Thought Leadership

In sports, a team only has to score more points than its competitor to win. While customer experience (CX) is a little more complex than that, it is important to know how your brand stacks up against the competition to understand customer expectations. Benchmarking—the process of evaluating performance by comparison—is a critical tool in creating context for your customer experience initiatives.

Expert Outpost, Pearl-Plaza’s proprietary global consumer insights panel, helps companies outscore the competition with industry-specific insights straight from the mouths of consumers.

The online community, which empowers consumers to help organizations enhance the customer experience, allows individuals to express their unique views about their favorite brands. Thousands of members participate in activities each week (e.g., polls, live discussion forums, video feedback recordings, and surveys), which promote expression, transparency, and truth.

In turn, Expert Outpost allows companies to:

• Know where they rank against competitors.
• Understand performance benchmarks across national and regional brands.
• Identify key behaviors and drivers of their most loyal customers.
• Learn about evolving trends and areas of opportunity in their industry.

Custom Research

Pearl-Plaza clients also have the ability to pose specific questions for the consumer panel community to understand whether or not their products or offerings are making a mark within the industry. This allows for highly customized, highly informative benchmarks, research, and insights that can be used at all levels of the business.

Several brands have successfully leveraged consumer intelligence and experienced significant benefits from using Pearl-Plaza’s Expert Outpost community. Here are just a few real-life examples from some of our global clients:

Industry Trackers and Reports

Whether quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or ad hoc, Pearl-Plaza launches gamification surveys, pulse polls, and more—with industry-wide and client-specific classification questions—that allow the company to understand its competitive edge and key differentiators within the industry.

Integrated View

Pearl-Plaza integrates the client’s internal consumer classification algorithm into the scripting and reporting tool, providing the company with a unique and unbiased read on what types of consumers visit its locations, and their overall experience.

Competitive Comparison

The company uses benchmarks to understand performance across various categories, report opportunities for improvement to its executive teams, and gauge how changes impact customer experience compared to competitors.

Detractor Analysis

A bottom-to-bottom report that gives an overview of detractor data allows the company to determine if staff changes and product enhancements have altered critics’ negative perceptions.

Mobile App Insights

By using pulse polls and live discussions, the company gains valuable feedback about its mobile app, understands its rank against competitors, and pinpoints the digital improvements customers would like to see from brands within the industry.

Understanding Industry-wide Drivers

In 2015, when industry CX scores dropped across the U.S., the company was one of the few brands that remained stable. Expert Outpost enabled the company to identify areas of significant impact before its competitors, and shift operations accordingly.

Enhancing Business Performance

Pearl-Plaza’s Expert Outpost consumer insights panel gives businesses a distinct competitive advantage. It helps companies identify emerging trends, understand differentiators, evaluate marketing efforts, and pinpoint opportunities for improvement so they can stay ahead of their competitors.

Above all, it delivers customer truth—the reasons behind consumer thoughts and behaviors—which brings unmatched value to companies in all industries.
To learn more about Expert Outpost, visit www.expertoutpost.com.

Inspired. Proud. Motivated to be even better. The Pearl-Plaza team is still taking in the full impact of a report recently released by an independent research firm in which we were cited as a Leader, received the highest possible score in 10 criteria for our Current Offering, and achieved the top ranking for Strategy.  

And beyond all of good news for our company and clients, the report also contains some very insightful findings that will help every customer experience (CX) practitioner better understand the landscape they’re working within, as well as the opportunities.

The report is titled The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017. In addition to exploring the similarities and differences between top technology providers, Forrester makes clear the connections between Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs and Customer Feedback Management (CFM) platforms, as well as the role each play in supporting organizations’ CX initiatives.

How “VoC” Relates to “CFM”

According to Forrester, there are four distinct VoC tasks:

• Listen: Directly solicit and gather unsolicited feedback from multiple sources
• Interpret: Analyze feedback, create dashboards and reports; automatically route
• Act: Alert on action, manage cases, prioritize and prescribe
• Monitor: Track change in perception over time; measure results of VoC-initiated activities

CFM platforms play the important role of supporting CX professionals in managing the complexity of their VoC programs by centralizing and automating these tasks.

Untapped Potential

While many companies have at least a rudimentary VoC program in place, few are leveraging technology to its full potential, leaving money—and opportunity—on the table. In the report, Forrester cites the following findings:

• Only 42% of companies use one ore more technology solutions to support their VoC program.
• Brands that buy CFM platform solutions are mostly first-time buyers.
• Although CFM platforms have functionality to serve all VoC tasks, just 19% of companies use a CFM vendor to solicit feedback, and only 5% of all companies use the same CFM provider for the majority of other tasks.

