Best Practices

A cloud of discouraging news has hung over the restaurant industry for several months now. NPD Group reported the number of restaurants in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level in 10 years. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, one third of U.S. adults indicated they are eating out less than they did just three months ago.

With fewer diners and the unpleasant news, brands are fighting for every dollar from the guest. A good place to start is elevating the guest experience. As the analyst firm Gartner declared: The customer or guest experience is “the new competitive battlefield.”

To help you navigate through this increasingly tricky battlefield, here are three keys to help you get the most out of your guest feedback and elevate the guest experience so you can win your unfair share of the market.

1. Focus on Stories, Not Scores

During a recent business trip, I had to miss my son’s first little league baseball game of the season. When I called home later that day, I asked him how he did. He proceeded to tell me he got a hit on the very first pitch of his at-bat and knocked the ball right back up the middle of the infield to get a single, and then his teammates managed to bring him home to score with a series of hits. His story was verified with the video my wife captured on her phone.

My son didn’t just recite his personal box score—2/3, 1R—when I asked how he did. He told me the story of the game, along with lots of detail about each at-bat. A box score wouldn’t have given me anywhere near the detail I needed to understand how the game had gone. It’s human nature to tell a story, rather than list off a series of numbers.

Your guests, like my son, have a story to tell—not just a series of ratings to share. Harnessing technology, you can capture rich data about your guests’ experiences. They’ll provide a “box score” by rating different aspects of the experience, from food quality, to staff friendliness, to overall satisfaction.

But the real value comes from the stories they’ll tell. A guest may rate the Quality of the Food a “3” but that doesn’t tell you much. You can infer the food wasn’t excellent or as good as the guest was expecting, but really not much beyond that.

Using artificial intelligence, today’s best feedback technologies can encourage guests to have a real-time conversation with brands—asking them to leave more detail to key into specific topics they mention. This gives the guest who rated the quality of the food a “3” the opportunity to tell you why. Understanding the why behind the score gives you and your staff specific direction on exactly where to focus improvements, as well as what guests love most about your brand.

We like to think of scores kind of like a compass or speedometer—pointing you in a general direction—with stories serving as more of a guidance system. You really need both to understand exactly where you are with your guests, whether you’re heading the right direction, and exactly where to go next.

2. Retain and Recover Guests

Earlier in my career, I worked as the general manager of a local barbecue restaurant. One Friday evening, I heard the words every GM dreads: “The phone’s for you. This guy is really mad.”

I picked up the phone and the conversation went something like this:

“You idiots forgot my barbecue sauce, I have two racks of ribs and no barbecue sauce! I don’t want to eat them without the sauce.”

“I’m really sorry, that shouldn’t have happened. There’s nothing worse than getting home and not having everything you need for you meal. We’d like to make this right. Can I bring you some sauce right now?”

“You would do that? We’re way out here, it’s probably too far.”

“Nope, we really want to make this right for you. Give me your address and I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m a pretty fast driver…”

The guest then gave me his address and I drove like lightning to get to his house. By the time I got there, he met me out on the front porch with a wad of cash for a tip and a smile on his face and thanked me for saving his night. In those few minutes between his call and my delivery, our restaurant had gone from the “idiots who forgot the sauce,” to the “restaurant that was willing to drive to his house.” And he wanted to give us more money, even though we messed up.

In nearly 14 years of working with customer feedback, we see this same trend across every industry we serve. If a brand responds quickly to a problem, resolving it with a high level of satisfaction, the customer is just as likely to return, and just as likely to promote the brand as if they had experienced no problem at all.

New York Times bestselling author Jay Baer has written a book about the importance of connecting with guests who had a bad experience called “Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.” Baer says that one-third of all customer complaints go completely unanswered which is the worst possible thing you can do. He says, “No reply is actually a reply—it says we don’t care about you at all.”

Through a proper guest recovery process, you can actually turn these negative experiences into a positive result. Reaching out to guests and resolving their concern to their satisfaction is a great retention tool to actually drive business results.

And the effort pays off. Baer writes that, “a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profits by 25% to 85%… Keeping a guest long term is much more cost effective than trying to find new guests.”

Reaching out does more than recover a single transaction. The value of a one-time rescue is multiplied over the lifetime of the relationship between guest and brand. Lifetime value is calculated by tracking the number of times they visit in a year, multiplying that number by the average per transaction spend, and then multiplying that number by the average number of years they’re a guest of your brand. Different demographic groups have different lifetime values. One large pizza chain estimated that the average lifetime value of a guest was around $10,000, and Starbucks says the lifetime value of one of their guests is over $14,000!

And value doesn’t stop there. Happy guests are also more likely to add even more value by influencing others to choose your brand.

The right technology will give you the ability to receive instant notifications when a guest requests follow up, automatically open and facilitate the successful management and closure of each case, and even check in with staff members to identify the root cause so you can prevent the problem from happening again.

3. Engage Your Employees

To your guests, your servers, cooks, and hosts are ambassadors of your brand.

Your employees are crucial to elevating the guest experience and creating more loyal guests. For many brands, the most talked-about aspect of their customer experience isn’t what went wrong. In fact, much of guest feedback is about the positive impact great staff had on their experience.

