Happy Holidays from Customers 1st!

We're taking some time off from our coverage of customer experience and service to celebrate the season with our loved ones. We want to sincerely thank you for your readership, your comments and your participation. We look forward to returning to the world of customer experience management in 2013!

Looking back, here is our top Customers 1st post from 2012:

This Week In Customer Experience: "Experience" as Marketing Buzzword

What was your favorite topic covered in 2012?

We wish you Happy Holidays! 

The Customers 1st Team
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TotalCustomer
Become a fan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TotalCustomer

Facebook & Nationwide Share How to Unlock Critical Insight for Your Business from Social Media

As another year comes to an end, many of us are looking back through the year reflecting on our business, our customers and the future. It's no secret that customer engagement is evolving, the question is how we, as customer-centric professionals, are addressing these changes and updating our strategies.

Today, phone communication accounts for about 6,000 connections per day, online live chat a little over 400 and social media, an astounding 1,100,000 connections per day.*

Are you listening and observing your customers through the social medium?

Your opportunity to tie in VOC data across touch points is exponential. Today's total customer experience strategy moves from "asking" to listening and observing customer actions and behaviors to achieve the holy grail of a 360 degree customer understanding.

Featuring Leaders in Social Media:

Valuing Customer Input and Feedback

Jasmine Green, Vice President, Chief Customer Advocate, Nationwide

Often referred to as "Listener in Chief", Nationwide's Jasmine Green will discuss her role in facilitating customer dialogue through the power of listening. She will talk about what it means to be a 'Listener in Chief' and the value that active listening adds to cultivating positive customer relationships. Explore how VOC data and design principles can be used to engineer experiences across your organization. She will also describe the opportunity that social media lends to actively listen to customers and proactively engage them through these mediums. Finally, she will discuss the benefits of recognizing and admitting mistakes that result in the potential to fracture otherwise positive relationships and the art of apologizing for error through action and results.

The New Collision of Measurement and Customer Insights

Sean Bruich, Head of Measurement Platforms & Standards, Facebook

As the leading place that consumers connect with friends, engage with brands, and share their experiences, Facebook represents nearly a quarter of all time spent online and bridges the digital divide between web, mobile and offline experiences. Through creating an understanding of these linkages between online and offline experiences, new technology platforms are enabling unprecedented opportunities to instrument, measure and analyze consumer behaviors, and thus create huge leaps in consumer experiences from creating powerful marketing programs to optimizing consumer products or experiences. Here, we describe some of the ways that these platforms have unlocked crucial insights into consumers, and how those insights were translated into action.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is bringing together cross-industry customer professionals from American Express, CVS Caremark, Eli Lilly, JetBlue Airways, Safelite AutoGlass, Toyota and more to share their customer journey. If you are serious about measuring and improving customer experience, you need a forum to meet fellow professionals and share best practices - and that's what this conference is about.

Visit our website and download the brochure for the full speaker list and session details.

We invite you to the 2013 summit to Craft Your Insights-Rich Customer Story - From Transparency to Trust. As a reader of this blog, we’d like to offer you a 15% discount off the standard registration rates, use code TCEL13BLOG.


We hope to see you in April in Boston.
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Event Team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TotalCustomer
Become a fan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TotalCustomer


* From Social Media and the Customer Experience

Customer Experience Experts Podcast: Scott Swift

Scott Swift,
Vice President, Customer Information,
Hunter Douglas, Inc

In anticipation of our 2013 event, I recently spoke to Scott Swift, Vice President, Customer Information, Hunter Douglas, Inc. about his involvement and experience with the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit.

We discussed upcoming trends in the customer experience space, and the huge importance of knowing what your customer experience or voice of the customer program goal is.

 Listen to the podcast here to learn more.

Want to be involved in more discussions like this? 
Visit our newly launched "Interact" page on our event website to have your say. 

Or, join Scott Swift as he chairs the 2013 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit. As a reader of this blog, we’d like to offer you a 15% discount off the standard registration rates, use code TCEL13BLOG.

Visit our website to download the 2013 brochure, learn more about the event, or register.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She is the voice behind the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

Unveiling the 2013 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit

You may have noticed some changes here on the blog lately. We've updated our design to provide a better experience for you, our readers, in anticipation of the launch of the 2013 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is more than a conference, it's a call to action for all leaders charged with and committed to strengthening and advancing their organization with a sound customer plan.

2013 will unite customer-focused professionals across industries, cultures and departments to deliver an unparalleled facilitation of provocation, collaboration and communication of higher level thinking around the alignment of customer strategy with business relevant aspirations. Download the brochure for the full agenda.

The opportunity for capturing data across touchpoints is exponential. Linking data driven behavior to business results, designing next generation customer experiences and measuring the impact of your customer programs is the difference between great and greater.

Customer Experience Design - Explore how VOC data and design principles can be used to engineer experiences across your organization.

Strategy - Interpret, analyze and evaluate your customer strategy to ensure business relevance

Measurement & Feedback - Drive change and optimize your sales force by measuring customer feedback through the entire customer journey.

Alignment - Integrate and leverage your customer touchpoints - measurement & ROI, linkage, VOC, social media, technology, design principles, operational metrics and senior leadership.

We proudly announce all new keynote presentations from leading B2B and B2C companies:
• Jasmine Green, Vice President, Chief Customer Advocate, NATIONWIDE
• Thomas Feeney, President & CEO, SAFELITE AUTOGLASS
• Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing, THE WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
• Sean Bruich, Head of Measurement Platforms & Standards, FACEBOOK
• D. Randall Brandt, Ph.D., SVP, Customer Experience Management, MARITZ RESEARCH
• Chris Frank, Vice President, AMERICAN EXPRESS, Author, DRINKING FROM THE FIRE HOSE
• Ken Erickson, Ph.D., CEO & Cultural Anthropologist, PACIFIC ETHNOGRAPHY COMPANY
• Andres Nicholls, Partner, PROPHET

Visit our website and download the brochure for the full speaker list and session details.