So how can a company that wants to improve its VoC efforts identify the right CFM provider?

“Providers that Matter”

Forrester has done a lot of important work for you in the report, in which analysts takes a very comprehensive look at state of the CFM platform market and providers within it. The first thing they did was conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that met the criteria for further evaluation.

Forrester winnowed the consideration set down to the “10 providers that matter” based on 1) product fit, 2) client success, and 3) Forrester client demand. Analysts then began the months-long process of surveying each vendor on their capabilities and validating capabilities through product demonstrations.

Client references played a large role in Forrester’s process. Analysts conducted three client phone interviews per provider, and fielded a survey among 60 client references.   

The result of these monumental efforts is a comprehensive evaluation of the top CFM vendors, including their strengths and weaknesses.

Partnership is Key

A key takeaway from the report was that not only are organizations looking for great technology, but they also need a true business partner—not just a vendor—to navigate the constantly changing CX landscape:

“The CFM market is growing because more CX professionals want a technology platform that automates and centralizes essential VoC activities. CX pros are also looking for a steady and close relationship with a provider that acts as an extended part of their team and helps evolve their VoC program.”

To read more about CFM and how managing and automating the complexities of your VoC efforts can create high-value relationships with your customers, download the free report.

For over 500 years, scholars and art historians have debated whether or not the woman in the Mona Lisa is smiling. Detailed analysis suggests that from certain angles and distances, the lady appears to be smiling; from others, the smile appears to have vanished—an effect achieved by using a combination of color and shading to create an optical illusion around her mouth.

If only every company analyzed its customers’ feedback—and emotions—with such fervor.

When companies focus on scores alone they fail to understand and bring context to the emotions and inherent richness expressed by their customers. Consider this: If art connoisseurs evaluated paintings the way many CX analysts evaluate results, they would note that the Mona Lisa measures two-and-a-half feet by one-and-three-quarter feet, was painted using oil by Leonardo da Vinci in 1503, and depicts a woman—Lisa Gherardini. There would be no discussion about her smile.

Yet, brands routinely make business decisions based on information not much more nuanced than this. They regularly overlook the emotions—joy, pain, or disgust, to name a few—communicated by customers in “human” data from open-ended comments, social reviews, etc.—hiding behind excuses such as “it’s too difficult to measure.”

With consumers so willing to tell companies how they feel—and why—why do many brands miss the mark so badly when it comes to customer experience?

Pearl-Plaza’s annual CX Trends Report delved into how both consumers and CX practitioners view the role of emotion in customer experiences and brand loyalty. We gave respondents a list of emotions and asked them to select which one they associated most strongly with great customer experiences. The overwhelming response? Satisfied. We also asked customers which emotion they associated with the brands they are loyal to. The answer, yet again, was satisfied.

So let’s get this straight: Can the relatively mild emotion of satisfied (not stronger emotions, like delighted or entertained) not only be used to describe great experiences, but also drive customers toward brand loyalty? Maybe satisfied is good enough—great, even—and customers don’t need to feel anything more to become loyal.

We then asked consumers to describe, in detail, the why behind their emotions—to give us a qualitative view into their stated satisfaction (or whichever emotion they chose). Within this unstructured, human data, we found a layered and infinitely more valuable story. Customers are very happy and feel bonded to brands when their expectations are consistently met. And those expectations are quite basic. Here’s one example from a Danish consumer:  “They had what I was looking for.”

Any CX analysis that ends with the quantitative data is missing important details—the emotional context—as well as the why of a customer’s experience. Only by including the human, unstructured data will analysts surface a much deeper intelligence—because just like the Mona Lisa, there’s so much more meaning than a quantitative description can ever capture.

The relationship between consumers and brands is no longer a mere transfer of goods or services for monetary exchange. Long gone are the days where consumers make a purchase on a whim. Today, they conduct extensive online research and have nearly endless options. They also have more information and more ways to interact with brands than ever before. These factors, combined with cultural shifts, find consumers approaching brand interactions much more like a relationship than a transaction.

This personal connection has created a kind of reciprocity between consumers and brands. And where a healthy back-and-forth exists, trust grows. Pearl-Plaza’s 2017 CX Trends Report revealed the impact this new perspective has on the brand-consumer relationship, including both the real risks and opportunities.

