As we continue moving through the phases of this pandemic, we must learn to accept the velocity of our “new normal.”

Infused by world events and the digital evolution, the only constant element to this uncharted territory is the pace of change. Business-as-usual vanished back in March. In response to the onset of this pandemic, companies reacted by making changes to their VOC programs and CX strategies in acknowledgement of COVID-19 impacts to their customers.

Gone are the days when customer experience survey programs ran on autopilot. Advancement in technology has opened up the opportunity to be nimble, and now is the time to increase agility on your feedback management programs.

Continuously evaluate your tone.

Strict stay-at-home restrictions have been lifted. Some businesses have reopened, with employees slowly heading back into the office. The new school year – in all of its various forms – is about to begin. With pent-up enthusiasm, the eager population transitions back to pre-pandemic activities because things are looking up – right? Wrong.

Unfortunately, for most it’s going to take more than optimism to get through the second half of the year. The reality is that about third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety and depression. According to our research, at least 50% of respondents think that it will take the remainder of 2020 – if not longer – to recover financially.

The goal is consistent messaging and timing across the enterprise.

If your survey questions aren’t changing – you’re missing the boat.

Overall empathy attributes began to dip in June, after plateauing through April and May. Although empathy is still relevant, empathy fatigue is real. To conserve authenticity, soften tones of empathy in your customer feedback surveys to be more subtle, and transition to themes encouraging hope and continued support.

With the state of change in our world constantly in flux, prepare to re-evaluate the tone of your invites and introductions every 4 to 6 weeks to ensure relevance. Adjust content to align the message and timing with other customer communications at the enterprise level.

Respond to the changing needs of your customers.

As activities resume, customer behaviors are changing across industries. Our research reported 52% say they will attend small events and 34% expected to eat out in restaurants within 2 months. On the other hand, nearly 30% of respondents say it will be more than a year before they begin attending large events and using public transportation.

To capture relevant feedback as customer behaviors continue to change, frequently update survey questions.

We recommend a rotating hot topic module in your survey to capture customers’ evolving needs and changing perspectives. The hot topic questions you were using in March are different than what should be used today.

Use surveys to drive adoption of digital capabilities.

Companies have made great strides to provide digital options to continue doing business. With inboxes around the globe saturated with customer communications, get creative using your survey feedback program to drive customers to your digital offerings.

Imagine you’re a loyal customer trying to pay a service-related invoice from your utility company. Typically, you prefer to call and pay by phone. But lately, wait times have been outrageous, and calls have become irritating and painful.

You remember receiving an email from the company with instructions for making payments online. With no time to waste, you locate the email, follow the steps to register your account and complete the task successfully.

Shortly after this transaction, you complete a survey regarding your online experience. The survey asks, “what other online tools would be helpful?” You select “Service Change Request,” and as you finish the survey, you’re directed to the “Request to Change Service” form on the company‘s customer service webpage.

The takeaway? Leverage customer feedback surveys to understand what your customers need now, and use those insights as an effective way to provide relevant and valuable content to your customers in real-time. Asking for a “like” on social media post-survey is a thing of the past. Landing customers on the homepage of your website is falling a step short.

Instead, drive your customers to useful tools or lead them to information in response to their feedback. In return, we’ve seen reduced call volumes, improved customer satisfaction and increased adoption of digital solutions.

Different industries, different redirects.

CX is the roadmap to digital evolution.

In general, people are now favoring a low-contact lifestyle, and their interest in continuing the use of technology, online tools and apps is increasing across industries.

At the onset of Coronavirus, organizations were forced to quickly maximize their online efforts to digitize solutions overnight. Now, digital transformation efforts are changing customer experiences with gaining momentum, creating a timely opportunity for CX leaders.

Take inventory. What changes has your company made recently to the website, mobile apps, or online tools that are creating gaps in your overall customer experience management? Align your feedback strategy with new offerings and solutions to capture a holistic view of the customer experience.

Re-think your approach. When it comes to methodology, consider new modes to data collection. Innovation has enhanced digital survey capabilities, making them less disruptive to the customer. The ability to capture feedback without your customer realizing it enables a seamless experience.

Keep pace with digital innovation. Customer feedback management continuously evolves to capture new feedback. Remain in lockstep with digital offerings and modernize survey techniques by intersecting customers at targeted moments within their digital experience.

How have you redesigned your feedback strategies to account for the new digital experiences in your customer’s journey?

