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Author: Stuart Richards

Don’t Let Distractions Be Your CX Kryptonite

The path to CX success is riddled with potential pitfalls, and just like Superman navigates Metropolis’ many traps, today’s CX experts should be aware of looming dangers and how to avoid them.

Sometimes CX programs simply need to be saved.

Whether insights seemingly dry up, executive leadership changes, or things simply feel “stale,” sometimes companies need to hit the “reset button” on their CX programs. And more often than not, it’s because businesses get distracted by elements that ultimately do not support their goals.

I don’t need to explain what a distraction is (e.g., your co-worker who insists on showing you videos of his children every five minutes). In CX, they’re no different. Anything that detracts focus from your business objectives and delivering on your brand promise is detrimental to your program’s success. Ultimately, a CX program is about understanding what your customers — and employees — are telling you and focusing on what matters most to them.

If you’re getting distracted from this essential mission, it’s time to shift focus. The path to CX success is riddled with potential pitfalls, and just like Superman navigates Metropolis’ many traps, today’s CX experts should be aware of looming dangers and how to avoid them.

Don’t Get Distracted, Get Focused

For CX in particular, it’s easy to be distracted by NPS, OSAT, and other CX metrics. It’s even easier to become distracted by the sheer amount of data available to today’s organizations. There is of course value in being able to trust your technology, and brands should feel confident about the integrity of their data and the accuracy of reporting. However, many brands are unable to differentiate between metrics and real-world consumer desires and behaviors.

Dedicating too much energy to metrics creates a decision-making environment where stakeholders overemphasize numbers and stop paying attention to emerging trends that positively impact customer and/or employee experiences. In their attempts to be the superheroes who can save the world, CX champions often struggle to support key business objectives.

While some brands cannot dedicate team members to CX research just yet, simple technology integrations make it easier to get on the same page with consumers now. Solutions exist to source and manage important customer feedback, and the most sophisticated can do this both quantitatively and qualitatively. These technologies can also incorporate employee voices to generate a holistic understanding of what an ideal customer experience looks and feels like.

The Benefits of Being a Customer-Centric Organization

There are many benefits to adopting a customer-centric approach to business operations, but the biggest is the ability to pivot and grow with target audiences.

For a multitude of reasons, most companies will come to a crossroads with their CX programs. However, only brands that have committed to learning more about customers and their desired experiences will know when it’s actually the right time for change. If a score stagnates, it’s simply a sign to focus your efforts on things that truly impact the customer experience — not just the score.

Learning more about customers helps stakeholders realign their roadmaps to both address lingering CX concerns and improve outcomes. For example, a brand may be funneling too many resources to mobile application development when in reality, talking to customers reveals that improvements to payments/returns would make a more positive, immediate impact. Rather than getting caught up in its own preconceived notions of what defines a strong CX, this brand would be better off hearing directly from its customers.

Direct customer feedback leads naturally to a blended, productive relationship between metrics and customer behavior information. An organization’s existing KPIs may be what’s holding back its CX program, as these metrics are measured against what was once thought to be true of consumers. In 2018, brands need to revisit their KPIs and allow modern consumer opinions to speak louder than existing operations.

The more comprehensive the review of one’s CX program, the easier it is to identify elements that do not support, and actually distract from, true business goals. And when brands can do this, they open themselves up to a world of new opportunities that trickle down to improvements for customers and employees.

And what superpower is better than that?

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Customer Success Operations Manager: Does Your Team Need One?

Customer Success teams are expanding – not just in size, but in scope. New roles are emerging as CS is maturing as a specialty, specifically roles like Customer Success Operations (CS Ops).

At early-stage startups, Customer Success Managers will find themselves covering this function, but as the company grows, it can be extremely valuable to separate this function into a dedicated role within CS to help scale up.

What does a Success Operations Manager do?

Think of “Success Operations” as a product that promises to optimize processes for its customers, i.e. the Customer Success Managers.

CS Ops managers establish a baseline of productivity using metrics like net MMR churn and how difficult it is to learn about new product features. They talk to CSMs to learn what pain points they face in their day-to-day responsibilities and observe how processes currently work.

They segment the current customer base to distribute the workload effectively among CSMs. CS Ops managers look for consistent issues across the whole Success team, break the issues down into manageable components, and create solutions with measurable results.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter F. Drucker

Using the information they’ve gathered, CS Ops managers may build tools like custom dashboards, or establish automatic workflows among software platforms to make the CSM’s job easier and help them be more productive.

A CS Ops manager will “onboard” CSMs, teaching them how to use the new tools at their disposal, and check in frequently with their “customers”. In this sense, they are CSMs to the CSMs.

In short, Customer Success Operations managers are responsible for providing tactical support to the rest of the Success team, helping them improve their KPIs and their efficiency.

What does a CS Operations Manager need to know?

Customer Success Operations Managers should be familiar with:

  • Customer Relationship Management Software (e.g. Salesforce, Gainsight, Totango)
  • In-app messaging Software (e.g. Intercom)
  • Support platforms (e.g. Zendesk, FreshService)
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Customer Success

Each company will have a unique suite of different platforms that it uses, and CS Ops managers need to be quick to become fluent in most, if not all of them. This is crucial for the role since data silos are a major hindrance to organizational efficiency and detract from your customers’ experience.

Additionally, Success Operations Managers will need many of the same ‘soft skills’ that CSMs use. For example, CS Ops managers need to be able to actively listen to the struggles of the CSMs to come up with valuable solutions.

What does this role look like in real life?

For Feedvisor Customer Success Operations Manager Shachar Avrahami, he came into the company as the first “Professional Services team member.” As the team grew from a one-man operation to a multi-person team (and the company scaled up), Shachar’s manager asked him to create his own role – Customer Success Operations Manager, “and I became the first person to assume this new position and help define it.”

He says, “I am the owner of our team’s processes on a macro level, making sure all teams are aligned with the strategy for each part of the customer’s journey.”

How do you know if you need a Success Operations Manager?

Giving a concrete number at which you need to hire a CS Ops manager is difficult. It depends on the capacity of your current CSM team. As a rule of thumb, you will want to look into hiring a Success Operations manager after you’ve hired your fourth or fifth CSM.

For some organizations, the new role may be an internal promotion of a CSM. For other companies, it may be wise to bring in an individual with experience in a ‘project manager’-like position to help streamline Customer Success processes, aligning everyone under the common vision that is handed down from the C-suite and creating a more consistent experience for customers.

Like Robert S. Kaplan, co-creator of The Balanced Scorecard, says, “consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution.”

