant impact on the outcome of your program. The right vendor will not only provide the necessary tools and technology, but also bring valuable expertise and experience to the table. They can help you identify your business’s specific CX needs, develop a tailored plan, and implement it successfully.
With the right vendor, you can ensure that your CX program delivers the desired results and improves your customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. When it comes to what type of CX solution you want to implement, there are two options to choose from: a full-service program or a self-service program.
What Is a Full Service CX Solution?
A full-service CX solution refers to a CX partnership where the company that provides the platform manages all aspects of the technology (programming, analysis, change management, etc.)
This brand/CX vendor relationship is services driven, and a brand that purchases this type of solution can expect to have a dedicated team of experienced CX and technology experts to check in with regularly (sometimes as often as every week with additional calls if needed) to help the brand with every aspect of their CX program. A full-service CX vendor will help your team define strategy, implement the technology, train team members, craft surveys, import other customer data, design reporting dashboards, and beyond.
What Is a Self-Service CX Solution?
A self-service CX vendor refers to a situation in which a person or persons within the purchasing organization are responsible for all aspects of the ongoing technology usage.
A brand purchasing a self-service CX solution can expect to have full control and autonomy in their CX initiatives. There is often a dedicated implementation team, but post implementation, there is more likely to be a helpline or contact the brand can reach out to in case of an error or if they’re in need of help.
Of course, there is a gray area between the two categories. A CX vendor that emphasizes true partnership will emphasize that customer experience is not one size fits all, and will therefore offer a blend of self-service and support-driven options to fit your needs. For example, a vendor may offer DIY survey tools alongside strategic insight sessions.
Self-Service v. Full Service: How to Determine Which Is Right for You
A full-service program can be a great choice if you’re short on resources or if you want to outsource CX management to an expert team. With a full-service program, you’ll be able to fill in any gaps in resources or skill sets with the considerable expertise your full-service CX vendor has on staff. Your dedicated team will be infinitely familiar with your business, goals, and program.
A full-service CX solution will also help you to drive more long-term strategy for your program. Check-ins will help you to stay accountable to goals, and your vendor will be able to advise you on any challenges, as well as connect you with other CX professionals in your industry.
On the other hand, a self-service program may be a better option if you have the expertise and resources to accomplish your CX goals in-house. With a self-service program, you can make changes to surveys or other initiatives in the middle of the night if you want to.
Additionally, self-service programs can be more cost-effective in the long run, since you won’t be paying for the vendor’s management services.
Take Our Quiz and Get Started
Ultimately, the decision between a self-service and full-service CX program depends on a variety of factors, including the size of your organization, your budget, and your technical expertise.
Click below to take the quiz and find out whether a self-service or full-service CX program is right for your business!
QUIZ
Self-Serve v. Full Service CX Program: How to Determine Which Is Right for You
Looking to choose a CX technology vendor? Here’s the first question you need to ask yourself: are you looking for a self-serve solution or a full-service solution? The answer will determine how much support your team receives, the expertise you have access to, where your team will spend their time, and more! On the fence about what’s right for you? This quiz will help you decide.
Forrester predicts that in the next year, one in five customer experience (CX) programs will disappear, but one in 10 will be stronger than ever. The pressure is on for all CX practitioners—but small CX teams are feeling the heat the most. But just because you have a small team doesn’t mean you can’t make a major impact.
In our over two decades of experience, we’ve worked with many small-but-mighty teams of around one to three people. And though it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you have big obstacles but limited resources, we’re here to tell you success is possible—if you use your time wisely.
That’s why it’s absolutely crucial to focus on CX strategies that help your organization get the most out of your program. What strategies will support CX success for your small team? Keep on reading to find out!
4 Strategies for Success With a Small CX Team
#1: Focus on Quick Wins
Much like baseball, customer experience is a game of singles. You can’t magically tackle every customer issue at once—especially with limited resources. Instead, you need to understand what most negatively impacts a specific customer journey and focus on solving that problem. Then line ‘em up, and knock ‘em down.
For example, let’s say that your call center data shows customers frequently complain about the log in experience for their online account. Then you know you need to dig into the call transcripts and other available unstructured data to understand what about that experience is making such a negative impact on your customers. (Get a step-by-step guide on how to do this here.)