A few questions to ask yourself as you consider the role your frontline employees play in the guest experience:

• Do they know how important their role is?
• Do you have the right people in the right roles?
• Do they feel valued and appreciated?
• Are they receiving guest feedback about their performance—regarding both opportunities to improve, as well as appreciation?

The tried and true service profit chain model says that happy, engaged employees lead to happy, engaged guests, leading to increased revenue and profit.

However, what we’ve found is that this relationship is more reciprocal and bi-directional. The relationship between guests and employees is much more circular than linear. You can use the feedback and stories from your guests to help engage your employees. Consider the following comment left by a customer of a large restaurant chain:

“Everything was AWESOME!!! My food was hot, my server [NAME] was super nice and totally helped me out with my veggie burger. Plus she had a contagious smile the whole time, it really brightened up my day! I’m definitely [sic] impressed with the cleanliness of this [BRAND]. You guys rock and Thanks [NAME]!”

Now imagine if this story was shared with the employee. She would feel valued, appreciated, and motivated to continue to go above and beyond and create more of these “wow” moments with her guests. If this was shared with the rest of the team, they would be inspired to perform better as well.

Ensure your feedback partner has the analytics power to capture, understand, and instantly route notifications of these types of “wow” moments to targeted leaders in your business to ensure these positive behaviors are recognized and in a timely manner.

Using these types of stories from your guests to celebrate and recognize your team perpetuates a culture of positivity around guest feedback. Too often frontline employees look at guest feedback as punitive and damaging. And unfortunately some managers and leaders use it that way. Frontline employees should want to hear the guest stories whether positive or negative. Sharing the positive stories helps to create better dialogue and coaching moments between a frontline employee and their manager even when those negative stories come through.

The Result

Getting the most out of the feedback your guests provide will ultimately help your business thrive and succeed in both challenging and prosperous times. Study after study has shown brands that elevate the guest experience have higher stock prices, increased revenue, and reduced expenses. Temkin Group research shows even modest improvements in customer experience can be worth millions of dollars to restaurant brands.

So don’t wait! Begin elevating the guest experience—and their voice—at your restaurant now.

In a recent study by Convey and eft, researchers surveyed 200 retail supply chain executives about the role and importance of customer experience (CX) in the last leg of delivery and its impact on supply chain performance.

The study found that higher customer expectations are leading to new challenges in transparency, speed, and real-time communication between retailers and their customers. For retail supply chain executives, the main priority is now providing a consistently great customer experience, whether that be when shoppers receive packages or need to return them.

The study addressed four major CX issues that supply chain executives encounter:

• Understanding the importance of CX
• Struggling with technology that does not address CX needs
• Integrating CX into business operations
• Positively impacting both operations and CX

Understanding the Importance of CX

Retail supply chain executives seem to be catching on to just how important CX is to the survival of their business. Of the 200 retail executives surveyed, 83% said that customer experience is now an organization-wide initiative that they are feeling pressure to improve. In addition, 56% reported that CX measurements are becoming a key part of making operational decisions.

These high percentages are significant because they illustrate how retail supply chain executives want better CX, but the technology and success must carry through into operational improvement as well.

Struggling with Technology That Isn’t Addressing CX Needs

One of the biggest challenges for supply chain executives is equipping themselves with technology that is not only powerful, but that also helps address CX needs and improve the overall customer delivery experience. Only 3% of retailers said they have a current program that fully supports improving the customer experience. The overwhelming majority of supply chain executives said that their current programs do nothing to improve the delivery experience.

Integrating CX into Business Operations

In addition to improving the customer experience, supply chain executives said that they wanted to integrate customer experience into their operations. In fact, 71% of respondents said this was crucial or very important to their business. At only a percentage point below that (70%), executives said that it was crucial or very important to improve two-way communication between the brand and the customers regarding delivery expectations, package tracking, and resolution of delivery options.

And just a percentage point below that (69%), supply chain executives said that the ability to take dynamic and proactive action on customer experience issues was crucial or very important. These results illustrate how important it is to get voice of customer (VoC) technology in the hands of supply chain executives.

Positively Impacting Both Operations and CX

Supply chain executives may have accepted the need to integrate CX initiatives into their business, but they say reducing business costs and improving margins is still crucial (51%) or very important (28%).

Fortunately for customers, retail supply chains have recognized the need to provide great customer experiences throughout the entire purchase/return process. Unfortunately, the majority of these brands still need proof that CX has a positive impact financially and operationally on businesses, or at least need a nudge in the right direction.

To learn more about the ROI of CX initiatives download our new eBook, The Five Steps to an ROI-Focused CX Program.

Speed, convenience, and the ability to execute transactions accurately. These are well-accepted, core customer expectations every financial institution must meet. Yet any time money is involved, there’s a heightened level of emotion inherent in those expectations, providing brands with both new risks and opportunities.