How do you advocate for a CS Operations Manager role?

Understand that a CS Operations Manager’s responsibilities are nearly the same as those of a Sales Operations Manager. The justifications for the CS Ops role are similar.

The operations role increases the productivity of your customer-facing Success team members, who carry the weight of recurring revenue on their shoulders. Not only does this mean management can hire fewer individuals for the customer-facing roles, but each CSM’s key performance indicators will improve at rates that were impossible before this specialized role.

Having a CS Ops role also improves visibility into the Success team’s business outcomes, places for improvement, and what projects need to be prioritized for Customer Success.

For an excellent breakdown and comparison of the Sales and CS Ops positions, click here.

Operations For Smooth Scaling

There will always be growing pains as a start-up matures and finds success. Operations experts specialize in finding technical solutions for when people are stretched beyond their limits. Creating a Customer Success Operations position is an effective way to proactively combat capacity issues for the Success team and deliver a consistently positive experience for your customers.

Access Voice of the Customer insight in your system of record with InMoment’s native integrations, including Salesforce, Gainsight, & Totango.

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Contemplation and Inspiration: A Year of CX Innovation

We recently celebrated the first anniversary of the release of “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017,” where InMoment was named a leader; and the second anniversary for InMoment Chief Product Officer JD Nyland. JD looks back on the past year and the work InMoment has done to honor our ranking, and continue to earn the respect of our industry and the business of some of the world’s leading CX brands.

We recently celebrated the first anniversary of the release of “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017,” where InMoment was named a leader; and the second anniversary for InMoment Chief Product Officer JD Nyland. JD looks back on the past year and the work InMoment has done to honor our ranking, and continue to earn the respect of our industry and the business of some of the world’s leading CX brands.

A little over a year ago, our team was deep in the details of preparing for our annual CX Elevated conference when we received the news that the final results of The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017, were in: Not only had we been named a Leader (the top category) for our current offering, we’d also received the top ranking in Strategy.

We were, and are incredibly proud of being a Leader. InMoment has taken a bit of a different journey to where we are today. We’ve grown organically, choosing not to take large outside investments. We’ve been profitable for all 15 years in business. As a result, we’ve been able to grow on our own terms, and stay accountable only to our clients and our employees. For a tech company today, that’s pretty rare. But it’s worked well for us, enabling InMoment to compete toe-to-toe with other Leaders in our space, and stay true to our core.

Being a Leader is awesome. However, being top-ranked in Strategy has been something special. In evaluating Strategy for each of the 10 “vendors that matter” in our space, Forrester looked at the following:

  • Our ability to engage clients in its strategy, design, and development process to ensure product enhancements are in line with their needs
  • How aligned each vendor’s product vision and roadmap are with Forrester’s CFM vision
  • How well planned enhancements will allow each vendor to leap ahead of the market

For us, our top ranking in Strategy reinforced our commitment to relentless innovation. It also reminded us that, “with great power (in this case, ranking), comes great responsibility (thanks, Spiderman). Over the past year, we’ve really taken that to heart, doubling down on making sure our vision and roadmap aren’t just different, but different in ways that deliver completely unique and significant business benefits to our clients.

The most obvious evidence of what we’ve been up to is our newly announced CX Intelligence (CXI) Cloud™. This next-evolution of our platform is built on a robust and modernized technology stack, instantly boosting our ability to innovate on a global scale. Our proprietary data science underlies all aspects of the platform, supporting more intelligent conversations, curating feedback whenever, wherever and however it is shared, and ultimately, transforming simple metrics into meaning. Oriented around a “jobs to be done” or “actions to be taken” approach, the CXI Cloud provides a clear framework for our clients to access fast, differentiated solutions that go beyond listening and responding to customer feedback, to powering intelligent automation and human action.

Inside InMoment, we refer to the CXI Cloud as the Sexy Cloud, and it’s not just because we’re technology nerds. Platforms don’t normally earn that adjective, but we think ours has. It’s not just a matter of being in the Cloud. It’s not just that it makes our technology faster, more reliable and globally available. The underlying data science is completely unique to InMoment—and super sexy. This “secret sauce” supports every aspect—from the types of data we can collect, to giving customers the ability to engage with clients on their own terms, to powering AI-driven, real-time conversations, to applying in-flight predictive and prescriptive analytics, to delivering instant alerts and timely intelligence across the enterprise. This complex, powerful and, yes, sexy platform is in a class by itself. And with it as a foundation, our team is having a really, really good time.

We gave the world a peek at the kind of new thinking and creating the CXI Cloud is allowing us to do at our conference earlier this spring. We announced our Creative Toolkit, Digital Intercept, Next-gen Discover, and Coach Pro. And that was only the beginning. In the coming months, look for new products and capabilities from InMoment that will fundamentally change the CFM/VoC landscape, and bring our clients completely new value.

The relationship between brands and their customers is at a new tipping point (see Facebook)—one that presents an incredible opportunity for companies that choose to use technology to help build new kinds of relationships. It’s no longer about surveys; it’s about having ongoing, intelligent conversations. It is no longer about metrics; it’s about meaning. The old ways of doing things just aren’t enough anymore. We’re inspired, and prepared to be part of what comes next.

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Three CX Basics Retailers Should Revisit

To say that the retail landscape is changing would be a complete and utter understatement. It seems like you can’t turn on the news or scroll through your smartphone without spotting another bankruptcy, downsizing, or complete shutdown of a brand that previously seemed untouchable.

Where some may see these shifts as intimidating, I think that they also present brands with an opportunity to step back and reanalyze their organization, especially when it comes to customer experience.

Customer experience is a key differentiator for all industries, but especially for retail. Our recent Retail Trends report found that positive interactions with staff increased customer satisfaction by 33% across industries and by a whopping 73% in the fashion industry. Because satisfied customers become loyal customers, emphasizing your CX efforts can really make a difference in your bottom line.

Whether you are relatively new to customer experience, or if you’ve had a program for a while, it’s important to make sure that you are covering all your bases with your customer experience program. I’ve put together a list of three CX basics that you can consider (or revisit) in order to make sure your customer experience is keeping you ahead of the game.

Efficiency

We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” and it’s true (especially in the checkout line)! Everyone has been in a situation where they are in a hurry and need to pick up an item last minute, only to be greeted with one open register and a seemingly never ending line. That is a guaranteed recipe for a negative experience that may even result in a customer abandoning their items and heading out the door.

With this in mind, it is incredibly important to keep wait times to a minimal. The latest CX technology can deploy data science to calculate when you have historically had the highest traffic, so you can schedule more employees accordingly. This tech can also leverage unstructured comments to get more specific feedback on your checkout process.