Your success lies in your ability to know your customer, to value your customer and and all their unique experiences. We invite you to the 2013 summit to Craft Your Insights-Rich Customer Story - From Transparency to Trust.

As a reader of this blog, we’d like to offer you a 15% off the standard registration rates, use code TCEL13BLOG to save. Visit the webpage to register today.

We look forward to seeing you next April in Boston!
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Event Team

Stay in touch:
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TotalCustomer
Become a fan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TotalCustomer

New Poll: Does your organization have a customer-centric culture?

Back in January of 2009, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote on the Zappos company blog:

"We believe that your company’s culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.

Your culture is your brand."

And we've written here frequently about the importance of a customer centric culture within the company to building a great customer experience program (including speaking with Jamie Naughton of Zappos about it in 2011). Now we want to know, is your organization there yet? Or is there still work to be done?

Vote in this LinkedIn poll to tell us your thoughts:




Our Total Customer Experience Leaders LinkedIn group is a great place to connect with the community and network with over 1,000 of your peers. Join us there today.

Unique Opportunity: Attend the Total Customer Experience Leader's Summit As A Guest Blogger

We're currently preparing to unveil the redesigned Total Customer Experience Leaders 2013 program and website. As we look forward to this year's event, we have a unique opportunity available for one member of our community: attend this year's event for free as a guest blogger.

As a guest blogger, you’ll have access to TCEL's comprehensive customer experience agenda attracting the best in insights from around the world. You'll also gain exposure on this blog and our related social media channels.

What will be expected of you:

Contribute guest posts regularly to this blog (http://customers1st.blogspot.com) on customer experience-related topics. Blogger will be expected to submit at least 15 blog posts between December 1st, 2012 and April 1st, 2013.

Attend and live-blog the 2013 event. The event will take place April 8-10 in Boston, MA. You will be expected to attend each day of the event and submit at least one blog post per day of the event by 8pm of that day.  

Contribute content for our exclusive executive summary. At a basic level, this would include your notes from the live event. In the past guest bloggers have also contributed other content such as photos and video.

In exchange for guest blogging, you will receive an all-access pass to the event – a $3,000+ value. Guest bloggers are responsible for their travel and lodging.

Apply today by sending your name, company, biography and links to your blog or writing samples if applicable to Michelle LeBlanc at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Poll: What aspect of Customer Experience will be most important to the industry over the next several years?

What aspect of Customer Experience will be most important to the industry over the next several years?

We'd like to hear from you, the customer experience community, are any of these trends in the industry looming large on your horizon? Which and why? Join this LinkedIn poll to share your thoughts:



Our Total Customer Experience Leaders LinkedIn group is a great place to connect with the community and network with over 1,000 of your peers. Join us there today.

Customer Service Week Is Coming: How Will You Celebrate?

In 1992, the U.S. Congress declared the first week of every October to be National Customer Service Week. In a proclamation, then president George H. W. Bush wrote of the value of a holistic customer experience:

"A business built on customer service understands and anticipates the customer's needs. It designs goods and services to meet those needs and builds products that perform to customer expectations. It then packages them carefully, labels them correctly, sells them at a fair price, delivers them as scheduled, and follows up, as necessary, to satisfy the customer. This kind of commitment to service leads to customer loyalty and to genuine improvements at the bottom line."

Now, 20 years later, will you take the opportunity to celebrate, reflect, or honor your own commitment to customer service next week?

Many use this week as a opportunity to reward or recognize those who are on the front line with customers - from call center representatives to retail staff. Another way to celebrate could be taking this as an opportunity to step back and review your holistic customer experience - go through the process of making an order, calling a helpline, using your website or visiting a store - and asking, is there more we could be doing? Lastly, this is a great time to hold a training, take a class, or read some thought-leadership: get re-inspired! (Perhaps join our LinkedIn group to discuss your challenges with like-minded individuals.)

Here's some of our recent favorites in thought leadership to start with:

1to1media: Customer Experience Leaders Spank Customer Experience Laggards in Total Returns

Chadwick Martin Bailey: Is Your Loyalty Program Just a Face in the Crowd?

Social Media Today Social Customer: Why Customer Insight Matters To Every Customer Service Leader

Whatever you are doing, we'd love to hear from our community. Post photos of your celebrations to our Facebook page or share in the comments below.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She is the voice behind the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

CALL FOR PRESENTERS: DEADLINE EXTENDED! Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit

INDUSTRY ALERT: OFFICIAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS: Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2013 Call for Presenters Now Open

The Institute for International Research (IIR) presents:
Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit
April 8-10, 2013

Due to the high volume of submissions, we suggest you submit your proposal early and no later than Wednesday, September 12, 2012 to Rachel McDonald, Senior Conference Producer at rmcdonald@iirusa.com or 646.895.7405.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is an event that showcases trends, insights and best practices for measuring, aligning and communicating your customer experience strategy to ensure business relevance.

A Three Day Conference Experience Featuring NEW Topics
Customer Experience Design & Measurement
• Experience Engineering
• Design Management
• Redesigning a Program
• Analyzing VoC
• Data Deployment and Data Dissemination
• Social Media Feedback
• New Innovative Methodologies
• Internal Customer Index Scoring vs. NPS
• Enterprise Feedback Management

Strategy & Alignment
• Using VoC to Take Actionable Insights
• Employee Engagement
• Monetizing Your Customer Experience
• Recovery Strategy
• Linkage
• Customer Service

High Level General Sessions that Focus On:
• Innovation & Creativity in Customer Experience
• Operational Perspective
• Digital Customer Experience
• Behavioral Economics
• Leadership

We are also happy to consider topics not listed here that you feel would add value and be appropriate.