In our recent CX Trends study, we asked more than 20,000 consumers and 10,000 brand representatives across 12 countries to weigh in on a variety of topics. The point of this annual study is to understand how these two groups feel about different aspects of customer experience. While the findings have broad applicability to a range of industries, the findings around emotion and personalization are particularly relevant for financial services brands.
Head vs. Heart

According to the analyst firm Forrester, emotion is now the No. 1 driver of customer loyalty—outpacing ease and effectiveness.

I remember the pride I felt when I got my first paycheck, riding my bike to the closest bank and making that first, albeit small, deposit. Back then, my options were limited to how far I was willing to pedal, and my youthful expectations were simple: I wanted a safe place to put my money. But even at that young age, much more than the practical was at play; there was the whole collection of emotions tied to starting the journey toward adulthood and self-sufficiency

In fact, there’s so much emotion attached to money, financial institutions must understand that when a customer opens an account, takes out a loan or purchases a policy, they bring strong, personal emotions around security, family, future, and even legacy. Customers want more than a transaction; they want to know their finances—their future—are safe. Sounds reasonable.

The CX Trends Report gave us a deeper look into the relationships between customer emotions and expectations. Past reports have revealed that customers are moving toward more of a relationship vs. transaction orientation with brands. This year’s report found that customers are both satisfied and loyal when brands simply deliver on what customers believe they’ve been promised. One Danish consumer summed up the verbatims around that finding: “They had what I was looking for.” In other words, customers, by and large, have very reasonable expectations.

But don’t take that as an excuse to deliver a mediocre customer experience. Because customers view interactions with brands more like relationships, and their expectations are reasonable, when those expectations are not met, strong negative emotions arise.

“Disappointed, inconsequential, belittled, insignificant, worthless.” —United States consumer

The three emotions customers associated most closely with bad customer experiences were disappointment, frustration, and disrespect. When asked that same question, brands tended to underestimate the downside. They ranked the much more neutral emotion of “unsure” nine points higher than consumers, and “anger” 10 points lower.
More than a Number

The other area this year’s trends study delved into was that of personalization. Our data scientists asked customers to rank the importance of personalization in three key journeys: advertising/marketing messages, support/service, and purchase. Across every market, customers ranked personalized support interactions as most important.

“When I call my bank I appreciate being recognized, as the telephone advisor knows my record, and that I don’t have to repeat myself. I feel like a valued customer.” —French consumer

And while support ranked highest, consumers also expressed appreciation for personalized advertising/marketing messages, as well as sales interactions—as long as the brand delivers real value in exchange for the customer providing their personal information.

In light of the study’s findings, following are five practices that financial services should consider in order to positively differentiate themselves and create high-value customer relationships:

Deliver the Basics

Of course you must deliver on the basics. Are your locations convenient? Do you make it fast and easy to receive service? Are your fees reasonable? Are online instructions simple to understand and your website easy to navigate? Is your staff knowledgeable? If you don’t get the basics right, the next four steps won’t matter.

Be Relevant

College students are too busy partying studying to worry about retirement and Roth IRAs. But they probably need a place to deposit a paycheck with ease (ideally on their phone without missing a tweet or leaving their dorm room). There’s no one-size-fits-all approach in financial marketing, so your messaging—and products—must be personalized and relevant to the audience(s) you’re trying to reach.

Make Consolidation Attractive

There was a time when every financial institution wanted to be seen as the expert in a given field, such as mortgages or wealth management. Now businesses want to be everything to everyone. Consolidating accounts, loans, and policies with a single company sounds nice in theory, but if the process is a hassle, and there aren’t significant advantages involved, who really benefits?

Know Your Niche

The insurance industry has been great about making brand promises and differentiators clear, and banks have a huge opportunity to follow suit. One company positions itself as the expert in identifying gaps in coverage and potential liability. Another says it pays out claims the fastest. Yet another promises to cover you under the broadest range of circumstances. So in an industry with much of the same old same old, what really sets you apart from the competition?

Be Human

Ultimately, brand loyalty is about relationships. Support is ranked as the No. 1 stop along the customer journey where customers want personalization. Yes, customers want processes that don’t require human intervention to be automated, but they also want situations that necessitate intervention to be quick, easy, and painless. And when something goes wrong, make it right—quickly—because there are few circumstances more stressful than having your financial security hanging in the balance.

In an industry often seen as cold and sterile, adding some personal touch can turn a pimply-faced teenager into a loyal power investor down the road. And it begins with trust. If you earn trust, make processes simple, interactions personalized, and meet customers’ reasonable expectations, then you won’t have to ask your customers for more business—they’ll bring it to you.

In January, InMoment released the 2017 CX Trends Report. The report uncovered some valuable information about brand and consumer expectations—particularly when it comes to providing personalized support.

In the report we defined personalized support as, “When you reach out for help, the associate and/or the self-service channels already knows who you are (name, status, loyalty, VIP, etc.) and demonstrates strong knowledge of your recent interactions.”

In comparison to a personalized purchase process or advertising experience, an average of 45% of consumers worldwide ranked personalized support as their first priority. Consumers in North America and the United Kingdom ranked personalized support nearly 10 percentage points higher than the global average, while German consumers weighted the different types of personalization most equally. No matter the country, though, consumers put high value in unique, personalized experiences.