Convenience

For superior customer experience, you also need to be aware of how easy it is for customers to interact with your brand at every touchpoint. Convenience goes beyond the location of a physical store and self checkout stations; today, user experience is under the convenience umbrella as well. From the moment a customer enters your site or opens your app, it should be simple and easy for them to find a product, place it in their cart, and checkout.

If you are curious as to the convenience of your user experience, the simplest way to find out more is just to ask! Many web retailers have deployed intercept surveys in the past, but you want to be careful about how you use these. Make sure intercept questions aren’t one-size-fits-all and are relevant to a customer’s specific journey.

Friendly, Knowledgeable Service

If you’re looking to make a positive impression on your customers, your people are still your best weapon. This can be surprising seeing as we live in a world where automation is becoming the norm and in person interactions are becoming more rare, but retail employees still make a difference to customers. When you’re looking for new shoes, getting a second opinion or informed suggestion from a knowledgeable employee can make your day.

With this in mind, it is more important than ever to invest in your employees. You can hold frequent customer-centric or new product trainings to keep those on the front line informed. This enables them to provide consistent experiences and answer customer questions with ease and authority.

With so much change going on in the retail industry, it’s important to go back to the basics of your customer experience and make sure that you are proving the sort of interactions that will set your brand apart in the best way.

For more information on the current retail landscape, check out InMoment’s “2017 Retail Trends Report!”

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Leave Your Mark

The entire premise of customer experience (CX) is based on the idea that brands want their customers to have positive interactions with them and their products. In other words, brands who focus on customer experience want to leave a positive mark.

When my team and I were putting together the content for CX Elevated 2018, I started thinking a lot about how the mark we want to leave can define not just our CX efforts, but our lives.

Our lives are made up of moments that create a certain kind of impact. Our choice is not if we will leave a mark, but rather what kind of mark we leave. Previously, our company referred to this stand-out way of affecting the people around us as “Red Shoes” living, but with the most recent evolution in company vision, we figured it was time for a new take on an old classic.

It was this line of thinking that lead me to create the Leave Your Mark award and share it with our InMoment community on the last day of conference. It was an absolute pleasure to present the first of these awards to Sean Rausch, a local high school student who chose to leave a legacy of sportsmanship and camaraderie that serves as an inspiration to everyone.

In a cross country state championship race, Sean chose to forgo personal victory when his teammate snapped his tibia mid-race, falling to the ground. Sean stopped, picked his teammate up and carried him on his back—stopping only to set his teammate down so he could hop across the finish line and finish the race.

Both boys were disqualified, but it wasn’t the podium that mattered here or the winners that exemplified true sportsmanship. It was the young man who gave up his chance for a medal because he wanted to do the right thing. Sean chose to leave a mark, and in my mind his choice is more meaningful than a thousand first place titles.

The award presented to this remarkable athlete was a plaque impressed with a sneaker-sole footprint. This print represented the mark that Sean chose to leave. We also presented all attendees and InMoment employees with a similar plaque, instructing them to write on the sole a description of the mark they want to leave. This mark could be personal or professional, family or customer experience-oriented, big-picture or in the moment.

Being intentional about the mark you want to leave makes a huge difference in how you live every day. Our hope with this new movement is to inspire our community so that in moments of reflection, we will all be able to look back and be able to say that we left the mark we wanted to leave.

How are you leaving your mark?

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Airport Series: JFK And Planning For The Future

JFK International Airport is about to undergo a massive renovation. To understand what JFK should change and why, we analyzed 1000's of traveler reviews using our web-based text analytics platform. Here's what we found.

Consider New York City: the tangy gradient of smells emerging from chocolate shops and beer halls between 18th Street and 14th Street; the dissonance of high heels and sirens pounding against the Upper West Side; plumes of steam on a cold night, seething from deep within the City’s crust. New York is the navel of civilization — a hub where all people meet. To this end, its primary ports of entry, its airports, are unique in their role as ambassadors of the City.

A business and an icon

In this series we’ve examined airports like any other business. But for John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), the delineations between retail space, transit hub, and cultural monument are blurred. Analyzing public comments on JFK’s official Facebook page, we found an uncanny trend of users equating the airport to the city as a whole. Unfortunately, the comparison rarely proved positive. This is true even for the locals: “I have lived in NYC for 12 years,” says one man, “this airport is an example of everything wrong in this great city.” So, how might such an airport remedy this reputation crisis?

Here’s to new beginnings

In January 2017, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a $7-10 billion renovation plan for JFK International Airport. While a start-date has yet to be announced, the Governor’s office is accepting proposals. How might this portal to New York City respond to customer feedback? We uncovered some rich insights by mining and structuring thousands of free text reviews from travelers passing through JFK. The body overseeing the renovations, the Airport Master Plan Advisory Panel (AMPAP), might set some criteria based on these qualitative feedback.

Get connected

We ran this Facebook text data set though our web client, Semantria Storage & Visualization (SSV). By viewing Topics, which are query- or model-generated document classifications (in other words, known categories you’re actively looking for), we can see an immediate issue.

Figure 1: JFK topic sentiment polarity.

Notice Internet, the solid red column near the center of the visualization. What might be going on here? As we drill down we quickly notice something all too familiar to any regular at JFK: Wifi. Take it from one foreign traveler:

“How it is possible that one of The biggest airport [sic] of The world dont [sic] Provide free wifi???”

And, from a sardonic American:

“Get free wifi, this place is like a greyhound station ?”

There is, in fact, not a single neutral or positive mention of wifi in the JFK data set. It’s 100% negative. When planning future terminal renovation, AMPAP ought to consider network optimized architecture as well as sponsored, complimentary wifi.

Kindness is a universal language

A trend we’ve noticed across our airport experiment is the frequency of staff attitude. Staff attitude frequently plays first fiddle in the qualitative reviews.

This pie chart illustrates how much of the JFK data set is dedicated to customer-staff interactions.

Figure 2: Topic breakdown by volume.

All four variants — Attitude, Staff-General, Staff-General-Helpfulness, Staff-General-Attitude — constitute a volume nearly equal to the next 16 topics combined. Furthermore, we begin to notice a troubling situation when we compare this pie chart to the sentiment polarity columns from the first visualization. Frequently, customer-staff interactions result in negative feedback.

Figure 3: Detail of topic sentiment polarity for staff attitude.

