Where you’re from influences what you say!

Where people are from makes a difference…and likely skews their contributions to collaborative or VOC  systems.

A couple of years ago someone asked me if I was from New York.  The fact is I’m from Chicago but I think I understood what they were saying…I speak like I know what I’m talking about; I know what I want…and probably I intimate that I’d like it right now (please).  

The fact is when you ask your customers what they think their responses may be skewed in tone depending on where they’re from.  Let’s remember voice of the customer response collection systems…in fact any collaborative technology, is still a form of social network and the interactions occurring there should be interpreted with a tempered understanding of the social backgrounds of the participants.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn't believe them nor accept rudeness nor push for more than what you’re getting.

It just means you should at least consider where any given comment is “coming from”.

The USA reflects three different attitudes
For instance people from the US can be divided up into three regions with somewhat predictable responses. 

Those in the Midwest, Great Plains, and Deep South can be relied on to be “people who are, on average, conventional, friendly, sociable, compliant, and emotionally stable.” Just like the voice of the newscaster, you can expect responses to questions to come through on an even keel.  “Gee Whiz!  Us folks from Chicago go to bed early!”

Those primarily from the Western portions of the country are “people who are, on average, creative and relaxed, reserved, and perhaps somewhat socially distant.”   Their responses can be expected to be leavened with a friendly frankness.  “No problemo, mi amigo!”

Lastly those folks from the Northeast can be counted on to be “people who are, on average, irritable, impulsive, and quarrelsome.”  So don’t be surprised when their frankness is less than friendly, it’s just their nature.  “Beep Beep…Move it!”

Extreme Weather can produce Rich Innovators!
I manage the idea management group on LinkedIn and a big chunk of the LinkedIn groups I belong to have something to do with Innovation.  So together with my work (which is international in scope frequently) I get to talk to people interested in Innovation from all over the world.  A couple of years ago I noticed a high percentage of innovative people coming from The Netherlands.

I was motivated to ask a couple of these folks why that was.  Predictably the answer I got was something on the order of “it’s cold here so we spend a lot of time in doors thinking, talking and drinking beer”.  I don’t think that’s quite it.

Studies do show those both affluent and from demanding climates (cold or hot) have the most freedom and opportunity.  Because of this they tend to be open minded and are comfortable seeking risks.  They're creative thinkers who are happy to share their opinions.

Where you’re from makes a difference.
We all work to have a social media “voice”.  Sometimes the collaborative contributions we read in news feeds are affected by the geography of the contributor.  Don’t take offense at the tough guy from New York; don’t think the guy from California is slack; don’t be surprised to get a bunch of creative thought from wealthy people in either Denmark or Saudi Arabia.  Just like Real Estate, when it comes to the Voice of Your Customer the three top important attributes might just be location location location.

Rentfrow, P. et al., “Divided We Stand: Three Psychological Regions of the United States and Their Political, Economic, Social, and Health Correlates,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).
Van de Vliert, E., “Climato-Economic Habitats Support Patterns of Human Needs, Stresses, and Freedoms,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (October 2013).
 

Ron Shulkin blogs, researches and writes about enterprise technology focused on social media, innovation, voice of the customer, marketing automation and enterprise feedback management.  You can learn more about Ron at his biography web site:www.shulkin.net. You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook group.  You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn.   

Ron Shulkin is Vice President of the Americas for CogniStreamer®, an innovation ecosystem. CogniStreamer serves as a Knowledge Management System, Idea Management System and Social Network for Innovation. CogniStreamer has been rated as a “Leader” in Forrester’s recent Wave report on Innovation Management Tools. You can learn more about CogniStreamer here http://bit.ly/ac3x60 . Ron also manages The Idea Management Group on LinkedIn (JoinHere).

Create Unforgettable Customer Experiences like Disney

Since 1923, The Walt Disney Company has been delighting its customers with an enchanting and diverse approach to entertainment. As the envy of marketers across the world, the Disney brand has become a global household name with a mass of dedicated followers of all ages. 