PLUS! Idea gathering forums following each session topic.
The Audience
• Individuals within the company responsible for customer experience, voice of customer, customer research
• Individuals with direct experience for the customer experience and/or voice of customer collection, dissemination, interpretation and results
• Individuals seeking to enhance their own company's capabilities in these areas (become more customer-centric and drive business results through improved customer experience), and willing to help others advance through sharing of best practices and experiences

Speakers receive FREE admission to the conference.

Sponsorship & Exhibition Opportunities
If you are interested in sponsorship or exhibit opportunities please contact Jon Saxe, Business Development Manager at jsaxe@iirusa.com or 646.895.7467.

Interested in Becoming a Media Partner or Featured Event Blogger?
Contact Kacey Anderson, Marketing Manager, at kanderson@iirusa.com.

Call for Presenters:
For consideration, please email rmcdonald@iirusa.com with the following information by Wednesday, September 12, 2012.
• Proposed speaker name(s), job title(s), and company name(s)
• Contact information including address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail
• Talk title
• The main theme you plan to address
• Summary of the presentation (3-5 sentences)
• Please indicate what is NEW about the presentation
• What the audience will gain from your presentation (please list 3-5 key “take-aways”)
• Previous conference experience
• Short bio

Due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to respond to each submission. All those selected to participate as speakers will be notified shortly after the deadline.

Thank you for your interest in the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit. We look forward to receiving your proposal!
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Event Team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TotalCustomer
Become a fan on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/Aw2yW4
Read the blog: http://customers1st.blogspot.com/

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2013 Call for Presenters Now Open

INDUSTRY ALERT: OFFICIAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS 
 The Institute for International Research (IIR) presents: Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit March/April 2013

Due to the high volume of submissions, we suggest you submit your proposal early and no later than Wednesday, September 5, 2012 to Rachel McDonald, Senior Conference Producer at rmcdonald@iirusa.com or 646.895.7405.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is an event that showcases trends, insights and best practices for measuring, aligning and communicating your customer experience strategy to ensure business relevance.

A Three Day Conference Experience Featuring NEW Topics 
• Customer Experience Design & Measurement
• Experience Engineering
• Design Management
• Redesigning a Program
• Analyzing VoC
• Data Deployment and Data Dissemination
• Social Media Feedback
• New Innovative Methodologies
• Internal Customer Index Scoring vs. NPS
• Enterprise Feedback Management Strategy & Alignment
• Using VoC to Take Actionable Insights
• Employee Engagement
• Monetizing Your Customer Experience
• Recovery Strategy
• Linkage
• Customer Service

High Level General Sessions that Focus On: 
• Innovation & Creativity in Customer Experience
• Operational Perspective
• Digital Customer Experience
• Behavioral Economics
• Leadership

We are also happy to consider topics not listed here that you feel would add value and be appropriate. 

PLUS! Idea gathering forums following each session topic.

The Audience:
• Individuals within the company responsible for customer experience, voice of customer, customer research
• Individuals with direct experience for the customer experience and/or voice of customer collection, dissemination, interpretation and results
• Individuals seeking to enhance their own company's capabilities in these areas (become more customer-centric and drive business results through improved customer experience), and willing to help others advance through sharing of best practices and experiences Speakers receive FREE admission to the conference.

Sponsorship & Exhibition Opportunities 
If you are interested in sponsorship or exhibit opportunities please contact Jon Saxe, Business Development Manager at jsaxe@iirusa.com or 646.895.7467.

Interested in Becoming a Media Partner?
Contact Kacey Anderson, Marketing Manager, at kanderson@iirusa.com.

For consideration, please email rmcdonald@iirusa.com with the following information by Wednesday, September 5, 2012.
• Proposed speaker name(s), job title(s), and company name(s)
• Contact information including address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail
• Talk title • The main theme you plan to address
• Summary of the presentation (3-5 sentences)
• Please indicate what is NEW about the presentation
• What the audience will gain from your presentation (please list 3-5 key “take-aways”)
• Previous conference experience
• Short bio

Due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to respond to each submission. All those selected to participate as speakers will be notified shortly after the deadline. Thank you for your interest in the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit.

We look forward to receiving your proposal!

All the best,
Rachel McDonald Senior Conference Producer, IIR

"Driving Best-In-Class Customer Experience" Webinar Recording Available

Recently we were pleased to present a webinar entitled "Driving Best-In-Class Customer Experience: Beyond Social Media Listening" in cooperation with EmPower Research, a Genpact company.

In this session, presenter Sagita Joshi explored the customer experience ecosystem, discussing the ways that listening and engagement can be performed on social media channels.  We learned more about the ways that Twitter "has become the help desk" with examples such as Lenovo and Best Buy's "Twelpforce" leading the way.

Joshi presented a "win me, delight me, keep me" approach to social media customer experience building, with Empower finding that over time increased awareness of a brand on social media lead to up to 37% more first timers visiting a brand's page. To learn more, view a recording of the webinar here.

Are you using social media for customer experience?


About EmPower Research:
EmPower Research, a Genpact company (NYSE:G) provides integrated media and business research services. We help our clients understand stakeholder perception and needs, empowering them to service better. We use proprietary methodologies to listen and learn about conversations in the customer ecosystem, deriving real insights for active stakeholder engagement.
For more information, visit http://www.empowerresearch.com 

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

Putting a (Robotic) Face on Customer Service?

