Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of July 10, 2023

Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

70% of Consumers Are Tired of Tipping and It’s Pushing Your Most Valuable Customers Away: Here’s How to Respond by Molly Burke

(Capterra) Capterra’s 2023 survey of over 780 U.S. consumers who are familiar with tip screens on tablets or mobile devices found that half have felt manipulated or tricked into tipping when paying on a checkout tablet recently, and 70% say they’re being asked to tip too often.

My Comment: I’ve recently written several articles related tipping fatigue, tipflation, and tip creeping. Our friends at Capterra wrote an excellent article and included a few of my thoughts. Consumers are feeling tricked and pressured into tipping. In some cases, it’s negatively impacting the customer experience. Here you’ll find comments and statistics about why customers are leaving the places they’ve enjoyed doing business with.

5 Proven Ways to Enhance Restaurant Employee Appreciation by Marbue Brown

(QSR) Employee turnover is one of the biggest challenges quick service restaurants face in delivering consistently outstanding customer experiences. For many, the cycle of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training amounts to a revolving door. Almost as soon as the business can get a new employee settled in, they’re gone and need to be replaced. At that rate, it’s especially challenging to cultivate a culture that prioritizes customer experience excellence that consistently delivers memorable wow moments.

My Comment: Even though this article focuses on restaurants, the ideas and concepts can be used for any business. Consider the opening line: “Any company that aspires to be customer-obsessed must also be employee-obsessed.” What’s happening on the inside of any organization will be felt on the outside by customers.

Gen Z’s Reaction to Negative Brand Experiences: The Confluence of Customer Service and Technology by Adam Torkildson

(ReadWrite) The reactions and preferences of Generation Z (Gen Z) consumers are playing an increasingly pivotal role in shaping brand strategies. With the advent of digital technology and social media, Gen Z’s response to negative brand experiences is remarkably different from previous generations, often leading to brand abandonment after just one poor experience and a pervasive online discussion about the experience.

My Comment: Gen Z may be our youngest generation, but they are already proving to be a force behind the economy and the way companies do business. And when it comes to customer service and CX, one size does not fit all (generations). A case and point is how Gen Z reacts to bad service. Are they really ready to walk after just one bad experience? Read this article and find out!

How to Overcome CX Gaps with Experience-Led Growth by Christine Crandell

(Spiceworks) Christine Crandell of New Business Strategies discusses how marketers constantly seek strategies to accelerate growth and enhance customer experiences. One such strategy that is revolutionizing customer experience is Experience-Led Growth (ELG); ELG is a powerful solution that can address the challenges associated with customer experience. She further explains how ELG has the potential to transform the way leaders approach vision setting, customer-centric strategy, and operating models.

My Comment: A company or brand that excels in providing a great customer experience can experience the benefit of growth, also known as Experience-Led Growth. For those unfamiliar with ELG, this is a great opportunity to learn about the benefits of delivering an experience that gets customers to return, spend more, and share their experiences with others.

Consumers and Marketers See a Role for (Responsible) Generative AI in Customer Experiences by Anil Kamath

(Insider) In less than a year, advances in generative AI have made it a transformational force in creativity and work, redefining the way consumers, schools, and businesses think of everything from image to text generation. While organizations must address valid public concerns, including ensuring transparency into when generative AI is used to create content, there’s also a lot of excitement around this emerging technology.

My Comment: The topics of AI, ChatGPT, and similar technologies continue to make daily headlines. If you’re not already using some version of these solutions in your business, you will be playing catch up with those that are. Generative AI, when used the right way, can save time, effort, and money. And consumers want companies to use it – but they want them to use it responsibly! This article shares some findings from an Adobe study of more than 13,000 consumers and 3,000 customer experience professionals worldwide.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.