Innovative CX

JANUARY 23, 2023

How customer service can help build relationships one customer at a time. Before the end of the year, I was looking through my library of past business books and came across an “oldie but goodie”, The One to One Future Building Relationships One Customer at a Time by Peppers and Rogers. Originally published in 1993, according to Amazon’s website, “The One to One Future revolutionized marketing when it was first published.

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Innovative CX

OCTOBER 24, 2022

“We have seen the enemy and he is us.” This statement came to mind as I talked with a colleague who was challenged with the lack of progress at convincing his organization to get on the customer experience bandwagon. Interestingly, this statement was paraphrased by comic strip writer Walter Kelly from the original declaration of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry during the war of 1812, “We have met the enemy and they are ours”.

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Effort Score Loyalty Resources Financial 45

Innovative CX

JULY 22, 2022

I recently posted about a horrendous customer experience I had with an online car care company. I concluded that it was a small company and an exception to experiences we are having as consumers. My thought process was dead wrong. In the last week, I have the following “experiences”: -A large electronics retailer. I called customer service and was advised the wait time to chat with an agent was 3 hours and 15 minutes.

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Innovative CX

JULY 13, 2022

How many times have you had an issue in a restaurant with service, a cold meal or incorrect charge? It happens, as it does in many industries. I’ve had my share of less than desirable experiences at restaurants. When it happens, I’m frequently offered a free dessert. I’ve often wondered why after failing to deliver an acceptable dinner experience, a restaurant management’s response is “give them a free dessert”.

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Innovative CX

MAY 5, 2022

Are you hiring applicants or candidates? Recently my financial institution requested that I complete a document, sign and return it to them, via Fax. I laughed out loud when I read their request. Fax? Who uses faxes anymore? I sent it to them in a PDF file via email which satisfied their request. Some organizations are slow to change. I’m finding the same is true when it comes to how some organizations recruit perspective employees.

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Innovative CX

FEBRUARY 23, 2022

CX. PX. UX. EX. XM. SX. How many different “X’s” can you name to describe the experience you want for your customers? We seem to have gone overboard in our efforts to include every type of experience ever thought of in modern times. Aren’t we all, customers? Aren’t we buying products or requesting services or asking for assistance? Tagging the type of experience as an acronym seems to minimize the true importance of what we are trying to accomplish, namely better experiences.

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Innovative CX

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Have you tried to buy a car lately? Let’s forget for a moment that there’s a chip shortage causing car dealership lots to be nearly empty with skyrocketing prices for both new and used cars. Forget about discounts or rebates they are few and far between. If you can locate your vehicle of choice, it may come with an additional dealer mark-up of $1000, $2,000, or even $10,000 above the MSRP.

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Innovative CX

AUGUST 10, 2021

In 2013, Oracle conducted a research study among executives regarding the state of their customer experience initiatives. The study found that while 91% of the respondents wished to be a CX leader in their industry, only 37% said they were just getting started with a formal CX initiative and 20% considered their CX initiative, “advanced”. While I’m hopeful a lot has changed in the past 8 years, I fear it hasn’t as organizations continue to struggle with integrating customer and employee experien

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Innovative CX

JULY 21, 2021

When the pandemic began, restaurants, to survive, had to convert overnight to take-out and drive-up options for their customers. Some restaurants simply took their in-person menus and put the food in a Styrofoam box. Others, the more customer-responsive and “design-thinking” ones, re-vamped their menus and created meals that would travel well and re-heat to reflect in-person dining.

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Innovative CX

JUNE 22, 2021

Despite what industry experts may profess, customer experiences aren’t getting any better. While customers expect immediate answers to their inquiries, efficient order processing and fast shipping, there’s no indication that fulfilling these expectations is improving customer service. What research do I have to prove my point, you may ask? None. But I do have my own experiences and if anything, they have gotten worse rather than better since the pandemic began last year.

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Innovative CX

JUNE 1, 2021

We do what we do, and we do it together! For a better customer experience. I think we can all agree that the linkage between customer and employee experiences is critical to delivering on your brand’s promise. For years, we’ve said happy employees make happy customers. Unfortunately, I think that statement, while true, minimizes the importance of an engaged workforce delivering better customer experiences.

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Innovative CX

APRIL 26, 2021

As CX professionals are we too linear in our view of experience management? For example, service blueprinting, process documentation and journey mapping all tend to look at the customer experience in sequential steps. We describe experiences as the customer’s journey when buying our products and services. Journeys imply getting from point A to point B, often in the shortest amount of time possible by the straightest route available to us.