We asked 20,000 consumers and 10,000 CX professional across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to tell us which emotion they associate most strongly with a negative customer experience. The findings showed a major disconnect between what brands believe and what consumers feel.

Consumers Don’t Have Unreasonable Expectations

The top emotions consumers reported feeling when they had a bad experience were “disappointment,” which implies they had an expectation which the brand failed to meet—or in relationship terms, they broke a promise.

In the Age of the Customer, it’s easy to chalk this up to rising, and perhaps even unreasonable expectations, but that’s not the story the unstructured feedback told; just the opposite in fact. A Danish consumer’s comment is representative of what we heard from satisfied consumers across geographies: “They had what I was looking for.”

So because consumers feel like they’re in a relationship with brands, and their expectations are reasonable, when those expectations are not met, strong negative emotions emerge.

The Impact of Anger

What brands do not seem to comprehend is the intensity of these negative emotions. In fact, the study found that consumers were nearly twice as likely as brands to associate anger with negative experiences.

The qualitative data around bad brand experiences was even more definitive. A Finnish consumer reported feeling “rage, disappointment and loathing,” and a consumer from Sweden claimed to have “lost all trust in the brand.”

So how do brands reduce or prevent these kinds of feelings?

Reducing Negative Emotions

When attempting to reduce negative emotions and poor consumer experiences, it is imperative that brands do two things:

1)    Align the brand promise with customer expectations.

2)    Reliably deliver on that promise.

This may sound like an oversimplification, however it’s surprising how many companies still overshoot, or miss the mark completely.

Emotion plays a fundamental role in any relationship, and by understanding the power emotion holds—and taking action to positively influence emotion—brands will create long-lasting, reciprocal relationships with their customers.

More and more, customers view their interactions with brands as relationships rather than just transactions. The foundation of that relationship is the brand promise.

Keeping a brand promise, however, is often where this relationship falls apart.

In the “age of the customers” more brands are striving to surprise and delight the customer—in Valentine’s season terms, this is like a grand, romantic gesture (like sprinkling rose petals). But when these extra touches come at the expense of delivering on a core promise (being on time for your big night out), the brand needs to reevaluate its priorities.

Delivering on the promise is easier than brands might think. According to our recent study, customers don’t necessarily expect rose petals—they simply want brands to keep their promises. Pearl-Plaza found that 38% of customers say as long as they feel the emotion of “satisfaction,” they believe they’ve had a great experience. And 40% of customers say that when they feel satisfied, they stay loyal to a brand.

As in all relationships, the first step is to make sure the partners both agree on what’s been promised. Step two is keeping the promise. One French consumer surveyed for the study summed it up this way: “In order to appreciate a company or brand you need a relationship based on trust between the two parts.”

For brands, consistent keeping of that promise over time, just like in a loving partnership, generates emotions that build long-term trust and happiness with customers. Once you’ve achieved that, then bring on the rose petals.

Earlier this month, Pearl-Plaza released our 2017 CX Trends Report. The objective of this annual exercise is to examine various areas of customer experience (CX) from both consumer and brand perspectives to determine where these groups are aligned, and where there are disconnects.

Last week we held a webinar, during which my colleague James Bolle, who heads up our UK office, and I went into detail surrounding some of the report’s findings. We also talked about what these findings mean for CX practitioners, and how they can put those learnings into action inside of their organizations.

One of the areas we touched on briefly was the opportunity brands have to move beyond reaction — simply giving customers what they say they want — to giving customers what they truly need.

I referred to a personal experience I had with the online furniture brand, Wayfair. I had ordered a new bed for my six-year-old daughter. When it arrived, in pieces and ready to assemble, the box had been damaged. And while the bed itself was unscathed, most of the hardware to assemble the bed was either missing or strewn between the curb and my front door.

I called customer support and was greeted by a friendly and helpful agent. He called me by name, which means Wayfair has put in the effort on the back end to connect customer information and make it available to their front line service team. Good first step. I explained my problem and he immediately agreed to ship the new parts to my home at no charge. And while I was appreciative of his quick and cordial response, he must have heard the frustration I was still feeling in my voice. He followed up in fast order with another fix: In addition to expediting shipment of the new nuts and bolts, he told me that I could also visit my local store, purchase whatever hardware I needed, and submit the receipts for immediate reimbursal.

This may not sound groundbreaking, but it was for me. This agent, and the entire machine Wayfair has created to support him, was prepared to understand not just what I said I wanted (new hardware), but to make possible what I needed — to assemble my daughter’s bed that afternoon so she could sleep in it that night.

