I think in almost every industry, there is a sense of nostalgia for how things “used to be done.” I say “almost” because I know that for the customer experience (CX) industry, the way things used to be done brings one thing to mind: simple, single point customer surveys.

It’s an ugly truth, but surveys used to be the go-to method—or even the only method—for anyone looking to gather customer data. It may have worked at the time, but thankfully, we know better today.

The fact is that the modern customer doesn’t want to answer questions about what they bought and where they bought it. (After all, with all the technology available today, we should already have that information from transactional data.) Customers also don’t want to spend large amounts of their valuable time going through pages and pages of questions when they only wanted to comment on their experience.

So if the old methods aren’t creating a great feedback experience for your customers, what will work? Today, the key to creating a survey that will actually improve the customer experience is a simple shift in mindset:

Stop interrogating. Start conversations.

Whenever I think of interrogation, I think of the cliche police scene where a suspect is sitting at a table beneath a harsh spotlight while a serious looking detective drills them about what they already suspect the person has done.

There are a couple of things wrong with this interrogation picture when you apply it to customer experience. Firstly, you should never make your customer feel like they’re in the hot seat by firing question after question at them. Second, you should never ask a question that you already have the answer to. Third, interrogating the customer is not focusing on their experience, it’s focusing on what you want to know. Essentially, when your surveys feel like interrogations, they aren’t improving the customer experience. They’re taking away from it.

When you focus on starting a conversational survey, the picture completely changes because of one major fact: conversations are customer-focused. They are mindful of the customer’s time and don’t ask too many questions (they definitely don’t ask unnecessary questions.) Most importantly, they focus on what the customer wants, not what they want to get out of the customer.

So before you set out to create your next survey, think to yourself: Am I interrogating or am I starting a conversation?

Looking for a better way to ask? Check out our first of it’s kind Digital Intercept tool that helps you enhance your customers’ online experience—without interrupting it. Check out the free Digital Intercept eBook!

If you follow the InMoment blog, you know that we believe loyalty is the end all be all of customer experience efforts. If customers are loyal to your brand, it means they spend money with you, interact with you, and give you feedback—even better, they do so consistently. This means plenty of benefits for your organization, but it also requires quite a bit of consistency on your part.

A consistent experience is widely recognized as one of the major contributors to overall customer loyalty. Take it from Footlocker’s Director of Customer Experience Tyler Saxey, who had this to say on the subject: “That’s how you drive loyalty the most in my perspective: value and consistency. Think about Amazon. You are almost shocked if your product doesn’t arrive in 2 days, and you are willing to give them a break if it happens. If you consistently succeed, you will drive revenue. If you consistently fail, people will find other places to spend their money.”

To break it down even more, memorable experiences that happen consistently lead to loyalty, which increases a customer’s lifetime value, which increases revenue. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

In order to get to the benefits, however, it’s vital to understand why a uniform brand experience means so much to your customers. Here are three reasons why consistency drives loyalty:

Consistency makes you reliable.

This might sound a little weird, but stick with me here. Think about your favorite comfort food. There’s a reason why that mac and cheese, fried chicken, or pizza is more than just a dish you like. The difference between it and any old salad is that your comfort food elicits an emotional response. No matter where you are in life, you can rely on that simple meal to give you a sense of comfort.

In the same way, a customer should be able to rely on you to create a certain feeling for them. Maybe they’re excited because they know you will always ship their purchases quickly or that when they call you, they’ll be met with a happy and helpful representative. No matter what, that dependability gives your customer a sense of confidence and trust because they know you can be relied upon. If they can rely upon you to deliver every time, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Consistency makes you recognizable.

In today’s crowded market, everyone is looking for a way to stand out. Everywhere you look there are new, more interesting ways that brands are marketing or re-branding themselves to differentiate from the competition.

I would like to suggest that one of the best ways to stand out is consistency. By keeping your color schemes, messaging, product presentation, and any other detail uniform across your organization, your brand will be instantly recognizable to customers. Whenever they have a need for a product or service in your industry, they will automatically think of you if you keep it consistent.

Consistency makes you a part of their lifestyle.

Because you are a consistency rockstar, customers now think of you whenever they think of the industry you’re in. Because of that simple association, whenever they need a new pair of shoes, a new car, or a vacation, they will automatically google your brand first. If they’ve bought from you before and had a great experience, they are likely to come back the next time they’re in the market for your services.

Take Starbucks as an example. I bet you can think of at least one person in your life that is a “Starbucks person.” Whenever they’re out and about and in need of coffee, they pop right over to the nearest drive thru. This is because their experience with the coffee giant has been so consistent that they don’t even need to think of where to go when they need caffeine. The brand has become so embedded in their lifestyle that the customer is guaranteed to be a regular.

If you look at it from this perspective, consistency really is key to driving customer loyalty. It helps customers form emotional attachments and automatic associations with your brand, as well as making brand a part of their routine as a consumer. In short, consistency helps you create a solid relationship with customers, and that’s a pretty big win for your customer experience and your bottom line.

Looking to become a consistency rockstar? InMoment’s CX Intelligence Cloud empowers you to identify customer pain points both on a larger scale and at a location level. To learn how this solution can be tailored to your brand, schedule a demo with one of our CX strategists today!