So how exactly does Disney do it? Simple: It focused on the customer.

For years, Disney has worked to really understand its customers and to develop a culture that is centered on the creation of great customer experiences. In today’s competitive marketplace, great experiences drive brand advocacy and revenue improvements.

The Disney customer experience can be replicated, enabling retailers to leverage experiences as catalysts for improved advocacy. The key to replicating Disney’s customer experience is to place the customer at the center of brand culture. By reorienting the brand around customers’ needs and emotions, catering to these preferences, and igniting positive emotional bonding, retailers can achieve outcomes like Disney’s.

By following Disney’s lead, paying attention to the details that matter, retailers can develop customer experiences that wow consumers and differentiate their brands.  According to Retail Customer Experience, here are some ways to make your customer experience as unforgettable as Disney’s:

Show Clarity. Retailers often try to create a first-rate customer experience according to their pre-conceived notions instead of gathering customer feedback. But, the creation of the customer experience must begin by asking the right questions and identifying elements that hit home with consumers. These insights will allow you to use customer intelligence to design a customer experience strategy that reinforces your brand’s appealing qualities.

Amplify Strengths. After you have determined how the customer experience should feel to customers, then you must amplify the volume of your brand’s most desirable characteristics. By magnifying the traits that make your customers feel good about buying your products, you can better align the customer experience with customers’ needs.

Image via dailypix.me

Engage Employees. Employees play a key role in the execution of customer experiences. Like Disney, it’s important to empower your workforce to forge connections with customers around targeted dimensions of the customer experience, equipping them with insights about what draws consumers to your brand.

Outperform Expectations. Great brands go above and beyond for their customers.  In many cases, value-added products enhance the customer experience and play a role in differentiating the brand experience from the competition.

Create Connections. Disney knows how to build long-term, personal relationships with its customers. By understanding customers on a personal level, the brand has converted scores of satisfied customers into brand advocates.

Overall, Disney’s success comes from its ability to create customer experiences that reflect the needs of audiences. By developing a deeper understanding of your customers through feedback mechanisms, you can dramatically improve the impact of your customer experience strategy.

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. 

Related articles

• Context Is The Future Of Customer Experience
• Four Steps to Segmenting and Delivering the Right Customer Experience

Companies are Lacking Integrating Customer Experience Strategy

These days, most companies are surprisingly still in the early stages of formulating customer experience strategies, according to new research published by Econsultancy, a provider of digital marketing and ecommerce solutions, and CACI, which specializes in assisting brands maximize the value from their customers by delivering a truly integrated, multi-channel experience.

“The sheer difficulty and complicated nature of integrating the customer experience is identified as the single greatest barrier to improving the customer experience. This is a challenge but one that businesses need to overcome,” said Econsultancy Research Analyst Bola Awoniyi in a statement.

The Integrated Customer Experience report, based on a survey of marketers and ecommerce professionals, found that 58 percent of companies are still developing strategies in this area, compared to just 20 percent of companies with a well-developed strategy. And, 15 percent of companies said their strategy ‘is being changed’, but seven percent said there was ‘no strategy’. This is despite nine in 10 companies saying there is at least some level of organizational commitment to delivering an integrated customer experience.

“For the majority of organizations the challenges to overcome have remained similar. What is new is that the impact of these challenges is accelerating with the increase in channels, data and organizational silos,” said Matt Hey, director of Consulting at CACI.

The research is based on a survey in June and July 2013, to examine how organizations approach an integrated customer experience, and what marketers regard as factors for success. The research also sheds light on the aspects of the customer experience that organizations are having difficulties with. While more than half of the responding companies see ‘data’ (63 percent) and ‘systems and processes’ (54 percent) as critical areas for delivering an integrated customer experience, most companies have inadequate capabilities in both areas. Only 32 percent of companies rated themselves as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for data, while even fewer (24 percent) rate themselves this positively for systems and processes.