There’s a quote attributed to Henry Ford that goes like this: “If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Whether or not Ford actually vocalized this specific sentiment, there’s an important lessons for CX practitioners.

First, listen. In this case, customers wanted faster horses. The next step is to ask why. Why did customers say they wanted faster horses? Because they wanted to get from point A to point B faster. Ford’s response: the automobile. He heard what customers needed, and with a groundbreaking innovation, gave them what they needed. And he solved their problem better than they knew how to imagine.

The CX Trends Report reinforced the need for companies to deliver not simply on their brand promise, but on customer expectations. What I expected from Wayfair was a bed in which my daughter could sleep. But within my expectation was also a time frame. Wayfair had promised my bed would be delivered on a specific day. I had planned around that promise, getting rid of my daughter’s old bed and creating an expectation with her that her new bed would be ready on a specific day.

Wayfair has gone to the effort to understand the personal — and emotionally-charged — aspect of my expectations. I had invested a lot in their promise. And just as our trends study confirmed, because the company met my expectations, I was both satisfied with the transaction, and I am now a loyal customer and advocate.
Yes, it’s difficult to align an organization’s culture, technology, and processes to get it right with your customers. But not only is it possible, it’s happening. For those brands still grappling with the myriad of real challenges, there is simply too much evidence to let the difficulties stand in your way.

If an employee offers a suggestion on how to improve your business and no one is there to hear it, does it even make a sound? It may make noise, but one thing is for certain—it won’t make a positive impact on your customer experience.

First, a quick primer on terms. Employee engagement and related feedback primarily refer to employees’ experiences with their jobs, colleagues, pay, benefits, etc. Voice of Employee (VoE) refers to feedback employees give a company regarding the customer experience. Sometimes VoE feedback is mingled with employee engagement feedback. Some companies even ask employees about their ideas on how to improve the customer experience. Unfortunately, those cases are rare.

With the introduction of the service-profit chain theory more than a decade ago, companies began to understand the strong connection employee engagement levels have on the success of their business. Today, 71 percent of businesses rank employee engagement as “very important” in achieving overall organizational success. Sixty-six percent of CX professionals also say employees are the top source of actionable insights about their organization’s customer experience.

It’s not that businesses do not see the value of employees’ perspectives feedback. It’s that, in a time when brands will do almost anything to please customers, it’s surprising how many companies fail to solicit, value and act on Voice of Employee feedback.

Brands have stepped up their customer listening, or Voice of Customer (VoC) efforts significantly. And while incredibly valuable, even essential, VoC programs only collect one perspective of customer-to-brand interactions. Employees have an insider-view of the business as well as direct connections to the customer.
The next opportunity for companies is to more closely link these two essential stakeholders and their feedback.

Why Does VoE Matter?

Employees are on the front lines daily, which means they can offer companies rich intell into customer opinions about the existing CX. Likewise, employees can connect those perceptions to what’s not working inside the businesses, or which elements generate strong loyalty and advocacy with customers.

Some companies solicit VoC feedback as part of employee engagement surveys, which normally happen about once a year. A small minority of brands have invested in both technology and practices that build a culture of continual employee participation in shaping and improving the customer experience. Armed with both insider company knowledge and a unique understanding of customers, most employees have useful ideas for how to create a differentiated CX. Often, these insights are otherwise unavailable to decision makers higher up within the company.

Inviting employees to become co-creators of the customer experience fosters a sense of shared responsibility for company success. Benefits of this approach include the ability to design and execute truly differentiated experiences for customers that return more value to companies, increased efficiencies and improved employee investment and retention.

For VoE to make a positive impact on company processes and decisions, businesses must purposefully connect employee engagement and Voice of Employee, employee feedback with customer experience efforts.

Here are a few tips on how to do this well:

1. Educate Employees on Key CX Areas

Customer feedback is too often used to focus employees solely on improving negative customer experiences. Companies must focus at least as much time to helping employees understand the ideal customer experience they want to create, their role in making that happen, and how customers feel when the have great experiences.

Organizational leaders must quickly and constantly communicate any changes to brand promises or customer experience goals so employees can offer feedback on key CX components and identify where there are disconnects and disasters, as well as successes. Every piece of customer feedback is valuable, and withholding information from employees creates gaps in understanding, and therefore problem-solving abilities.

Knowledge of future CX plans should also be readily shared to ensure employees are engaged and understand their role in improving CX long term. Employees who understand a company’s CX vision can better address customer concerns and prioritize customer feedback that aligns with pending CX blueprints. Likewise, employees in the loop with future CX plans can better monitor when plans do not adequately address common customer concerns, which helps companies avoid misguided investments.

