The following is a guest blog written by Sara Wright, Marketing Director, at Dialog Direct.

Last week we shared the first post in this two part series “Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned From the 2015 Holiday Season.” Get all caught up on the first two “lessons learned” by reading the first post in the series!

At Customer Response Summit Phoenix a one-of-a-kind panel involving customer experience executives from three of retail’s biggest competitors came together on the stage.  The panelists shared their firsthand experience in retail’s hottest trends, innovations, wins and lessons learned.

Here is what we learned:

3. Social Media Brings Delight and In-Store Insight

The speed of growth and change in social media, and the way that it is transforming the expectations of the customer, will continue to revolutionize the way retailers market, sell and communicate with their customers.

The most common way that retailers are engaging with their customers on social media is through two-way social media communication. The debate, however, is about who to prioritize the communication strategy around – influencers, detractors, or do you proactively reach out to all to delight? It depends on who you talk to, but the majority seem to prioritize reactive communication to the detractors or those that have an issue to resolve. One large online retailer, however, spoke up at the Customer Response Summit and stated that they believe in using social media to surprise and delight, not just react. Use vines, photos and video, not just text, to engage with a customer to create an over-the-top experience. Many retailers rely on an outsourced customer engagement partner to help monitor, engage and delight customers, especially during peak times or after hours. It has also been found that social media predictive technology can increase operational efficiencies by nearly 41% by prioritizing the most impactful conversations.

<Read: Going Above and Beyond to WOW on Social Media: Real-Life Case Study>

Other ways that top retailers are using social media is to provide store-level customer experience insights. For example, a brand can capture social media interactions made about particular stores or specific store employees and brings them back to the store. For example, if you love the customer service that Kathy Smith from the Boise, Idaho, store provided you and you tweet about it, there is a good chance that Kathy will see that recognition. If you are upset about the fitting room mess at the Shelby Township, Michigan, store, again, a good chance that the store manager from that location will be aware and take action.

The third way that retailers are using social media is to increase sales through posting about specific products with a link to purchase. It was stated that this strategy is fizzling for them as social sales only contribute to about 1%, significantly down from 2014.

4. Customers Don’t Care About Your Silos

In spite of being recognized as one of the biggest barriers in creating a seamless customer experience, departmental silos haven’t gone away. Brands are working toward breaking the silos by first identifying the silos and understanding how customers interact across them.

In the retail space, there are a growing number of channels and departments that must assume a holistic online-offline perspective; everything from physical store interactions, to marketing and customer service interactives, to departmental credit card initiatives. It was mentioned that to help create a seamless multichannel experience, retailers are integrating a CRM system that houses all departmental and channel interactions. This will give the right team member’s access to the most up-to-date customer data, eliminating some of your customers’ most frustrating experiences such as high-effort engagements and non-personal interactions.

If your brand has not yet completed the journey by tying in a robust CRM system, you may find it beneficial to rely on a customer engagement professional to help. Many outsourced customer engagement professionals have the integrated tools and processes that help bridge the CX and systems gap, helping to create a more seamless experience.

5. Customers Are Still Experiencing RAGE

In conversation over the 2015 “Customer Rage” study, the top conversation was around annoyance with customer service catchphrases. While it was agreed upon by all that the phrase “That is our policy” should never be stated in the call center or on the retail floor, the No. 1 most annoying phrase, as cited by the study, was still being used very frequently. That phrase? “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold.” 50% of all surveyed believe that is the most annoying phrase, while 17% actually want it banned completely.

One of the most controversial topics discussed regarding the Rage Study results? Whether or not to apologize to an unhappy customer. The Rage Study says that 75% of unhappy customers want an apology while only 28% received it. What do the retailers and the attendees of the Customer Response Summit think? Do you apologize or do you not? Well, that is still the debate. Some believe you do own up to the issue and apologize while others believe it comes off very insincere to say that you are sorry. Whether you apologize or not, it is a fact that complainant satisfaction will nearly double (from 37% to 73%) when a non-monetary remedy is applied with a monetary remedy.

It is important to consider that to avoid Customer Rage, it is essential to always be available, personal and effortless. This can be more difficult during high peak-volume times such as holidays and the launch of new programs when your call center is already experiencing a high volume of calls. Consider looking into an outsourced call center partner to help ease the pain of high call volume or to assist with after-hour needs.

