8 Stats Proving the Importance of Customer Experience

Is customer experience really that important? Well, the recent Fortune list of the world’s 10 most admired companies in 2013 includes seven that are renowned for excellence in that area: Apple, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, Southwest, Disney and FedEx. Here is some recent research by Business2community.com that proves customer experience should be a top priority for companies today.

• Dell has published internal metrics showing that 97 percent of dissatisfied customers can be rescued with proactive intervention and more than 40 percent of those people become raving fans.
• Siegel+Gale’s 3rd annual Global Brand Simplicity Index reported last year that nearly one third of American consumers would be willing to pay an average of four percent more for simpler brand experiences.
• Gartner estimated last year that by 2014 “failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15 percent increase in churn rate for existing customers.”  
• Research by Temkin Group last year reported that only seven percent of the 255 large companies it surveyed could be described as reaching the highest level of customer experience maturity, although 60 percent said their goal is to be the industry leader in customer experience within three years.
• A July, 2013 Lloyd’s survey of 588 C-suite executives found that customer loss was their second biggest concern, exceeded only by worries about high tax rates. Respondents also indicated they are under-prepared to address this risk, with executives giving themselves only a 5.7 rating on a 1-to-10 scale. 
• Sixty-two percent of B2B and 42 percent of B2C customers purchased more after a good experience, while 66 percent and 52 percent, stopped making purchases after a bad experience, according to a survey of 1,000 people who had had recent customer service interactions.
• An Oracle survey of 1,342 senior-level executives from 18 countries earlier this year found that 97 percent agree that delivering a great customer experience is critical to business results, and that the average potential revenue loss from failing in this area is 20 percent of annual revenue. However, 37 percent are just getting started with a formal customer experience initiative, and only 20 percent consider the state of their customer experience initiative to be advanced.
• A survey of 2,000 adults last year found that 83 percent are willing to spend more on a product if they feel a personal connection to the company. One-fifth said they would spend 50 percent more on companies that they felt the company put the customer first.

Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the tech industry.  She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc. 

Starbucks’ New Brew: Faster Digital Customer Experience

Today, Starbucks Coffee Company has become almost as well known for its free WiFi as its coffee. The $13.3 billion company provides a model of combining a physical retail operation with digital channels. It has more than 34 million Facebook likes and more than 3.6 million Twitter followers, and is successful at using social media and mobile technology to create unforgettable customer experiences. 

In fact, recently Google and Level 3 Communications have partnered up to provide wireless service at Starbucks U.S. locations. The new Google WiFi will initially be seen at new locations over the next month and then be rolled out to its remaining 7,000 locations across the country over the next 18 months. According to Level 3 CEO Jeffrey Storey, the company is working with Google to provide Starbucks with a differentiated experience for customers.

“We will do the things that we do best – building and managing complex network services to support that infrastructure. And, Google will do the things that they do best and make sure that they provide a differentiated WiFi experience that they will at some point, use that portal and that interface to, for example, offer seasonal drink coupons to the customers as they walk in,” he told Diginomica.com.

Starbucks Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman said it’s the next step in the relationship between the coffee giant and Google. Currently, Brotman is responsible for delivering wider digital thinking at Starbucks, which is key to its customer experience (CX) strategy.

“From the digital perspective, we spent the past several years building an engine of digital touch points with our customers that not only allows us a deeper relationship with our customers, but also pays off with incrementality for our business,” he commented.

Image via www.technology-digital.com

A critical tool for Starbucks is its loyalty card program which has seen a 100 percent year-over-year growth in dollars loaded via Starbucks mobile apps and Web properties.  Over 10 percent of all transactions in U.S. stores are made via mobile phone, according to Brotman. So, mobile devices have become important part of the CX as the fastest and easiest way to pay in stores and will continue to bring more innovation into the space.

“One of the things that’s allowed us to get a lead in mobile payments is that we did not try to go for example, right to the cloud or right to some sort of tap to pay, although we do plan in the future on implementing whatever is suited and most convenient to our customers,” he added.

Additionally, Starbucks recently passed almost four million Twitter follower mark, and while its global Facebook following allows the firm to engage with our customer’s every day, “Our internal measures tell us that these digital initiatives have added demonstrable impact to our US business with the promise of even greater growth in the months and years to come. We are not resting on any of our previous successes,” said Brotman.

To date, Starbucks has a robust pipeline of developments in each area of its digital ecosystem and it expects to deliver a number of improvements and innovations through its existing programs and introduce new concepts. For instance, one new initiative is a partnership with Duracell to trial wireless charging for our customer’s mobile devices in select Starbucks stores in Silicon Valley. The installation of multiple wireless charging Powermat services in our stores will allow Starbucks customers to easily recharge their smartphones.

Brotman said, “This is a kind of improvement to the digital experience that our customers expect from Starbucks and the kind that we will deliver at scale moving forward.”

Furthermore, Brotman said work is underway to accelerate the digital strategy globally. China, for example, already has 2.5 million My Starbucks Rewards members without a mobile payment platform or eGifting in place. The company has even made mobile payment available to apps on Android and iOS to Starbucks customers in the Hong Kong market.