For each of these categories, sentiment skews neutral-negative. Frequently, visitors mention how JFK appears understaffed, like this American traveler:

“Not enough staff, the staff you do have are rude, shouting at the public like they’re animals. I will never fly through JFK again. End of story.”

JFK is close to two competing airports, including Newark Airport. This means JFK’s non-aeronautical facilities, such as restaurants and retail stores, are especially susceptible to churn. A disgruntled guest, like the one highlighted above, can have a sphere of social influence encompassing hundreds of potential customers.

Hearing and addressing these concerns are the only way to ensure JFK retains a dedicated user base.

The road ahead for JFK

The AMPAP renovation project will cover a broad scope. But central to the mission ought to be the loud and colorful social media manifesto issued by JFK’s many customers. Staff attitude and wifi aren’t the only discussion topics. Hundreds of JFK reviews point to broken elevators, jammed jetways, confusing signage, and more.

Keeping a finger on these real time data streams will define the projects of the future while maintaining the facilities of today.

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Soft Skills are Real Skills – In CX, You Need These 10

“Soft skills” have traditionally been undervalued, and that’s slow to change. But more companies are realizing their worth. And even if the skills themselves are difficult to quantify (how much more likeable is Job Applicant A than Job Applicant B?), their effects aren’t.

The soft skills CX professionals possess directly affect metrics like:

  • Net promoter scores
  • Customer satisfaction scores
  • Customer effort scores
  • Qualitative survey feedback on customer support interactions
  • Qualitative data gleaned from online customer reviews
  • Number of referrals and recommendations

Human-to-human interactions can make or break those scores, generate referrals or cancellations, and either fuel word-of-mouth growth or silence it.

But before you break out your old copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (a classic for a reason), I’d like to talk about why I’m reading more articles now on “soft skills” as they apply to customer service, customer success, and customer experience.

Because we need them more now than ever.

“So let’s uncomfortably call them real skills instead.

Real because they work, because they’re at the heart of what we need to today.

Real because even if you’ve got the vocational skills, you’re no help to us without these human skills, the things that we can’t write down, or program a computer to do.”

– Seth Godin, Let’s stop calling them ‘soft skills’, Medium

What Exactly Are Soft Skills?

Often referred to as “people skills,” ‘soft skills’ don’t have a hard definition. In fact, they’re remarkably hard to pin down.

If you try to define these skills with a list of what they entail, you’ll run into trouble. Everyone has their own set.

Some argue that part of the definition of ‘soft skills’ is that they are something you’re born with. But others, including Seth Godin, say that’s “crazy because infants aren’t good at any of the soft skills. Of course, we learn them.”

(When was the last time you met a baby with a good work ethic?)

Seth Godin calls for five categories of ‘soft’ skills: Self Control, Productivity, Wisdom, Perception, and Influence.

Others cite the ability to listen, accept feedback, and communicate effectively. Or qualities like charisma, empathy, friendliness, patience, and reliability. Problem-solving skills get thrown into the mix with teamwork and attentiveness.

I like this exhaustive list from the balance which offers 6 categories of soft skills with sub-lists of specific skills under each. Their categories are:

  1. Communication skills
  2. Critical thinking
  3. Leadership
  4. Positive attitude
  5. Teamwork
  6. Work ethic

But even those don’t make it into “The Five Soft Skills Recruiters Want Most” that made it into the eponymous Fast Company article. Those were: Problem solving, adaptability, time management, organization and oral communication.

In 2013, Google tested its hiring hypothesis that prioritized top grades from elite universities in STEM subjects. They found that, in practice, the eight most important qualities of Google’s top managers were:

  1. Ability to be a good coach.
  2. Willingness to empower, rather than micromanage.
  3. Taking an interest in people’s success and well-being.
  4. Ability to be productive and results-oriented.
  5. Communication and listening skills.
  6. Willingness to help employees develop their careers.
  7. Holding a clear vision and developing a strategy for the team.
  8. Possessing key technical skills that allow the manager to advise the team.

Technical skills came in dead last. The rest were ‘soft skills.’

For our purposes, I’d like to simplify the definition of these skills and stop calling them “soft” – period. Let’s call them “people skills.”

People skills are what you need to relate to people, be understood, and be liked. Likeability is one word that encompasses myriad characteristics, including charisma, reliability, empathy, and willingness to take a stab at solving problems. Above all, we’re talking about genuinely caring about people.

If you get that one thing right – you’ve already got the core soft skills you need.

Relationships Can Make Or Break a Business

Businesses are rising and falling based on the quality of their relationships with their customers – and employees.

For subscription-based services in general, and SaaS in particular, success metrics like retention, customer lifetime value and cost-to-acquire are all correlated with how well businesses relate to, and engage with, their customers.

These are people skills.

And as artificial intelligence is taking over so many of the human-to-human interactions businesses have traditionally had with their customers, the human interactions that do happen are coming under more scrutiny.

In Top Customer Service Trends for 2018 by Kate Leggett, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester, Kate points out the repercussions of increasing AI and self-service in customer service.

“With customers increasingly using self-service, there are fewer opportunities for engagement with agents who can lend a human touch.”

That means three things: Those fewer opportunities are under more pressure to produce positive results, human-to-human interactions will be reserved for bigger problems that AI can’t handle, and those complex issues will require both accurate diagnoses and empathy.

“These organizations will focus on the quality of interactions as measured by customer retention and lifetime value. Agents will need to be more highly skilled and better compensated. Old management principles that focused on efficiency must be relaxed. Ultimately, technologies such as quality monitoring should be replaced by customer feedback.”

As companies race to differentiate themselves based on customer experience, these interactions become vitally important.

“Forget about your company’s historical point of differentiation. Customer Experience reigns supreme today and you will either be rewarded or punished for how you are treating your customers.”

– Bill Carmody, founder & CEO of Trepoint, “Customer Experience is Your ONLY Differentiator. You’re About To Be Rewarded or Punished”, Inc.

With hundreds of “soft skills” listed, it might seem like a lifetime’s worth of study for anyone who isn’t confident in their natural gifts of gab. Yes, you can learn people skills. You can certainly improve them. And to really make an impact on CX, you and your customer support or customer success team may have to. So let’s concentrate on the skills that make the most impact.

