Thought Leadership

Today’s empowered customer has brands asking themselves a major question: Do ideals like trust and loyalty still exist between individuals and institutions?

It’s a fair question. Customers in 2018 have endless options when it comes to retailers, so brands need to differentiate themselves in order to get and keep their customers loyal—or risk losing out to a competitor. Additionally, in the fallout of recent customer data scandals, it’s understandable that customers may not have the same level of trust when it comes to brands.

It’s the blurry lines around these two topics that inspired Pearl-Plaza’s most recent study of retail customer experience (CX) trends.. We surveyed 1,300 U.S. consumers to understand the state of trust and loyalty, as well as customer perception about retailers’ attempts to offer more experiences versus simple transactions. What we found was a veritable goldmine of good news and informative insights that we’ve compiled into the “2018 Retail CX Trends Report.”

We found that trust and loyalty definitely exist (and definitely matter to customers), but there are three major themes our research uncovered that are vital to understanding the nature of these two sentiments between brands and customers in 2018. In this post, I’d like to share the first theme we uncovered in our research: Trust and mistrust are EARNED.

Consider this statistic from our research: 88 percent of respondents agree that trust is “extremely important” when deciding where to shop (with 40 percent say they strongly agree). It’s not surprising that customers want to shop with brands they trust. What is surprising is that brands might have some misconceptions about what earns and breaks customer trust.

When brands talk about gaining and keeping their customers’ trust, most discussions and assumptions center on data security and privacy. Major events like the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal, the launch of GDPR in Europe, and discussions over more stringent national legislation continue to push this issue to the top of newsfeeds. However when we asked consumers about the most important actions retailers can take to build trust, the top pick by far (55 percent) was “deliver what they promised.” Keeping data safe came in at just 13 percent, and other factors like personalization and supporting shared values registered only in the single digits.  

The inverse is also true, and to an even greater degree. The failure to live up to a brand’s promise was the “biggest deal breaker” for consumers, with 67 percent choosing this as the chief reason for losing faith with brands they previously loved. Failing to keep data safe and sharing it without permission registered at just 17 percent.

To recap, trust definitely matters to customers, isn’t solely determined by data privacy, and can be broken if brands don’t follow up on their promise. But what does it mean for the bottom line?

Well, data indicates there’s a real payoff for earning and keeping consumers’ trust.  Approximately two-thirds of consumers will buy more, shop more often, and recommend trusted retailers to friends and family. Nearly 50 percent of consumers say they are willing to spend 11-50 percent more with brands they trust a lot, versus those they trust very little. And nearly 10 percent say they’d spend more than 70 percent with trusted retailers.

When it comes down to it, a customer’s trust in your brand really does pay, but it is not simply given. It must be earned.

To learn more about the latest retail CX trends, download the full report: “ 2018 Retail CX Trends: Trust and Loyalty in the Experience Economy”

When it comes to metrics, the human race is a little obsessed. We measure our weight, height, IQ, wealth, and now our followers on social media. Those of us in customer experience (CX) take metrics even more seriously, and for good reason.

CX metrics help us understand our company’s relative position, reinforce expectations and key behaviors in our teams, and quantify our level of impact and achievement.  Because of this, many program owners and stakeholders spend their time agonizing over what questions to ask of their customers. Though this is important, I would like to suggest that CX experts begin with a different approach, asking: What business outcome do we want to influence and why?

It’s easy to get stuck on what your measuring. After all, it makes your CX program tangible, but when it comes down to it, you want your program to create real impact. That impact can only be shown with the right metrics.

You may be creating the first ever metric framework for your company or you may have historically tracked certain metrics, but have a feeling they just aren’t working for you any more. Either way, if you want to elevate your programs and practices, you’ve got to be deliberate about your metrics. How? Here are four guiding principles for choosing and implementing metrics with meaning:

Principle #1: Design with the End in Mind

It used to be that program owners would start their programs off by turning to each other and asking, “what have we always wanted to know about our customers?” The result was surveys populated with “best guess” questions that provided some information, but not much direction. This method causes a disconnect in the relationship between customer listening, CX improvement, and ROI understanding.

To avoid this confusion, it’s important to start at the end by defining what you want to achieve before you even start. What meaningful financial and intrinsic value can this program drive for your organization? The answer to this question should point you towards more specific metrics; choose the ones that are closely tied to your value proposition, customer promise, and are aligned with your strategy. If you start with your goals in mind, you’ll be able to make sure your metric framework will provide real meaning by helping further your greater goals as a company.

Principle #2: Give the People What They Want

This point may seem obvious for any industry, but it’s meaning requires a little more explanation when it comes to metrics. By this point, I mean that you need to be hypersensitive as to who your stakeholders are when you select metrics for your program. The three most common stakeholder groups I’ve seen in my experience are the company as a whole, it’s employees, and, of course, your customers.

Each of these groups will have specific sets of needs. When selecting metrics, you need to tailor your choices—and the messaging with which you deliver them— to align with the assets of the business and experience those groups most care about. For example: the metrics you choose for your company will align more with business results, whereas for your customers it will concern more of overall satisfaction or ease.