Traditionally, marketing has played the biggest role in personalizing the customer experience—for example, using personal information to recommend a new product or present consumers with a specific ad based on their interests and purchase history. Our research showed that although customers appreciate being recognized by name, they value personal interactions that demonstrate a brand is interested in more than upsell opportunities.

“Knowing my needs are far more important than knowing just my name or my status on a screen that they look at.” —American consumer

Fortunately, both consumers and brands agreed that advertising was the lowest priority for customer experience personalization. Many organizations still report marketing as the owner of the customer experience, though, so it’s particularly important for marketing leaders to work with customer support and operations leaders to provide that personalization in a much more coordinated way.

Here are three keys to personalizing support across your organization:

1. Gather quality customer data

Personalized experiences begin with quality, actionable customer data. In addition to gathering good data, businesses need to de-silo that information and share it across the organization. Employees at every level of an organization need all the information they can get to deliver a great customer experience.

2. Hire the right people

A large part of successful CX programs is making customers feel valued. One of the best ways to do that is by hiring employees who are invested in your brand and helping customers on a personal level. Personalized customer experiences create brand loyalty, bring in new customers, and drive revenue, but the most important thing your organization can do is build a team of individuals with the singular goal of making customers feel like they are an individual—not a number.

3. Empower employees

My colleague, Brennan Wilkie, recently had an experience where he purchased a bed for his daughter from an online retailer. He and his daughter were counting on the bed arriving at a specific time and date. While the bed arrived on time, the package was missing hardware crucial to assemblage. This oversight meant that the bed that Brennan’s daughter was looking forward to—and planning on—sleeping in would not be built that night.

Brennan called the online retailer’s support line and explained the situation to the customer service agent. Understanding the urgency, the agent apologized and offered to reimburse Brennan if he went to the nearest hardware store and purchased the necessary parts.

By empowering this agent to satisfy consumer needs by means outside of the normal process, this brand enabled Brennan to build the bed that night and make his daughter happy.

Personalized support is valued globally. Invest in creating more meaningful and personal experience for your consumers. In addition to valuing personalized support more than any other type of personalization, consumers have come to expect these types of experiences. Make sure your brand delivers it to them.

To learn more about customer experience in 2017, download the full CX Trends Report here.

The role of Chief Customer Officer or Chief Experience Officer is still relatively new, and enterprise businesses are struggling to understand the role itself, and the roadmap to success.

According to the Chief Customer Officer Council, only 35 of the Fortune 500 companies have a CCO at all, and the average tenure for CCOs is just just over 29 months. Those are some scary statistics for customer experience professionals—even more so considering the daunting role that a CCO must play in uniting all customer-centric initiatives across large, complex organizations and driving a mind-shift in the way every person on the team embraces the customer experience.

So where do you start?

A recent Forbes article, “Why Your Company Needs a Chief Customer Officer,” which was co-authored by McKinsey & Company, not only made the case that now is the time for businesses to add a CCO to the C-level executive team, but also provided a roadmap for success in the role. Considering that McKinsey’s research shows that “improving experiences along the customer journey—which is defined as a series of interactions with a brand to achieve something—can boost revenue by up to 15 percent and increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent, while at the same time lowering the cost of serving customers (through automation, for example) by as much as 20 percent,” we thought it would be valuable to examine their recommendations.

First, the article suggests that the role of the CCO is to ensure that everyone, from CEO to frontline employees, are aligned in their understanding of the customer experience. By bringing the customer to life through storytelling or immersive experiences, team members at all levels become more engaged and invested.

InMoment’s Erich Dietz offered some suggestions on how to start this process in a white paper called How to Transform Your CX Program. Dietz asks, “When was the last time you used your own product or service? Took a call in your contact center? Visited your own website? Used your mobile app? Sat down with a customer to understand how they use and view your product? Listened to a frontline employee about the customer experience and how it could be improved?” Listening to customer stories is very powerful for people at all levels of the organization, and innovative feedback options like live video can further help bring the stories to life. “People thrive on connections with real people. For any narrative to speak to us, we must meet and believe in the characters of the story,” says Dave Carruthers of VoxPopMe.

The next recommendation is to include customers in the creation or service process. Of course, in order to do this you need to ensure that you have a myriad of ways to listen to your customers and engage them in your business in effective ways.

Next, harnessing the power of your employees is critical. According to McKinsey, “Nowhere is obsessing about customer experience more critical than for workers on the front lines.” But how do you collect feedback from thousands of sources, zero in on the actionable data, and then empower the organization to act? Voice of Employee programs are a good place to start and, when done properly, can elicit high-impact results. Dr. Paul Warner, Ph.D., [title] notes, “It’s no surprise that employees who are invested in the experience of their individual customers not only create a better experience but engender loyal brand advocates.”

Finally, data, data, data. It is critical that the CCO has visibility into a wide range of data sets, both structured and unstructured, from multiple sources that provide insights into every step of the customer journey. According to the Forbes article, “Having a 360-degree view of the customer paves the way for measuring customer satisfaction across all touchpoints along the customer journey, which McKinsey has found is 30 percent more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than for the quality of each individual interaction.”