The 10 People Skills You Need Most for CX

  1. A genuine willingness to help – Not only does a genuine willingness to help make customer support agents shine and customer success managers effective, this instinct to solve problems and make positive impacts bleeds into other areas as well. For example, a customer success agent who becomes aware of a problem through customer feedback can patch the issue – or the agent can investigate the problem and actively work with other teams to bridge that success gap for everyone, strengthening the product or service and the company as a whole.
  2. Empathy – Customer support professionals are often trained to “show empathy” by repeating phrases that come off as insincere at best: “I understand that this can be frustrating.” Empathy phrases can be incredible tools (this is a very good list), but only when used with discretion (so it doesn’t sound like you’re reading off of a card). But empathy is about more than the words you use. It’s the desire to really understand where someone else is coming from and what they need to thrive. That’s Customer Success 101, right there: Taking the time to learn about your customer’s business and challenges so you can understand your product from their perspective.
  3. Communication – Communication skills, the ability to listen carefully, explain clearly and treat kindly are must-haves in the People Skills toolkit, but there’s another type of communication customer service and success teams should have: Cross-communication. You’re at the nexus between your customers and your business which puts you in a unique position to gather data customer sentiment, use, and engagement that everyone else in your business needs. Make sure they get that info.
  4. Emotional Intelligence – Connected to empathy in that you’re aware of other people’s emotions, Emotional Intelligence also means you’re aware of your own. It’s self and social awareness of mood, emotional strengths and weaknesses, and potential underlying motivations behind behavior. In practice, this means knowing when to praise team members and how to constructively criticize. With customers, often it’s about understanding how your actions and responses can positively affect their moods to create memorable experiences.
  5. Integrity – Managing expectations by honestly telling customers what they can and can’t expect builds a tremendous amount of trust and sets customers up to have positive experiences when businesses don’t overpromise. Being able to set expectations also builds trust with internal teams.
  6. Problem-Solving – The best problem-solvers are the ones who jump in as soon as they see a rough patch arise and have enough confidence to figure it out if a solution doesn’t immediately present itself. Really, it’s all in the attitude. You don’t have to know the answer to everything to help. You just have to be willing to figure out the answer that’s needed.
  7. Stress Management – Dealing with people, even lovely coworkers and customers – is inherently stressful to most humans. The ability to manage that stress and not take it out on those around you is one of the best ‘People Skills’ you can cultivate. One bad day can lose a lot of clients when you think in terms of not just the client you’re speaking to, but all of the future clients they can bring in with recommendations.
  8. Listening Skills – This is one everyone in the company, from the Founder on down, needs to have, because listening to your customers effectively, focusing on their needs and desires (instead of your needs), is how great products and companies are built. More than that, though, is the willingness to listen internally as well – to people from different departments who often have valuable insights to add.
  9. Leadership – Once you uncover a good idea or customer feedback that requires action, it’s a real skill to be able to inspire others to follow your lead (especially if those others are above you). This becomes easier when you work from the mentality that your role is to make those you lead wildly successful. Everyone wants to follow a leader who gives them what they need to do their best work and get the best results.
  10. Team Building – Team building across departments brings leadership to a whole new level. Reaching out and forming relationships with people in other departments is something anyone can initiate. And when you approach your co-workers with an open willingness to help and collaborate, you won’t get turned down.

What “soft skills” – or People Skills – do you see the most need for in CX?

Be the customer experience champion at your company. Sign up today for free Net Promoter Score, CSAT or Customer Effort Score feedback with InMoment.

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

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The 2024 Consumer Trends Report

This isn't your average trends report – read on to see how your business can lead the charge into a new era of CX

10 Steps to Easily Build An Integrated Customer Experience Program

A game-changing guide for your team on how to build & implement a competitive, fully-stacked integrated CX program.

Automatically Analyze Qualitative Customer Feedback with Auto-tagging

Customer experience professionals live in a world overflowing with data. Sitting on that wealth of information is frustrating when you know it has incredible potential.

If you are tracking CX metrics, like NPS or CSAT, the numbers help you quantify customer loyalty and satisfaction. But it’s the customer comments that come with those surveys, all of that rich qualitative data, that give you invaluable context for why customers feel the way they do.

Until now, it’s been difficult to analyze qualitative data because it is so unstructured.

This is where tagging comes in.

Using software to analyze qualitative data

Modern customer feedback software comes with the ability to tag customer comments. Tagging feedback has two functional goals: Routing and Insight.

Routing:

Creating a tag for specific stakeholders, e.g. “product”, quickly sorts feedback to be routed to the correct teams for follow-up. Product teams can simply click a button to see verbatim comments regarding feature requests and support teams can be more proactive by checking for comments under a “bug” tag.

Insight:

Tagging comments by relation to product, website, or customer experience helps themes emerge. For example, you may see that most of your detractors are tagged with “shipping” or “price”. This will help you prioritize and address issues in real-time.

Tagging comments manually doesn’t scale, however.

If you are receiving less than 100 comments a month, manually tagging comments can work. But customer comments can pile up just like emails in your inbox. Constant monitoring results in little else getting done. When you find yourself drowning in responses, CX feedback can feel overwhelming — just like your inbox.

This is where using software to auto-tag customer comments saves the day.

Auto-tagging gives you real-time categorization of large quantities text feedback

Auto-tagging automatically sorts qualitative comments for you using AI-powered text analysis, and it happens in real-time. This helps you surface themes and see trends that the human brain has trouble processing on its own.

For example, you may find that pricing issues are mentioned in 80% of your detractor comments in the past couple months, or a new feature is mentioned in 65% of your promoter comments since it launched.

Auto-tagging serves as a dynamic tool to quickly sort massive amounts of feedback for routing to the appropriate teams for insight and immediate follow-up.

We’ve provided the first steps and some suggestions to start auto-tagging in real-time.

Using machine learning to auto-tag

When you’re drowning in feedback, we recommend using natural language processing to auto-categorize feedback. Customer feedback software, like Wootric, can tag and surface themes in your feedback based on what’s important in your industry.

Automatic text classification is the ultimate time saver when it comes to comment feedback. While this isn’t a necessary step, for large amounts of feedback, it is an incredibly powerful tool for true automation in your tagging system.

How to set up text-match Auto-tags

The time you save by setting up an auto-tagging system can be spent taking action based on the insight lifted out of your survey feedback.

If you aren’t using machine learning software, here are the steps to take in planning your text-match auto-tagging system and some suggestions to get you started.

First, Some Questions to Ask Yourself

When you start to tag your feedback, read every comment you receive in a period of time, perhaps a week or a month, and consider the following:

  • What topics/features/issues stand out in your comments?

For example, you may see that many of your customers talk about your Support team’s response time, or the value your product/service has brought to them. These general themes will serve as jumping off points for brainstorming tags and keywords.

  • Is there industry or business specific vocabulary or jargon that you might want to track?