Principle #3: Quit Living in the Past

I like to follow up this third principle, “quit living in the past,” with “unless your boss says you have to.” When I say the past, I am referencing past data and practices. Most often people don’t want to mess with their historical data, so they’re afraid to ask questions in new ways or start new initiatives for fear that the data won’t match up. To them I say that if you allow yourself to be paralyzed by the politics of historical data, your program will never evolve and therefore will never improve.

The way forward is to have an honest conversation about metrics with meaning. In this conversation, you and your other stakeholders will find that your metrics have to change as your business changes. Otherwise, your metric framework will be out of context, therefore limiting the value of any insight gained from that framework. Living in the past is then the common culprit of flat metrics; whereas adapting, insightful metrics evolve with your business so they can inform and inspire real change.

Principle #4: There’s Value in a Good Story

Although metrics are vital for you program, it’s important to remember this Albert Einstein quote: “Not everything that counts can be counted.” Traditional scales, ratings, and numbers may only take you so far. The future of metrics lies in your ability to leverage unstructured feedback to shape what you will measure and why.  In other words, we can modernize the approach and use customer’s qualitative story about their experience to create metrics that matter.

In unstructured feedback, customers are already telling you what they care about most. At Pearl-Plaza, we have developed a sentiment scoring algorithm that interprets the value of the customer experience based on what they write (or tell you via voice or video feedback) instead of just what they score. In a very compelling case study with an Pearl-Plaza client, we found that our sentiment score trends exactly as NPS and OSAT scoring; and can even be used to predict scores, forward and back. How’s that for a game changing approach to metrics?!

When it comes to deciding on your metric framework, you have two choices: are you curious about your customer experience, or are you serious about using the right metrics to get the right intelligence for real business impact? I don’t know about you, but the decision seems pretty obvious to me. When you choose your metrics based on the value and meaning they present, you set yourself up for a CX program that will propel your organization into a future of success.

If you want to learn more about crafting metrics with meaning—including specific case studies and practical approaches—watch the full webinar, “CX Metrics: Choosing and Implementing the Right Ones for Your Business!” Click here to access!

In the world of customer experience (CX), your efforts can successfully differentiate you from your peers, but in order to achieve this, you need to focus on more than simply listening to customers and acting on that data.  A successful CX program requires continuous evolution and advancement to adapt to a company’s ever-changing landscape. When working with brands to optimize their CX programs we refer to this program evolution as CX Maturity.

Every CX program is different.  Each company has a unique set of internal and external circumstances that require a customized action plan.  In order to create the right CX strategy, it is important to understand where you are and where you want to take your program.  From there, any program can take the right steps toward success.

In order to figure out where your program stands in terms of CX strategy, alignment, and engagement, there are four major areas you need to consider for CX Maturity:

Cultural

The cultural aspect of CX Maturity refers to how well your organization is aligned with your CX vision, program, and its goals. An advanced program is well socialized and employees are familiar with the program.  They are invested, as the culture of the organization is customer-centric and puts the customer at the center of all decisions. There is also a well-established cross functional team, CX strategy, and employee engagement program.

Technological

A CX program that is technologically mature will have an advanced customer listening program that includes collecting, analyzing, and reporting capabilities.  This technology allows companies to transform the way they interact with customers, to start intelligent conversations, and to utilize direct, indirect, and inferred feedback.  It will incorporate AI, advanced data science, and cutting-edge features that transform simple metrics into meaning.

Analytical

Mature analytical programs incorporate customer and employee experience data as well as operational, CRM, segmentation, and other data sources to uncover real intelligence that impacts the business. Leveraging these data sources creates a holistic view of the company and enables you to get insights that siloed data cannot provide.  These programs also leverage Voice of Employee data to understand internal employee’s perspective on the customer experience. Mature programs are able to get to the bottom of customer issues, discover root cause, and act on customer intelligence.

Business Value

Last, but possibly most important, is the question of whether or not your program provides you with real business value. CustomerThink recently showed that less than one-third of CX professionals are seeing tangible results from their CX program.  A program that has reached full CX maturity will have a drawn out ROI framework, complete with a detailed plan for measuring success. CX metrics are tied to overall business objectives and the CX team is able to show ties to business outcomes. The value of the program is well known throughout the company.

When you are able to assess each of these individual areas of your organization, you can piece together a clear picture of the maturity of your CX program. After your assessment, you can then set goals, create a plan, and get on your way to evolving your CX program.

In my last post, I discussed the expanding role of the CMO from steward of the brand to caretaker of the end-to-end customer relationship. While this transition has been recognized by various studies, it has been especially evident in my own experience as Chief Marketing Officer at Pearl-Plaza. In fact, my position gives me an even more interesting and unique perspective: I have a front row seat to new developments in the marketing world and to the evolution of the customer experience (CX) industry.