Awoniyi  continued, “Having an integrated customer experience is becoming less of a novelty and more of a necessity in our heavily connected society. Companies must commit to a customer experience strategy, and start laying the foundations for investment and training in this area.”

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. 

Related articles

• The Emerging Customer Experience Platform Trend
• Kicking the Customer Experience Can Down the Road
• Customer Service or Customer Experience?
• The User is Not Like Me: Design Thinking in Customer Experience #forrforum

How to Create a Great Social Media Customer Experience

These days, when it comes to social media, it is absolutely critical that you create the right customer experience for both existing customers and potential customers. 

In fact, 77 percent of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies used Facebook to acquire new customers in 2012. So, it is key that your social media strategies engage and retain your existing customers, while at the same time attract fans, converting them into new customers.

Luckily, sites like Facebook and Twitter spend a lot of time getting the aesthetics of their pages just right – providing companies with tools they need to set up communities attractive to the right audience. Still, you must perfect your company’s own strategy in order be successful. Here are some tips, according to Social Media Today that will help  you create a great social media customer experience (CX):

Know your Audience

If you want to create a great CX on social media you need to know your audience inside and out. You need to post unique and specialized content that will interest and attract the right people – those who can be converted into customers. Also, encourage your existing customers to follow you on social media sites by putting follow widgets on your website and putting your social media handles in sales and marketing collateral.

You can use other social media sites to connect with your customers as well or, even better, provide a place where they can connect with each other. Create a Page/Group/Community so that you fans can discuss your company: a place where you can get involved yourself, engaging your fans with interesting content and questions.

Perfect your Pages

Make sure you post compelling, diverse, quality content on your pages. Don’t post too regularly, but still frequently enough. Work out what your fans and followers like and work out a posting strategy which takes advantage of this. In addition, be sure that you promote your products enough, but too much as fans don’t like being inundated with advertising, they want to see content that is of use to them.

Next, make sure your profile images and descriptions are eye-catching, interesting and, grammatically correct. Check all the spelling in your posts and tweets and only post images that fit within each social media sites’ image parameters. The content on your pages needs to be both professional and attention grabbing.

And, respond to all the comments on your pages and re-tweets your messages get on Twitter. Be active and polite: you customers will appreciate it if you acknowledge them quickly and consistently. Analyze the sentiment of comments about your company online: if someone is negative about your brand you need to act quickly so that your reputation isn’t damaged.

Reward your Fans

Reward your fans and followers with exclusive content. Post information about new products and behind the scenes footage where only your fans can see it. Send out a new product to you Twitter followers before you send it anywhere else, or invite them to your headquarters to try it out for themselves.

When it comes to the social CX, it is key to find customers who are willing to be your social media brand advocates and provide them with a platform to promote your products. Reward these influential people with discounts and products or, if they’re very good at what they do, a marketing job. 

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. 

Related articles

• How to Build your Brand using Social Media?
• Why You Should Follow Influencers

7 Tools You Need to Make it in the Customer Engagement Era

Did you know that the majority of customers expect you to go the extra mile to keep their business, but a whopping 71 percent of customers don’t think companies are doing enough?  This is because as of late, the rules of customer engagement have changed drastically

Simply acquiring customers is not enough for today’s businesses - the goal now is to deliver an amazing customer experience (CX) at every interaction so that you not only acquire customers, but they become your loyal fans. You must engage customers like never before, along the entire journey from awareness to lead. 

So, here are some tools, according to Business2Commity, that you should use to boost your company’s CX.

Relevant customer insight. Relevant insight enables employees to anticipate and solve customer needs. Make sure you are tracking social and online information to understand opinions and attitudes.

Flexible applications. Happy, empowered employees deliver better customer experiences.

More than CRM. Your CRM strategy must expand and be able to embrace social listening, social engagement, e-commerce, and cross-organization customer analytics.

Imagie via webindiasolutions.com

One unified team. Collaboration tools should extend beyond marketing, sales, and customer service. This cross-organization orchestration is also the secret to your delivering on your promises faster than the competition.