Want even more content?

– Join a free webinar on “How to Craft a Strong Customer Service Recovery Program on May 19th. Register Here (expired).

– Interested in what was learned at the Customer Response Summit in Seattle during September 2015? Check out www.dialog-direct.com/media-room/article/crsummit-2015-6-things-we-learned/

The post Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned From the 2015 Holiday Season – Part 2 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Sara Wright, Marketing Director, at Dialog Direct.

The winter Customer Response Summit may have concluded, but the excitement generated by the event still lives on. Of course, when Execs In The Know is involved, we can all expect great connections, thought-provoking panels and lots of laughs, but it’s what we didn’t expect in Phoenix that is generating the most chatter – the convergence of three of retail’s biggest competitors together on one stage. This one-of-a-kind panel involving customer experience executives was full of energy, content and friendly, competitive jabs, as the panelists shared their firsthand experience in retail’s hottest trends, innovations, wins and lessons learned.

Here is what we learned:

1. “Click-and-Collect” Shopping Has Many Challenges and Opportunities

Appealing to the omnichannel shopper who bounces back and forth between online and in-store shopping, “click-and-collect” orders are enjoyed by 42% of online shoppers, according to Forrester Research. While the concept of buying online and picking up in-store seems easy, both retailers and consumers are experiencing both the joys and the pains that go along with this new initiative – especially during the 2015 holiday season.

The introduction of buying online and picking up in-store is very complex operationally, with one major retailer expressing challenges specifically around accuracy of available stock, customers buying the reserved item in-store before it is picked, and order queuing. While challenges are observed and expected, this new fulfillment model brings many exciting revenue growth opportunities. For one, this model brings online shoppers into the stores which, according to a survey by Deloitte, omnichannel shoppers were poised to spend about 75 percent more than store-only shoppers this season on gifts, entertaining and other purchases.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to retailers? The ability to tackle their warehouse out-of-stock issues by using their stores as another fulfillment source. During the 2015 holiday season it was noted that 30% of the items that were purchased online were out of stock at the warehouses, but because of the new ship from store model, brands are now able to save all of those sales. Dubbed “smarter inventory,” retailers can now pull from stores that have higher inventory of a specific product, reducing static shelf life to maximize profits, as well as pull from the store closest to the shipping address to lower shipping costs and decrease ship time. This format greatly benefits those last-minute holiday shoppers, now giving them additional online shopping days while still receiving their packages on time.

As a retailer, be prepared for the pitfalls of not meeting customer expectations when it comes to click-and-collect, or with any new innovation, by adequately staffing your call center, or outsourcing a piece of your contact center for an increase in call volume. A customer service recovery strategy, following data-backed guidelines to deter customer rage, may also be helpful.

2. Geo-Tracking Enhances the In-Store Experience

While dot-com sites have long had the benefit of placing cookies and other tracking tools on computers to track online consumer behavior, 2015 brought a similar benefit to the brick-and-mortar operations. Thanks to cell phones, Wi-Fi and retailer apps, retailers can now personalize the in-store experience by tracking the customer location, as well as real-time store behaviors. One of the retail panelists at the Summit spoke about their use of this new technology, to enhance the customer experience with their booming grocery pickup service. The store can actually receive a ping from your cell phone, alerting them that you are in the parking lot. This then let’s the employee know that it is time to meet you outside to load up the groceries!

Another large retailer represented at the Summit uses mobile tracking to track customer behavior. If a purchase is not made in their store, they can send you a non-purchase survey and then track the competitor stores that you go to instead. The mobile app also tells the brand that you are in the store, so if you are ordering an item via your phone while in-store, the shipping charges will be automatically waived.

Geo-tracking can bring many opportunities for retailers to personalize the customer experience, giving the opportunity to deliver just-in-time ads and coupons, as well as gain a better understanding of how customers move throughout the store, providing helpful insight for store design and product display. Another option for a personalized customer experience is to work with a campaign management partner to strategically use your data, to deliver personalized and relevant digital and traditional communications that drive measurable results in real-time.

Join us next week for part two in this series, to discover three more lessons learned from the 2015 Holiday Season!

Want even more content?

– Join a free webinar on “How to Craft a Strong Customer Service Recovery Program on May 19th. Register Here.