“I truly believe that no other retailer is as far along as Starbucks in terms of building an end to end digital customer experience across a variety of digital touch points both in-store and out of store, across channels, and now across geographies,” Brotman said. “We are truly only just getting started.”

Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the tech industry.  She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmanadCicc. 

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How to Create Made-to-Order Customer Experience

Welcome to the world that will not wait, where each customer service interaction is driven by the "me" mentality. According to Google's "The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior," the average consumer moves among three screens per day to search for information and perform tasks. In addition to potentially being multiscreen, customer service transactions are also often multichannel, performed across a varying combination of platforms including but not limited to phone, email, chat, social media, smartphone, or tablet. An Ovum study of more than 8,000 consumers shows that 74 percent now use at least three channels when interacting with an enterprise for customer-related issues—and this approach to resolution is completely changing the way support communicates with customers. The consumer is now in control, demanding service anytime, anywhere, via the channel of his or her choice. Therefore, many big brands have brought back the structure of single-file service by making certain customer support contact information less accessible and siphoning customers through one or two more cost-effective channels like email or live chat. But between the bloggers, the media, and the public outcry on social media, these could not contain consumers who demanded a made-to-order customer experience based on expectations. So, how does a brand master all the combinations? Destination CRM has shared some insightful answers: Offer as many customer service channels as possible. Expectations of today's customer are for service at least via phone, email, and online support portal. Additional channels that prove to be customer service differentiators include live chat, self-service knowledge base, mobile, social media, and video. Embrace agile channeling. While an organization may offer a variety of customer service channels, you'll increasingly frustrate customers if they're not connected. More and more customers are expecting service and support to be agile. They want service to start an interaction at one point, whether that's phone or email or help desk, and the brand should be able to carry over that information and continue the conversation as the customer arrives at the next touch point. Know thy customer. Locked hand in hand with agile channeling is the personalized customer experience. Without aggregated data, information, and feedback from across all channels, you will never have a true 360-degree view of the customer to create a made-to-order customer experience. With a new generation of customers demanding more and reaching out and voicing their opinions across more channels, brands can only contain the empowered consumer with siloed channels for so long. Customers have figured out their own way to put themselves first. Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist at IIR USA in New York City, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the tech industry.  She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.

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Idea Gathering: Customer Experience & Mergers/Acquisitions

Not just hearing, but translating innovations and insights is a huge part of the value of the Total Customer Experience Leadership. Our unique idea gathering wrap-ups between sessions facilitate alignment of customer strategy inspiration with business relevant actions and have been one of our most highly rated features in the past.

Here's our weekly idea gathering wrap ups of some of our favorite customer experience strategy, design and alignment news and views:

Given their recent appearance in the news this week our topic is mergers and acquisitions.

Within the last month several big names have announced mergers and acquisitions including Berkshire Hathaway acquiring Heinz Food, US Airways and American Airlines seeking to merge, and Office Depot merging with Office Max.

Inc Magazine reported that large companies spent a total of 84 billion last year alone in acquisitions of smaller companies with the top five being Facebook, Google, Groupon, Twitter, and Cisco respectively.  For many companies making acquisitions is just part of their corporate strategy, and for many more being acquired is their strategy.

Mergers and acquisitions can often be long drawn out affairs depending on the sizes of the companies, and can certainly be a headache for all parties involved. However, despite the difficulties that businesses ma face during a merger and acquisition it’s crucial that they don’t lose sight of the most important thing: the customer.

Many acquired customers are often lost primarily due to poor communication regarding the acquisition process. If it’s a bigger company, customers might hear about the merger or acquisition themselves and immediately fear service or quality changes. With smaller companies the problem often arises when the customer tries to make contact and struggles to find the new department, service, or even company.

It’s the responsibility of all parties involved in a merger or acquisition to re assure the customer that things are going to stay the same, or improve for them. People tend to fear change and a customer finding out that their new provider is some random merger who “acquired” them might be put off. Often mergers and acquisitions mean disruptions in service for customers and strategist guru Joe Lamantia explains in an article on the subject how “Much of the disruption is easily managed in advance by communicating upcoming changes to customers”.

They key of the whole process is communication. American Banker sums it up saying “The value of communicating to strengthen customer retention through the post-acquisition integration process is quite clear.” Keeping customers informed means keeping customers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeffrey Marino is a contributing writer concentrating his focus on Business Administration, Management Information Systems, and Tech Innovations. He blogs atFordham Nights and can bereached at JMarino@iirusa.com.

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Customer Service and Cloud Computing Make Service Cloud

According to ZDnet.com, Salesforce.com has unveiled its Service Cloud, a customer service application that’s designed for cloud computing and plugged into conversations that occur on Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Customers can use the Service Cloud as a community on these websites and social networking sites to talk about specific products--a more 2.0 version of the message board. The goal of the Service Cloud is to "absorb information into a corporate knowledge base," i.e., find out when and what people are talking about and use that to enhance their customer service and understanding of consumers.

Also, Salesforce.com promises that Service Cloud results will be ranked near the top of Google results and multi-channel–phone, email and chat–support hosted in the cloud.

It seems that these online retailers are looking to be a "friend" with the consumers online and will try to engage the consumer about products on a candid level.

Post your thoughts on Service Cloud here or on our LinkedIn group.