Seamless workflow. Bring the back office to the front office with business processes that span organizations. Your customer shouldn’t feel a transition when they go from marketing, to sales, to billing, to customer service, and back again.

Best practices. Save employees’ time for the activities that will make a difference to your customers. A strategic business partner can help you stay on top of the ever-changing best practices for your industry.

Cloud-based agility. You can’t allow internal issues about whether systems and processes will scale or adapt, keep you from being in tune with your customers’ needs. Let your customer’s changing needs drive your pace of change. Cloud solutions deliver instant value while extending the capabilities of your existing systems.

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.  

Defining the Customer Experience

Over the last few years, “customer experience” has become a commonly used phrase, but like “innovation” it is difficult to find a clear, common definition. Of customer experience (CX). So, how we can really improve something if we can’t even define it? What encompasses CX? How do we structure it? And, how do we improve it?

People have been grappling with a definition of CX for several years. Sometimes it’s defined as digital experiences and interactions, such as on a website or a smartphone. In other cases, it is focused on retail or customer service, or the speed at which problems are solved in a call center.

According to the Harvard Business Review, CX is the sum-totality of how customers engage with your company and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout the entire arc of being a customer.

Every company provides a CX. Your company provides a one too, even if you aren’t aware of it or create it consciously. That experience may be good, bad or indifferent, but the fact that you have customers, you interact with those customers in some way, and provide them products, means that they have an experience with you and your brand. Now it is up to you whether it’s fantastic, awful or average.

There is a strong case to be made that companies cannot completely control experiences, because experiences inevitably involve perception, emotion, and unexpected behaviors on the parts of customers. No matter how well we craft an experience, people will not perceive exactly as we anticipate. So, companies cannot afford to throw up their hands and give up in the face of unpredictably. Instead, they need to plan for the worst and aim for the ideal when considering the experiences they want to create.

CX may sometimes seem like something which appears as if by magic, and only certain companies are able to create it regularly. The good news is that creating a great CX does not require knowledge of magical incantations, instead, it springs from controllable elements — the touchpoints. These can be numerous and diverse, but they can be identified, crafted, and integrated.

If this is the case, why are their only a few companies we think of when it comes to great CX? Crafting a great CX requires enormous amounts of collaboration across groups in a company that often work independently and at different stages of product development. In many cases marketing, product design, customer services, sales, advertising agency, retail partners must all be working in concert to create even one single touchpoint.

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 a regular contributor to several of IIR’s blogs including Front End of Innovation, The Market Research Event, Next Big Design, Digital Impact, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts. 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.  

Related articles

• The Truth about Mobile Customer Experience
• 10 Ways Customer Experience Rocks Your World
• Customer Experience - Where the Rubber Meets the Road
• Is There Any Real Value in Customer Experience?

Why Mobile is a Game Changer—for Research and Dunkin’ Donuts

By David Forbes, Ph.D.

One of the things we love best about using our MindSight® technology via mobile is that it lets us capture consumers’ emotional responses right in the moment, while they are still fresh.   Research in memory consistently tells us that the passage of time works to distort our memories, so that remembering something for the first time – right after it happens, may look very different from remembering it hours or days later, because our memories change with each act of remembering.

One implication of this is that getting feedback about customer experiences right after they happen can be very important. So, for example, in our recent work for a large Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee, we took to the field and got consumers to tell us about emotions using their smart phones.This client was troubled by a few underperforming stores among his franchises. These franchises seemed very much like his high performing stores at first glance: they had identical offerings, were the same size and located in similar areas. They were even staffed by comparable crews.  And past measures of customer satisfaction indicated little difference between the stores.

To solve the mystery, we sent researchers to study the emotional experience of customers at a high-performing store and at a low performing one.  Over the course of the morning rush, we showed off the MindSight® “game,” and invited them to try it themselves on their mobile devices – what we learned was unexpected.