2. Make Smart VoE Technology Investments

Never missing a moment of feedback demands the appropriate VoE technology. However, not just any technology can keep pace with the high volume of employee feedback needed to generate actionable CX improvements.

For example, the best VoE technologies allow employees to offer feedback in the manner and time that’s easiest for them. This may include open online forums, ad hoc email and video surveys or more in-depth annual explorations. Likewise, VoE platforms should be able to handle a variety of feedback types, including unstructured comments. While structured questions can point companies in the right direction, employee verbatims about the customer experience are by far the richest source of actionability.

Companies should look for technology vendors that can handle this type of data at scale with purpose-built text analytics. And accuracy rates matter. A company can’t act on information that isn’t analyzed. A high degree of variety also gives businesses the flexibility to institute VoE programs that best fit their specific needs. Companies should seek out technology vendors that offer mix-and-match capabilities to best fit and meet all employee feedback preferences.

3. Express Gratitude for Employee Feedback in Word and Deed

Employers should get in the habit of clearly communicating the critical nature of VoE feedback to overall company success. Reinforcing the value of employees’ voices encourages a steady stream of feedback and reinforces employees’ role as indispensable agents of change.

Employers must also find ways to clearly communicate they have heard and appreciate employee feedback, as well as the actions they intend to take. As with customers, when employees give feedback and then hear nothing but crickets, the effect on the relationship can be more negative than not asking for feedback at all.

Employees must express genuine appreciation. Gratitude comes in many shapes and sizes. For example, companies can reach out to individual employees and personally thank them for their feedback, or even reward them. Blanket company praise is good, but not sufficient. Top VoE technologies streamline feedback to help companies identify vocal employees and extend one-to-one thanks.

Companies should pursue operational decisions with employees in mind to support appreciate with investments. For instance, picking VoE technologies that are easy to use demonstrates respect for employees’ time and input.

Every organization has unique CX needs, and each should pursue the right technology investments to capitalize on its specific feedback sources. However, despite differences, all companies must make VoE technology purchasing decisions that focus on one goal—constantly collecting, analyzing and acting on feedback from customers and employees. 

Storytelling and understanding the rules of a “happy life” are two of the dominant themes throughout my career and education, with science being added as an interest as I have grown older.

All three come together beautifully in customer experience (CX). In his book “Happiness by Design” Paul Dolan argues that true happiness is achieved through a balance of purpose and pleasure, and this really works for me as a rule.

Let’s tackle purpose first, and how this is essential in providing the right framework for CX happiness.

1. Happiness Is Having a Vision

TS Eliot wrote that “the journey not the arrival matters” and this is as true in CX as it is often in life. Think about the thrill of anticipation in planning a holiday, for example.

Creating a promised land for all levels within your business is key in creating the right environment for a customer experience focus to flourish. This vision should provide a simple and universal description of what you will be achieve through making better decisions for your customers—be it reaching a number one position for customer care (Boots), or making a positive contribution to the everyday lives of your customers (Caffe Nero).

And keep reminding members of your team that whilst journey will no doubt be challenging, getting there will be worthwhile and rewarding.

2. Happiness Is Living the Life You Want to Live

Once you have created your vision, be clear on your customer promise and deliver this consistently across your brand, regardless of which channel they visit or when they come into your store. Wilko’s vision of helping customers “getting those to dos done” is a great example of a clearly defined promise.

Be authentic to your vision, and build your products and processes around achieving your customer-orientated goals.

Communicate internally and externally your progress on a regular basis, and make sure that the continued focus is recognised.

CX should never just be an initiative or a fad to introduce as a short-term fix.

3. Happiness Is Actively Pursuing Your Goals

Make sure that all parts of your business understand your CX objectives, consistently measure progress against this vision, and record the actions taken.

Celebrate great service examples, and coach those that do not match your ambitions.

4. Happiness Is Making Money, but It’s Also About Creating Great Stories

Business goals may essentially always need to be aimed at commercial gain, but this is rarely enough to get a team behind stretching goals.

Making great memories for your customers and colleagues, building a brand reputation through the stories customers tell about them, and making a positive difference can, however, bond disparate people or departments behind a single goal.

Getting your teams and leaders behind this challenge, and providing a compelling reason why the vision has to be realised, will drive the results you seek.

Now let’s look at pleasure. What can CX learn from more lessons in happiness?