– Interested in what was learned at the Customer Response Summit in Seattle during September 2015? Check out www.dialog-direct.com/media-room/article/crsummit-2015-6-things-we-learned/

The post Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned from the 2015 Holiday Season – Part 1 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Customer Response Summit Phoenix is an intimate, laser focused forum, providing outstanding opportunities to directly engage with some of the brightest senior executives in customer leadership. The strength of the forum lies within the innovative design of informative sessions, relevant industry tours, specialized networking opportunities, and dynamic extracurricular activities all centered on one thing – customer service excellence. The theme of this year’s Summit is Customer Driven.

Highlights of the Summit include a behind-the-scenes interactive tour of the GoDaddy facility, and the release of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series 2015 Corporate Edition Report, a joint effort between Execs In The Know and COPC Inc.

“The customer should be at the heart of all that you do,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “All of the members of our community are Customer Driven. Driven to respond to customer feedback, engage with their employees, innovate their products, services, and technology, and to provide moments of magic during each and every customer interaction. Customer Response Summit is the perfect place for executives from every industry vertical and department, to gather and share best practices, to enhance not only their own brands, but the customer experience industry as a whole.”

Sample of Panelists:
Amazon – Tim Hickler, VP WW Customer Service
Target – Efrain Irizarry, Director, REDcard Guest Services & Collections
Orbitz – Carolyn Matseshe-Crawford, VP, Global Customer Experience Services
Walmart – Michele Watson, VP Customer Care & Payments & Risk 
UPS – Elias Hakim, VP Operations Global Business Services  
Kohl’s – Brian Dennis, VP Customer Experience  
Microsoft – Claudia Cristiani, General Manager, Services Operations
Michael Kors – Ebrahim Hyder, VP, Consumer Support  

To learn more about Execs In The Know Customer Response Summit Phoenix, visit the event website https://execsintheknow.com/events/crs-phoenix/ or download the full event agenda http://ow.ly/YoN2S.

About Execs In The Know

For over 15 years, Execs In The Know has built a reputation of excellence in the Customer Management Industry and a worldwide community of over 50,000 Customer Experience Professionals. Execs In The Know connects people to engaging industry content, thought leadership, current trends, peer-to-peer collaboration, networking, and industry employment opportunities. Examples of this can be seen at their Customer Response Summit events, roadshows, webinars, workshops, Blog Talk Radio segments, Industry Benchmarking Series, blogs, thought papers, and social communities.

To learn more about Execs In The Know, visit www.execsintheknow.com. For more information on their Customer Management Recruitment Solutions, visit www.justcareers.com.

Media Contact

Alyssa Pitura
Director of Marketing and Brand Experience
info@execsintheknow.com
www.execsintheknow.com
@ExecsInTheKnow

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The following is a guest blog written by Matt Wheatley, VP of Customer Experience at 24-7 Intouch. Learn more about 24-7 Intouch by visiting their website.

It is no surprise that an improvement in customer experience can easily translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental annual revenues. One key component to making a lasting, positive impression on your customers is through the personalization of the consumer experience.

Customers are constantly contacted by brands in the hopes of gathering as much information as they possibly can to build out customer profiles. The more effectively a company uses customer information to understand and acknowledge both the differences and similarities, the easier it will be to provide a truly personalized, highly customized experience through relevant channels in ways that drive stronger, more profitable relationships. However, if nothing is done with this data, all you’re left with is an annoyed customer and a detached experience.

Here are a few ways you can drive immediate engagement and better serve your customers by giving them exactly what they want, when and how they want it:

Solution Diversity

According to a Forrester Wave Customer Service Report, the majority of businesses are unable to support a cohesive omni-channel customer journey. In fact, only 12% can. Streamlining the omni-channel experience will allow you to become more nimble to how customers want to be served and communicated with. Rather than treating each channel as a separate, offer customers a unified, tailored service experience across every channel, whether it’s on the phone, in a chat conversation on your website, or through your Twitter account.

A Well-Equipped Workforce

The most talented and efficient customer care agents are limited by the resources they can leverage. Having the right data in front of them during the customer interaction empowers the agent to go “off script” and personalize the conversation. This could be anything from acknowledging previous purchase history and making recommendations for similar products they may be interested in, or asking how that purchase is working out for them and if they require any further assistance with it. The personalized data in front of them motivates agents to self-manage and be as resourceful as possible to every customer. Not to mention, it drives loyalty amongst your customers.