Here in NYC, we've just learned that the Newark, Kennedy and LaGuardia airports are getting a brand new customer service representative: an avatar. Watch the video below for a glimpse:



The Port Authority has reportedly spent $180,000 on this new development, but we have to wonder, do these avatars really deliver customer service value? Will they impact customer experiences in any significant way?

Putting a more "human" face on basic information such as the location of ground transport and bathrooms may make customers feel welcome, but as reported here "the avatar was not capable of processing or responding to human interaction...the technology currently plays a 90-second sound loop which reactivates anytime a person is within 30 feet of the apparatus."

It's a neat idea, and I'm sure management sees value in an "employee" that never needs a break or a vacation day, but with less interactivity then your average online "live chat" help representative, we can't see this avatar being the next big leap in customer service.

Michelle LeBlanc is a social media strategist at IIR USA and the voice of the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit on Twitter and on Facebook . She can be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Idea Gathering: Customer Experience News: Know Your NPS

As guest blogger Flavio Martin wrote during the 2012 Total Customer Experience Leader's Summit: "statistical precision matters." One of the statistical means of measuring customer experience discussed at the event was the Net Promoter Score or NPS. We're going to be hearing more about NPS during next week's webinar - specifically social engagement as the path to improving Net Promoter Score/Customer Satisfaction Index - so I wanted to do a deeper dive into this concept in this Idea Gathering wrap up.

First things first, what is a NPS? The term was first introduced in this Harvard Business Review Article "One Number You Need to Grow" by Frederick F. Reichheld. The number measures one simple thing: how likely a customer would be to recommend a company to a friend. The effectiveness of NPS is based on the following finding:

"In most of the industries studied, the percentage of customers enthusiastic enough about a company to refer it to a friend or colleague directly correlated with growth rates among competitors."

So, what's new in the NPS world? Time recently published a "small business tip of the day" entitled "Knowing Your Net Promoter Score Can Help Your Business" breaking down the importance of the NPS with the following statement:

"But it’s what you do with your NPS, not the score itself, that is the key to improving your business. As Customer Experience Professionals Association Chairperson Bruce Temkin notes, companies must ask the right questions of the right clients at the right time so they can understand why customers are Promoters, Detractors or Passives. Understanding those reasons is the first step toward a higher NPS — and more loyal customers."

NPS scored well as "the best customer measure" in this post on Harvard Business Review noting that "NPS is clearly a good predictor of the individual customer's attitudes" if not the absolute when it comes to measuring loyalty.

Finally, In the recent Forbes article "If You Aren't Social, You'll Shrink: 10 Steps To Becoming a Social Business" the author cites Enterasys as an example of a successful social business, noting that "Enterasys has produced 3 years of consecutive top-line year-over-year revenue growth, and a net promoter score of 81."

Interested in learning more? Join us for our free webinar "Driving Best-In-Class Customer Experience: Beyond Social Media Listening" on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 from 12:00PM - 1:00PM ET. Details here.

Complimentary Webinar: Driving Best-In-Class Customer Experience: Beyond Social Media Listening

In association with EmPower Research, a Genpact company, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary Web Seminar:

Driving Best-In-Class Customer Experience: Beyond Social Media Listening
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
12:00PM - 1:00PM ET

Presenter:

• Sangita Joshi, Managing Partner, EmPower Research, a Genpact company

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://cc.readytalk.com/r/ivporydm5oxu
Please mention your priority code: MWY0001BL

Today the rise in customer participation in Social Media is pushing marketers and researchers to listen and learn from Social Media conversations. While numerous applications of Social Media research are taking shape, understanding customer experience through the new media is gaining tremendous mind-share.

Social Media provides an excellent platform to listen to customer concerns, criticisms, and feedback, and address issues through one-to-one engagement. Social Media listening helps brand managers and marketers in not only differentiating their service quality but also aligning them with customer expectations, thus, driving greater satisfaction and better experience. In this session, you learn how Social Media can provide holistic insights on the “voice of consumer”.

Participants will learn:
• Understanding and measuring customer experience through Social Media – the possibilities today
• Beyond listening- Tracking voice of the consumer across the relationship cycle
• Social engagement- The path to improving Net Promoter Score/Customer Satisfaction Index

Sangita Joshi is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of EmPower Research - a Genpact company. She has over 20 years of experience in research of which the last eight years have been at the executive level. At EmPower, Sangita leads social media research and delivery to global clients, and closely works with the innovation team to continuously evolve solutions that aid decision-making in a dynamic business environment. She regularly writes for leading industry publications and speaks on topics related to social media-led insights.

About EmPower Research:
EmPower Research, a Genpact company (NYSE:G) provides integrated media and business research services. We help our clients understand stakeholder perception and needs, empowering them to service better. We use proprietary methodologies to listen and learn about conversations in the customer ecosystem, deriving real insights for active stakeholder engagement.
For more information, visit http://www.empowerresearch.com

About IIR:
The Institute for International Research (IIR) is the world's largest conference company and has been the leader in the provision of business information for over 25 years. IIR produces over 5,000 events annually through its network of offices in over 35 countries.

Idea Gathering, Customer Experience News: Digital Trends and Forgotten Feedback

It's been over a month since we've returned from the 2012 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit, so we wanted to check back in. Have you implemented any ideas from the event at your company? Come up with any new questions? Let us know in the comments!

In the meantime, let's take a look at what's been happening in the customer experience world.

Back on June 20th, Forbes posted an interesting piece "Shoppers To Retailers: Hello!? Is Anyone Listening?" suggesting that retailers are not acting on the customer feedback they may be receiving. One interesting note from the research being quoted:

"83 percent of those surveyed told Empathica they are more loyal to a brand when they believe action has been taken based on their feedback. Yet, in a RetailWire poll accompanying the story, 60 percent of those voting gave the retail industry a “D” or an “F” for responding to consumers’ suggestions."

