The Secrets Behind a Successful Customer Experience Strategy

According to the Customer 2020 Report, the customer of the future will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive.

They will expect you to know their individual needs and personalize their experience. Immediate resolution will not be fast enough as customers will expect you to proactively address their current AND future needs.

At the 2014 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit, we examine the power of today's customer-driven world to develop a strategy to deliver an integrated customer experience by focusing on four key content pillars - Linking, Design Thinking, Synthesis, and Data Mapping.

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014

April 9-11, 2014

Trump International Beach Resort

Miami, Florida

Download the brochure for the full agenda: http://bit.ly/1ffN4Qo

Join our keynotes as they address the main themes of the Customer Experience process:

Linking - Explore how to connect attitudinal metrics to behavioral data across the enterprise.
Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality at Work
John D. Mayer, Renowned Professor of Psychology, The University of New Hampshire and Author, Personal Intelligence

Design Thinking - Go beyond transaction and strategize a new way forward.
The Crazy Ones: How to be a Leader that Inspires Creativity and Innovation
Stephen Gates, VP and Creative Director, Global Brand Design, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

Synthesize - Integrate insights and intelligence to get at the heart of the emotional experience.
Using Emotional Energy To Make Your Customer Experience Programs Easier, Faster and Smarter 
Daryl Travis, CEO, Brandtrust

Data Mapping - Discover new approaches to measuring and aligning your data.
Employees are the Key to Delivering your Customer's Experience
Peter Neill, Former Chief Customer Officer, Level 3 Communications

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit tells the whole story, from beginning to end. This is your invitation to join the conversation to gain a deeper understanding of your customer and provide you with the foresight you need to create a strategic and effective customer experience plan.

Mention code TCEL14BL & Save 15% off the standard rate. Register today: http://bit.ly/Ofcbrq

We hope to see you Miami!

Cheers,
THE TCEL Team

@TotalCustomer

#TCEL14

customers1stblog.iirusa.com

Customer Experience is the Way to Grow a Business Today

As the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded with products, it is becoming more difficult for companies to stand out amidst the noise. In the past, product packaging and messai8ng was the most important way to stand out from competitors. Today, these elements are still critical, but in addition, you need to offer the customer a special experience.

The customer experience is a blend of a company's physical performance and the emotions evoked, intuitively measured against customer expectations across all touch-points. The customer experience should be a reflection of everything that makes up your brand – not just the products or services, but its attitudes, values and key differentiation. This means that every time a company and a customer interact, the customer learns something about the company that will either strengthen or weaken the future relationship - and with that - the customer's desire to return, spend more and recommend.

Here is an infographic produced by Nunwood  that shows just how important customer experience is to a growing business:

Government Organizations Must Win Hearts of Public

Today, customer experience is one of the most popular phrases in the business world. Major companies across the globe have realized this trend and are now making customer experience the focal point of their entire business.

Lou Carbone, customer experience expert and founder & CEO of Experience Engineering, says that any organization looking to satisfy customers must make all the effort to enter the hearts and minds of its customers.

When it comes to government organizations, this is absolutely critical. Government organizations, according to Carbone, should strive to make an emotional connection with the public to win their hearts. At Government Summit in Dubai last week, he warned that organizations can become so intensely focused on meeting the needs of customer that they might miss other important aspects, like emotionally connection.

"Corporate managers of companies are emphatic that what counts is not the function they provide but the effect it has on people," he stated.

In fact, according to Carbone, 95 per cent of what humans process in their minds consists of unconscious thoughts. So, understanding the role of the unconscious mind, becoming clue conscious and developing systems to manage these clues for emotional experience are key to delighting customers. 

He advises that the first step is to move from a 'make and sell' attitude to a 'sense and respond' approach in order to achieve customer happiness.  Carbone said, “Organizations that fail to make this shift face the danger of doing all the wrong things.”

Want to learn more about customer experience from Lou Carbone in person? Join me at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, click here: http://bit.ly/1h8MTb4

This year, TCEL explores the new realities of building brands and relationships in today's socially driven and data abundant world. Discover the emotional drivers that are critical in creating an effective customer story. The event shines an important lens on the power of insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships.

Your experience will include three full days of high-level visionary keynote presentations and in-depth case studies illustrating linking insights & data, data measuring & mapping, design thinking, synthesize intelligence from B2B and B2C companies across verticals, disciplines and cultures to march forward with a sound total customer experience plan.

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.