5. Happiness Is Doing What You Do Best, as Often as You Can

According to most wisdom, understanding who you are, what you love doing, and how to make sure that you make the best use of your time, are keys to a happy life.

For businesses, knowing what you stand for, understanding the impact of different experiences on your customers, and knowing what great looks like are just as fundamental for your CX journey.

Driving the right improvements, and tackling where you can let yourself down, are key examples of the knowledge to be gained through CX.

6. Happiness Is Creating Really Good Friends

Every business has great stories that have the potential to become legends. Simply hearing these human narratives makes everyone realise just how fortunate they are to have the opportunity to connect emotionally with so many people.

(And if they don’t have the potential to feel that joy, they should probably not be working in a service-orientated culture, so it may be time to move on to find something they feel more authentic in pursuing).

Cherish the stories where someone has gone out of their way to help another, and who has built personal connections that typically resonate when shared. Reward the colleagues who do this really well (not just on sales).

Communicate the lessons learnt, but keep replenishing the stock of stories to avoid them becoming stale—and to allow others to take advantage of their wisdom through action libraries accessible to all.

But also tell your customers that they really make a difference, how you recognise their contribution, and that you take care of their time. Build your community or tribe through these connections, and look after them.

7. Happiness Is Actively Expressing Your Thanks

Finally, make sure you always express your gratitude. This may be demonstrated through providing an attractive incentive, or sharing and responding to their views through social review sites.

At its heart, however, being thankful is best expressed through really taking the time to listen to your customers, and delivering the sometimes-subtle changes that they want to see in your brand to keep your brand’s journey in line with your customer goals.

Last month, Forrester held its annual CX Europe Conference. Customer experience (CX) thought leaders came together to highlight how interplay between executive leadership, customer understanding, design management, culture, and measurement all contribute to the success of high-performing firms.

I observed four key trends at the conference, all of which combine to give us a clear sense of what we can expect from CX in the coming years, and all of which are already helping to differentiate ambitious companies from the rest of the pack.

1. Consistency

Great CX is about a brand delivering on its brand promise consistently over time, across all channels. Successful businesses have a clear brand promise: It is part of their DNA. Employees and customers know what to expect and can see a consistent thread across all channels.

Over-delivery against a brand promise can create value and an opportunity to take a brand into exciting new places. Inconsistent delivery, however, destroys value, and at a far quicker pace.

Consistency counts.

2. Employee engagement

Employee engagement is another key feature that differentiates CX leaders from the rest. A business’ employees are the face of that company and the people a brand employs speak volumes about the value they place on CX.

CX leaders truly care about the emotional well-being of their people, and create an environment where employees can see the contribution they make to customers and its importance.

Crucially, CX leaders also listen to employees in a way other companies don’t. Front-line staff have the ability to understand customer experiences in a way that many decision-makers across the company simply can’t. They are a brand’s natural interface with customers and, if harnessed in the right manner, one of the most effective tools in a CX arsenal. We call this type of listening “Voice of Employee”— the practice of purposefully soliciting feedback from colleagues about the customer experience.

A recent study with CustomerThink confirms that Voice of Employee feedback provides some of the most actionable insights in improving the customer experience. Inviting employees in as co-creators of the customer experience inspires higher levels of creativity and investment in both customer relationships and a brand’s success, driving both improved employee engagement and enhanced customer experiences.

3. Personalisation

In terms of customer insight, many brands have come on leaps and bounds. However, there is still — and probably always will be — more work to be done. Customers’ expectations are constantly evolving and one of the big emerging trends is that they want to be treated as individuals.

To meet this trend, brands are trying to develop more complex customer segmentations, sub-dividing existing segmentations to drill down deeper and deeper into the specific needs of customers. The pinnacle is perhaps those businesses that combine data and analysis to produce “segments of one.” This enables brands to understand expectations of individual customers and where appropriate, deliver a truly bespoke customer experience.

Note that for customers, it is the personalisation of the experience that is important — personalisation is not just about marketing. Also, brands don’t need loads of customer data to deliver a personalised service.

4. Combining qualitative and quantitative data

Quantitative data elicited from ratings-based surveys has been the cornerstone of understanding customers for decades. Although this data is informative, it is limited. It may provide a top-line sense of a problem, but rarely illuminates the solution.

Qualitative data, such as text analytics and free-form customer comments, often unlocks another level of insight, where CX professionals can understand the real reason why an experience was good or bad. The best businesses at the moment are successfully marrying quantitative data with qualitative data and truly enlightening the CX experience.

