Let’s take a look at the concept of total experience (TX), an approach that could redefine your business’s strategy for success. Here’s why organizations are considering shifting to TX.

The Rise of the Experience Economy and Digital Transformation

The early 2000s witnessed a paradigm shift in business strategies. Companies began to realize that customers sought more than just the functional benefits of a product or service; they craved enriching and immersive experiences. This realization gave birth to the experience economy, redirecting investment and efforts toward creating engaging and memorable experiences in every customer interaction.

Simultaneously, the digital transformation era began, where organizations integrated digital technology into various aspects of their operations. These two revolutions have enhanced competitiveness, customer satisfaction, and business growth.

Total Experience: A Holistic Approach

The concept of TX takes a comprehensive approach, combining customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), user experience (UX), and multi-experience (MX). It’s about the sum of all individual experiences and impressions with a company, including online and offline interactions. TX recognizes that these interconnected aspects impact overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 60% of large enterprises will employ a TX strategy, aiming for world-class customer and employee advocacy levels. This prediction underscores the importance and potential impact of embracing TX in your business strategy.

The Benefits of Total Experience

Adopting a TX focus offers exponential value over addressing each experience domain individually. It leads to a more comprehensive and positive overall experience, resulting in improved customer and employee satisfaction, higher retention, and stronger brand advocacy. Moreover, TX initiatives encourage internal collaboration and provide more comprehensive insights, leading to better product and service design and delivery.

Implementing Total Experience in Your Organization

To transition to a TX-focused strategy, organizations need to expand their thinking and efforts beyond individual disciplines. This shift starts with a cultural change, spearheaded by leadership. Establishing a TX center of excellence can facilitate collaboration across different disciplines, accelerating learning and results.

Furthermore, a robust technology stack is crucial for capturing and analyzing data, providing personalized experiences, and automating routine tasks. This technology infrastructure should include data collection, integration, advanced analytics, personalization, and automation tools.

The Critical Role of CX Leaders

CX leaders are uniquely positioned to drive the TX initiative. They should start by building a case for TX, highlighting its benefits, and aligning business goals with experience goals. Identifying the right technology support and listening to the voices of customers and employees are also key steps in this journey.

The Time for TX is Now

As we look toward the future, TX presents an incredible opportunity for organizations aiming to differentiate and enhance their customer experiences. It’s a powerful approach that can drive existing experience-improvement initiatives and lead to more comprehensive results.

Interested in learning more? Read the entire article: Moving Beyond Customer Experience and Employee Experience to Total Experience.

It provides detailed insights and actionable strategies that could be pivotal in transforming your organization’s approach to customer and employee experiences. Embracing TX could very well be the key to your business’s long-term success and relevance.

Read and download the January 2024 issue of CX Insight magazine.

In this issue, we delve into cutting-edge trends, innovative strategies, and the inspiring stories of industry leaders shaping CX’s future.

The post Embracing Total Experience (TX): A Holistic Approach appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Why are we seeing Total Experience become so critical for our customers? The pandemic essentially left us with a three-year window of deep effort and investment into innovative and long-overdue digital projects. This trend has had very positive impacts on individual aspects of customer experience like online chat, chatbot functionality, and self-help tools. But those individual successes have now left us with a “big picture” challenge. With so many new touchpoints for the customer to take advantage of to reach your brand, you need to make sure you can measure, monitor and optimize those multi-channel experiences that cross different platforms and technologies.

It also means that you need to think beyond multi-channel. How are we creating cohesive and engaging experiences for the employees that need to leverage the other side of all those new tools and channels? For every digital project that was designed to create an exceptional customer and user experience, there’s a good chance there’s a relatively unconsidered employee experience on the backside. Or even worse, the employee that needs to support your customer might not have clear visibility into that new digital channel.

In parallel to these emerging digital challenges, the ways that customer experience leaders think about and measure success have been evolving for the past ten years. The transition from CSAT to NSP and today’s customer sentiment is a reflection of the increasing sophistication, proliferation, and intricacy of our digital platforms and tools – more great tools, but also a lot more to measure and manage. How easy is it for your customers to engage with you, buy your product or service and become loyal to your brand?

The way we work through this with our customers at ACT is through the lens of our Total Experience Formula™. Essentially, we take a broad look at all the interdependent moments, touchpoints, and experiences that create the total experience for every customer, user, and employee that engages with your brand.

The 2020-2022 window was a time for businesses to double down on digital investments and UX projects. That was money well spent, but now we need to take a step back and think strategically about how these pieces fit together to enable customers while also simplifying and adding value to customer-to-employee interactions.