#2: Lock In Your Executive Champion
To get your CX program started, you likely needed an executive sponsor. But in order to have long-term impact, you need to maintain their support.
This may be easier for the 53% of CX practitioners who say their executives want their firm to be a CX leader, but for the other 47% percent, making an exec-friendly business case is everything. Your team will need to craft a compelling story, leverage strong visuals, and prove tangible ROI to really knock it out of the park!
#3: Sell Your Program Internally
With your executive sponsor in place, now it’s time to sell the rest of your organization. Realistically, you won’t be able to get every employee to buy-in—that’s why you need to sell your program to key individuals that can help you to take action and influence other team members.
How? You need to adopt a salesperson approach to your own program. Make it clear to team members in other departments exactly what they can gain from CX insights: optimized processes, access to data that can inform decision making, and wins of their own.
#4: Leverage Your CX Partner
Having a small CX team or even just one CX employee can mean that it’s hard to validate ideas or discuss new ones. In fact, four out of five CX teams will lack critical design, data, and journey skills. And that’s understandable when you have a small team—you can’t be absolutely everything for everyone.
Luckily, you can lean on your CX partner as an extension of your team, especially if your vendor provides you with dedicated services and team members!
Your Next Steps
Now that you understand the four strategies for success, it’s time to make an actionable plan to turn those strategies into a reality.
To get you started, we’ve put together a step-by-step checklist for your team. In it, you’ll find a manageable task list that will help you lay a strong foundation for each of these strategies, and there’s even an advanced checklist to take your success even further.
How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team
Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.
For your small CX team, every second counts. You simply don’t have time to waste with a vendor that doesn’t work for you or understand what makes your business different.
At Pearl-Plaza, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions or set-and-forget programs. Our award-winning technology is built to integrate into your existing tech stack and align to your business goals. And our expert services? Your dedicated team is with you every step of the way. You are always able to reach out to an expert who is intimately familiar with your program—not merely dial a 1-800 help center.
That’s why Pearl-Plaza customers give us 4.9/5.0 Stars and a 100 “Would Recommend” User Rating.
Want to learn how Pearl-Plaza can help you maximize your CX strategy? Let us show you!
In today’s highly competitive business landscape, delivering exceptional customer experience (CX) is essential for any organization to remain relevant and successful. However, many businesses struggle to find success with their CX program because of organizational silos.
What Are Organizational Silos?
The term “organizational silos” refers to the condition in which different teams or departments within a company operate in complete isolation from one another. This isolation hinders overall collaboration and the sharing of information and data, making it almost impossible to execute on a business-wide initiative that requires the buy-in from multiple teams across the organization.
How Do Organizational Silos Impact the Customer Experience?
This challenge likely sounds familiar to CX professionals. After all, a successful CX program needs to be able to collect data across channels and touchpoints, pinpoint friction points wherever they exist, and then take swift action.That simply cannot happen with silos in place, and that’s why organizational silos can have such a significant negative impact on the customer experience—they make it essentially impossible to improve experiences.
Wondering if organizational silos could be at the root of your CX challenges? Today, we’ll explore the symptoms of CX silos within an organization and why breaking them down is crucial for achieving your CX goals. We’ll also provide practical tips and strategies for bridging these silos and fostering a customer-centric culture within your business.
The Symptoms of Organizational Silos
Organizational silos refer to the situation where different teams or departments within a company operate in isolation from one another, hindering collaboration and the sharing of information. This can have a significant impact on the quality of the customer experience delivered by the organization. But how do you know if your company is suffering from silos that are negatively affecting the customer experience? Here are some signs to look out for:
Executive Level:
Lack of Organizational Efficiency
Misaligned Resources
Competing Organizational Objectives
Ineffective Process
CX Specific:
Consumer Data Silos
Limited Insights
Duplicative Efforts
Feedback Disarray
If any of these signs resonate with you, it may be time to take a closer look at the silos within your organization and take steps to break them down. In the next section, we’ll discuss the impact that silos can have on the customer experience and why it’s crucial to address them.