But having the data is just the beginning. The CCO must also be able to identify trends and anomalies as well as specific customer experience issues that must be resolved case by case. Technology solutions like InMoment are able to provide data and actionable insights in real-time for all of the journey touchpoints. Armed with that information, the CCO is empowered to drive change across the organization that impacts the business in positive ways.

Dietz says that data is also important because CCOs always need to keep the company’s strategic business objectives at the forefront of everything they do, rather than skipping those and just focusing on CX. “A mistake I have seen is when CCO’s disassociate themselves somewhat with the overarching corporate objectives and just tackle CX in a silo. It’s much more effective to stay focused on the corporate objectives, and then figure out how the CX team can have the greatest impact. Then you start working the issues across the organization all the way to the front lines—using data as your guide—to ensure that everyone in the organization is clear on how they can maximize their impact on the customer experience, and in turn how that impacts the overarching objectives. That’s a critical key to a CCO’s success.”

The Chief Customer Officer role is evolving and expanding, as is the practice of customer experience in general. With the right focus, strategy, and tools, CCOs will be better equipped to deliver results—and hopefully extend that 29-month average tenure!

Attracting a new customer costs five times as much as retaining an existing customer. This statistic gets thrown around quite a bit, but at this point, only 40% of companies have an equal focus on acquisition and retention. It is important to get new customers in the door, but it may be even more important to keep them around.

Relationships with customers are always a two-way street. If they are not mutually beneficial for both parties, they can quickly fade away. That’s why it’s vital for companies to not just maintain these relationships, but to also help them grow and evolve.

The three following strategies can be implemented to build relationships and help ensure that customers will stay with you.   

Capitalize on Complaints

Everyone likes to be complimented, but constructive criticism can be invaluable—not only for improving your business, but also for retaining disgruntled customers. In fact, if you resolve a complaint in the customer’s favor, that customer will do business with you again 70% of the time.

With InMoment’s Resolve, customer concerns are flagged immediately and directed to the employee best suited to solve the issue. This allows businesses to not only rescue individual customers, but also understand root cause.

Surprise Your Customers

Whether it’s a kind email, small gift, or a simple act that goes above and beyond, surprise your customers in the best way possible.

A study from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that even a minor gesture could have a large effect. In a restaurant setting, when servers offered extra mints after the meal, they saw a 21% increase in their tips. If you go about exceeding expectations—even in the smallest way—you will stand out as a company that truly cares about its customers.   

Take Time to Really Understand Them

Make it a priority to gain a deeper understanding of who your customers are. InMoment’s text analytics and various feedback channels can give you a chance to see customers as real people rather than just numbers. And if you know who your customers are, you’ll know what they want.

The fact that consumers are increasingly expecting good, if not great, interactions with their favorite brands is nearly universally accepted at this point. And while there’s strong agreement on that point, most companies diverge sharply from their customers on a critical and related point: whether the feedback customers give about their experiences is primarily negative or positive.

Before we address the most recent study of CX Trends, though, I’d like to provide context by looking at the big epiphany from our previous year’s study, where the overwhelming learning was consumers want a more reciprocal, give-and-take relationship with brands.

In fact, when we dug into the unstructured data to understand this issue more deeply, we found that the different ways consumers used the word “value” was very telling:

• 51.6 percent of the time they expressed a want to get value from the brand
• 48.4 percent of the time they used it to communicate the desire to be or feel valued for being a contributing customer

It was a similar story when using the word “help”:

• 46.7 percent of the time consumers expressed a want to get help
• 53.3 percent of the time wanting to provide help to the brand

When asked to note all contributing factors in their decision to leave feedback, four out of five selected “I enjoy offering my feedback and making a difference,” with more 40 percent of consumers listing this as their primary reason.

Brands that recognize this shift in what customers want—going from transaction-based to relationship-based interactions—are ahead of the game. It’s not to say they are now relating to their consumers in the same way they would a significant other or a family member, but they are creating an environment of mutual respect, of value and investment, and of ensuring expectations are met with their consumers.

Feedback Is a Positive Force

In this year’s study, we went a level deeper, exploring the overall sentiment of consumer responses. It’s vital to know that when trying to understand someone’s perception, it is critical to use the correct word, as the word choice can prime the response. In this instance, in addition to asking about satisfaction and experience, we specifically chose the word “feedback.”

Interestingly, when asked if they gave more positive or negative feedback, 63 percent of consumers indicated their feedback tends to be positive, while 37 percent indicated it was negative.

In general, consumers appear to view giving feedback in these terms: “I’m offering useful information that is helping the brand.”

And while this finding could be dismissed as one-sided, the study confirms customers’ assertion, with 498 out of the 500 brands that were included in the study receiving more positive feedback than negative.

Who Gets the Most Positive Press? Who’s Out of Touch?

Which sectors came out on top? Consumers report giving the highest percentage of positive feedback to the following sectors: Apparel, at 87 percent; Full Service Restaurants, at 81 percent; Pharmacy, at 81 percent; and Home & Supply, at 81 percent.