There is plenty of evidence in this report, where we see these major takeaways:

1.Don’t Overlook the Human Factor – Employee Experience Matters

89% agree that customer care agents need to be “very passionate about the brands they represent” (page 85) and 44% of consumers “prefer to speak to someone” (page 81).

2. Multichannel Strategy Needs to Be a Priority in 2023

39% have no cross-channel initiatives started, which is up from 35% a year ago (page 42)

3. The end-to-end CX Tech Stack Needs to Be Mapped to Your Total Experience Strategy

Only 31% are satisfied with their CX tech stack (page 64) and “Legacy systems, processes, and tools” were the #1 challenge for CX operations (page 47).

We also believe that empowering agents to make decisions and solve problems dramatically improves the customer experience. Too many times we see agents being handcuffed by not being allowed to make simple process decisions and having to transfer the customer back to the captive center creating much friction in the call and outcome.

If the past three years have been about doubling down on digital platforms and UX investments, then it’s clear that 2023 is about unlocking more measurable value from those investments by focusing on multichannel, employee experience, and most importantly, the broader Total Experience.

If you’re ready to learn more about Total Experience and understand how to simplify multichannel and employee experience, we’re here to talk. Visit our website: https://www.acttoday.com/solutions/

Guest blog post written by ACT. To learn more about the report, you can view it here.

The post Three Reasons to Focus on Total Experience in 2023 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The lines between omnichannel and multichannel customer experience often blur, and even though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same. Understanding the difference between omnichannel and multichannel is essential for businesses to enhance customer experience.

Back to Basics: What Is a Channel?

Before diving into the differences between omnichannel and multichannel CX, let’s go back to basics and go over what a channel is.

A channel is a medium a brand uses to communicate with customers and target audiences, and vice versa. Channels include email, phone calls, social media, websites, text messaging, online, and physical stores. Anywhere that communication between a brand and a stakeholder can happen is a channel.

There are typically two types of channels that brands rely on for communication: marketing channels and customer contact channels.

Marketing channels help brands grow awareness and promote their product or service. For example, advertisements on a billboard, signs in a physical store, or a company’s website copy and images are considered marketing channels. Contact channels are how customers can get in touch with a business — for example, by emailing, engaging in a live chat, or calling a contact center for support. In modern customer service landscapes, marketing and customer contact channels overlap.

Given the variety of channels brands and customers can use to communicate, businesses have turned to omnichannel and multichannel CX models to align CX goals better and create effortless communication with all stakeholders.

What Is Omnichannel CX?

As digital natives, most consumers switch between channels and devices throughout the day. For example, a potential customer could see an ad on Instagram and then visit a company’s website to make a purchase. Since consumers are tech savvy regarding channel usage, they expect brands to meet customers where they are and support their CX preferences.

With this in mind, an omnichannel strategy aims to ensure that customers don’t get lost or have to restart their journeys when switching between channels.

Omnichannel means all channels and is growing in popularity among industry experts. Omnichannel CX involves all potential customer touch points connecting seamlessly, regardless of channel. This seamless connection allows customers to pick up where they left off on one channel and continue their journey on another. A customer can start a support inquiry with a chatbot and then transfer to a live agent phone call without restarting their customer service request.

Information from each channel and interaction integrate for a better user experience. As a result, the user experience is more personalized, seamless, and contextual. Omnichannel CX relies on tools that unify sales, marketing, and support so that customers can jump between channels to continue their journey with a brand seamlessly.

One technology that supports an omnichannel CX is a customer data platform. This platform aggregates customer data across all channels to create more holistic customer profiles. Companies can improve the CX across channels with more accurate and detailed information about customers. However, genuinely connecting these channels can be challenging to achieve. Moreover, proper omnichannel support requires every employee to operate from the mindset of delivering and sharing a seamless and consistent CX.

Another barrier to omnichannel CX adoption is the cost and complexity of adopting new technologies that support it. Implementing omnichannel processes and communications across a business will likely require significant investment in technology and business adaptation.

What Is Multichannel CX?

Multichannel CX refers to using more than one channel to market your brand and communicate with stakeholders. These multiple channels are typically not integrated with each other, but they can communicate with each other through APIs.

Businesses opt for a multichannel strategy for CX to focus on being present where their customers are and seek to make each channel engaging and easy to use. Doing so can positively impact sales, customer retention, and customer satisfaction.

Businesses can use customer segmentation and customer journey mapping tools to identify improvements to their multichannel strategy and prioritize investments. A robust multichannel strategy can enhance CX and create a competitive advantage for businesses.