Becoming customer-centric doesn’t just happen. It begins with a vision which, over time, becomes a fully-immersive reason for and way of doing business. It’s more than an initiative—it’s a business discipline—a way of life within a brand. Here are five key areas that serve as building blocks for infusing customer centricity into your brand.

Vision: A vision is not simply a mission statement; it should specifically tie to your brand’s promise and guiding values. It should be clearly defined and communicated to employees and understood—and expected—by customers. When you have a clear vision, you’re more likely to follow through, and more importantly, you’re motivated to improve.

Executive Commitment: In an ideal world, customer-centric culture and business practices begin at the top. In fact, researchers and analysts believe that if the CEO is not leading the CX conversation, then a company will never become a CX leader and reap the related benefits. CX professionals need to build a compelling business case that supports executive goals so that the relationship between CX success and the bottom line is evident.

People: Once you define your vision, it must be infused across hiring, training, coaching, and professional development to build and nurture a customer-centric culture for the long run. Your vision should help define the specific behaviors and traits of employees required to deliver on the brand promise. This means shifting hiring practices from a skill-based to a personality-fit mindset so you can hire within the scope of your company’s customer experience vision.

Environment: Maintaining a customer-centered company takes a comprehensive commitment, and incentives that match those objectives. Find ways to recognize people for upholding the brand’s promise and reward those who continually strive to improve the customer experience. Also, design KPIs, track net promoter score, and establish communication and recognition programs to reinforce the message that you both hear and heed employee contributions.

Communication: A vision is only effective as the way it is communicated throughout the organization, and to the world. Internally, discuss expectations, listen to the voice of the customer, list challenges, and recognize successes constantly.. There must be continuous follow up and clear, consistent communication to all employees. Externally, publicly state and provide updates to investors, analysts, media, and other external stakeholders regarding CX efforts and their impact on the business. This not only brings you credit where it’s due and ensures future accountability, but helps attract the right kind of employees—and customers—to your business.

Cultivating CX-centric DNA is not only essential to creating lasting relationships with your customers, but it is also a foundational pillar for a successful CX Strategy.

At InMoment, we believe that interacting or listening to your customer shouldn’t just take place at a single point; we believe that you should be listening to your customer whenever, wherever, and however they reach out to you. Because this is such a core belief of ours, we are always looking for new, valuable, and relevant ways for you to collect feedback.

In the recent history of customer experience (CX), speech-to-text has been a favorite talking point when it comes to giving your customers options. Speech-to-text is also known as automated speech transcription, or technology that automatically recognizes digitized speech wavelengths and then converts that speech to text. While this tech is great for translating comments that can then be run through text analytics, there’s a new player on the scene of CX feedback.

Voice feedback takes speech-to-text a level deeper, using AI to analyze a recording of a customer’s actual speech—and all of the detail that comes along with it. Also known as speech analysis, this technology is able to recognize customer tone, pitch, and volume to determine customer sentiment and emotion.

Essentially, voice feedback takes traditional text and speech-to-text feedback to the next level. Need more reasons why? Here are three specific ways that voice can enhance your CX feedback!

Emotional Context

There’s a reason why you shouldn’t have high-stakes or emotional conversations via text message: there are some things that just don’t translate in a text. The closest you can get to a change in tone is using ALL CAPS, and we all know that just makes it seem like you’re yelling at someone. When you analyze voice feedback, you aren’t missing out on those emotional indicators like tone, pitch, and volume. This gives a customer’s words emotional context, which in turn gives you much more data on how that customer is actually feeling (and as we all know, richer data means richer intelligence).

Convenient for Customers

Your customers are busy people, so it’s best that you give them feedback opportunities that fit easily into their daily routines. Traditional text or even speech-to-text is much more time consuming, requiring customers to type in or speak slowly and clearly in order for their comment to be translated correctly. Voice feedback gives them the ability to multitask and be completely hands-free when giving feedback. For instance, if you are using voice in a post-service survey at an auto shop, your customer can leave you feedback on their drive home. It’s quick, convenient, and doesn’t require your customer to set aside time to complete a survey.

Stay Current

Voice feedback is also compatible with the technological must-haves of today: voice assistants. To give you an idea of how many people will be able to leave you feedback via the Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft’s Cortana, here are some stats:

• In 2016, one of these devices existed in 4% of American households.
• In 2017, that number has grown almost 130%.
• Apple’s Siri handles over 2 billion commands a week.
• 20% of Google searches on Android-powered handsets are input by voice.

From these numbers, it’s clear that voice assistants are becoming a staple in your customers’ households. By equipping your CX program with voice analytic capabilities, you are giving your customers an opportunity to interact with you using a device that consumers are clearly excited about. Even better, they can leave you feedback handsfree and from their living room.

Of all the technologies to be excited about, voice feedback is definitely toward the top of the list. With the ability to provide better data and a more convenient, technologically advanced way to interact with customers, it has the ability to revolutionize the way you collect feedback and the quality of that feedback. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

To learn more about the technology that can help you interact with your customers whenever, wherever, and however, schedule a demo with an InMoment CX Strategist today!