Today’s marketers are increasingly seeing customer experience fall under their umbrella of duties, and it’s easy to confuse CX efforts with traditional marketing approaches such as loyalty marketing programs. However, marketers should be warned that this is a place where “similar” definitely does not mean “equal.”

Loyalty marketing programs refer to a company-wide initiative that is focused on growing and retaining existing customers by selling them more. CX programs help businesses understand the customer/brand relationship and what makes the customer loyal to the brand in the first place. The key difference between the two is in their approach: loyalty marketing is selling—often through incentives—while customer experience focuses on the ongoing conversation with the customer to then drive a deeper sense of loyalty.

This is where a traditional approach to loyalty programs goes wrong: At the end of the day, your customers don’t want to be bought with coupons, infrequent freebies, and discounts. While they appreciate them, they aren’t what makes them loyal. Customers want to feel valued and heard. If you look through the lens of customer experience, you can reset your loyalty marketing programs to take a more holistic, relationship-centric approach that will truly impress your customers.

Here are three specific ways a CX mindset can help you take your loyalty program to the next level:

Craft a Consistent Experience

Each year, Pearl-Plaza surveys both brands and customers to unearth the latest trends in customer experience. The 2018 CX Trends Report revealed that consumers across all industries are creeped out by the way companies use their personal data and are therefore more reluctant to share that data. This can be a massive problem for loyalty marketing programs as they require customers to enroll by sharing some form of personal data. So how can a CX mindset help you solve this possible customer objection? One word: consistency.

Customers need to know that they can trust your brand from the get-go. If they’re receiving mixed messages in policy, employee interaction, or overall experience, they aren’t going to know what to expect and will be less likely to trust you with their information. If you approach this problem with a CX mindset, you know that you need to dedicate resources to unearth areas of brand inconsistency so you can streamline, hire, and train appropriately and put the best foot forward before asking for customer data.

If customers have a great impression of who you are as a brand, their positive and consistent experiences will inspire the trust they need to join your loyalty program.

Provide the Right Perks

Though perks alone won’t drive true brand loyalty, they are incredibly necessary to provide what customers expect when they sign up. However, your efforts can be all for nought if you aren’t providing the right incentives.

According to that same CX Trends report, customers are less likely to share their info when a program simply offers to make interactions easier, more efficient, or to deliver personalized recommendations. What they do value is when they receive exclusive access to sales, events, or products. Essentially, today’s customers are more willing share their data if they are given the VIP treatment.

The listening capabilities of a CX platform can help you to further narrow down what perks really drive participation in your loyalty programs.

Focus on Relationships, Not Memberships

Sure, customer satisfaction is a short-term win. After all, if a customer was able to purchase the product or service they were looking for, they might be more willing to become a loyalty program member. But why stop there? When you provide excellent brand interactions over and over again, you have a customer that will come back, buy more, and recommend you to others. That is the kind of customer you create when you focus on relationships and loyalty over merely satisfaction.

The key to going beyond “good” and creating excellent experiences is emotion. When Pearl-Plaza studied unstructured customer data, we found that when discussing memorable experiences, most customers concentrated on the interactions they had with brand representatives and, even more importantly, the emotions they evoked. Ultimately, it’s not the 20% off coupons that inspire emotional experiences, it’s the meaningful human interactions that keep customers around in the long run.

With customer experience, you can go beyond collecting loyalty members and utilize emotion  to create lasting impact.

Though loyalty marketing programs and customer experience both have similar goals, it is vital that marketers recognize customer experience goes beyond the membership/incentive mindset. When you focus on customer experience, you can enrich all areas of your business—including your loyalty program—by understanding your customers, evoking positive emotions, and fostering long-lasting relationships.

To learn more about what customers expect from their brand interactions, check out the 2018 CX Trends Report: What Brands Should Know About Creating Memorable Experiences!

With the arrival of Amazon Prime set to cast a very long shadow of rising expectations over the Australian consumer landscape, brands across the board are going to have to work harder to gain and maintain the satisfaction and loyalty of their customers. Providing a meaningful customer experience is no longer a nice to have, but a necessity if a brand is to succeed and compete against a behemoth with the humble mission of becoming the ‘Earth’s most customer-centric company’.

Amidst this fundamental shift in what customers are experiencing, 43% of Australian consumers admitted to having a bad brand encounter over the last year that has stuck with them. In addition, just under a third (28%) of consumers, said they would respond to a negative experience by not shopping with a brand again.

Brands are also more optimistic about the good experiences they are delivering, with 80% saying they are delivering memorable experiences. Consumers peg that at 70%, a healthy number, but still 10 points below what brands estimate.

So why is there such a disconnect between brands and consumers, and what can companies do to ensure that they create a customer experience that doesn’t just satisfy, but remains memorable, influencing customers to come back often, spend more, and engage in priceless word-of-mouth advocacy that simply can’t be bought?  The research also provided a few tips:

1. Find the balance between personal and creepy

While marketers are trying to better engage through personalisation, our research shows that their strategy is frequently backfiring and actually driving customers away.