While omnichannel and multichannel CX both focus on communication across all channels, omnichannel goes the extra step by providing an integrated and optimized customer experience, with conversations seamlessly transferring across channels.

At-a-Glance: Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

Multichannel Strategy Use Case: Retail

E-commerce and online shopping continue to increase in popularity among consumers. This shift has forced brands to enhance retail CX from the digital shopping cart to the contact center. Technology such as AI-powered intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) helps companies improve customer support by enabling multichannel CX.

For example, retail contact center agents typically engage across various channels (e.g., phone, email, and social media) and resolve technical issues and detailed product questions. IVAs help retail organizations manage and enhance CX by delivering human-like messages across multiple channels. At the same time, IVAs can proactively suggest the next best action by leveraging customer data and past interactions without the support of a human agent.

Mosaicx transforms retail service by helping businesses deploy virtual agents to enhance CX.

Enhance CX with Mosiacx

Innovative and affordable contact center automation solutions allow brands to bridge the gap between channels. IVAs like Mosaicx help bridge the gaps between channels by meeting customers where they are. By bridging the gap, customers have more control over their journey with the brand, which leads to overall satisfaction.

Businesses can use solutions such as Mosaicx to offer a unified solution with various customer engagement and customer experience solutions. Companies can automate common customer inquiries, minimize wait times, establish easy AI-to-agent handoff, lower average call costs, enhance CX, and increase customer retention.

Mosaicx is more intelligent than traditional contact center solutions. It provides true automation, not just interactive voice response or automatic call distribution. Its software uses voice recognition, AI, and machine learning to help customers find information quickly and resolve issues without help from a human agent.

With Mosaicx, your company can build a dynamic multichannel strategy. Your customer support teams will deliver better customer service, elevate the overall customer experience, and promote customer loyalty.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel: Final Review

Though they have notable differences, omnichannel vs. multichannel CX are two terms often misconstrued with each other. While they both emphasize all channels, omnichannel provides seamless connection, while multichannel focuses on communicating with stakeholders across all channels.

Companies can begin to bridge the gaps in CX with the use of conversational AI tools like Mosaicx. With Mosaicx, brands prioritizing a multichannel strategy and leveraging IVAs in their contact centers will gain a competitive edge and deliver a strong CX.

This post originally appeared on mosaicx.com.

Guest blog post written by Mosaicx. To learn more about this topic and others, visit the events page to check out all of our upcoming events.

The post Omnichannel vs. Multichannel: Are They the Same Customer Experience? appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Over the last few years, the word ‘omnichannel’ has been used (and overused) to describe a utopia of marketing and customer care. We all have heard and read about how an omnichannel approach solves all customer care issues and allows brands to prove their customer obsession. Then why do brands still pursue a better approach?

The answer is simple: because every brand has defined ‘omnichannel’ using the best of their abilities and technologies at hand. We saw many multichannel or cross-channel solutions being called omnichannel only to be found incapable of delivering what they promised. What we needed was a solution capable of delivering a true omnichannel experience. And what differentiates a true omnichannel solution from its counterparts is the technology that empowers it.

Let’s start with the definition. We believe that a true omnichannel solution does not make the customer bend their ways to engage with the brand, it allows customers to switch through various channels of their choice to complete a transaction without being limited by rules and predefined menus. It offers a personalized experience for the customer using the data and customers past behavior. And it maintains context and persistence throughout the customer journey so they don’t have to repeat themselves as they change channels.

Here’s a quick checklist of items you should be looking for while selecting an omnichannel solution:

CHANNEL CHOICE

A true omnichannel IVA solution spans all channels of customer communication and maintains conversations and brand persona across those channels — from traditional telephony to digital channels like text, web chat, mobile apps and from new messaging platforms such as Facebook messenger and apple business chat to smart speakers like Google home and Amazon Echo.

PERSONALIZATION

Customers like when brands show that they care by offering personal and relevant service. A true omnichannel solution recognizes a customer when they start the engagement, greet them with their name and carry out a conversation using what they know about the customer – past behavior, purchases, and preferences.  A true omnichannel IVA achieves this by tightly integrating with a brand’s CRM or data stores and retrieving customer profiles and relevant information in real time to offer a personalized experience.

Ex. Good morning Tim, how may I help you?

CONTEXT AND PERSISTENCE

When it comes to customer service interactions, context is everything. Repeating themselves again and again when switching channels or personnel is one of the biggest cause of frustration among consumers. A true omnichannel IVA avoids all of this by maintaining a context either by transferring session IDs or history of the transaction across channels.