Guest post written by: Concentrix
For more insights from Concentrix on VoC, watch the CustomerCONNECT session, The Future of VoC is Coming Fast. Ready?, presented by Jackie Potts, Director of VoC Strategy at Concentrix.

For more CX tips and advice from our experts, visit www.concentrix.com/solutions/voc.

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PHOENIX, Ariz., July 31, 2020 — Global customer experience (CX) industry leader Execs In The Know (EITK) is pleased to announce CustomerCONNECT, an innovative industry event designed to bring together the world’s foremost customer experience executives for a unique opportunity to learn, share, network, and engage to innovate for an improved customer experience. CustomerCONNECT is a live, virtual event scheduled for August 11, 2020, featuring a packed agenda that will kick off at 11:15 AM EDT and run until 5:45 PM EDT, followed by unique networking and debriefing sessions on the morning of August 12. CustomerCONNECT is a completely free event and participants will gain access to a full slate of interactive presentations, live Q&A with CX thought leaders, virtual networking activities, on-demand content, and valuable materials — all with one simple registration.

CustomerCONNECT features an impressive lineup of keynote speakers that include Lisa Oswald from Travelzoo, Elena Loucaidou from Wargaming.net, Bit Rambusch from Dell Technologies, Angie Pizzuti from DTE Energy, and Becky Ploeger from Hilton. The theme of CustomerCONNECT is Voice of the Customer, and each keynote presentation will inspire and educate by sharing insights into the challenges faced and successes claimed over recent months.

“In recent months, customer needs have changed rapidly. The same is true for brands as they transform in response to an evolving landscape,” said Chad McDaniel, President and Co-Founder of Execs In The Know. “Throughout this era of unprecedented CX transformation, our community leaders have charted new territory — breaking down barriers, overcoming challenges, and problem-solving through innovation. CustomerCONNECT, our upcoming live, virtual event, is yet another opportunity to learn, share, network, and engage as we head into one of the busiest times of the year for the CX industry.”

In addition to an all-star cast of keynote speakers, CustomerCONNECT will also play host to thought leadership presentations and virtual solution showcases from event sponsors Salesforce, Interactions, Concentrix, Hiya, and Kustomer. This content, along with ample opportunities for live engagement and virtual networking, make CustomerCONNECT an essential event on any CX professionals’ calendar in the weeks and months to come.

Already have a busy day planned for August 11, 2020? No problem. As a part of the free registration to CustomerCONNECT, registrants will gain access to on-demand streams of each and every session, available within moments of their completion. In other words, registrants don’t have to miss a minute of the action. Furthermore, they will have the flexibility to tune in (and out) of the live event according to their existing schedule. On-demand recording will also be made available to registrants for several weeks following the event, providing ample opportunity to listen, evaluate, and improve.

CustomerCONNECT is fast approaching, and it’s the quintessential CX event industry executives don’t want to miss. Early registration is highly recommended. Moreover, CustomerCONNECT will not only plug participants into an invaluable slate of content, it’s also a great opportunity to get familiar with the Execs In The Know community — a thriving, highly-engage group of CX advocates and enthusiasts.

About Execs In The Know
Execs In The Know is a global community of CX professionals focused on excellence in customer 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 numerous live events each year including Customer Response Summit, Subject Matter Briefings, Lunch & Learns, and Leadership Dinners. The company also offers industry content and thought leadership through webinars, reports, a quarterly CX insight Magazine, the Know It All “KIA” Online Community, and various social media groups. To learn more about Execs In The Know, visit: www.execsintheknow.com.

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In Part 1 of this series, Get to the Heart of Your Customers’ Expectations and Experience, we reviewed multiple methods to ensure that you have a holistic and accurate picture of what your customers need and how you are performing to those expectations.

Getting this data to support your voice of the customer (VoC) program is just the first step. It is likely that you are receiving data from multiple sources, making it even more critical to have a structured and nimble process to consume, analyze, and act on that data to drive significant and lasting change. You want to ensure the data you are acting on is accurate and representative, but you also don’t want to wait too long to act on said data as it can quickly become irrelevant. After all, with customer expectations changing in real-time, using data from even eight weeks ago to make decisions today could lead you in the wrong direction.

So how do you take all the layers of data and operationalize it for your VoC program?