In other research, Mashable noted "5 Digital Trends Shaping the Consumer Experience," and Dan Schawbel Personal Branding Expert, Millennial Branding explained "Why Brands Should Respond to Customers on Social Networks" on the Amex Open Forum.

Lastly, we enjoyed this piece on Fast Company's Co.Exist "Great Brands Are About Fusing Product And Service. How Do You Do It?" which noted:

"Companies need to start thinking about the holistic experience between their brands, products, and services. Crafting an experience requires design that considers these three elements of brand, product, and service in order to generate successful results. Any company can be analyzed through these lenses to evaluate the experience it creates for its customers."

What customer experience news have you come across since the event? We want Total Customer Experience Leaders to be a thriving community year round, not just a three day experience, so please share your thoughts.

Like these updates? Follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for industry news all week long.
 

Infographic: #TotalCEL 2012 Retrospective

Total Customer Experience Leaders may be behind us, but the learning and sharing doesn't end with the event. Be sure to join our LinkedIn group to network with your customer experience colleagues all year long and stay tuned here or follow us on Twitter or Facebook for more industry and event updates.

Speaking of Twitter, we had a great conversation during the event on our #TotalCEL hashtag. This infographic from Visual.ly sums up some of the highlights:

create infographics with visual.ly

Thanks so much to everyone who came and tweeted from the event!

If you missed our 2012 event, or need a reference now that you're back in the office, you can read recap posts of each day here:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit Day 3 Recap

The final day of the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit certainly didn't disappoint as we were privileged to hear an amazing line up of leaders who are aligning organizations around a customer experience mission and teaching us to effectively do the same.

We started the day discussing customer experience in a digital age. How to effectively implement customer experience loyalty programs and communicate the needs and action steps of the program to our organization.

We learned about the power of happiness within our organization to engage employees and unite people around a customer experience service mission. We also explored a case study of an airline that has effectively implemented a successful, premium flight experience in an age where customers are shopping for bargains. Here's a recap of some of the key discussions on our third and final day of our customer experience management conference.

Delivering Customer Experience Value in a World Gone Digital

Neff Hudson from USAA masterfully showed how USAA has been able to leverage technology to bring the clients at USAA the greatest value in service.

Customers today are spending more time researching, connecting, and interacting with our organizations before ever picking up the phone and interacting with a human being at the company. Because of this, it's not enough to have a great Web site today. 


We need to develop systems within our companies that connect our people, to our site, and our customers so that we know about our customers as the customer contact is being made. Using the latest technology available we can create smart call centers where customers are connected to agents who are armed with all of the tools and information about the customer and is able to bring real value to the customer interaction.

How a State of the Art Customer Experience Program Can Prevent the CEO Losing Sleep

Bill Barnes, from Burke, Inc., broke down the worries and concerns of executives when it comes to customer experience programs and shows us how to prepare our company executives to embrace customer experience and see the value it brings to the organization.

The most important question that any customer experience professional has to answer to the organization is: What is the financial impact to the organization for improving the customer experience?

We answer that question, by laying out a customer experience program using the linkage process. Within the linkage process we:

• Blueprint - lay out all of the business processes changes required in customer experience.
• Assess - review what systems contain information that will be needed for customer experience change.
• Analyze - propose changes to existing business systems and processes to contribute to a better customer experience
• Simulate - test out the changes and determine if the change is significant to be fully implemented.

Following this pattern when implementing customer experience programs, ensures us that we complete all of the requirements for effective customer experience change:

Case Study: The Porter Airlines Customer Experience

We were privileged to have Robert Deluce, CEO of Porter Airlines, with us at our conference. Robert discussed the Porter difference in how they have been able to thrice as a premium regional airline in a time where the margins in the airlines business are slim and customers are looking for bargains.

Porter Airlines goes above and beyond by carefully targeting their customer base and masterfully defining their brand and service experience. They realize that the most budget conscious consumer may not be willing to choose Porter, but providing a dignified, exceptional service experience still matters to many customers.

Toronto-based Porter Airlines enjoys the highest ratings in its airline category and is currently ranks along the lines of JetBlue and other award-winning service-based regional airlines. They truly show that service matters.

The Value of Happiness in Creating Positive Customer Experiences

JoAnna Brandi, a certified happiness consultant, expounded on the importance of culture in gaining a competitive advantage. JoAnna taught us that you can't put in place great experiences unless you have a culture of great people behind a great mission.

Customer experience is creating organizations that can out-think and out-perform the competition. As we invest in our company culture, the positive emotion we create within our organizations is contagious and helps us become successful in positively connecting with our customers.

Organizations with higher employee engagement have:

• 27% Higher Profits
• 50% Higher Sales
• 50% Higher Customer Loyalty

So why is creating this happiness and focusing on an exceptional customer experience important?

Customer experience is what you'll do after marketing. It's taking care of the customers you've brought in. If you want to keep them, you have to care for them.

Creating a Customer Focused Culture

Janet LeBlanc rounded out our conference talking about the responsibility to develop a customer-centric organization. Ultimately, it's not the CEO's responsibility to create the customer culture and it's not the customer experience manager's responsibility to do so.

The responsibility to create a customer-focused organization lies with every employee of the organization. It's a team effort. Customer experience can't be seen, it can't be heard, it can't be smelled or touched. Customer experience is intangible, it's the feelings you create within the customer.

Every customer touch point or experience has the potential to improve or diminish the power of the value of your brand. Everything the customer encounters is part of the customer's experience.