Ex. Good morning Tim, are you calling about your recent purchase of a vacuum cleaner or how may I help you?

INTEGRATIONS

Modern customer experience expectations have taken customer service beyond the contact centers. Now, it is widely distributed among various departments — for example, the social channels are managed by a marketing team and web or mobile chat channels are managed by digital teams. These teams need to access central CRM systems, knowledge management systems, agent desktop softwares and other repositories to deliver a coherent experience. A true omnichannel IVA integrates with all the pieces of the customer service jigsaw puzzle in real time.

THE BEST OF AI AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

A true omnichannel solution uses the best of AI technologies to understand and predict customer behavior. Technologies such as automated speech recognition and natural language processing help the IVA understand the customer in spite of complicated prompts, stacked intents or background noises. The dialog management technologies ensure a conversational interaction over voice and digital channels. A true omnichannel IVA also offers a second source of recognition — human intelligence — when the AI produces lower confidence score in what the customer is asking. The machine learning algorithms complete the feedback loop so the system learns from its experiences and gets smarter with each interaction.

With the current misuse of terms describing a variety of automated customer care solutions, it’s important to understand what technologies are required to empower a truly omnichannel solution — so you can be sure you’re selecting the right technology for your organization. To learn more about how Interactions omnichannel solution is truly unique, watch our on-demand webinar today.

The post What is the technology behind a true omnichannel solution? appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – April 3, 2018 – Advocates for customer experience professionals, Execs In The Know and COPC Inc., have announced the release of the 2017 Corporate Edition of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series. The 11^th volume in the series, titled The CX Journey: Strategic and Operational Insights, provides an understanding of the current CX landscape. Specific areas of expanded exploration include channel consistency, quality programs, and CX priorities for corporate professionals. Traditional Care (phone, email, and in-person), Interactive Care (online/video chat, FAQ, and self-help), Social Media Care (Twitter, Facebook, forums, etc.), and Mobile Care (apps, text/SMS, and mobile chat) are all explored.

Key Insights from the 2017 Corporate Survey:

– Only 50% of respondents answered “Yes” when asked, “Is your company’s leadership fully committed to a customer-first strategy?”

– Thirty-four percent of respondents didn’t believe their company had a good understanding of which channels their customers preferred, nor how these preferences differed from current channel offerings.

– Interest and investment in chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) exploded in 2017, with more than a threefold increase in the percentage of brands naming chatbots and AI as the technology of most interest and/or investment.

– Only 14% of respondents felt their brands were doing a good job of providing a consistent customer experience across channels and solutions, while only half of brands (51%) had any initiatives to create greater consistency.

The CXMB Series is a resource for customer care professionals, looking to enhance their customer care program, improve brand opinion, and drive customer satisfaction. Brands such as Marriott, Blue Rock Energy, The Mine, The Home Depot, LinkedIn, Hyatt, Desjardins, CIBC, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., and more participated in this year’s survey.

“The leaders in the Execs In The Know community truly display a customer-first commitment in everything they do,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “Our goal with every edition in the CXMB Series, is to help brands better understand the consumer, validating investments and identifying possible areas of improvement. We are thrilled to provide this resource to our community, to further assist them in the pursuit of customer service excellence.”

“We are honored to play an ongoing role in the creation of this valuable industry research. We hope this work will continue to enlighten and inspire,” said Kathleen Jezierski, COO of COPC Inc. “We’d also like to thank the many brands that participated in this year’s survey. Their experience and expertise is what makes this report possible.”

The full 2017 Corporate Edition is available for purchase at https://execsintheknow.com/cxmbseries/2017-corporate-edition/.

About Execs In The Know

Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience professionals, from various industry verticals, all focused on the same thing – excellence in customer service and experience. Execs In The Know gives brands a platform to share and gain insights, benchmark their brand, stay on top of the latest trends in CX, and create lasting relationships with their peers – “Leaders Learning From Leaders.”

Execs In The Know holds their national event – Customer Response Summit – twice a year (in the Spring and Fall), giving executives the opportunity to connect face-to-face. They also hold a number of other live regional events throughout the year including Subject Matter Briefings (on topics like social media, AI, SMS, outsourcing, etc.), Lunch & Learns, Workshops, and EITK Dinners. The community is able to stay engaged long after the events come to an end through industry content and thought leadership, webinars, reports, and various social communities.