70% of Australian consumers admit to finding most forms of personalisation “creepy”. What is even more shocking is the number of brands that admit that their own personalisation efforts are creepy. Over a third of brands admit to using creepy marketing tactics. With one in three Australians declaring they would stop using a brand after a “creepy experience” of personalisation the business risk is real.

Customer demographic and behavioural information is obviously a rich source of insights that can help brands offer a better, more personal experience to consumers. While this works en masse, when applied to an individual consumer during a single transaction, the approach must be particularly nuanced. Brands need to find the right balance and offer genuine value in exchange for a true and beneficial personalised experience.

2. Be human

The human element can make or break a customer experience. A brand’s employees are its most influential ambassadors. Over two-thirds of consumers report staff interaction as the most significant and frequent contributor to positive brand experiences, and the majority of these positive experiences were in-person. Investing in hiring processes and training programs can help with this. Conversely, poor staff attitude, lack of knowledge and bad service created negative experiences. Getting the right personalities in the right place with the right skills is key to ensuring good relationships between consumers and brands.

3. Find a purpose and communicate it

Our research shows that Australian customers connect more with brands that take an active interest in social causes that impact their local communities. 69% of Australian consumers want brands to be more purpose driven by advocating causes they care about. What’s more is that 25% of the causes consumers want brands to be aligned next to are community-based causes.

Finding a purpose and supporting local causes creates an additional opportunity for brands to connect with customers in a meaningful way, and build long-lasting relationships and emotional connections with the community.

4. Watch the social gap

One of the largest areas of disconnect between brands and consumers is how they view social media. Brands put considerably more emphasis on the ability of social media as an element of memorable, positive experiences. Only 6.6% of consumers report social media as a contributor in comparison to 31% of brands. This tells us that while social media is an important interaction forum, it is not something that significantly defines the customer relationship. Because of its public nature, brands often put more resources toward solving issues raised in social forums. Giving equal focus to all touch-points in the CX experience will ensure the business takes a more holistic view whether or not they’re meeting expectations, as well as what needs fixing, new ideas, and which elements should be elevated.

Customer experience (CX) maturity is a phrase we seem to be discussing a lot lately at Pearl-Plaza. As a CX technology vendor, we often talk about it in terms of how our platform can power CX programs from beginners to seasoned veterans. We had the opportunity to explore the broader picture at the recent Forrester’s CX NYC conference.

June 19-20, a few Pearl-Plaza teammates and I got to experience two days of customer experience centric conversations, many of which revolved around the maturity of the practice of CX itself.

Forrester described the next stage of the industry’s development perfectly with the conference theme: “Your New CX Mandate: Be an Engine of Growth.”  

“Mandate” is a strong word. And in this case, not an overstatement. The call from the analysts and other speakers at the event was for all business leaders to literally grow-up their CX efforts; to become better organized, deliberate and strategic.

Following are a few of my favorite takeaways that can help turn your customer experience management programs into full-blown business initiatives with definitive impact:  

Bring Real Business Discipline to CX

The opening keynote by Greg Marion, VP and Enterprise Senior Strategy Officer for USAA, set the stage for the entire event. USAA is a regular leader on several Forrester CX Indexes—and now I know why. Marion talked about need for organizations to treat CX strategy as seriously and methodically as business strategy. While this may seem obvious, it’s not what we’ve seen in most organizations.

CX may be suffering from its inherent “no-duh” value proposition: be nice to your customers and they’ll be nice to you. It made so much common sense that many companies  haven’t treated customer experience as a true business discipline. Adopting a customer-centric and even customer-obsessed mantra or mission isn’t enough.

Understanding how to design and execute customer experiences that are differentiated in ways that are uniquely valuable to customers AND achieve the right business outcomes requires specific work. Unfortunately, most brands haven’t connected and the right data or done the right (or any) data science to identify specific levers and prioritize efforts. So when or if they take action to fix or elevate their customer experience, it tends to be either completely uninformed, or in better cases, under informed.

Another imperative Marion highlighted is tying CX to larger business initiatives. When companies design customer experience initiatives to support what the CEO and board care about (while at the same time delighting customers), not only does CX get a lot more of that mythical “buy-in from the top,” it also genuinely improves the bottom line.

“Good” isn’t Good Enough for Growth

My second takeaway has to do with the difference between meeting customer expectations and going beyond. I want to be clear: providing “good” experiences deliver real value back to the brand. In fact, Forrester found that for customers who report having good experiences, 74% will stay, 66% will spend more, and 83% will recommend.

Not too shabby… until you look at this next set of numbers. Customers who say they had not just “good,” but “excellent” experiences, 83% will stay, 83% will spend more, and 94% will recommend. What does a 9 point reduction in churn translate to in savings at you organization? How about a 17 percent increase in spend? And how many marketing dollars would you have to spend in order to equal that that 9 point increase in authentic customer recommendations?    