For SaaS companies, you may want to include terms like “dashboard”, “widget”, or “in-app” as tags or as text-match keywords. Oftentimes, these terms will be abbreviated, like UI for “user interface”. 

You can even choose to create tags for team members to alert them whenever they are mentioned by name. This might be helpful for a customer support agent who wants to see what customers are saying about their interactions.

As you read through your sample of comments, make a note of the words and phrases you spot customers using. They may be using different terms than the language you and your colleagues use as professionals in your industry.

  • Which teams will you be sending customer feedback to and what terms are relevant to them?

You want to be routing comments to the right teams. For example, a product development team will be interested in comments about user interface, integrations, or feature requests while your support or success team may be more concerned with bugs or implementation.

Nested Tags or Parent-Child Tags for Tag Hierarchy (SaaS example)

Once you’ve answered these questions, start grouping specific terms under broader terms. This is going to help you create hierarchy within your tags, also called nested tags.

Nested tags are labels associated by a hierarchy. The ‘sub-tag’ or ‘child tag’ is a tag that is more specific and can be categorized under a ‘parent tag’.

When any of the ‘child-tags’ are text-matched to a comment, feedback platforms will also tag that comment with the corresponding ‘parent tag’. Comments tagged with only the ‘parent tag’ do not include any of the words associated with any of the ‘child-tags’.

This allows you to pull comments that mention any of the specific integrations through the child-tags. At the same time, the broader “integrations” tag pulls comments that mention integrations in general, e.g. suggested integrations from our customers.

Choosing Text-Match Keywords or Keyphrases

For auto-tagging, it is important to choose the right words or phrases to match the tag to the comment. Text-match tags use an “exact match” rule for automation.

This is where having read through some of your current open-ended feedback is useful. You’ve seen the specific words that your customers tend to use when writing about different issues. It may also be helpful to use a thesaurus to come up with synonyms for the words or phrases you choose to match on.

Remember that text-match is very literal, so you will need to include variations on the words and phrases you choose. For example, an “implementation” tag should match on “implement”, “implemented”, “implementation”, and “setup”, as well as “set-up”.

Suggestions

We’ve compiled a list of auto-tags that are commonly used by SaaS businesses. You may be able to use some of these in other industries as well.

As you start to receive feedback you should refine your tags to be more specific to your business needs.

Here’s a list of common tags for SaaS companies to start with:

Tag name: Matches on:
“Product” parent tag Terms specific to your product like the name, or terminology for features, e.g. “Amazon”
“Product A” child tag Name of one of your more specific products or services if you have more than 1, e.g. “Prime Music”
“Product B” child tag Name of another product or service if you have more than 2, e.g. “Prime Shipping”
“Bug” “issue, issues, crash, crashes, bug, bugs, buggy, error, errors”
“Competition” Names of your competitors
“Documentation” “docs, documentation, article, articles, help article, FAQ, FAQs”
“Feature request” “wish, add, would like”
“Implementation” “implement, implemented, implementation, setup, set-up”
“Integrations” parent tag “integration, integrate, integrates”
“Integration 1” child tag Words specific to one integration, change the tag label to the specific integration, e.g. “Slack”
“Integration 2” child tag Words specific to another integration, with the corresponding label, e.g. “Salesforce”
“Performance” “speed, slow, fast, uptime, downtime, 404”
“Price” “cheap, expensive, promo, promotion, deal, price, price tag”
“Support” “support, onboarding, on-boarding, issue, broken, assistance, service, tech support, help, helps, helping”

Human Review: Manually Tagging for Refinement

Monitor your feedback for a couple weeks after you set up your auto-tagging system. If a comment should be tagged, but isn’t, add more keywords to the text-match tag. Manually tag any comments that are difficult to text-match.

A good example would be a comment like “I tried to connect your software to my CRM but it didn’t work.” This comment is clearly related to integration, but text-matching wouldn’t catch this. After manually tagging this comment, you can then add “connect your software” as a keyphrase to the integration tag.

Human review becomes a tool for refining your existing auto-tags, instead of the main workhorse. As time passes, you’ll spend your time scanning for edge cases and new issues or topics that require a new auto-tag.

Do this check periodically to ensure your insight is accurate. Maintaining your valuable tagging system will save you time in the future.

If you are using machine learning, use manual tags to train the AI to be more accurate in the future. In case you spot an inappropriate tag, the AI also learns each time you remove a tag that it generated.

Feedback Routing & Driving Action

Surveying customers is the first phase in your transformation into a more customer-centric company, but you will plateau if you sit on the feedback. Setting up an auto-tagging system means feedback is sent to relevant teams in your organization in real-time. Trends are lifted more easily from qualitative feedback, and your customer-centric organization will be empowered to actively pursue customer happiness.

Measure and improve customer experience.

Get auto-tagging with Wootric customer feedback software. Sign up for a free trial.

Read Now – The 2024 Consumer Trends Report

This isn't your average trends report – read on to see how your business can lead the charge into a new era of CX.

10 Steps to Easily Build An Integrated Customer Experience Program

A game-changing guide for your team on how to build & implement a competitive, fully-stacked integrated CX program.

5 Things Successful Customer Experience Leaders Know That Others Don’t

CX leaders know that knowledge is only a means to an end. They know that it is the “doing” that keeps the flame of knowledge from burning out. They work hard on these five skills, constantly practicing and refining them because they know the purpose inspiring those actions will make all the difference for their employees, customers, and bottom line.

In the last several years, there is no doubt that improving the customer experience (CX) has been a top priority for any company looking to improve employee performance, drive customer value, and grow their bottom line. Yet there remains a gap between those CX leaders who successfully lead their organization in effecting CX change and those who do not. What makes the difference?

CX leaders know how to do these five things successfully:

Align the Vision

CX leaders know that driving a common purpose starts with having consistent language and definitions across their organization. How else would everyone in an organization know what makes up an effective customer experience without first having a clear, agreed on definition?

CX leaders also constantly connect specific customer feedback to each customer touchpoint to bring life to this definition of an effective customer experience. Ultimately, these CX leaders line up the overarching brand promise, employee experience, and internal training across the various key CX touchpoints.

Intentionally Enable Connections

CX leaders know that aligning a vision does not happen on an island. They use their leadership skills of kindness, credibility, and telling a compelling story to build an army of passionate individuals within their organization who rally around making their customers’ lives better. They purposefully network within their organization to get buy-in from key stakeholders who have power, influence, passion, budget, direct access to customers, or other essential tangible or intangible resources across all departments.