• 87% of organizations want to be customer experience leaders.
• 13% have achieved any level of customer-centricity.

• The key is making memorable connections.
• Your culture is who you are as a company.
• Culture is an organization's personality.

Customer focused organizations focus on customer action. They share the same characteristics:

• Customer requirements are considered first.
• Customer is talked about constantly.
• Customer feedback mechanisms are built into everything.
• Leaders visit with, talk to, and talk about the customer regularly.
• Employees feel connected to and are able to act for the customer's needs.

Customer experience focused organizations share the same benefit:

• Better financial performance.
• Higher employee involvement.
• Stronger internal communication.
• Healthier risk-taking and more innovation.

Putting the customer first eliminates the disconnect that companies often struggle with. Throughout our 3 days of customer experience we learned about the big things and little things that matter in exceptional customer experiences and customer experience programs.

We learned from organizations that get customer experience and from those that have learned to successfully align organizations around a customer experience mission.

With this rich experience, we'll now be able to be more effective at understanding the trends, the processes, and best practices to engage employees, educate executives, and manage the processes that allow our companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit Day 2 Recap

We spent day one of our customer experience conference looking at ways to design and measure our customer experience actions. Day two took us a journey of how to get our people connected with customer experience and the pitfalls of using customer experience the wrong way.

Never by Chance: How Leaders Align Intentional Customer Experience to Accelerate Strategy

Chuck Feltz started the day by answering the greatest question about implementing customer experience in our organizations: if we only had 30 seconds to tell an organization how to get the best return on their dollar, what would we tell them?

 Chuck's answer? STOP.

Stop doing what you're doing. Too many companies are spending more dollars in customer experience, than their efforts bring in.

Chuck goes on to says that the ESSENCE of strategy, is choosing to perform activities DIFFERENTLY or perform DIFFERENT activities than rivals. That's the first place we need to focus our customer experience development efforts. 

We do this by asking ourselves:

-WHAT problem do we want to solve?
-FOR WHOM do we want to solve it?
-WHY is our solution the best option?

Most customer experience strategies fail, not in execution, but in return for investment.

We fail to get the return we want, because we haven't asked ourselves the right questions and developed our customer experience process to answer those questions.

You CAN'T achieve DISTINCT competitive advantage from things you do REASONABLY well MOST of the time.

Never build WOW experience when your CORE experience is bad. Build your core process, then get started working on adding the WOW factor.

Experience Matters: The Role of Brand in Creating Customer Experiences That Count

Peter Dixon with Prophet ran through a case study on how the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas went from failed real estate project with $1 billion dollars lost and nowhere near completion, to successful Las Vegas contemporary hotel by using customer experience to build a brand.

Peter's presentation shows that customer experience is about telling a story that creates feelings within customers. It's not just done with human interaction.

Everything presented to the customer, people, location, objects, all contribute to the overall customer experience.

 Peter left us with the following advice about how brand and the customer experience:

Before starting anything think: what will be the touch points what are the experience objectives what will be the touchpoint priorities what are the segments what will be the inspiration what will be done new/different.

The key is to create signature touchpoint for the customer. We need to create distinctions that stand above the rest.

Our customer experience solution has to be: 

-Effective/Behavior Changing
-Feasible/Sustainable
-Unique/Memorable

Meeting the Expectations of Your Customers

Scott Hudler from Dunkin' Donuts discussed how brands can evolve to meet the needs of customers.

Not all customers are the same and effective brands know how to cater to the individual needs of their specific customer segment. Dunkin' is not in the business of providing coffee for the whole world.

They know who their customer base is, and they create a customer experience to connect with their target audience, listen to their customers, and make changes as their customer needs change.

Scott reminded us that: Putting the consumer first is ALWAYS the right strategy.

Dunkin' Donuts implements this strategy by focusing on their Dunkin's Half-Dozen Customer Experience Rules:

1. The power has shifted to shifted to consumers.
2. Brand has to be build around customer insight.
3. Customer has to be the center of everything we do.
4. Create dialogue with your customers.
5. Data is powerful...only if you put it into action.
6. Problems happen, how you resolve is the key.

The Seven Deadly Sins (and Seven Heavenly Virtues) of Voice of the Customer Research

Howard Lax from GFK enlightened us to the seven sins we're all guilty of committing in our measurement and research at one time of another...and many times we do this without even knowing it!

The 7 Deadly Sins of Customer Measurement:

Vanity - We focus on easy metrics or just those that make managers look good.
Provincialism - We don't ask the questions that really matter.
Narcissism - We looking at experience from company's perspective, not customer.
Laziness - We think we know what customers wants, more than the customer.
Pettiness - We limit the scope of the problem. Or underplay the gravity of the problem.
Inanity - We lose sight of the consequences of measurements.
Frivolity - We fail to take action.

From Bow to Stern: How Royal Caribbean is Strengthening Guest Engagement

Kara Wallace from Royal Caribbean teamed up with Judy Melanson from Chadwick Martin Bailey to show they they were able to build a customer engagement program to measure the customer experience in Royal Caribbean's cruise offerings.

Kara showed us how Royal Caribbean sets the bar high by showing customers that they operate on a brand promise. Based on the brand promise to its customers, the brand then prioritizes all of its investments on those that make the biggest difference to the guest experience.

The cornerstone to maintaining a high level of customer engagement for Royal Caribbean comes down to closely monitoring what customers are saying and making constant changes to the process based on what customers are saying.

Measuring Customer Loyalty

Renee Pezzi and Kerry Whiting from Citizen Bank demonstrated how Citizen Bank is staying on top of customer needs and focusing their actions as an organization on those that build customer loyalty through their custom customer loyalty index.