To learn more about Execs In The Know, visit www.ExecsInTheKnow.com.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. provides consulting, training, certification and the RevealCX™ software solution for operations that support the customer experience. The company created the COPC Standards, a collection of performance management systems for call center operations, customer experience management, vendor management, and procurement. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to optimize operations to deliver a superior customer experience across all channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, FL, U.S. and with operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan.

COPC will also be giving an educational pre-conference seminar at CRS Denver in September, 2019.

For more information, visit www.copc.com.

Media Contacts

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

Lezli Harrell
Vice President, Marketing
COPC Inc.
lharrell@copc.com
www.copc.com

The post Execs In The Know & COPC Inc. Publish 2017 Corporate Edition in Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Click here to catch up on Part 1 – Customer Expectations. 

The second installment of this series focuses on thoughts on channel choice and omnichannel digital transformation.

• The continued shift to “social channels” and the need to be adept at serving customers who reach out for help in social media.
• A key word is “predictive service”. Next era CX – what AI will enable?
• C-Suite will begin to see the potential for revenue generation on the service side of the house with new channels and old channel improvement.
• Companies must be more agile in testing and deploying new solutions and channels due to increasing competition from new market forces (e.g. Amazon).
• Businesses who do not embrace omni-channel digital transformation will lose customer loyalty, their share of wallet and overall market share, to those that do.
• The volume of calls will continue to grow even with the continued introduction of alternative channels of support.
• Amazon will disrupt the ACD market.
• IoT pervasiveness will increase call volume.
• Phone channel continues to be the dominant channel for “complex” client care issues.
• Many companies focusing on “demand management” initiatives to help clients self-serve, improve CSAT and reduce call volume.
• Mobile Messaging/SMS and MMS. More interesting and efficient use cases for text will emerge. Companies realizing that leveraging instant photos or videos sent can help reduce conversation time.
• Companies look for more true omnichannel platforms and adoption for these grow. Not just a single platform that can hook into all kinds of other technologies, but a single platform that can tie all of the conversations together, no matter what channel.
• Phone channel continues to be dominant for overall customer resolution.
• Companies will continue to add more channels and favor “cheaper” asynchronous (can respond at the same time) channels, like chat and text, in exchange for “more expensive ones”, like phone and email. Volumes of total communication will stay the same, but allow for brands to save money.
• Two way SMS continues to lag with some brands testing specific use cases.

Stay tuned next week for Part 3 – Operations.

The post 2018 Predictions for the Service Leader: Part 2 – Channels appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – November 16, 2017 – Global leaders in the customer experience industry, Execs In The Know and COPC Inc., have announced the release of the 2017 Consumer Edition of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series. The report provides compelling insights into key areas of consumer expectations, opinions and perceptions in using multiple channels for customer care. Traditional Care (phone, email, and in-person), Interactive Care (online/video chat, FAQ, and self-help), Social  Media Care (Twitter, Facebook, forums, etc.), and Mobile Care (apps, text/SMS, and mobile chat) are all explored.

Key Insights from the 2017 Consumer Survey:

– After two consecutive years of solid improvements, consumer opinion toward customer care’s ability to meet needs and expectations has flattened

– With results going back to 2014, 2017 saw the lowest percentage of consumers avoiding interacting with customer care

– Whether or not consumers self-select the multi-channel approach (as opposed to being forced into it) continues to have a profound impact on resolution and satisfaction rates for multichannel engagements

– In-Person Shoppers place far more value on good customer service than Online Shoppers

The Consumer Edition of the CXMB series is a resource for customer care professionals, looking to enhance their customer care program, improve brand opinion, and drive customer satisfaction. The 2017 Consumer Edition is the fifth consecutive year of reporting on findings of U.S. consumers, in all age groups and geographic regions. The survey findings provide both an overview of the entire customer care experience and insights regarding specific channels, as well as two new sections about the purchase experience and customer effort.

“The 2017 Consumer Edition of the CXMB Series is our most comprehensive to date,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “With every CXMB Series edition we continue to expand questions and sections that are important to today’s CX Professional, in addition to comparing data over the years to identify trends and patterns. Our community find the reports highly valuable and love using these insights to benchmark, learn, and plan their future approach.”

The full 2017 Consumer Edition is available at https://execsintheknow.com/cxmbseries/2017-consumer-edition/.

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.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. provides consulting, training, certification and the RevealCX™ software solution for operations that support the customer experience. The company created the COPC Standards, a collection of performance management systems for call center operations, customer experience management, vendor management, and procurement. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to optimize operations to deliver a superior customer experience across all channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, FL, U.S. and with operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. To learn more about COPC Inc., visit www.copc.com.

For more information, visit www.copc.com.