As you review these recommendations, the key is to keep it simple and, in some ways, “go back to the basics.” When having multiple sources of data, it is particularly important to avoid silos created for management or analytical purposes and to fully understand the reliability of the data. When you put yourself in the customers’ shoes, consider their journey holistically and within the context of the current environment. When you keep it simple and you know that the data is reliable, it is easier to monitor from week to week and adjust as necessary. To get started, here are a few suggestions on how to operationalize your data:

• Validate and compare data sources – Analyze your data holistically. If one source of data leads you in one direction, but another source contradicts those findings, validate which is correct to avoid missteps in action plans. When collecting data from multiple sources, avoid looking at data in silos. Instead, create a holistic view of the entire customer journey to consider all the customer’s needs, expectations, and experiences. Task your analytics team with validating conclusions from more than one finding to avoid drawing reactive conclusions based simply on a number that goes up or down. In short, ensure conclusions are based on solid analytical theory and are statistically significant.
• Question your targets and thresholds – With changing customer expectations, what may have been acceptable to customers three months ago may not be the case now. Leverage the data you are collecting from your customers and other internal sources to assess if your targets and thresholds are still accurate. Then, adjust accordingly and structure regular reviews. For example, your customer’s tolerance for wait times may have changed in recent months as they are willing to wait longer to resolve their issue, or vice versa.
• Align on strategy and priorities – Starting from the top, you first need a culture committed to driving rapid change, with alignment on business objectives and customer experience. Many companies talk about the customer experience and their commitment to improving it, but what does that really mean for your organization? How is CX measured and managed alongside efficiency and other organizational goals? The vision must be clear to ensure priorities are aligned cross-functionally.
• Design flexible and nimble organizations – Some of you probably witnessed changes and improvements made at the speed of light during COVID-19. We have heard countless stories of companies who were able to pull off miracles that would not have seemed possible two weeks prior, proving it could be done. So, you need to design your organizations in such a way that data can be consumed, analyzed, prioritized, and actioned quickly and methodically. The old organizational structure may have worked six months ago, but to be truly agile and drive improvements based on a rich and current data set, you may need to rethink your structure. We have received feedback from several organizations noting that since adjusting to smaller and more nimble teams, it has created greater agility and has increased the team’s ability to get things done.
• Bust the “data silos” – Much of the data you will be receiving crosses through different departments. The customers’ experience with your company spans their entire journey with you. The data received from all sources should provide insights into just about every department: from marketing to sales, to fulfillment, to support, and to finance. So again, the organizational and ownership structure needs to be designed to ensure there are no silos and all leaders are working together to determine priorities and develop plans based on the data. Remember, we are all in this together!
• Ensure ownership and accountability of results – Clear ownership, accountability, and results of action plans are critical. Quantified targets with specific timelines should be established based on data versus opinion, and again, balanced with overall organizational goals.
• Include your team in the plans – Your plans to operationalize CX data do not stop at the senior leadership level. Include those closest to your customers, such as your agents, supervisors, and quality teams. They should be part of the solution, both in planning and execution.
• Implement a structured performance improvement approach – There are many structured performance improvement approaches, including the use of internal Six Sigma teams. If you do not have a dedicated Six Sigma team, you’ll be fine! Just ensure you have an approach that works for your organization that uses a systematic define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) discipline. You don’t need to over-complicate the model; it just needs to fit with your organization but most importantly, allow you to analyze data quickly, draw conclusions, implement plans for improvement, and measure results.

In summary, do not rely on your old playbooks for consuming and actioning your VoC data. Customer expectations have changed and you have more data than ever to help you make decisions. Ensure you have a staff with advanced analytical skills to help you draw appropriate conclusions, an organizational structure and culture that allows you to make quick and thoughtful decisions, and a structured improvement approach that focuses on results with the ability to pivot based on what the data is telling you.
With a multi-layered VoC program and a structure behind it to consume and act on the data, you will be well-positioned to drive sustainable change, in which your customers will reward you for with their loyalty for the long-term.

If you have implemented unique and new methods for operationalizing your customer feedback as part of your VoC program, we would love to hear from you!

To Learn More About The Voice of the Customer:  Register to watch CustomerCONNECT sessions on-demand

The post Part 2 of 2: You May Be Listening to Your Customers, but Are You Hearing Them? 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.

Hear more in the video below from top executives from Hyatt, Porsche, Walmart, Travelzoo, and many more to discover what their priorities and areas of focus are for 2015.

The post 2015 – The Year of the Customer appeared first on Execs In The Know.