Window Dressings Won’t Do

I have had the pleasure of working with Maxie Schmidt (Principal Analyst at Forrester) on multiple occasions—from webinars to our own CX Elevated event — and she always brings incredibly valuable insights to the table. Forrester CX NYC was no exception; she delivered a powerful mainstage presentation on the importance of shifting CX efforts from superficial changes to the deeper transformations that net real business value.

She used the example of redecorating a home versus renovating it. When redecorating, you change furniture and maybe hang some new paintings. When you renovate, you get down to the foundation, pipe and frame level, The latter is the approach you need to take with your customer experience. You have to get down to the bones of your business and make substantive changes to everything from how contracts are written and your supply chain runs, to who you hire and how they are incentivized.

Forrester CX NYC 2018 was an incredible experience and I know that we at Pearl-Plaza take this mandate and its meaning to heart. Thank you to Forrester for a great event!

To find out more about how Pearl-Plaza can be a real engine of growth for your company, schedule a demo with one of our CX strategists.

To be human is to continually look for improvement, to innovate and to cast an eye to the future. Simply put – we live in an ever changing world.

Economic, societal and environmental forces create constant metamorphosis in our thoughts, feelings, and actions – one way this is evident is in the way we as customers interact with brands.

One of the key drivers for change in perceptions of brands and our experiences with them is artificial intelligence (AI). For some, this technology feels alien – new, exciting and perhaps a little scary, yet it has been around for decades. As far back as the 50s when Alan Turing made waves in computing advancements, automation in technology and machine learning has been a constant in human innovation. Fast forward nearly 70 years and AI is everywhere – from spam filters ubiquitous in email technology to Alexa and Google Home.

This innovation, however, has come at a price, most fervently felt in the lack of trust towards brands in a so-called techlash against those at the frontier of tech – Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple. This techlash has also caused a wider issue around for any breaches of customer data. As we continue to innovate, we must consider the challenges technology such as AI brings, particularly for businesses that are looking to apply it to improve the customer experience.

For many brands, the key battle is between acquiring and enhancing use of data whilst nurturing customers’ trust. Trust is a funny, and sometimes elusive thing – difficult to attain but remarkably easy to lose. Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Unilever explains this as “a BRAND without TRUST is just a product. Trust arrives on foot, but it leaves on horseback.” The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal cast a gloomy shadow over brands’ use of customer data, highlighting a major shift in power and expectations between customers and brands – and the need to fundamentally change the agreement and ground rules between these two groups.

With the fallout from Cambridge Analytica, the introduction of GDPR in May, and the widely-discussed perception that AI could cause job losses,  it could be argued that the drive to innovate is threatened. However, the opportunity to harness the learnings from our recent experiences with data is innumerable. GDPR (and other legislation) is in fact an opportunity, to drive transparent and authentic conversations with customers and move from conducting transactions to building relationships – enabled by technology. The key is doing so in a way that benefits the customer and does not border on a ‘creepy’ engagement, such as receiving a prompt from Google to post a photo at a popular location you’ve just visited. Pearl-Plaza’s annual CX Trends survey found that 75% of customers find most forms of personalisation creepy, so it is imperative brands respect customer data and understand what level of personalisation enhances the customer experience.

To forge and leverage these relationships to create reciprocal benefit, brands must go beyond listening and engage customers in always-on, intelligent conversations. It’s about engaging rather than eavesdropping, using real-time analysis and response of customer feedback across all channels – from social media networks to CX surveys  – and harness predictive technology to respond to customers in a way that works for me. By doing so, brands will welcome customers as co-creators of the customer experience and create value-added relationships.

It’s time for brands to change their perception of AI and see the value it brings, augmenting human experiences and interactions. For example, AI could be used to take away mundane, repetitive tasks that could give employees time to focus on driving real change, such as investing more time in providing customers with authentic expertise.

Where AI will really show its mettle is in its ability to spot trends for brands when using a range of different touch points with their customers – critical in CX. AI will support the next stage in the evolution of CX, such as enabling more conversational surveys via chatbots and shifting reporting to predicting and eventually prescribing. For brands looking to harness AI in this way, success will rely on sourcing the right data, ensuring continuous testing, learning and adapting, measuring everything and setting appropriate expectations. With this, brands will be able to fly in the era of the relationship.

With a rise in social media communications, the goal posts of customer engagement have forever shifted, demanding a more instant and personal approach from brands. Traversing each channel of communication can be a minefield, with each one requiring its own style and speed of response. At the same time, customers are becoming increasingly savvy to alternate ways to reach a brand and this has changed the expectations of customer experience. In this piece, Pearl-Plaza investigates the current state of play for brands in the multichannel communication sphere and explores how they can find the balance in their own CX approaches.

Whether it be responding to a customer complaint or a more general enquiry, the multichannel approach is bringing the consumer into ever closer contact with a business. As a result, brands need to evolve their CX approach to ensure they can continue to meet the expectations of customers who demand a 24/7 response – those businesses that do this will thrive. This means a CX programme needs to take into consideration bricks and mortar retailing, online operations, mobile interfaces, social platforms and beyond.
While each channel is distinct they should not be looked at as siloed avenues – with the technology now available, brands can build an open response model, allowing them to successfully bring their CX strategy into alignment with the multiple channels available for communication.