The Negative Impact of Organizational Silos
Silos within an organization can have far-reaching consequences if left unaddressed. The negative impact can be felt across the entire organization, from customers to employees to the bottom line. Here are some potential outcomes of silos:
Customer Churn:
When different departments are not aligned on the customer experience, it can lead to a disjointed experience for the customer. This can result in frustration and dissatisfaction, leading to churn and lost revenue.
Customers may seek out competitors who can provide a more seamless experience.
Employee Turnover:
When teams are working in silos, it can lead to a lack of collaboration and communication, making it difficult for employees to work together effectively. This can result in a negative work environment and a lack of motivation among employees.
Frustrated employees may look for opportunities elsewhere, resulting in high turnover and the loss of valuable talent.
Excessive Costs:
Duplicative efforts and inefficiencies can result in excessive costs, both in terms of time and resources.
Teams may be spending time and money on initiatives that are not aligned with company goals or customer needs. This can have a negative impact on the bottom line, with costs eating into profits.
In order to avoid these negative outcomes, it’s essential to address organizational silos and foster a culture of collaboration and communication.
So, What Is the Prescription for Organizational Silos?
You know the symptoms of organizational silos, and what the negative effects may be. But what are your next steps going to be?
In our over 45 years of experience, we have helped organizations of all sizes break down organizational silos. As a matter of fact, we have developed a 3-step organizational silo treatment plan to help you do just that. Join two of Pearl-Plaza’s brightest minds, VP of Customer Success Will Huffman and Manager of Program Excellence Angela Zieres as they walk you through our 3 step treatment plan that won’t just improve your CX program, but it will also improve your business! Watch it here!
WORKSHEET
Discover Your Customer Experience
A Guided Exercise to Help You Understand the Current State of CX at Your Organization
So, you’ve been charged with leading a company-wide CX initiative. But where do you even start? Likely, customer experience efforts are already being made in different pockets of your organization, but it’s up to you to break down the silos and connect the dots. This worksheet will guide you through an exercise to do just that!
Mary Anne Ghobrial is the director of Australia’s largest customer experience event—The Customer Show. Because she speaks to thousands of client-side professionals and many vendors, she gets an insider view of how the entire industry is structured, giving her a unique perspective on the customer experience market.
Pearl-Plaza’s Simon Benns sat down with her on the recent XI Cafe Podcast to chat with Mary Anne about what you can expect to see at The Customer Show this year, as well as getting Mary Anne’s insider knowledge as to what are the key trends and concerns for CX professionals in APAC. Here’s an overview of their Q&A:
What Is the Customer Show?
The Customer Show launched in 2022, and the premise behind the event is to bring together everyone playing an active—or even a passive—role in the customer journey. The team used to run smaller events for different business units, but they soon realized it would be more valuable to bring together all the silos of the organization—marketing teams, senior leadership teams, data teams, employee experience teams, product teams, and, of course, the customer experience team under one roof.
From a bird’s eye view, there are 2,500 expected attendees for this year, 50 exhibitors, 100 speakers—and Mary Anne organized all of it!
What Is the Purpose Behind the Customer Show?
All brands know that customer experience is important—delighting customers is the name of the game. There are many ways to do that, but the result is to give good experiences to customers. The event is designed for attendees to actually learn how to work collaboratively across the organisation.
Different teams have different goals and incentives. For instance, the marketing team might focus on driving loyalty and retention. CX teams will have more impact if they work with the marketing function’s unique goals and align their priorities to reach the end goal: delivering great customer experiences.
Think of it like building a house. You’ve got individual people building the foundation but you need project managers to take on different parts of the process. As with building plans, your CX program also requires a strategy and multiple people working together collaboratively to execute it. The overarching idea is to ensure all different business parts are working toward the same goal.
What Are Your Views on Customer Experience as a Centralized Versus Decentralized Function?
When customer experience is centralized to one department, it won’t have a strong impact. Ultimately, customer experience should be decentralized so that the strategy can spread to every department.
A company that has decentralized customer experience really well is Medibank. The healthcare business had one of the biggest corporate turnarounds in Australian history, largely due to its commitment to customer centricity. Medicare appointed cross-functional squads that took customer insights (using data to back it up) and then tested which insights would have the biggest impact before deciding which CX initiatives to invest in. The team also implemented a re-measuring step to confirm which initiatives would have the biggest impact, then re-measuring to see if it worked.