In most organizations, customer experience initiatives are designed, executed, and owned by marketing or operations. We see more CX-specific leaders and departments coming online as well in an attempt to move more of the organization towards customer centricity.

Regardless of who “owns” customer experience, their view is inherently limited to the types and frequency of interactions they have with your customers. This produces blind spots in the holistic lens of customer experience. This limited view causes over-generalizations based on non-representative samples of Voice of Customer data (VoC), shared mythologies generated by compelling anecdotes, and often misses key attributes in the customer experience. Unless CX “owners” are keenly aware of these blind spots, the particular data they’re privy to can actually create a form of skewed groupthink, obscuring the broader truths that exist in customer-brand interactions.

Enter Voice of Employee.

What Exactly Is Voice of Employee?

We hear a lot about the impact Employee Engagement has on Customer Experience. Most times, Employee Engagement is viewed in a vacuum. Every year or year-and-a-half, the Human Resources department trots out a survey asking employees to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of their jobs: benefits, pay, management, work-life balance, and so on. Rarely, if ever are employees explicitly asked about their perspectives on the customer experience. What are their perceptions of what’s working, and what’s not—and more importantly—why? What would they recommend as solutions? What new ideas do they have to improve how your brand delivers on customer expectations? This is Voice of Employee.

Forrester Research defines Voice of Employee (VoE) as “Any feedback from employees or partners that pertains to their ability to deliver great customer experiences.” Without it, you have a huge blind spot in understanding your customer experience, and in achieving positive relationships and business outcomes. The importance of employee voice in the workplace has become more relevant today than ever in order to increase workplace satisfaction, performance, and overall retention. The key to ensuring that this essential feedback continues is to demonstrate that the organization values the voice of employee by not only collecting the feedback, but showing that it has an impact and influence in the workplace.

A Frontline View

Your employees are the face of your company. They are the primary representatives and executioners of the company’s customer experience. Not only do employees interact with customers, they often have a broader view of the operational performance of your organization. Think of it this way: While a single customer can share his/her perceptions of their experiences at specific touchpoints and throughout their journeys, they provide an important, but limited, sample size of one. A single employee, on the other hand, may interact with hundreds of customers each day and therefore the depth of their feedback around the customer experience is much greater. Also, the breadth of their perspective is greater as they can see all of the elements that contribute to a good or bad experience. The elements that may frustrate an employee, whether it be making a customer wait in line, poor service from customer care or billing, or any myriad of issues, are often the same things that frustrate customers.

And their perspectives contain unique and powerful insights. A recent survey by CustomerThink of CX leaders in business-to-business organizations reported that two-thirds of those leaders feel employees are the top source of actionable insights about the customer experience.

If employees can provide you with such a large percentage of actionable, success-driving insights, asking for their opinion cannot be relegated only to the normal 18-to-24-month Employee Engagement survey cycle. As gold mines of insight-laden information, smart brands should provide a variety of employee feedback forums, and establish voice of employee surveys and programs.

Owning the Experience

Soliciting employees for feedback about the customer experience comes with other benefits. Asking for their best ideas and opinions creates a sense of respect and value from the organization and its leaders. Unlike scheduled employee surveys, the process of gathering Voice of Employee feedback is, in and of itself, an engaging experience. Essentially, VoE tells employees that they matter and that they have ownership in customer experience, significantly increasing the likelihood your CX initiatives will achieve the desired results.

Broadening Your Perspective

The key to broadening your perspective of the customer experience is to listen through multiple channels to multiple stakeholders. After customers, employees are the next stakeholder group you must tap into in order to gain an increasingly broad and deep understanding of how all of the factors in your organization are coming together to deliver on what you’ve promised. Voice of Employee is key to listening and gathering other perspectives to help you make better workplace and business decisions. Just like your customers, your employees are able and willing to help you succeed. If you let them. Gather more VoE insights to improve your workplace with Pearl-Plaza.

Somewhere, someone is dreaming about being a marketer who drives millions of people toward their brand. As a chief marketing officer, I’d like to say I was that someone, but I wasn’t. In fact, I took only one marketing class during college—and I thought it was a waste of time.

I wanted to preface this article with that bit of information not because I hate marketing. (I love my job, and I love marketing.) I just want to emphasize that—like customer experience (CX)—marketing is constantly evolving. What worked 20 years ago simply would not fly today.

Back when I was in my marketing class (and still today, no doubt), marketers were taught The Four Ps of Marketing: Price, Product, Promotion, and Place. While the four Ps certainly have their merits, they are also one of the main reasons marketing is killing the customer experience.