Michaels’ New Kind of Customer Experience: Pinterest Parties

Online interaction has become one of the major aspects of the customer experience today. If I ever came across a company that didn’t have a website, I’d most likely take my business elsewhere. Social media has become a predominant platform to interact with customers. Now, with the rise in smartphones and tablet use, businesses have no choice but to think about their mobile and social customer experience strategy, if they want to be profitable.

Over the last few years, the number of channels consumers use to reach companies has doubled over, and the Internet has become the predominant medium for consumers to express their opinions about a product or company. In fact, a survey found that 50 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a product from a company that they can contact via a social media page. In addition, 56 percent of consumers that actively use social media to interact with businesses feel a stronger connection to that business.

Not to mention, using mobile to reach customers is growing more prevalent. A recent survey of smartphone users found that 63 percent will use online coupons to get the best price. In addition, 57 percent of users indicated that would like to receive location-based offers from companies, and 80 percent said they have received promotions on their smartphones from preferred brands.

Motivated by this social customer experience revolution, Michaels has partnered with Hometalk to bring its customers Pinterest Parties. The craft store is setting aside dedicated time for you to make those cool projects that you’ve been pinning all this time.

According to the companies, these parties will provide live access to Hometalk's network of DIY experts. Hometalk has selected 100 of its members to lead a series of DIY craft demos for customers to learn from as they shop for supplies in Michaels stores. Handpicked for their DIY expertise, Hometalk members will put their own twist on one of five Pinterest-inspired projects, offering customers hands-on help and tutorials, ideas and advice.

"Michaels is all about providing inspiration, instruction and ideas for creative DIY projects," said Michaels CMO Paula Puleo, in a statement. "As a top destination for home and garden project supplies, Michaels is happy to welcome Hometalk members into the stores for these fun, educational events."

The next in-store Pinterest Party will be held on Sunday, February, 16th, 1pm – 4pm at all store locations. There will be plenty of project inspirations, or you can bring in a Pinterest idea of your own!

The Pinterest Parties at Michaels have been a great success for the company’s web presence. Between October and December 2013, visits on the website more than doubled — jumping from two million visits in October 2013 to more than four million in December 2013.

Want to learn more about social customer experience in person? Join me at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, click here:  http://bit.ly/1lx8EDx

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.

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Customer Experience Conversations: Janet LeBlanc

In this next post in our Customer Experience Conversations series, we sat down with Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit’s speaker Janet LeBlanc, who is also President of Janet LeBlanc + Associates Inc. LeBlanc discussed how empathy and emotion has a critical impact on customer experience today.

This year, TCEL will explore the new realities of building brands and relationships in today’s socially driven and data abundant world. The event will shine an important lens on the power of insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships.

Your experience at TCEL will include three full days of high-level visionary keynote presentations and in-depth case studies illustrating linking insights & data, data measuring & mapping, design thinking, synthesize intelligence from B2B and B2C companies across verticals, disciplines and cultures to march forward with a sound total customer experience plan.

Here is what LeBlanc had to say:

IIR: Describe your best customer experience.

LeBlanc: The best customer experiences are those that elicit the strong positive feelings and emotions that strengthening the relationship and loyalty a customer has with a company. Statements such as: “I felt like she understood what I wanted or they treated me with respect” are the best examples of a great customer experience.

IIR: How is empathetic leadership changing leadership in customer experience today?

LeBlanc: Empathy is considered one of the five categories of emotional intelligence. It will enable a leader to develop a closer, more collaborative relationship with others. Taking a personal interest, showing that you care, and having a genuine concern about another person’s point of view fosters an environment of trust and caring—the ideal environment for employees to perform at their best and for customers to feel appreciated and valued.

IIR: Why are empathy and emotion so important in when it comes to customer experience?

LeBlanc: Recognizing the power an emotion has on determining the outcome of a customer experience is paramount to a successful customer experience management program. We may forget what someone says to us, but we rarely forget how they make us feel. Having empathy and understanding emotions throughout the customer experience journey helps organizations to stay connected to their customers, to design a better problem resolution process, and to create a more collaborative empathetic work environment.

IIR: What are the key traits of a great customer experience leader?

LeBlanc: Today’s savvy business leaders recognize the shift towards collaborative leadership capabilities. Implementing a large-scale customer experience program requires the commitment and collective forces of the entire leadership team. No one leader can drive customer-centricity alone. Strong alignment and collaboration is a must to be successful.

IIR: If your customers have a bad customer experience, how do you reconnect with them moving forward?