Additionally, they take a good look at the various projects stakeholders are initiating to see if they would truly make customers’ lives better. CX leaders then humbly help these key stakeholders champion these projects to successful outcomes. They further enable internal connections by breaking up silos and supporting cross-functional teams. In the end, they know that intentionally investing in trust pays dividends in the end.

CX leaders also know the importance of connecting their employees with customers. At the top of the house, CX leaders know that sometimes a few executives become “hard of hearing” when it comes to listening to the voice of the customer. They encourage these and all executives to periodically work alongside customer-facing employees to keep their customer listening muscles from atrophying. In the field and with customer-facing employees, CX leaders, along with the training team, use various forms of customer feedback to give these employees vivid descriptions of what a great customer experience is (and what it is not).

Maintain Relentless Focus

CX leaders know their customer listening programs inside and out. This empowers them to know which key areas need to be improved within their organization. CX leaders maintain relentless focus on these key areas and are not distracted by the “side projects of the few” or on things that matter less. They know how to say “no” which frees them up to work on only those things that will truly drive improvement. Importantly, they know the “why” behind what they measure and don’t lose sight of it.

Drive Consistent Improvement

CX leaders know the organizational weaknesses at each customer touchpoint and support the person or team in charge of championing the projects that will improve their customers’ lives in these areas. They constantly push for executive ownership and stakeholder accountability. If internal incentives are used, CX leaders know that tying incentives to desired behaviors (not scores) brings about the greatest change.

CX leaders know they are playing the long game and patiently pursue the most effective path for sustainability within their organization. This may mean connecting with specific people within their organization, upgrading needed tools or resources, getting buy-in from a certain department, or discovering the real reason of what turned the last “program of promise” into a “program of the month” where enthusiasm for the program quickly waned.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

The old real estate adage is “location, location, location.”  CX leaders know that “communication, communication, communication” is vital to the success of any customer experience improvement strategy.  In the early stages of their CX journey, CX leaders employed various internal awareness campaigns. Later in their journey, they continue the conversation by discussing success stories, citing specific examples from customer feedback of employees who have demonstrated effective improvements to the customer experience.  They publish these successes in internal newsletters, their intranet, in employee paychecks, and anywhere else they can keep the message top-of-mind. CX leaders also work with the marketing department to communicate with customers when they have improved a product or process.

Ultimately, CX leaders know that knowledge is only a means to an end. They know that it is the “doing” that keeps the flame of knowledge from burning out. They work hard on these five skills, constantly practicing and refining them because they know the purpose inspiring those actions will make all the difference for their employees, customers, and bottom line.

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5 Ways to Avoid Falling Flat on Your Customer Experience Journey

Regardless of industry, CX programs are no longer a nice to have, but instead, a must have business discipline.

Nobody likes roadkill.

It’s gruesome to see and certainly even more horrible to become—literally or metaphorically. That’s why Andrew Park, InMoment VP, CX Strategy, and I recently hosted a webinar entitled, “How to Avoid Becoming Roadkill on Your Customer Experience Journey” with our partner, CustomerThink.com.

According to CustomerThink research, a mere 7% of CX initiatives have created competitive differentiation while only 23% of brands have realized tangible benefits. So less than one-third of CX initiatives can claim the clear “win” that CEOs demand: ROI as evidenced by measurable business impact. This inability to prove impact has caused CX programs to stall.

Regardless of industry, CX programs are no longer a nice to have, but instead, a must have business discipline. However, there’s no “one size fits all” approach to CX and strategies will differ based on budget, organizational structure, CX maturity, and more. But that’s no reason to become discouraged.

Pulling from InMoment’s white paper on Customer Experience Strategy—and based on our experience working with hundreds of brands from across the world for over 15 years—Andrew and I discussed five areas companies can take action on immediately.

Create and Prove Value

This is where brands are struggling the most. Improving CX metrics—such as NPS and OSAT—is admirable, but companies must link CX results specifically and thoughtfully to business-wide KPIs and financial results. During the webinar, Andrew discussed a global retailer which tied financial performance and workforce data to customer feedback. By doing so, customer experience became a scorecard for the front line: a way to show the effect of specific staff behaviors on OSAT, conversion, and sales per associate. The company found that the top 10% of locations achieved a 3% higher conversion rate—which equated to a cool $67 million annually. We can assure you this CX program is not getting cut any time soon.

Infuse CX in Everything

Often viewed as a fluffy concept, this CX mindset is anything but. And it’s not something that simply happens; it takes work, is purposeful, and strategic. In fact, according to Andrew, “Best-in-class CX companies—if you listen to their earnings calls—the executive teams are talking about customer experience.” He continued by referencing a CX executive at a global athletic apparel retailer who—over many years—has successfully developed a CX-centric culture within the brand. This kind of achievement does not necessarily happen organically and certainly not by accident; by weaving CX into hiring and training practices, and “coaching up” other executives—across all departments—he has infused the Voice of the Customer throughout the organization.

Organize for Success

Most brands are not born CX-centric. This means organizations must be agile; they must shift and flex with emerging trends and customer needs. Luckily, one of our energy clients wrote the book on this topic. In a regulated industry with literally zero competitors, safety and “keeping the lights on” have always been the company’s priorities—not customer experience. However, when the J.D. Power rankings came in and the energy provider found itself sitting in last place, the executive team knew it was time to make a change. The company called upon a cross-functional team of influencers—from powerline technicians to accountants to customer service agents—to craft a customer experience intent statement and tackle customer pain points head on. The results: entirely new departments, improved operational efficiencies, and policies that make sense for customers and the bottom line.

Leverage the Voice of the Customer

More than ever, customer feedback must be an ongoing dialogue as opposed to a one-time interrogation. This means moving beyond traditional surveys and listening to your customers wherever, whenever, and however—and in a way that makes sense for them. We’re seeing brands leverage mobile voice feedback, video, and even image recognition which allows customers to leave more authentic, rich feedback. Others brands are bringing in contextual data such as social reviews, CRM, and transactional metrics. One of InMoment’s airline clients appends up to 300 pieces of customer-specific data points to each customer feedback response. This means the company understands the impact that seat location, aircraft, food, staff, weather, travel history, departure time, and more have on customer satisfaction. VoC data becomes infinitely more valuable with this kind of detailed context.

Empower Employees

The old CX adage is that employees are either serving the customer, or serving someone who is. In other words: everyone has an impact on customer experience. Andrew shared a quintessential example of this from one of our healthcare clients. An 80-something-year-old man had an appointment at a hospital and received an exceptional experience from his care team. Yet, when he returned to his car, he found that the valet had changed the radio station. This turned a 5-star care experience into a 3-star overall experience. In a complex healthcare setting, a valet, receptionist, or cafeteria worker might not think they have an impact on customer experience, but in today’s CX-driven world, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This teachable moment proved that everyone—regardless of position—plays a role in CX. And if companies are not making their employees a part of the conversation and solution, they’re missing a major opportunity to improve the customer experience.