What is key for businesses is to invest in technology that enhances the customer experience. Pearl-Plaza’s latest CX Trends Survey, launched in April this year, found that brands often overinvest in technology for the sake of it rather than looking at what will impact the relationship with the consumer. The survey found that the most valuable experiences that involve technology reflect a desire for convenience: self-checkout at a physical store and the ability to give feedback via a mobile device. The fact that customers are so eager to share feedback is golden for brands, since it gives them opportunities to listen and act.

If brands are implementing new technology, they must ensure that it provides value to the customer experience across all channels. One example of a brand using cutting-edge tech to do just that is IKEA. Using augmented reality, they provide customers with a high-tech solution to very practical challenges: virtually seeing what a specific paint colour will look like in context, and seeing how a piece of furniture will fit into a room — both in terms of size and aesthetics. The key to investing in flashy new technology is to ensure they align with your overall brand strategy and follow through to ensure they make a real impact on customers.

Businesses should also see the 24/7 consumer as an opportunity to create new found levels of engagement with their target audience. Brands need to embrace the multichannel approach and renovate any outdated CX models that don’t encompass the nuances of each platform. In the last few months we’ve seen dozens of retailers and hospitality businesses significantly downsize or collapse, such as Toys R Us, Maplin and Prezzo. We’ve seen the ease of purchasing via online retailers and price-competitive grocers being blamed, along with falling behind with vital store updates, however, what many brands are missing is the importance of nailing the customer experience, in a relevant way for all customers across every brand touchpoint.

There are clear pressures for brands, such as increasing operational costs and squeezed budgets, but this is where understanding what is important to customers is paramount. Businesses that create memorable, positive impressions are the ones that will prosper – those that deliver what they promise, consistently across all platforms, and really listen to their customers. Staff interaction cannot be overlooked as it has a huge impact – both good and bad – on the customer experience. Consumers want real connections with staff who are well-trained to educate and inform across all channels. Over 73% of customers reported in Pearl-Plaza’s survey that staff interaction is key when creating positive experiences – and a further 61% said poor staff attitude, lack of knowledge and slow or unhelpful service contributed to a negative memorable experience. Brands should look for ways to reduce customer pain points, increase frequency of opportunities to delight, and measure the change, and this must happen wherever a customer interacts with a brand.

One of the key opportunities for brands is to implement always-on listening, plugging in CX feedback technology into all channels to ensure customer feedback is being consistently collected, analysed and acted upon. AI will be key, opening up barriers to communication and empowering CX professionals by arming them with relevant and timely data. Brands that embrace this technology, listen to customers consistently and – most importantly – make operational changes based on this data will keep the 24/7 customer on side.

As the chief marketing officer of a customer experience intelligence company, I am often asked for my thoughts on the intersection between marketing and customer experience (CX). The two are similar in many ways and related because both are focused on connecting with the customer. The how and why of the connection with the customer can vary fairly substantially, however, and I believe that is where opportunity lies for a CMO with a CX-centric mindset.

The role of the CMO has changed substantially over the past several decades. It used to be marketing was primarily responsible for the definition and stewardship of the brand and, along with that, considered a cost-center. This was the era for the famous quote of “I know 50% of my marketing is working, I just don’t know which 50%.”

Then came the digital decade where everything could be measured, tracked, and quantified. This changed the role of the CMO to more of a “revenue generator.” As a result, Gartner stated at the beginning of 2017 that, “over the past several years, we’ve witnessed an expansion of the CMO mandate, from what was largely a promotional role to what is now often seen as the growth engine for the business.” We were sitting on top of the world. Our influence was growing, our budgets increasing.

Looking back, I tend to think of this shift as a pendulum swing, with the brand emphasis being on one side, the digital components on the other, and the role of the CMO swinging back and forth between the two. This pattern has recently been interrupted, however; by the end of 2017 Gartner found marketing budgets stagnating and stated, “marketing leaders must now justify past budget commitments and who the returns they deliver to ensure the future fiscal health of marketing.”

What changed? There are a lot of answers to that question—market environment, consumer expectations, competitive pressures.  Marketing that is solely focused on an “acquisition” mindset isn’t working the same way it did even a year or two ago. Customers want, and frankly expect, a different kind of relationship with businesses. So, the pendulum is swinging back toward a middle ground where there is equal emphasis on brand promise/brand delivery and acquisition.

That middle ground requires today’s CMO to play a bigger part in the “end-to-end customer relationship,” which is where customer experience comes into the picture. Customer experience, when done well, is a holistic company initiative where every department plays an important role. The opportunity for the CMO is to help facilitate and coordinate this process. Often, a customer’s first exposure to a business is through marketing; if what they experience is inconsistent with their expectations, you’ve got a problem.