Brands, on the other hand, do not have such a rosy view. In fact, some industries were grossly out of step with both customer perception and reality.

Those brands with the largest perception gaps, reporting they received much more negative feedback than the consumers were actually reporting, were Pharmacy, with a gap of 31 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 81 percent of consumers reported positive); Automotive, with a gap of 23 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 73 percent of consumers reported positive); Discount, with a gap of 21 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 71 percent of consumer reported positive); and Grocery, with a gap of 11 percentage points (brand predicted 67 percent positive feedback received, while 78 percent of consumers reported positive).

The brands whose perceptions were relatively close to those of their customers include Home & Supply, with a difference of only 1 percentage point; Multi-Department Stores, with a difference of only 3 percentage points; Gas Stations with a difference of only 4 percentage points; and Online Retail, with a difference of only 5 percentage points. Being in alignment with one’s customer creates the ideal scenario, where you are better able to predict thinking, desires, and responses, which leads to being able to better deliver on brand-related promises.

Allies Not Adversaries

There is an obvious danger in brands being grossly disconnected from their customers, especially when it comes to listening. If leaders believe that customer feedback is primarily negative, that attitude will seep into the culture and across the ranks. This bunker mentality turns customers into adversaries.

Imagine the impact this has on how decisions are made across organizations. Imagine how this affects the way frontline staff present themselves. And when feedback is viewed first and foremost as criticism, that’s how it will be received (whether it was intended to be or not), making it impossible to glean the full range of wisdom customers share. Instead of building relationships and improving your business, this dissonance invariably leads to a system of react-and-repair.

Another finding from this year’s trend study gave us even more pause. For the 37 percent of consumers who indicated their feedback was negative, we asked, “Did the company respond?” 72 percent of consumers said the company did not respond in any way. (A response may be a myriad of things, including: phone call, email, text, letter, etc.) With a 72 percent non-response rate, it is no wonder another major finding in the study is that consumers crave more transparency.

In fact, they ranked transparency, defined as “keeping customers informed on how their feedback is used,” as the second most important item, with brands putting it in fourth place.

When a customer requests a change or shares an experience and, in return, receives silence, the perceived message from the brand is “I do not want your feedback,” “I do not value your feedback,” “I do not value your time,” which is very damaging to the relationship.

By asking questions/requesting feedback, brands are setting the expectation that these are the items they value; these are the items they aspire to have favorable experiences towards; these are the items they are willing to take action on and improve. So when no actions are taken, customers are doubly disappointed.

Brands that are top of class value feedback as a gift and ensure the same attitude permeates every level of their business. They listen deeply to understand the full range of insights their customers offer up and, as a result, find a myriad of ways to improve both their customers’ experiences and their bottom lines. And those that take the extra step of continuing the conversation to let customers know their feedback is appreciated and how it is being put into action create high-value relationships that benefit both sides of the customer-brand equation over the long term.

The booming topic of conversation lately has been the competitive advantage that non-traditional pharmacies (big-box retailers and grocery stores, for instance) have over traditional chain pharmacies. I have always wanted to peel back the layers of the pharmacy industry and determine what exactly differentiates the consumer experience with these two types of drugstore retailers. And now appears to be the perfect opportunity.

We recently launched our annual Pharmacy Benchmark study to our InMoment panelists, and more than 6,000 North Americans shared their thoughts about recent experiences with various drugstore retailers. Our study allowed consumers to openly voice their opinions, which helped us to surface some precise strengths that non-traditional pharmacies enjoy over traditional chain pharmacies.

By looking at key attributes that our identified pharmacy industry leaders are executing at high levels, I was able to draft a “recipe for success” for pharmacy industry leaders.

Recipe for Success for Pharmacy Industry Leaders

Mix your pharmacy with quality products that consumers demand

Non-traditional pharmacies can offer lower prices because they compete on a mass level, hence the name “big-box.” Despite low prices, consumers are interested in the products offered at these locations because of their known quality.

In order to compete on the level of the top industry leaders, it is important to highlight quality products that are in high demand for consumers. Limited-time promotions and deals that may even incorporate a consumer’s loyalty card generate the most success in these circumstances.

Season your pharmacy with well-trained, genuine staff

Aside from convenience, one of the top reasons consumers were drawn to a particular drugstore was for the experience provided. Experiences help to drive loyalty, and, in our study, it was the staff who specifically drove consumers to have an exceptional experience.We asked consumers to rank various staff members based on availability, friendliness, expertise, and attentiveness. For the top industry leaders, consumers gave high acknowledgement to the pharmacist and pharmacy staff. The major differences between top and bottom competitors were focused around wait times and expertise level.

Friendliness of staff members proved to be an expectation, a minimum requirement. It takes a lot more for consumers to confide in a pharmacy as their primary prescription provider. This is why I say it is crucial that pharmacy staff and pharmacists are educating the consumer as much as possible about their prescription(s) and quoting accurate wait times.