The majority of marketers receive compensation and bonuses for creating brand awareness and pushing people to buy whatever product or service their organization is selling. Unfortunately, this system promotes brand selfishness and creates a disconnect between customer experience and brand expectations.

In a recent article by Sean Hargrave from MediaPost, he argues that customer experience and brand value are the same thing. Based on my experience and the evolution of marketing and the customer experience I’ve witnessed in my career, I would agree.

The article cites research from brand valuation specialists Markables, who report that the contribution of brand value in a company’s overall valuation has decreased by half from 2005 to 2014, while the value of customer relations has doubled.

Customer experience expectations are increasing by the day. This is a good thing. Instead of brands differentiating themselves through product offerings, brand image is now a mirror image of how your organization treats people. Your brand’s value comes not from what you say you’re going to do but what you actually deliver. With social media platforms and people spending hours upon hours on the Internet each day, customer perception of your brand is everything. Customers will be loyal to brands that value them as people not numbers.

5 Ways to Align Customer & Brand Expectations

Start with a Vision

A mission statement is all well and good, but to be an effective CX vision, it needs to be clear. For marketing, this means listening to employees and customers and closing the experiential gaps that exist between them.

Interweave Methodologies

It’s common for different specialties to have different words for what turn out to be the same thing. For example, marketing approaches campaigns in terms of personas. In CX, they approach things in terms of customer segments. They’re the same. By interweaving methodologies, we can eliminate confusion, communicate, and ultimately create a better experience.

Collaborate

Similar to interweaving methodologies, we need to get rid of silos and create solutions that we’re aligned on within our organizations. Increasingly, I’m seeing the CX function move under the marketing umbrella. In this new leadership role, marketers need to get outside of themselves and take ownership beyond the close of the deal. We need to understand how the brand promise is delivered on the front lines.

Connect Brand and CX Metrics

Brand perception and NPS (Net Promoter Score) are not all that different. Look for opportunities to measure CX in terms of brand promise. Is your brand’s customer feedback aligned with the experience your organization has committed to delivering? If not, why not?

Become a Storyteller

For this point, I’ll quote Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha, senior analyst at Forrester Research, who said, “The power of storytelling is undeniable. A quota-busting salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and inspire employees. And a great CX pro can weave a story that helps employees understand their role in a customer journey.”

As brands, we have to take an honest look at who we want to be. Are we going to go the route of traditional marketers and place more value on sales over experience, or are we going to ground our business firmly in CX and integrate this longer-term perspective throughout every level of our company?

Recently, Forrester VP, research director and customer experience thought leader Harley Manning looked at the current volatility of the global economy, referenced trends in consumer behavior, and urged a wise course of action for businesses: Keep investing in the customer experience. His article outlines a few well-backed financial points of reasoning and also dishes sound advice.

It makes economic sense—especially in uncertain times—to invest in the customer experience. But if it makes so much sense, then why does Manning worry that businesses will be tempted to do the opposite? Over the past five years, there has been a pronounced surge in companies investing in the customer experience. As top companies have increased their advantages through superior customer treatment and as the financial sense of customer-centricity has been proven, nearly everyone has taken note to at least some degree.

Know Your Existential Imperatives

Here’s where the worry comes in, though: When times turn uncertain and fear creeps in, human beings cling to what feels safe. In business, this usually means those existential imperatives like operational efficiency and reduction of costs. While a focus on these core elements may achieve savings in the short term, this limited view often comes at the expense of one of its most important assets: the customer. But those who really understand the customer experience and why it is a profitable investment will say the true existential imperatives are, in fact, customers, employees, people. And that’s the test. What’s your answer when the chips are down?

Customers have a different perspective. What matters most to them are relationships of trust established over time, regardless of the health of a company’s bottom line. So, when times and economies destabilize, you have to show customers that they matter most to you if you want to matter most to them. Frankly, consumers do not care about a company’s bottom-line. They care about how well brands are delivering on their customer experience promises. More importantly, macro-economic factors that affect business performance often have the same impact on consumers, thus, making them more concerned with the value they receive from brands.

Stay Strong. Stay Savvy.

Thankfully, recent history shows that companies are generally savvy to this reality. Through the Great Recession of 2008–2013, customer experience budgets showed resilience, and overall consumer opinion on the American Customer Satisfaction Index saw a rise that spiked in 2013. If anything, indications are that volatility presents the greatest opportunity for brands to invest in their customers—and see returns on their previous efforts.