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Innovative CX

APRIL 1, 2021

It never ceases to amaze me how some organizations just don’t get “it” yet. The “it” is a better customer experience. Here are a few recent examples that exemplify my point. A top seller of home security cameras sends two cameras in separate packages both with missing parts. When I called to request the missing parts I was given two options: 1) they would send me the parts and I could expect them to arrive in 5-7 days or 2) I could go to their website, BUY the missing parts, and get them in 3-5

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Innovative CX

MARCH 12, 2021

I teach a global operations strategy graduate course at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Each semester I set aside one of our sessions to discuss corporate social responsibility within organizations especially as they pursue globalization of their products and services. The lively discussion among students usually centers on which comes first, corporate profits or social responsibility?

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Innovative CX

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

I teach a global operations strategy graduate course at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Each semester I set aside one of our sessions to discuss corporate social responsibility within organizations especially as they pursue globalization of their products and services. The lively discussion among students usually centers on which comes first, corporate profits or social responsibility?

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Innovative CX

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

You’ve worked hard on establishing a new CX strategy for your organization. In developing your strategy, you secured the commitment of executive leadership; received the buy-in from department leaders; established a cross-functional team of frontline employees seeking their perspectives; sought out the voice of your customers; analyzed touchpoints; created journey maps; alleviated pain points; measured your progress and celebrated your successes!

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Innovative CX

DECEMBER 17, 2020

“Terrified. Mortified. Petrified. Stupefied”, so said Russel Crowe’s character, John Nash, in the movie, A Beautiful Mind. And so, I am (am I)! Here’s a sampling of my recent experiences with a broad range of companies across a wide range of industries (consumer goods; automobiles; business services; big box retailers; online marketers; financial services): · Mobile applications that have constant chat window pop-ups that impede your ability to complete an order?

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Innovative CX

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

No, I’m not confused. I’m simply following the engineer’s motto. If it isn’t broken, take it apart and fix it! I know it sounds strange but are you sure you’re delivering the kind of experience your customers expect from your organization? Are you content with your existing CX approach despite significant shifts in what customers expect from organizations today versus a year ago?

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Innovative CX

OCTOBER 12, 2020

On more than one occasion, I’ve been asked by a CEO to “fix the customer service department” so the organization can improve its customer experience. The request sounds like this, “We’re getting too many service-related calls in our contact center and that’s giving us poor ratings on our surveys”. The problem most likely isn’t within the customer service department.

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Innovative CX

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

When it comes to executing effective customer experience strategies, we spend a good deal of time gathering, analyzing, and executing on the voice of the customer. We want to ensure we understand customer expectations. We desire to build our products or deliver our services in alignment with those expectations. Recently, there has been a renewed emphasis on ensuring we also focus on the voice of the employee in helping us create better customer experiences.

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Innovative CX

AUGUST 27, 2020

I hesitated to write this article because if there’s one, there must be a hundred opinions on where the customer experience function should align in an organization. In my experience, I’ve heard and seen it report to any one of these C-suite positions in an organization: CEO CMO COO CFO CCO CXO CPO CTO/CIO And if it’s not reporting to one of the C-suite positions, it reports to someone who reports to one of these C-suite positions.

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Innovative CX

AUGUST 20, 2020

1 Hour telephone hold rates. 45-minute wait for chats. 5-7 day delays in email responses. These are just a few examples of what I’ve been experiencing the last few weeks when trying to contact customer service at a variety of organizations. In some cases, I had cash in hand and was ready to buy, in others I had order issues that needed to be addressed.

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Innovative CX

AUGUST 5, 2020

I haven’t been courageous enough yet to go to a restaurant and enjoy a sit-down dinner. Rather, I’m patronizing my favorite restaurants through ordering and taking out dinners from their establishments. It’s a difficult time for restaurants. Some may not survive or ever return to the robust businesses they were before the pandemic. Trying to ensure the safety and health of their employees and customers is taking a toll on the already thin margins in the restaurant business.

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Innovative CX

JULY 22, 2020

In a scene from the 1988 movie, They Live, Roddy Piper utters the iconic phrase, “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick a#!….and I’m all out of bubble gum!”. Talk about getting right to the point. We could take a lesson from Mr. Piper when it comes to designing a better customer experience. He’s bold and deliberate in his approach. His intentions are clear.