Tips to Improve Wait Time and Staff Expertise

• Increase staff count during peak hours
• Encourage consumers to use time-saving ordering methods (call-ahead, online/apps etc.)
• Train staff on ways to effectively communicate with customers

Add a dash of a personalized experience

The nature of consumer feedback has moved toward being more positive than ever before. Our recent CX Trends report highlights this concept, and it was shown to be important for pharmacy leaders looking to provide a personalized experience.Personalization means much more than knowing someone’s name, and that’s where the consumer’s voice is so important. Let them be heard! Offer them the ability to talk about the experience, provided there is a solid foundation to handle the influx of comments.

Whether it is face-to-face or through social media, attentiveness is a quality that consumers who gave the highest rankings to industry leaders monitored closely. Consumers’ voices are empowered in today’s market, and if optimizing these interactions is set as a high priority, consumers will appreciate the extra mile their pharmacy is willing to take for their business.

We can define “competitive leaders” in every industry—brands that have captured the market by differentiating themselves on several levels from other direct and indirect competitors.

In every client presentation or webinar I’ve ever done, I try to remind the audience that their weakness should be viewed as an opportunity. And yet, when I talk about weakness in terms of online presence, quite a few brands seem ready to give up on expanding online options and services. Our research shows that this approach could diminish brand exposure and dull competitive edge.

In our recent Online Retail Industry Benchmark study, where 15,000+ North American consumers shared thoughts on the their online experiences at various e-tail and brick-and-mortar stores, we noted three key areas that can drastically help your brand rankings in the online space:

1. Make it quick. Make it simple.

The Top 10 industry leaders got this right. User friendly websites with organized content can truly increase both your Likelihood to Recommend and Return ranks, which, in turn, increase your Overall Satisfaction measures.

Consumers are asking for a means to quickly research and purchase products with a few clicks of their mouse. Slower page response times cut into an e-tailer’s bottom line, because consumers want to be able to purchase products in a matter of minutes.

Also, they want to avoid the additional “promotional,” loyalty, or feedback pages. Those should come later, in an email they can circle back to at a more appropriate time.

2. Don’t be afraid to offer more products and services.

Online consumers are more careful than your average in-store consumers. This is mainly because they understand that products can be researched with a simple click of a button and feedback can be found on every product/service today.

Yet, one key notion e-consumers agree on: They are willing to pay more for products and services that truly match their needs. Our top 5 e-tail and brick-and-mortar brands do just that, offering not just unique products and exclusive brands, but also services that can help consumers as well.

This notion of more being better is also important on a shipping scale; offer your consumers more shipping options and you’re likely to see them return to your site in the future.

3. By all means, give them social media!

Unlike many of the offline industries, social media plays a valuable role online. Our top 5 e-tail brands all have a strong social media presence. In return, they noted a higher “likely to return” value overall.

Consumers want to share their experience online and are likely to do so if you give them more unique means of building a stronger e-relationship with their brands. Encouraging your loyal consumers to interact with your brand should be approached in a manner that is relative to your product or service. In some cases, this could mean offering various e-points/e-rewards to help promote social media interaction.

Remember, social media comes with both positive and negative commentary. Yet negative brand mentions should be taken as an opportunity, not weakness, and consumer transparency must be a key means of communicating change with your consumers.

You can learn more about retail’s critical customer experience drivers here.

Understanding your customers can be a difficult task. No one would blame you for feeling like they’re not always on your side. The truth, though, is that customers are actually quite positive and helpful by nature.

Customers are people who have chosen to “consume” your product or your service. They have already invested in your offering and gained some value from you, for which they are often thankful. They are not coming at you as a neutral third party; they are coming from the perspective of knowledge and connection.

Turn That Frown Upside Down

In our recent CX Trends report, we asked organizations to share their perception of how much negative feedback they receive from customers versus positive feedback. Our results showed that there is a disconnect between brand and consumer perception.

Of the brands surveyed, we found that their perception of customers leaned toward negativity. In reality, the numbers reported by consumers skewed toward the positive.

The CX Glass Is Full

Now that you know your customers are your friends, it’s time to view the CX glass as half full instead of half empty.

Positive customer comments can help your organization satisfy and retain customers. Identifying the voice of the customer can help you move beyond a solely reactive approach to a more effective proactive one. This strategy will align your brand’s perception of customer sentiment with reality.

Wade through the Digital Noise

Your customers have a voice, and they want you to hear it. Unfortunately, in the digital age we live in, customer stories can get lost in the deluge of social media unless organizations are properly equipped and prepared to listen.

Based on an article originally published on MyCustomer.com, we’ve put together five great ways your organization can develop a successful social listening program and start hearing the voice of your customers.

The 5 Keys of Successful Social Listening Programs

1. Come Up with a Strategy

A successful social listening program requires strategy and process. For example, don’t immediately give the job to young team members because of their perceived expertise with social media. Cater to all of your customers and ensure your organization harnesses customer interactions as an opportunity to build strong relationships. Before your organization can even begin to think about having an effective social listening program, it needs to have a plan in place. Success doesn’t happen on accident.

2. Define Your Strategy

When defining your organization’s social listening program, be sure to target all of your customers—not just the younger demographic. Your customers use social media in different ways, and your organization needs to make sure it’s tuned in to the specific social channels where customers are talking about your brand.