What wasn’t different between the stores were rational dimensions of performance like how long the line was, or how accurately the orders were filled.  Both stores did fine on those criteria.  What was different was the nature of the emotional experience in these two stores.

Both stores did well on some key elements of emotional experience – fulfilling a desire to feel empowered and achieved – to “start your engines and dive into the day.”  But the high performing store also did well in delivering another “softer” type of emotional experience — the desire to feel understood, and even a little bit nurtured.

At the high performing store, the crew greeted customers warmly, sometimes even by name. They frequently knew what “regulars” wanted, and would start on that hazelnut-light-two-sugars even before the customer had a chance to order it.

At the low-performing store, coffee transactions were less personalized and nurturing, more businesslike and anonymous. MindSight® images chosen by those coffee drinkers to capture the feeling of their customer experience made it clear that they didn’t feel nurtured here. They felt isolated, and in fact, they even felt incompetent (about their store choice.)  These results fit well with earlier work we’ve done in breakfast cereals, that shows us how people tend to be a bit infantile in the morning, and kind of vulnerable – almost as if they are “waking up like infants” and needing to be gentled.

The “no frills” satisfaction of timely, competent service reported in both stores did not reveal the important differences in service experience between the high and low performing stores.  Only a method focused on the emotional experience revealed the issue.  And a method using images to get “under the radar” was likely critical.  I doubt many of these consumers could have articulated the pleasure at feeling recognized and nurtured if we had asked —it’s like confessing that you wish your Mom could still cut your toast in little triangles and butter it just so.

Finally, a method that allowed us to get “in the moment” feedback was likely critical to the insight – measuring consumers emotions while they were still in that emotional mood of “morning vulnerability.”  Cognitive science tells us that memories of negative feelings tend to fade over time (the “Fading Affect Bias”) we suspect that feelings of incompetence, and of being isolated, during a morning coffee purchase are very good candidates to “fade” (as the day progresses).

Our client is in the process of coaching the staff in under-performing stores to add those warm touches, asking customers’ names and treating them like regulars. We’re betting that will be enough to turn those stores around, so stay tuned.

Want to learn more about this topic? Attend TMRE 2013 in Nashville, TN October 21-23. For details, click here:  http://bit.ly/1eV1G5q We hope to see you there!  

About the Author: David Forbes holds a Ph.D. in clinical and cognitive psychology from Clark University, and was a member of the faculties of Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry and the Harvard Laboratory of Human Development before beginning his career as a business consultant. He founded Forbes Consulting over 20 years ago as a strategic market research consultancy dedicated to creating business advantage through psychological consumer insights. He has since built Forbes into a major resource for scores of major corporations in the CPG, Financial Services, and Pharmaceuticals industries, domestically and internationally. David is the creator of the MindSight® emotional assessment technologies, a suite of applied neuropsychological methods for understanding consumer emotion and motivation, without the distortions of conscious editing and self presentation.  

Related articles

• The mobile customer experience - failing to deliver
• Ode to Customer Feedback from Social Media

Customer Experience Geography: Map Out Your CX

Most companies have gotten the message that customer experience matters these days. As more organizations are focusing on the customer, they’re looking at how to improve customer satisfaction scores, but it’s not enough to improve call center performance or website usability. Today, we live in a multichannel world where channel-surfing customers hit all sorts of touchpoints before completing their task - it’s a journey.

Being successful at one touchpoint is good, but it doesn’t matter if you haven’t created a journey. In fact, 56 percent of all customer interactions happen across a multichannel journey.  A good customer journey map can be very powerful for your business, but can also become a huge project that sucks the life out of the team. According to Business2Community, here are some of the ways you can tackle learning about the terrain your customers go through just to buy your products.

Get Everyone Involved

Customer journey maps should identify each interaction a customer may have with your organization – meaning understanding what the players within the organization are doing is critical. Asking stake holders to participate and share what they think happens in the journey and what interactions are supposed to happen can enlighten even the most connected participant.  The mapping process can be low tech or high-tech. If it’s your first trip to the Customer Journey Mapping rodeo, try keeping it simple because you can always add to it.