The Citizen Bank Customer Loyalty Index helps the organization make sure that they are monitoring the needs and wants of the customers across all of the services and components that customers interact with. Renee and Kerry reminded us that when creating customer loyalty programs:

• One size does not fit all. Do what's best for your organization & customers.
• Make sure metrics link to desired business results and why! 
• Sell the process internally, showing why!
• Always have ongoing assessment & improvement of metrics.
• Create great partnerships across business departments. You'll need it!
• Not all customer experience improvements cost $$$.
• Celebrate the quick wins in customer experience.
  

Integrating Voice of the Customer Into the Organization

Master storyteller Scott Swift from Hunter Douglas delivered a master presentation on the power of story telling to connect people with customer experience objectives.

Scott showed us how customer stories can show that we're using the data we receive and anchor it in the heads of the people.


The problem we often have with data is that we love it and would marry it if we could. The problem is that we transform it, manipulate data, play with it, and complicate it.

At the end of the day, stories are remembered much better, it's especially good if the story anchors to a specific piece of data.

We can be more effective at making customer experience organization changes if we:

• Train our people to show data.
• Explain what the data means.
• Show what we're going to do about the data.
• Determine the expectation from the process change.
• Measure the outcome of our changes against our expectations.

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit Day 1 Recap

1 day, 10 sessions, all customer experience. For everyone in attendance, this was a customer experience event worth every minute. If you weren't able to be there, here's a recap of what you missed. First, make sure you check out the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit Web site and stay tuned for details for the 2013 event. Trust me, after the smashing customer experience topics discussed this year, you won't want to miss this event again.

The State of Customer Experience Today

David Blair, with Rockwell Automation reminded us that the sad truth is that loyalty programs, customer satisfaction programs can all disappear. If people don't find value in it, it will disappear. Our focus is to ensure that keep moving this space forward, evolving.

Managing the Customer Experience - What It Means and What it Takes to Do It Well

Randy Brandy from Maritz and Loy Carbone with Experience Engineering discussed the frequent difficulty customer experience leaders have in connecting their organizations with customer focused action.

The problem is that we often don't have a clearly articulated definition and direction, with the exact role of customer experience management. We end up adding on pieces and components onto something that's already existing. But it's not a clearly outlined process. We spend so much time designing the experience for the customer, but it's critical to design the customer experience internally for the organization!

How to embed a culture of customer experience in your organization.

Kelly Harper, Director of Customer Experience at the Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial) showed us that not all banks are failing in the customer experience game.

BMO is leading the way at turning around the banking industry service model and showed us how BMO is taking customer experience to the next level. Kelly reminded us that customer experience isn't one thing. It's everything.

• Customer experience is how customers feels about us.
• Customer experience is our image and reputation in the marketplace.
• Customer experience is what our customers say it is.

...and effective customer experience management means we should know all of this.

Customer Feedback Systems: What the Academic Research Evidence Says About Customer Experience

Neil Morgan, from Indiana University, probably made the most earth shaking news during the day when his presentation showed what scientific data says about customer experience, customer satisfaction, and the various customer experience programs available to organizations.

 Neil showed that studies show that market oriented organizations are likely to be more innovative and able to implement faster than those that aren't market oriented. When an organization is market oriented:

• Innovates faster
• Greater focus on perceived quality
• More efficient and effective organizational performance

Neil discussed why statistical precision matters. Specifically, reminding that because of statistics, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) requires 13x greater sample size vs. standard satisfaction index. Ultimately, there is 0 academic evidence that customer satisfaction has impact in market share.

That's right. Customer satisfaction DOES NOT lead to greater market share. In all actuality, as the market share of an organization increases, there is a greater likelihood that customer satisfaction will actually DECREASE due to the size of the company, nature of a wider customer base, and inability to please every single customer!

 Does that mean that customer service scores don't matter? NO! But we HAVE to give CONTEXT to what the number say. Don't just give people scores, tell people what needs to be done with scores and what actions scores represent. Focus on actions!

Customer Experience Keeps Going and Going!

At this point, believe it or not, we were still just getting started with day 1!

 Other topics we discussed today were:

• Designing Customer Experience - Going From Strategy to Experience Engineering.
• 
  
• Measuring Successful Voice of Customer and Speech Analytics Deployment. 
• 
  
• Customer Care-opoly: Gamification to Teach Customer Experience! 
• 
  
• How to Effectively Measure and Analyze and Leverage Multi-Channel Voice of Customer Data 
• 
  
• What Lessons We Can Learn From How Voice of the Customer Leaders Measure Customer Experience 

Customer experience is more than numbers and measurements. Some things we do in customer experience has a big impact, but doesn't show up in the numbers.

So remember to give context to the customer experience actions we want to take and the value to the organization.

Welcome to day one at The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit!

The Total Customer Experience Leader’s summit kicks off at 8:00am today with opening remarks from our chairperson, David Blair, Director, Customer Experience, ROCKWELL AUTOMATION.

Join the conversation: follow our team on Twitter @TotalCustomer and if you're tweeting from the event use #TotalCEL. You can also catch up on sessions here throughout.


Thanks so much to our event sponsors:

Are you committed to customer experience? Don't miss out on this!

The time is here! The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit begins! Live from Boston, MA, we'll be experiencing 3 jam-packed days of customer experience, customer experience, and more customer experience from the leading experts in customer experience design, measuring, development, and alignment.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit will walk us through leading strategies to implement a successful customer experience culture in our organizations.

Throughout the three days we'll explore, collaborate, and build the ideas of designing successful customer experience programs, effectively measuring the impact of customer experience, strategically establish customer experience processes, and align entire organizations around customer-focused principles and processes.