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Innovative CX

JULY 1, 2020

Or put another way, when was the last time you: Accessed your website from a mobile device? Checked to see if a promotion code works when you try to enter it online? Asked one of your field sales representatives about the specifications of one of your products? Used your interactive voice response unit to access your account information online?

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Innovative CX

JUNE 17, 2020

Is your organization reducing customer experience funding? Are CX leaders and staff members being let go? Is the pandemic being used as an excuse for delivering poor customer experiences? Is your online customer service experience getting better or worse? Don’t get me wrong. It’s imperative that organizations ensure the safety and well-being of all their employees across every function of their business during this pandemic crisis.

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Innovative CX

JUNE 15, 2020

Thank you TechTarget for publishing my Innovative CX Solutions article on "Preparing your customer experience strategies for the new normal". Also looking forward to learning from the many contributors that are a part of this community.

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Innovative CX

MAY 6, 2020

Not the dot.com bust in the 2000’s. Not 9/11. Not the 2008 financial crisis. Nothing could have prepared us for the pandemic crisis we are in today and its impact on the customer, employee, and student experience. While we can certainly learn from past crises, those practices we used are simply not comparable nor as all-encompassing as this pandemic.

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Innovative CX

APRIL 22, 2020

I live in a city that is mandating the use of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I support this requirement if it helps flatten the curve and speed our recovery from this pandemic. I have noticed on more than one occasion when I venture out for essential supplies, that my customer experience has dramatically changed due to one missing element.

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Innovative CX

APRIL 16, 2020

We do what we do, and we do it together! When I last wrote about the Colleague Experience , defined as how we interact with one another to achieve an improved customer experience, phrases like self-isolation and quarantine, shelter-in-place and social distancing didn’t exist. Work from home was a luxury for some, a necessity for others and only experienced by a small percentage of the workforce.

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Innovative CX

MARCH 31, 2020

A lesson in customer experience during a crisis. But I couldn’t raise the dough. Literally. Like many of us, Austin is under a shelter-in-place order. While reading everything in sight, including the latest issue of Bon Appetit’ I came across a recipe for Focaccia. My wife thought it would go great with the pasta meal she was making for tomorrow night’s dinner.

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Innovative CX

MARCH 17, 2020

Take time to recognize those who are helping others in their time of need. The best CX of all! I’ve been inspired by this phrase ever since I heard Bradley Cooper say it in the movie, Burnt. It’s especially inspiring today as we see Americans across our great country stepping up to help those in need as a result of the coronavirus. · First responders and health care professionals caring for those in need, corporations collaborating instead of competing and federal, state and local officials who

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Innovative CX

MARCH 5, 2020

My Dad would frequently tell this story of how he was hired for his first sales position at the start of his young business career. He was invited to interview with the President of Deluxe Corporation for a field sales position. During the interview, the President asked my father, “Why should I hire you as a salesperson?” My Dad thought a bit and then told him that he and his friends would often have buffalo-chip throwing contests behind the barn of a neighbor’s farm.

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Innovative CX

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

I enjoy re-reading business books of the past that I used to aid in my professional development at some point in my career. In searching the archives, I found the book QBQ! The Question Behind the Question , written by John G. Miller originally published in 2001. The book is about “putting persona accountability into daily action, with astonishing results: problems are solved, internal barriers come down, service improves, teamwork thrives, and people adapt to change more quickly.

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Innovative CX

JANUARY 30, 2020

I’ve been involved in customer service for all my 40 years in business. For four decades, I’ve been trying to improve the customer experience for organizations in a variety of industries and diverse geographic locations. Having a knowledgeable, well-trained professional customer service representative (CSR) is table stakes for any business, be it B2B, B2C or B2B2C.

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Innovative CX

JANUARY 22, 2020

Although we live in a much less formal world than we did say 20 years ago, I’m not sure customer interactions are the best place to demonstrate that informality. These are YOUR customers and we should treat them not as account numbers but as the most important asset we have as an organization. The way we talk to customers is just as important as the what we are trying to convey to them.

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Innovative CX

JANUARY 9, 2020

There’s been plenty written about how to improve your customer experience. Lately it seems like we are all talking about the importance of the employee experience as well. The linkage between the two is imperative to improving both experiences. The Colleague Experience differs from these two. The focus of the colleague experience is about how we interact with one another to achieve an improved experience for our customers.

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Effort Score Metrics Customer Service Representative Travel 59