Media Contacts

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

Lezli Harrell
Vice President, Marketing
COPC Inc.
lharrell@copc.com
www.copc.com

The post Execs In The Know & COPC Inc. Release 2017 Consumer Edition in Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, AZ — (November 21, 2016) — Execs In The Know, a global network of customer experience professionals, together with COPC Inc., announce the results from their first travel industry survey, CXMB Industry Insights: Travel & Hospitality. The survey focused on the customer care experience, the purchase experience, and customer loyalty.

The findings show that both leisure and business travelers are using multiple customer service channels to resolve issues. However, customer satisfaction is higher when travelers self-select a channel that they want to use rather than being forced into one. Furthermore, a consistent experience across channels is so important among travelers that it ranks higher than competitive pricing and a personalized experience.

Survey participants were U.S.-based individuals traveling for business only, leisure only or both. Here are some key travel and hospitality industry findings for both leisure and business travelers. See the infographic for more details.

– Business and leisure travelers still prefer to talk to someone in person or on the phone to resolve their issues. Both groups were equally open to using new channels of communications — social media, text, mobile chat and smartphone app — at 27 percent for business travelers and 30 percent for leisure travelers.

– When multichannel communication is a choice rather than a forced approach for issue resolution, customer satisfaction increases. Conversely, when forced into a multichannel approach to resolve an issue, both business and leisure travelers stated a dissatisfaction rate at nearly 50 percent.

– Both business and leisure travelers consider a consistent customer experience across communication channels significantly more important than competitive pricing. In particular, 60 percent of leisure travelers stated a consistent experience was important.

“We are pleased to provide the results of this survey, showing how a multichannel approach to meeting customer needs can affect the traveler’s experience. For companies focused on providing excellent customer care, our findings reveal a choice of communication options is the key to customer satisfaction. Travel and hospitality brands should not only be present in the channels their customers prefer, but also need to be capable of resolving their issues through these channels,” said Kathleen Jezierski, chief operating officer, COPC Inc.

“CXMB Industry Insights allows us to dive deeper into different industry segments and provide the important insights that our community members in each vertical are looking for,” said Chad McDaniel, president, Execs In The Know. “Our findings provide a better understanding of the customer landscape in the travel and hospitality sectors, and hopefully will spark some ideas for brands to improve the customer experience and enhance overall customer satisfaction.”

This travel survey is the first in the series of industry-specific research, and is part of the larger Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series, also published in partnership between COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know.

Download http://ow.ly/OxT3306onPG, or sign up to receive future survey results produced by COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know. Other industry-specific reports will follow in early 2017.

To hear a further discussion about CXMB Industry Insights: Travel and Hospitality, join COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know on Tuesday, December 6,at 1 p.m. ET for a webinar. To register, visit http://ow.ly/yYyY306onpY .

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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. For more information visit www.execsintheknow.com.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to manage complex customer journeys. The company created the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard and provides consulting, training and certification for operations that support the customer experience. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company works with leading brands worldwide to optimize key customer touchpoints and deliver a seamless experience across channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, Florida, U.S. and has operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. www.copc.com

The post COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know Publish Travel and Hospitality Findings as Part of New Industry-Specific Customer Experience Research appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Digital disruption is on many corporate agendas right now, but what is it? Put simply, it’s when an idea or technological process changes the way that things are done. If the change is radical enough it can affect companies and even entire industries. Think of how Kodak once led the market for photographic film, yet didn’t see how digital photographs would change their industry.

Digital disruption divides opinion in the boardroom. Some leaders see the opportunity and some see only threats. The very concept of your entire business model being challenged by disruptive market entrants can lead to decision paralysis because no strategies or options appear to be right.

However, if you plan well and create a vision to manage digital disruption it can be exciting and empowering in the way it can reshape your business. Digital disruption often creates opportunities for companies to engage in a deeper and more meaningful way with their customers.

It’s important to appreciate that in the 21st century business environment it is often your customer that dictates the rate of change – consumer technologies have created enterprise disruption. The growth of multichannel communication between customers and brands is a great example that shows just how quickly customer expectations changed. Any customer who asks a brand a question using Twitter or Facebook today will feel ignored if they don’t get a prompt answer, but a few years ago most brands were still ignoring social networks and expecting customers to call a dedicated customer support phone number.

This is an important dynamic that all executives should appreciate – you can no longer plan your customer engagement strategy entirely in the boardroom. You just need to be flexible enough to adapt to what your customers want. I believe there are a few key areas that all executives need to be thinking of if they want to stay on top of digital disruption:

– Observe and react to your customer preferences. They have existing preferences for digital engagement and communication, but some will be exploring new channels, and any one of these channels could soon become important – just as some of the existing favorites may eventually be irrelevant.