Sophisticated Data

A crucial step to personalization is to ensure the right data is available to profile customers. It’s definitely out there. You just need to understand how to analyze it to influence the processes and policies in your other departments, such as Marketing, IT, Product Development and Finance. This means targeted content, specific promotions, aligned communication channels and resolved interactions. Strategize what you’re measuring so you can effectively manage it.

As mentioned earlier – that data is all out there. Once you identify trends within your customers and layer the right insights, you will be have no problem providing that white-gloved, personalized service they expect.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Phoenix, February 23-25, 2016.

The post The Power of Personalizing Your Customer Experience appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Lorraine Schumacher, Customer Experience Evangelist at Clarabridge. Learn more about Clarabridge by visiting their website.

Starting a Customer Experience (CX) program is no small feat. For Justin MacDonald, Customer Experience Manager at Infusionsoft, he eats, breathes, and sleeps CX and is a passionate champion and change agent within his business. A Software-as-a Service (SaaS) company that serves small businesses, Infusionsoft needs to earn their customers’ loyalty each month. To keep pulse on the customer experience—whether it’s calling the support center, using the product, or any other interaction—the business relies on customer feedback from multiple sources.

MacDonald shared some key principles that he’s identified as critical to understand when building a CX program.

CX Impacts Everything

It’s critical for a CX team to work cross-functionally because CX impacts all areas of the business, and all areas of the business impact CX. A true omni-source program gathers customer feedback from all sources, on all areas of the customer experience, and then makes that information actionable.

“With entrepreneurs and small businesses, business is personal, and their experience with every element of their journeys with our company and product impacts their business, their customers, and ultimately their vote to continue business with us each month,” said MacDonald. “Customer retention, cost of acquisition, and monthly recurring revenue are all majorly impacted by customer experience. We believe we will hit our business goals because we deliver a great customer experience.”

A true believer that a strong CX program is worth its weight in gold, MacDonald adds, “You don’t make experiences better for customers so that your company benefits; your company benefits because you make customer experiences better.”

Don’t Just Serve Customers—Empower Them.

“Our top priorities around the customer experience are first to make sure they feel understood and valued,” continued MacDonald. “Because small businesses often feel unique and alone, we let them feel empowered and by their partnership with us – not just by our software, but by our services and relationship with them dedicated to their success.”

This principle also applies to B2C companies. Empowering customers to share their feedback on their preferred channel, and to truly impact the business is critical. And on an even more personal level, a process for engaging with customers and closing the loop goes a long way.

Make Data-driven Decisions.

“We implemented Clarabridge about a year ago to feed customer insights to key strategic recipients who have an appetite and an influence to affect positive change in the customer experience and product,” said MacDonald. “All the way from the C-suite to the support floor – we harness champions everywhere we identify them. We currently flow customer sentiment from our NPS surveys and our new customer kick-start transactional surveys.” But it doesn’t stop there. Infusionsoft also uploads its support call NPS surveys into the platform for analysis, so they have a better understanding of the call center experience. “This provides us valuable solicited customer feedback both holistically as well as at a specific touch point in their experience to give us context on that feedback.”

According to MacDonald, the insight that comes out of these listening posts allows the company to understand customer sentiment about their product and service experiences. “It’s eye-opening and game-changing for us to see our customer base in unique segments. It has confirmed our previous beliefs and data in some places and busted myths we once held to be true.”

Because a data-driven approach is so critical to Infusionsoft’s CX program, they’ve invested heavily in implementing more and more customer feedback data sources into their program. They’re growing and maturing their program by going from solicited (survey) feedback to unsolicited feedback that includes customers, end users, partners, and employees.

Tell Stories That Make an Impact

While data is essential, the key to impacting true change is making that data personal. Pulling out individual customer stories and telling those stories in a relatable language is immensely powerful when communicating customer pain points.

“Part of the art and science of CX and Voice of the Customer (VoC) is telling transformational stories tailored to a specific audience, and rooting those stories in the reality of your customers,” said MaDonald. “Our company is continuing to mature to embrace the need to truly put our customers at the center, and it is that shift that is the greatest accomplishment of our VOC program. We are playing the long game.”

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Phoenix, February 23-25, 2016.