Invite Customers to Join

Once you have a basic understanding of the customer journey, ask customers to come help you with their perspective. The types of customers and business can have a big impact on which customers you invite into this process and how many, but even one can give you some insight. Invite them in to comment on the journey as you’ve mapped it, and invite them to tell you about their own journey. Customers can provide lots of insight, but don’t bribe customers because they won’t give you honest feedback.  

Check Your Data

Most organizations are rich with data these days. Big data is the buzz word of the moment, but little data works, too. Use your customer feedback surveys, your website analytics, your customer service reports, to inform the nuances of the journey. Look for patterns and work backwards to determine where the journey breaks down. “Talk to the hand!” Most unhappy customers leave without providing feedback.

Listen to What They are NOT Saying

Many customers don’t tell you directly that they are unhappy. They go to the online forums, social media communities and blogs, so be sure to keep searching to see what they’re really saying.

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. 

Related articles

• Customer Experience is Everybody's Business - Marketing
• Modernizing Customer Journey Mapping - Part One
• Customer Experiences Are Improving, Can You Keep Up?

The Retail Customer Experience Race

As the market becomes more and more crowded with new products and services, it is becoming more difficult than ever for companies to stand out from the noise. In the past, how you packaged your product was of paramount importance, along with the messaging around it. These elements are still critical, but in addition, now you need to offer your customer a unique experience.

Today, most retailers understand the inherent value of upselling, cross-selling and running specials—at the service level, these tactics maximize the marketing dollars spent getting that customer in the door. Yet small businesses are losing when it comes to capitalizing on these opportunities.

Software Advice, a resource for customer service technology reviews and comparisons, recently conducted “The Great Retail Experience Race: Local vs. National” to compare the customer experience of five Austin, Texas-based retailers and five comparable national chain stores. To gather this data, a team of 20 secret shoppers conducted 200 site visits, each lasting at least 15 minutes. One of the questions they had to answer was whether employees told them about sales or specials during their visit, or if anyone tried to upsell or cross-sell them. In every industry category but one, the national store outperformed the local shop. 

Related articles

• When it comes to e-commerce, retailers must ensure they are tablet-ready
• The Secret To Amazing Customer Experience: Know Thy Customer
• Employee Engagement and Customer Experience

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. 

4 Things that are Killing Your Customer Experience

As the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded with products, it is becoming tougher for companies to stand out amidst the noise and clutter. In the past, product packaging and messaging were the most important aspects. Now, those elements are still critical, but in addition, you need to offer your customer a unique experience they won’t get anywhere else.

The customer experience (CX) is a blend of a company's physical performance and the emotions evoked, intuitively measured against customer expectations across all touch-points. 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 and recommend. Excellent customer experiences are still so novel that, when we have one, we talk about it. 

The CX is all about doing things that will be memorable and of value to the customer. Start with the basics and fundamentals. Once you’ve gotten them right, you will have earned the customer’s trust and repeat business. There are plenty of companies offering what you offer, so be decidedly different. With that being said, according to Business2Community, here are four things you must stop doing if you want a stand-out CX.

1. Stop asking the customer to repeat information. This includes asking them to repeat identifying information already keyed in while listening to prompts.
2. Stop having all employees greet the customer when entering a store. Let one do it and then stop.
3. Stop being oblivious. Get your team to recognize current customers. Encourage them to check the database and acknowledge the customer specifically.
4. Stop being scripted. Customers want a real person delivering sincere service. Allow your team to build a relationship and use judgment.  

There are an array of things organizations need to start doing but get started by stopping certain irritating behaviors - it gives the customer a chance to think about taking their business to the competition.

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.

Related articles

• How to retain the personal touch in the internet age
• There is only one boss...the customer.
• What is Great Customer Experience?
• How to Build a Successful Customer Experience Strategy?
• Customer Experience circa 2013 : How Big Data Aids Marketing Operations