Taking the next (or first) step isn’t each always easy. Andrew urged webinar participants to avoid waiting for a perfect strategy, to get started today and continually refine over time, and to take pride in your incremental achievements along the way. Each “win” will help you garner more support and further prove the value of your efforts.

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Customer Experience Trends: 3 Millennial Myths

Organizations have made changes in an attempt to connect with this generation, but our findings reveal that there are a few myths they have about Millennials that could be misdirecting their attempts.
CX in retail

As I have discussed in previous posts, the findings from our 2018 CX Trends Report highlighted several misconceptions brands have about their customers. These disconnects show up in different ways, including memorability of experiences or the creepiness of personalization efforts. In this post, I would like to discuss the false assumptions many brands make about Millennials.

It’s safe to say that Millennials (born 1981-1997) have been the subject of a lot of debate and generalizations by brands. It is incredibly common to see articles on their buying preferences and the way they are changing and even killing some industries on a regular basis. Organizations — many begrudgingly — have made changes in an attempt to connect with this generation, but our findings reveal that there are a few myths they have about Millennials that could be misdirecting their attempts.

Myth #1: Millennials don’t think twice about sharing personal data.

Brands tend to believe that Millennials are more excited about new technology than older generations, with few privacy concerns and no hesitation to give away personal information. In fact, the opposite is true: Older generations report fewer creepy experiences from brands, while Millennials report the highest (at 22%, compared to 11% for the Silent Generation and 13% for Baby Boomers).

Myth #2: Millennials are all-digital.

The next misconception brands seem to hold is that Millennials are exclusively digital, preferring to conduct all of their personal and commercial interactions from their mobile devices. Our research finds that there’s a lot more to the story — in fact, Millennials are true omnichannel consumers who find value in shopping online, through mobile apps, and in physical locations. For example, 32% of Millennials rank the ability to buy online and then pick up in store as very valuable, and 29% rank physical locations for e-tailers like Amazon as very important.

Myth #3: Millennials are unique in wanting brands to be aligned with their causes.

While there’s a lot of chatter about Millennials nearly forcing brands to advocate for their specific causes, the data tells a more complex truth. Yes, 58% of Millennials do feel that it is important or very important that brands they support invest in causes near and dear to them — but so do other generations. About 55% of Gen Xers and 51% of Baby Boomers said the same thing.

When it comes down to it, it’s vital that brands understand that Millennials are not all they’ve assumed. To combat misunderstandings, organizations should be transparent in how they use or Millennial data, offer choices in how to engage with the brand, and pay attention to the causes that inspire them without forgetting the basics like price, ease, and functionality.

To learn more about the latest findings in customer experience, download our 2018 CX Trends Report!

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Are You Approaching Customer Experience as a Puzzle or a Mystery?

Together with our clients, we are trying to understand what their customers think of their experiences. We aren’t just trying to solve for what they do well what they could do better, we are attempting to understand and give intelligence on how the myriad of digital and physical interactions with people, products, environments, etc.

The theme of this year’s CX Elevated conference, From Insights to Intelligence, represented  our long-term vision for customer experience.

This vision includes the imperative all organizations have: moving from achieving insights into what customers think about their experiences toward a more comprehensive understanding of their conversations, emotions, and actions, and how that intelligence can impact the brand.

As we began planning our annual conference, our CEO, Andrew Joiner, left no doubt as to his pick for the primary keynote: Malcolm Gladwell, one of today’s brightest thought leaders and a New York Times bestselling author. . Previously, Andrew had seen Gladwell give a presentation on two fundamentally different approaches to “solving”: puzzles and mysteries.

In the case of a puzzle, you’re working with a lack of information. To solve for a puzzle situation you gather more data until you have all of the pieces and thus, the answer. In the case of  mysteries, however, you have lots of data—too much, sometimes—and need special tools to locate the right signals amidst all of that noise. Mysteries don’t have a single right answer, but rather require creativity, curiosity, and discernment to solve.

When it comes to CX, we’re most definitely dealing with the latter paradigm. As Gladwell put it:

“In the collision of human beings and all of their complexities with data, you are surrounded by mysteries.”

To help us understand the way to approach mysteries, Gladwell provided three examples of challenges that would benefit from a mystery approach. My favorite example concerns professional basketball players and the way their value is measured.

It used to be that a pro basketball player’s value was determined simply by the number of points they scored. However this changed with the introduction of win share analysis. This new way of valuing players took into account other aspects that contribute to overall skill and performance. The new lense yielded entirely different results, enabling analysts to determine that most players peaked in their fourth year in the league. While this was more interesting, and probably helpful to teams and coaches, Gladwell observed that this process didn’t take into account the other “noise” or characteristics that sometimes contribute to a later, even greater personal best. When he approached this mystery differently, he found that variables such as player happiness and work ethic caused players like Gordon Hayward to play their personal best later in their careers than the league average. In this case, bringing in specific types of data and analyzing it in new ways kept players with great potential from being overlooked.

In this example, Gladwell was able to expertly describe to us the dangers of addressing human behavior as if it were a puzzle, which can lead to misinformation, bad answers, and missed opportunities.

So what does this have to do with customer experience? In a post-CX Elevated note to InMoment staff, Andrew made the explicit connections:

“We hosted one of the great geniuses of our time — Malcolm Gladwell. His keynote at CXE was about how the world, especially in customer experience, is shifting away from traditional analytical constructs (a puzzle-based approach). His take is that they simply don’t work anymore. Asking more questions and producing more metrics won’t help our clients solve complex customer experiences. They need the right data and more intelligent technology — and that’s where InMoment is helping.”

Together with our clients, we are trying to understand what their customers think of their experiences. We aren’t just trying to solve for what they do well what they
could do better, we are attempting to understand and give intelligence on how the myriad of digital and physical interactions with people, products, environments, etc. impacts the relationship between customer and brand. And more importantly, why. With those answers, we can help build brands in prioritizing their efforts, introducing new offerings, and forging high-value, lasting bonds with customers.

Throughout the rest of 2018 we’ll be introducing even more tools brands can use to successfully pursue the great mystery of customer experience. And while the mystery vs. puzzle approach is infinitely more complex, the business and human impact hold a positive potential that is both perplexing and incredibly exciting.

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