How do you understand if you are meeting customer expectations or not? You listen to your customers. How do you know if your brand promise resonates with them? They will tell you. Marketers have historically used market research, and traditional surveys to gain customer understanding, but they need something more; they need customer intelligence. Customers today are speaking to you and about you more than ever. They understand their voice has power, and they are willing to give loyalty to those brands that respect them and listen.

In order to make the move to customer experience intelligence, CMOs need a shift in mindset. The goal should no longer be just about acquiring customers, but also what the company needs to do to maintain and grow those customers. It should focus on the experience that allows for both of those scenarios. This doesn’t lie in just listening to your customers and doing whatever they ask, but rather optimizing the customer experience.

Optimization includes not only what matters to the customer, but also what matters to the business. Is what they’re asking feasible? Reasonable? Doable? Would acting on their demands have a positive impact on the business results? If you can’t answer these questions, you could focus your CX efforts on the wrong areas and essentially customer experience yourself out of business. Therefore, a focus on optimization is vital to a CX-centric mindset.

When a CMO focuses their efforts on the things that satisfy their customer and their business goals, they can lead their company to true CX intelligence and fulfill their evolved role of fostering relationships while also proving ROI every step of the way.

Despite apocalyptic talk that artificial intelligence will replace people at some time in the not-too-distant future, Pearl-Plaza’s annual US CX Trends report revealed that the human factor continues to be the primary force in making or breaking the customer experience. Consumers value genuine connections with staff who are well-trained to care, educate and inform, whether in-store, online, or on the phone.

More than six out of ten (65%) of US consumers report that “staff interaction” highly influenced their decision to buy more products from a brand, while another 65% reported that access to educators and experts is highly influential.

In researching factors that contributed to positive, memorable experiences, we found good alignment between what consumers prioritize and what brands felt was most important to their customers. Consumers’ top 5 contributors to positive experiences were staff interaction, access to experts/educators, loyalty treated differently, trial / testing options, and exclusive products/services. Similarly, brands ranked their top five as staff interaction, loyalty treated differently, customization options, exclusive products/services, and access to experts/educators.

While human interaction is key to positive experiences, it’s also the top factor in poor experiences. And while brands recognize this fact, they significantly underestimate the real damage employees can do to the relationship with customers—and to the bottom line.

Almost three-fourths (74%) of consumers report that poor staff interactions (due to negative attitudes, lack of knowledge, or other reasons) were the key contributor to the type of bad experiences that they remember. By comparison, only 29% of brands reported the same.  This shopping 45% gap in understanding was the biggest disconnect in the study.

With human interactions so clearly influential in customer relationships, brands must ensure that employees who work directly with customers can make the kind of emotional connection that reinforces positive, memorable experiences. While this can be challenging, especially in industries with high, front-line turnover rates, the stakes are too high to ignore.

So what else should brands so to ensure positive experience? In addition to their own staff, brands can leverage outside experts to boost the experience. We’ve seen this work well for brands that partner with both professional “experts” and respected peer voices—particularly on social platforms. With more customers than ever crowdsourcing their buying decisions, it makes sense to invest in authentic relationships with others who can speak on your brand’s behalf.

Outside of human interaction, nothing makes an experience more memorable than ensuring your customers feel special. Loyalty perks were mentioned in the top five positive experience influencers for both brands and consumers, so leveraging a loyalty program can be a major differentiator. However, our research also indicated that not all perks are equal. It’s important to do the proper work of understanding what benefits truly deliver value that enhances the relationship. Finally, consumers also value the ability to try new products and services before they purchase. This makes an impact because it both allows them to feel special, and demonstrates a measure of trust.

In a world so focused on technology, it can be easy to underestimate the impact of human interaction. Given these findings, however, it’s clear that if brands should invest in hiring, training, and technology that supports their human talent delivering the most positive, memorable experiences possible.

To learn more about the latest findings in customer experience, download our 2018 CX Trends Report!

The media has painted millennials as killers of many things — whether it’s napkins, diamonds or bars of soap. And if you pay attention to any of these headlines, you might view the generation as a group of ruthless avocado toast fiends who aren’t interested in any of the traditional products or marketing tactics that have worked for other generations.

But are millennial preferences really killing all of these industries and products? Despite what headlines imply, the answer is no.

Millennials are certainly influential (and as of this year, they have more spending power than any other generation), but this isn’t a generational issue. It’s a brand issue. Retailers only have themselves to blame for their inability to effectively connect with this generation. The danger in making false assumptions about millennials — or any customer segment — is that those assumptions can result in dramatically misguided customer experience (CX) strategies.

Pearl-Plaza’s 2018 CX Trends report, a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers and 1,000 U.S. brands, discovered several disconnects between what millennials actually think and what brand assume when it comes to retail CX.

Myth No. 1: Millennials Don’t Care About Privacy

Brands often believe that millennials have fewer privacy concerns than other generations. It’s an understandable impulse. Members of the selfie generation are comfortable with technology and use it to communicate, find love interests, and shape the outside worlds of who they are — much more so than their older counterparts. But that doesn’t mean they don’t care about privacy. In fact, they’re even more concerned about online boundaries than their parents.