LeBlanc:  When a problem occurs, the bond between a company and the customer is broken. It places the relationship in crisis and creates a pivotal time for a company to re-establish the relationship and repair the damage. Most companies will train employees to apologize, but often will forget the most important ingredient needed for successful resolution—empathy. Even when an apology is offered, without recognizing the emotions at play or a statement acknowledging the gravity of the situation, the apology will not have a positive impact.

IIR: Employee recognition can positively influence employee behaviors and cultivate a customer-centric culture. How do you recognize and motivate your employees?

LeBlanc: Recognition programs motivate employees to make an extra effort or go the extra mile. By acknowledging and giving special attention to an employee’s actions, an organization is reinforcing the specific behaviors needed to realize its customer experience strategy and goals. The best employee recognition programs use a combination of informal and formal approaches that balance feedback from leaders, peers and customers. An effective employee recognition program not only recognizes top performers but also motivates all employees to reinforce and achieve the desired customer-focused behaviors.

Want to hear more from Janet on customer experience in person? Join her at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, click here:  http://bit.ly/1dmzfJe  

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.

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Is Instagram the next challenge for brand marketers?

I talk to social marketers every day.  And here’s a consistent message I hear:  “Yes we work with Facebook and Twitter”.  Or they might throw in Google+ or YouTube. 

But almost uniformly I hear, “and this year we’re going to try and introduce Instagram into the mix”. 

What’s happening out there in the social arena that image oriented social networks are getting this type of attention?  Is it the pictures?  Or because these networks are newer and younger audiences are seemingly migrating to Instagram and Pinterest? 

Is it just the visual nature of the medium presenting itself as a challenge worth pursuing (as well as worth a thousand words)?

 

Images Count

We know images are important.  The first things most people look at when they see a profile on Facebook or Google+ or LinkedIn is the profile picture.

Facebook is making it clear that brand postings need to be more content rich in the future.  No more posting just text… a link or an image must be associated with the post if there’s going to be a chance it will show up in someone’s newsfeed.

Most social users are drawn to images both to look at and to share. 

Some Statistics

In fact studies have shown photo uploads are the most popular activity on both Facebook and on Google+.  Posting photos is the number one activity on Facebook whether you’re logging in from your computer, your tablet or your phone.

This visual web is driving the rise of Pinterest with a growth rate of 88% over the last 12 months.  Instagram is the fastest growing social network with 150 million users and 40 million photos being uploaded each day .

How Do We Collect Information From Images?

All these photos can represent a data mining challenge.  It is much easier to perform data analysis on text.  Only if the photos have text associated with them can the images be counted, categorized and accorded value. 

But the good news is that users are using hashtags with the images. Hashtags are widely used by brands. 83% of posts submitted by brands include a hashtag, and almost all of the brands now use them.

So analysis might be fruitful and fuel marketing decisions.  For instance, it may be possible to generate keywords from images people have posted and use those keywords to direct relevant advertisements to that individual, in much the same way sponsored search now does with text queries.

Eric Xing, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, looked at images associated with 48 brands in four categories—sports, luxury, beer, and fast food. The images came from popular photo-sharing sites such as Pinterest.  He was able to produce cogent statistics based on the images.

Pictures Are Powerful

And images can reach consumers in ways text just can’t.  You can participate in social media with understandable images without putting out very much mental effort.  In fact you don’t even have to read.  The illiterate can easily communicate on social networks by enjoying images, liking them (by clicking on that thumbs up image) and sharing them (by clicking on an arrow).

A study done at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University showed that over-exposure to food imagery increased people's satiation. (Satiation was defined as the drop in enjoyment with repeated consumption, or the fifth bite of cake was less enjoyable than the first.) 

Best Practices

And leaders in social media communication, such as Target, are creatively using image oriented social networks to engage their audience.   Items in a Target store might have a tag that says, “As seen on Pinterest.” And you can browse the latest Pinterest postings at the Target web site.

Wrap Up

We know social networks constantly evolve, and the tastes and interests of users evolve right alongside.  It makes sense that brand marketers are planning to evolve their approach to engage with their consumers. And that means many are going to follow through on that promise and start using Instagram this year.

Ron Shulkin blogs researches and writes about enterprise technology focused on innovation and social media. You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook group.  You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn.  

Ron Shulkin is the Chicago area Director for Spredfast.  Spredfast provides a social relationship platform that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their social media programs at scale. Spredfast enables more people, in more places, to engage in more conversations from a single platform on supported social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ YouTube and popular blogging platforms.  You can learn more about Spredfast here.