– Plan ahead and consider which parts of your business can be digitally disrupted. Is it just the interaction with customers or is it your entire business? The hotel industry never imagined their main challenger in 2016 would be Airbnb and banks today are competing with apps. Which part of your business could change fundamentally?

– Consider how people are using digital tools today and how this affects your business, for example, are you ignoring opportunities that already exist just because you have not developed your offer? The L’Oreal Makeup Genius app didn’t exist two years ago, yet it’s now responsible for millions of purchases because it lets customers try products virtually, but they can easily buy the real thing direct from the app.

– Never stop exploring the immediate future. Many company leaders don’t know where technologies like Virtual Reality will go at present, yet it is a technology that is real, is available in stores, it is not science fiction. Make sure that you are the company exploring existing disruptors, not your competition.

– Learn from the success and mistakes of others. There is an enormous amount of experience out there. Nobody can predict a future disruption, but you can learn to spot the indicators and be ready for change.

Managers responsible for the customer experience know all of this because customers drive most disruption today. Some companies are truly innovative and far ahead of what customers think they need, but most are changing because their customers want change.

Digital disruption can be scary, but if you are ready for it the business opportunities are immense. Digital disruption is taking place, you can’t avoid it. Those who try to keep on delivering what worked last year will soon find they have no customers left.

I’m talking about this topic on a panel at the Customer Response Summit, on February 24th, in Phoenix, AZ. Please get in touch via my LinkedIn or if you are attending the summit, say hello and ask me about this blog in person!

The post Digital Disruption And The Customer Experience appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The Empowered CX – Rethinking Service for Mobile & Self-Help Panel ft. HGS, Nintendo, Expedia, and Target.

The following is a guest blog written by Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR). To learn more about their solutions visit their website at http://tcfcr.com/.

Once again, Chad and Susan McDaniel orchestrated a stimulating and educational Customer Response Summit, this time in beautiful Seattle. The keynotes were insightful, panel discussions enlightening and thought-provoking and the attendees were always engaged. Of course, Chad and Susan know how to throw a party and every social event was fun, especially the extravaganza on Tuesday evening at the Tap House Grill. The 80’s were a great era and all the trinkets, music and dancing brought us right back to that decade. Without fail, the opportunity to network peer-to-peer was the pièce de résistance.

The conference began with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Envisioning Center and Digital Crimes Unit at Microsoft. Those of us fortunate enough to attend Monday’s afternoon event were appreciative of an inside look into this major corporation. A picture is worth a thousand words. Perfect way to begin.

Microsoft Tours During CR Summit Seattle

The 1980’s, the theme of the conference, highlighted where we were and how far we have come. Chad, our exemplary MC, began the symposium with several clips spoofing customer service, including one memorable scene from the Seinfeld TV series when Jerry was told there were no cars available even though he had a reservation. Apparently, car companies don’t always actually reserve a specific car; the request is only entered into the system; making Jerry extremely frustrated. The question to the audience: has service improved in the last 30 years? It depends!

The organizations participating in the Customer Response Summit are leaders in their industries. Every participant wanted to learn, share and brainstorm with the Best in Class so their company can improve and provide exceptional service across every channel.

The 80’s were a simpler time with two primary channels of communication: face-to-face and phone. Now, in addition, there is email, chat, text, apps, etc. Consumers are not only using various channels to communicate, they are vaulting between each one making it difficult, almost impossible, to track and serve consumers. It’s an especially laborious task when company budgets remain tight and the cost for technology increases exponentially.

Every survey is pointing to self-serve as a customer preference. But, when self-serve doesn’t provide the answer, consumers call. According to the report compiled and reported by COPC and Execs In The Know, Traditional Care still is the dominant player in a multi-channel world. Herein lies the challenge. Because the complexities of the issues are significant and consumers have many options for communicating with a company, knowing and tracking the consumer channel history is imperative. It not only helps provide a more personalized experience, it allows a company to target their resources and train associates in real-time.

The costs are high associated with adding new technology, educating agents how to respond with both empathy and constant new information, and hiring additional staff to keep up with demand. It is nearly impossible to close the service gaps. However, impossible is a word not in the vocabulary of the conference attendees. The goal is facing the issues and delivering solutions.