For most organizations, social listening programs require the ability to monitor and analyze unstructured customer feedback. Equipping your program with advanced text analytics tools should be an essential part of your brand’s social listening strategy.

3. Listen to Your Customers

It may surprise you to learn that the most valuable insights come from your customers. If that didn’t blow your mind, this will: Listening to your customers is a key component to a great social listening strategy. For organizations with large followings, create individual engagement strategies. Creating social customer advisory committees can also be an effective way of building relationships and uncovering valuable customer insights.

4. Identify Your CX Goals

Effective social listening programs provide information that can improve just about every area of the business, from new product ideas and escalating trends to upcoming competitors and shifts in customer attitudes. Identify what your organization wants to accomplish with its social listening program and shape your program around those goals.

5. Measure Your CX Efforts

Organizations often don’t identify what they want to accomplish with their social listening programs, which means they can’t measure or determine whether their efforts are successful. Determine the purpose of your brand’s social listening program and measure your customer experience (CX) accordingly.

Execution. Execution. Execution.

We’ve provided you with five keys to creating a successful social listening program, but the greatest strategy in the world won’t matter if the plan isn’t executed properly. Share your social listening strategy with your entire organization and make sure that each employee—from C-level to front line—is on board with the plan.

We live in a world that is all talk. With social media platforms everywhere and growing, more and more people are chatting 24/7. When it comes to business, customers don’t want to be talked at; rather, they want to connect with their favorite brands knowing their voices are heard.

Many businesses are missing the opportunity for building and fostering strong relationships with their customers by not showing up to the conversation. Successful companies, on the other hand, find ways to show up—not only in stores, but online and through social media interactions. By engaging with your customers, acknowledging their concerns and complaints, and striving to put them first, you can foster long-term relationships with them.

Your customers have their own stories, and, if you are willing to listen, they will tell you what it is. While you build and cultivate the customer experience, remember that experiences aren’t born but are made. Each moment a customer engages with your products, services, and people is a moment that could sway them to be a lifelong customer or turn them away.

How would you rate your customer experience? As you evaluate your customer experience, here are 5 things to help you improve it.

Be proactive

Successful companies are always looking for ways the can provide their customers—current, past, and future—with the best service possible. By understanding your customers, being proactive, and anticipating their needs (and wants) businesses have the opportunity of gaining a loyal customer for life.

You’ve probably heard people say, “Get out of your comfort zone.” Businesses can have trouble doing this, especially if everything seems to be going well. However, are you continually looking for new ways to improve the customer experience, or are you comfortable in a company structure that isn’t willing to try something new? There are a lot of companies out there taking smart risks and reaping the rewards.

Show empathy

More companies are realizing that empathy is key to providing their customers with better service. Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s thoughts, feelings, personality, and circumstances. By simply taking time to be more empathic to your customers, you can better understand their needs and provide them with better service.InMoment believes that no one person owns the customer. Instead, everyone—customer and company alike—owns the experience, and by equally sharing in the experience, everyone carries equal weight. To better serve their customers, brands must understand why their customers have chosen to interact with their company. To do that is to show empathy.

If you want to learn more about showing empathy to connect and build better relationships with your customers, take a moment to check out and download our empathy map exercise.

Empower employees

Many companies overlook the power of their employees and miss out on untapped potential. In many cases your employees are the face of the company. Think about it. They are interacting with customers on a day-to-day basis, answering their questions, dealing with their complaints, and building (or not building) strong relationships with customers.Take time to train and ensure your employees develop the skills they need to be successful. Brands with a strong company culture that encourages employees to engage and share appropriate company Tweets and posts can have a positive influence on strengthening the company’s brand.

Also, encourage your employees to offer feedback and suggestions, and listen to their concerns. Businesses that listen to their employees, along with their customers, have more insights on where they can improve and strengthen the brand image.

Collect customer feedback

How do your company, products, and services rate with customers? If you aren’t taking the time to gather feedback from customers, you are missing out on actionable insights for improving the customer experience and implementing new strategies for meeting and exceeding their expectations.By collecting customer metrics and stories, you get a better idea of where you stand with your customers. In addition, the data gathered can help you develop more targeted interactions with your customer base and allow you have a more personalized experience with them.

Creating more personalized interactions and connecting with your customers is important. So, how are you winning the moment with your customers?

Exceed expectations

Stand out from the crowd by providing your customers with the best service, content, and overall experience possible. You are not only competing with your competitors, but with yourself. Where can you improve and how can you exceed your customers expectations? Look at what your competitors are doing and what they are talking about. Can you take another angle that they may not have mentioned and talk about it? There are always ideas out there that can be expanded on.With social media and other digital marketing platforms, create the best campaigns or blog posts that will not only inform but engage your online audience. Be authentic and add value to their lives in the content you create and share. In a world where there is a lot of chatter and information being thrown at people, you need to capture their attention with interesting and well-thought-out campaigns.

The more you understand your customers and their needs, the better products, content, and overall service you can provide them. InMoment wants to help you “own the moment.” That’s why we have developed products and services to not only improve the customer experience, but to truly empower each person in your organization.