What Are Some Tips for Delivering AND Demonstrating Impact?
Forrester predicted that 1 in 5 CX programs would disappear soon—mostly due to a lack of ability to demonstrate impact and prove ROI of their CX projects. That being said, it’s extremely important for CX professionals to learn how to deliver and demonstrate the impact of their programs.
It’s one thing to get the actual insight from your customer data, and it’s another to demonstrate the impact that insight will have.
When it comes to delivering and demonstrating insights, Mary Anne’s tips are:
Align every department to customer experience by aligning your CX priorities to the priorities of each individual business unit
Make sure you use your feedback to understand what customers actually value
Create strategies—or even micro strategies—that can deliver what customers want
Identify one of the four pillars of ROI to start pointing your CX program to: customer acquisition, customer retention, reduction in cost, cross- and up-selling
Understand your business’ “why” before implementing a CX program
Use true driver analysis to see if what you think is important to the customer is actually important
What Is the Best Way to Know Which CX Initiative Will Have the Biggest Impact?
It’s art and science to determine which lever is the easiest to pull. Figure out what will actually be the most important to the customer. For example, when it comes to insurance, fees might be the most important thing to a customer, but that’s not necessarily something you can change from a CX perspective. Instead, maybe look at the call center and see if you can identify another customer issue that could deliver a similar impact.
And when it comes to making changes across the business, you don’t want to take on too much at once. If you do a complete rehaul of multiple aspects, it might shift the brand promise, and cause customer confusion. You want to make incremental changes to actually shift the culture and sustain the program, not lose steam by taking on too much at the front end. At Pearl-Plaza, we recommend a continuous improvement framework to help you keep incrementally evolving your CX program.
How Is Pearl-Plaza Involved in the Upcoming Customer Show?
As the 2023 Customer Show Foundation Partner, Pearl-Plaza will have a representation at the panel “CX is an Outcome, Not a Strategy: Moving Towards an Era of Improvement Management Through Top Level Buy-In” on the NextGen CX Panel at 3PM on Wednesday 3rd. Pearl-Plaza’s Head of Customer Success, John Harb will join the panel to discuss:
How to ensure your customer experience strategy is flexible enough to shift based on changing behaviours
How to understand your customer behaviours and journeys by tracking their trends regularly
The steps involved in integrating experience improvement methodologies across the organisation
The Customer Show is also giving away a $10k holiday prize—go to Pearl-Plaza’s stand and get a stamp for your Customer Show passport, and at 2pm on Day 2, a winner will be chosen.
When and Where Is the 2023 Customer Show?
Date: Wednesday, 3 May 2023 & Thursday, 4 May 2023
Location: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
1 Convention Centre Pl, South Wharf VIC 3000
Where to Listen to the Full Conversation
You can listen to the full conversation with Mary Anne and Simon on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening now!
More of a visual person? No worries. You can also find the video recording on our YouTube channel!
As businesses strive to improve their customer experiences, asking for feedback has become a common practice. However, not all feedback is created equal, and simply collecting feedback for the sake of it may not lead to meaningful insights or improvements.
In a recent appearance on the ReThink Productivity Podcast, Pearl-Plaza’s Vice President of CX Strategy, Simon Fraser, discussed the importance of understanding why you are asking for customer feedback in the first place.
Fraser emphasized the need for businesses to have clear objectives and a strategic approach to collecting and utilizing feedback. He explained that businesses should identify the specific outcomes they hope to achieve through feedback, whether it be to improve customer loyalty, identify areas for operational improvement, or measure the success of a new product or service.
Fraser also stressed the importance of tailoring feedback collection methods to the specific needs of the business and its customers. This could include using various channels such as surveys, social media listening, or customer interviews, as well as considering factors like timing, frequency, and the types of questions being asked.
By taking a more strategic and tailored approach to customer feedback, businesses can gain deeper insights into their customers’ experiences and make more informed decisions to drive business growth and success.
Listen to the full episode to hear ReThink’s Simon Hedaux talk with Simon about:
Asking for customer Feedback?
Chat GPT
Supervised Machine Learning & AI
Tailored Feedback Modeling
Where to Listen to ReThink Productivity’s Episode With Simon Fraser
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening to this week’s episode!