Millennials are more aware of brands crossing privacy lines, according to Pearl-Plaza’s research. More than one in five (22 percent) millennials report they’ve had “creepy” experiences with brands over the past year, compared to only 11 percent of the silent generation and 13 percent of baby boomers.

This shows a heightened concern for brands that breach the thin line between “cared for” and “creepy.” While personalization efforts can create stronger connections and more engaging experiences for shoppers, they can easily go awry if shoppers feel violated. Brands must prioritize transparency and ensure they’re making it worth it for millennials to share personal information.

Myth No. 2: Millennials Are All Digital

When strategizing for millennials, brands often misinterpret digital native to mean digital only. Millennials are obviously engaged in digital channels, but they’re not shopping online only. Instead, they prioritize variety and seamless omnichannel experiences.

For example, nearly a third (32 percent) of millennials rank in-store pickup options for items purchased online as very important. Brands estimated that number to be half (16 percent).

Additionally, 29 percent of millennials rank physical locations for e-tailers (like Amazon.com or Bonobos) as very important factors for positive customer experiences, indicating that sometimes they want the in-person experience with products and services, even for those brands that traditionally only played in the online realm.

Myth No. 3: Millennials Are Unique in Wanting Brands to Be Aligned With Their Causes

Millennials get a lot of flak for being militant “social justice warriors” who expect brands to advocate for specific causes. But the data tells a more complex story.

While 58 percent of millennials report that it’s important for brands to invest in social causes (e.g., environmental advocacy groups), this number doesn’t differ much across generations. In fact, 55 percent of Gen Xers and 51 percent of baby boomers reported wanting brands to be aligned with their priorities.

In this case, a good percentage of all consumers — not just millennials — are putting pressure on brands to improve corporate social responsibility efforts. However, the fact that all demographics rate this in the 50 percent range indicates that while it’s important, other factors are as well. By viewing this issue as a niche millennial concern and over-rotating, brands risk alienating millennials who may not be activists, or activists across other generations.

Listen to Your Customers, Not Generational Stereotypes

These myths reveal a broader truth that retailers can’t ignore: MIllennials can’t be shoved in a box, and neither can other generations. It shouldn’t be a surprise that different generations have developed different shopping and brand relationships, but generalizations about age aren’t always universal.

Many brands make too many assumptions that don’t accurately tell the story of what customers want. To better inform CX strategies, brands need to listen to their customers rather than rely on stereotypes.

The voice of the customer (VoC) is far more important than the age of the customer. While much has been said about the preferences of millennials, nothing replaces the opinions of millennials themselves, which are diverse and wide ranging.

Brands that can actively listen to their customers, find the real meaning, and the leverage this intelligence to make real changes to their customer experience will be the ones that thrive — not those relying on outdated misconceptions. Research that illustrates generational and preferential trends can be useful, but only if it’s supplemental to an active, effective VoC strategy.

In our 2018 CX Trends report, our research delved into some of the aspects that make experiences memorable, including how elements like staff, environment, technology, etc. impact the customer experience, and to what degree.

We also wanted to explore some of the new fangled ways brands are either delivering products and services (e.g. pop-up stores and pre-packaged cook-at-home meals), or pairing the experience with things like augmented reality. We evaluated these elements on whether and how much consumers said they valued these additions (basically an understanding of a customer’s initial response on whether or not they feel something’s useful), as well as how much of an impact these elements have on creating positive, memorable experiences.

The high-value factors included self-serve checkout, human interaction, and being treated with special consideration, where the low value factors included pre-packaged meals, pop-up stores, virtual reality, and facial recognition.

Then there were the memorable factors, which included human interaction and being treated with special consideration. On the other hand, self-serve checkout, mobile, and social were deemed to have low memorability,  

While brands, and even some consumers may think some of the newer elements of customer experiences (social, mobile, VR, etc.) as intriguing, almost none bubbled up as either being categorized as “valuable” by consumers, or having a significant impact on long-term memorability.

The one outlier was self-checkout. Consumers ranked it as a valuable service, but ranked it low when it came to its impact on making experiences memorable. Perhaps surprisingly, we saw consumers rank mobile and social low on their impact to memorability. One possible explanation is that we may be seeing cases where newer elements of customer experience emerge and quickly go from “shiny” to expected.

The two basics of “human interaction” and “being treated special” (exclusive offers, loyalty programs, etc.) came through again as being highly influential on memorability, emphasizing the critical nature of getting this part of the experience right.

With this revelation in mind, it shows that it pays off for brands to be thoughtful when rolling out new tech or delivery models. Though they are innovative and exciting, they should prioritize those that lead to long-term, positive memorability. Additionally, brands should ensure that those new additions align with brand aspirations, are presented with consistent messaging, and double check that they make a real impact.

In summary, nothing replaces the power of people making other people feel special. Hire, train, and coach to that end.

To learn more about the latest findings in customer experience, download our 2018 CX Trends Report!