Here's a quick preview of some of the hot topics we'll be covering here during the next three amazing customer experience days!

Design the Customer Experience

-The Academic Research Evidence for Customer Experience
-Customer Experience Design—From Strategy to Experience Engineering
-Successful VOC and Speech Analytics Deployment - A Real-Life Case Study!

Measure the Customer Experience

-Customer Care-Opoly
-How to Effectively Analyze and Leverage Multi-Channel VoC Data
-Lessons Learned From Voice of the Customer Leaders
-The Seven Deadly Sins (and Seven Heavenly Virtues) of Voice of the Customer Research
-From Bow to Stern: How Royal Caribbean is Strengthening Guest Engagement
-Measuring Customer Loyalty

Strategically Establish Customer Experience

-Integrating Voice of the Customer into the Organization
-Summiting the Customer Experience Measurement
-How Emotion Drives Customer Experience, Engagement and Loyalty
-The Value of Happiness in Creating Positive Customer Experiences

Align Around Customer Experience

-How Highly Engaged Employees Deliver the Brand Promise through Customer Experiences
-Linking the Voice of the Customer to Business Processes and Results
-Creating a Customer-Centric Culture
-Integrating a Management Decisions into the Customer Experience

Stay tuned! I'll be giving you a little taste of the customer experience feast that will take place at the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit!

Understanding How Key Customer Life Events Drive Brand Innovation - Complimentary Web Seminar

In association with Questback, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary Web Seminar. This webinar is part of the 2012 Insights Webinar Series: Your resource for insights on the cutting edge.

Understanding How Key Customer Life Events Drive Brand Innovation
Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 1:00PM - 2:00PM Eastern Time

Presenter: Jim Whaley of Questback

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/7ck8vvrz74p8
Please mention your priority code: MWJ0021-Blog


Consumers are faced with brand decisions everyday - from the browser they use when surfing the Internet, to their toothpaste choice and where they get gas. When did these brand choices begin? How early in the buying cycle did the consumer experience influence their purchase decision? This is a question we may lose sight of. But today, brands must understand key milestones and triggers in a customer's life (a baby shower, opening a checking account, or moving out on your own) to build a better brand promise. They must understand where and how customers get information and their experiences and how they use that information to make decisions about your brand.

As a result, leaders struggle with decisions about funding and prioritizing projects and new campaigns. It is critical now more than ever, that brands take a deeper look at their insights programs and marketing channels and how they manage them. Join Questback Vice President, Jim Whaley, as he presents "Understanding How Key Consumer Life Events Drive Brand Innovation."

During this 1 hour complimentary web seminar, Jim will cover the challenges facing marketers today: 

•    Understanding key customer-event touchpoints;
•    Aligning marketing communications and your agency partners with new media realities;
•    Incorporating insights into business process; and
•    How to best share information with key stakeholders in your organization for decision support.

Jim will share what some of the biggest brands are doing to engage with customers and track customer experiences to gather insights for product, channel and brand innovation. And he'll wrap it up with some recommendations on what you can begin doing today to better understand the influences on your customers and their buying behaviors.

Title: Understanding How Key Customer Life Events Drive Brand Innovation
Speaker: Jim Whaley, Questback
Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM EDT

Register Now: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/7ar5uyjdr30s
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the web seminar.

Customer Experience Support for the Customer Experience People

We've finally arrived at the week of the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit! I'm looking forward to hearing from an excellent line up of customer experience leaders and hope you are looking forward an amazing and insightful week.

If you you're still undecided, there's still time! The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit starts on Wednesday, June 6 in Boston, MA. I want to get our week started by talking about why customer experience matters.

An exceptional customer experience take strategy, planning, commitment and hard work. It's not enough to put warm bodies where customers will be and think that great customer experiences will happen, just because you have real, live humans.

The true customer-centric, customer-thinking, and customer-loving organizations understand the needs of customers, and take action for customers at every level to develop the customer experience.

If you’re going to improve customer experience...you have to find ways to meet customers’ individual needs and manage the emotional states that impact decision-making. That will require strong relationships, excellent performance, and engaged employees. Your framework must reflect these components.

Curt Carlson, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Management – TNS North America

Who can you rely on to verify your framework? When the customer service leaders have questions, who can they turn to?

It's often difficult to effectively plan and execute all of the components of exceptional a customer-focused program. Luckily, we have tools, resources, experts, and a supportive community ready to help. They're there because they're also working or have worked out in the past, the same components we're working to implement today.

A Summit for Customer Experience Leaders

One Collective Voice, One Collaborative Congress, One Holistic Customer Experience Training.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is the conference where YOU get the chance to learn and collaborate with industry leaders from across the business spectrum. The conference brings together the top minds to share genuine insights and best practices which speaks to the TOTAL customer experience process.

This unique conference focuses on:

Designing the Customer Experience

See how VOC data and design principles can be used to engineer experiences across your organization.

Measuring the Customer Experience

Drive change and optimize your sales force by measuring customer feedback through the entire framework for customer service.

Strategizing for Customer Experience

Interpret, analyze and evaluate your customer strategy to ensure business relevance.

Aligning to the Customer Experience

Integrate and leverage your customer touch points – measurement, ROI, linkage, VOC, technology, design principles, operational metrics, and senior leadership – to structure a successful and meaningful program.

If you're ready to participate in a conference where you'll be connecting and discussing the most innovative techniques to gain consensus and buy-in, this conference will help you focus on the key areas of change and create a unique customer experience with customer focused interaction that will make a difference and establish your customer experience.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is a great opportunity to take advantage of 3-full days of innovative keynotes, and advanced case-studies that explore Customer Experience Design, Measurement & Feedback, Strategy, and Alignment.