The post Cultivating CX Change: A Real-life Success Story appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Edward Kowalski, Associate Vice President, Retail Marketing, at Sutherland Global Services. To download a free white paper on the topic, visit  http://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Retail/WP-20160104/Default.aspx

Most retailers are missing a key opportunity. It’s a way to take what’s now an expense and instead use it to build awareness, create loyalty and even grow profits.

It’s customer care.

Companies should combine customer care with customer experience, big data and predictive analytics. It’s a transformation that requires retailers to break down silos and start sharing information that’s widely available.

Consider the constant signals customers provide, based on multiple experiences, with brands across multiple touchpoints. Retail marketers use the information to develop a customer journey that’s seamless, relevant, authentic and omni-channel.

But it’s a missing link that needs to be shared with the customer care team.

Retailers should develop a new system that arms customer care agents with intelligence that spurs personalized engagements. This helps resolve complaints, increase Net Promoter Scores, improve customer satisfaction, create loyalty and, yes, generate revenue.

Here are the steps we recommend:

– Share information – Marketers analyze data and analytics, creating a 360-degree view of customers. It allows them to create intelligent communications so customers receive the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.

That customer intelligence forms the blueprint that drives strategic marketing plans. But it’s rarely shared with customer care agents who routinely have direct 1:1 communications with customers. Without the analytics needed to guide a customer’s journey, customer care is typically limited to solving at-the-moment issues as quickly as possible.

We helped a fashion retailer give customer care agents the tools needed to become an integrated part of the customer experience. The agents saw each customer’s purchase history, for example, allowing them to customize product recommendations. The result? Sales conversion climbed from 15 percent to 25 percent, the basket size increased by 7 percent and the average handle time dropped by 23 percent.

– Make it personal – Retailers have long tried to “know thy customer,” which is why they now analyze and segment data. Once they acquire a better understanding of customers’ buying behaviors, their predictions alter their strategies.

Product-centric programs are out. The focus now is enhancing the customer experience. No matter the communication channel, when businesses personalize shopping effectively, it creates a brand loyalty with customers.

This happens on intelligent websites, for instance. They collect user data and, based on a customer’s preference, they dynamically present different retail offerings. Today, as omni-channel marketers and ecommerce leaders make this shift, it should also carry over to customer care.

The more customer care agents know about customers, the more they can create personalized experiences across channels and devices.

– Help customer care agents make real-time recommendations – After unlocking information, retailers should provide customer care agents with an automated set of intelligence that enables personalization. Now the customer experience journey gets extended through the customer care channel.

Customer care agents can deliver a consistent, relevant, authentic and timely experience if they have tools that provide information, intelligence and recommendations in real-time. It’s efficient and effective.

After breaking down silos and unlocking all of a company’s information about customers, retailers must integrate that intelligence with the dashboards customer care agents use. This is made possible through the integration of Customer Engagement Management Platforms. Dashboards powered by these platforms will showcase insightful data and analytics, providing a full view of the customer and automating customized recommendations (in the form of next best actions). In turn, this provides the highly valued, personalized customer experience.

In addition to unified customer views and real-time recommendations, these platforms also provide robust business intelligence tools to measure the outcomes of customer engagement. If retailers understand those outcomes, they can incorporate the customer voice into the customer experience design.

The platform’s tools should help customer care agents:

– Pick data from disparate sources

– Correlate the data and enrich individual customer profiles

– Provide cross-dimensional views from the customer’s viewpoint

– Interface and deliver relevant recommendations (Next Best Actions)

– Deliver these actions to the customers at their preferred touch point with context and relevance

This creates more relevant, more meaningful interactions between the customer and the agent. Eventually, it also means a seamless and desirable customer care experience that prompts more long-term customer loyalty and advocacy.

– A better way to measure success – Traditional customer satisfaction measures (C-SAT) become less helpful as the standard of retail customer care becomes more consistent and homogenous. Instead, consider Net Promoter Score (NPS). This measures the most powerful form of marketing: a customer’s willingness to promote a service or product to family and friends. Earning that loyalty shows the retailer’s brand commitment to its customers has been noticed and appreciated. That loyalty means customers shop – and purchase – more frequently.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, from Sutherland Global Services and our other subject matter experts, join us at Customer Response Summit Phoenix, February 23rd-25th, 2016.

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