Scott Shute, VP of Global Customer Operations at LinkedIn Delivering his keynote

These were several major themes discussed at the conference:

• Many companies are relying on community forums to help provide support to their customers. In the past, it was possible to develop common scenarios and train staff to respond and be the only trusted source. Today there are so many combinations of software platforms, apps, etc., that relying on third party trusted advisors has become an essential and necessary way to conduct business

• Companies need to do an even better job of educating agents to focus on the emotional component in a transaction; listening to what the customers are feeling and acknowledging those feelings is an important first step. Soft skills are king

• Customers expect companies to track each channel used to communicate with the company. The desire is an easy transition from one channel to another. Very few companies currently have these capabilities

• Some attendees from the retail industry have found their NPS scores have plateaued. Explanation: overall customer expectations are on the rise, speed of delivery is a definitive competitive differentiator and multi-channel service is insisted upon.

• Most attendees are using NPS, but are frustrated when the customer is not able to make a distinction between their initial product quality concerns and how customer care handled the problem. Agents feel a disconnect.

• It’s important to empower employees to make out-of-the box decisions, but also set guidelines to ensure they are fair to the company.

• Customers like to be provided with options in order to make decisions, giving them a feeling of control.

• The trend is to employ remote agents, but the challenge is to motivate and train them when they are not located on-site.

Discussion During a Customer Experience Meet-Up

Other suggestions, comments or recommendations:

• Research has shown that providing additional useful information when responding to a customer’s direct question or issue improves overall satisfaction.

• Video chat is one of the best ways to sell devices; everyone concurred that offering video chat creates tremendous opportunities.

• Focusing efforts to serve people with disabilities should be more of a priority but staffing requires special training.

• Customers prefer social media communications that are more conversational and less corporate-speak.

• Using Gamification to train younger agents can be more effective than other methods.

• It is important to communicate to staff that every employee in the company must focus on the customer, even if their specific job is not in customer support. The goal is a customer-centric company culture.

• Many companies are using old school quality monitoring criteria that is tactical, rather than strategic. What information would get the attention of the C-Suite?

• It’s worthwhile for companies to consider developing a stand alone app for their customer support where the consumer’s history and preferences can be stored and tracked.

• Ensure all support has been designed for the appropriate screen size. Otherwise customer frustration is created and the support function diminished.

• Marketing should provide customer support with sufficient lead-time when releasing new campaigns so they are completely prepared to respond to questions or concerns. That must become the new norm.

• Onboarding new employees is even more important than ever. Most technical support positions are going to Millennials who possess great technical acumen, but don’t always have appropriate communication skills.

• Everyone is competing to provide the exceptional customer experience. Amazon has set the gold standard in customer service for innovation and speedy solutions and delivery. Every customer has high expectations. Any response other than now is regarded as slow and not customer focused.

• A major benefit of technology should be to allow agents to have more time to serve customers.

• According to the COPC & Execs In The Know Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series, 2015 Consumer Edition the percentage of customers using Twitter, Pinterest/Instagram increased 75 percent from 2014 to 2015. Text also saw a gain of 22 percent.

• There must be a security component to customer care. Customers want their personal information to be protected. How can we balance customer effort with additional layers of security?

• Associates should be encouraged to use LinkedIn as an important career tool. A professional photo should be displayed and your team counseled to keep profiles updated with detailed position summaries.

• A company’s success cannot always be judged by revenues; some customers stay even though they are dissatisfied and when there is a choice they will jump ship and do business elsewhere.

• Number one, most important question in every meeting: what’s in this decision for the customer?

• According to the 2013 Customer Rage Study, conducted by Dialog Direct, 94 percent of customers want to be treated with dignity and only 35 percent felt they received respect.

The conference closed with an inspiring presentation by JC Quintana, an innovative executive, author, speaker and founder of the Corporate Relationship Group. JC, a stand-up comedian on the side, concluded a long day with just what the audience needed. Although a comic, JC’s message was serious and relevant. He led a discussion about his Seven Unified Customer Strategies for Relationship Management: Relationships, Engagement, Centricity, Service, Support, Transparency and Experience. He emphasized CRM needs to be a collaborative activity, a unified approach to eliminate silos. JC’s closing remark, “A journey of a 1000 miles starts right where you are.”

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention

When is the next Customer Response Summit?

February 23 – 25, 2016 in Phoenix, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa.

Can’t wait!

To hear more about Customer Response Summit Phoenix, visit the official event website.

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President, The Center For Client Retention; author, The Welcomer Edge and the soon to be released, The Endangered Customer: 8 Steps to Guarantee Repeat Business

The post The Best of the Best – Customer Response Summit Seattle appeared first on Execs In The Know.