Best Practices

Each day, restaurants all over America serve tens of millions of guests. When they deliver great experiences, guests reward them with more frequent visits, larger orders, and positive word-of-mouth that drives revenue and growth.

However, while there are so many of these opportunities for restaurants, Technomic recently noted  traffic ranges from flat to down year-over-year, restaurant growth is outpacing population growth, and on top of that, fewer consumers are spending money away from home—down 7% from 2000.

While these statistics may seem grim, focusing on guest experience can help to revitalize the numbers. It is more important than ever for brands to deliver a great experience to ensure that they keep (and hopefully grow) their share of the market and keep guests coming back visit after visit—even though they have countless dining options.

Recently, I attended the 2019 Restaurant Leadership Conference, where I had the opportunity to listen to industry leaders talk about what helps their brands to go beyond run-of-the-mill interactions to create extraordinary guest experience success. As the conference went on, I noticed four trending topics in their presentations:

Trend #1: The Influence of Frontline Employees

The first trend that stood out was how important frontline employees continue to be in the guest experience.

Despite all the advancements in technology—including developments in artificial intelligence—people are still central to an elevated guest experience and delivering on a restaurant’s brand promise.

Here’s the truth that all brands need to recognize and act on: successful brands invest in their employees.

A leader of a large Mississippi-based franchise group noted: “we have two businesses: people and pizza.”

This leader said his brand’s employees are empowered with standard operating procedures that are designed specifically to deliver an excellent guest experience.

Tech Tip: InMoment’s front-line coaching application allows brands to integrate their standard operating procedures and best practices into the platform, which applies predictive analytic models to create “focus areas” based on each restaurant location. The brand’s unique SOPs automatically populate the Action Plan section, encouraging restaurant managers to train and emphasize the brand’s best practices with the employees who are on the front lines of the guest experience.

Trend #2: The Importance of Engaged Employees

Another trending topic was the importance of having engaged front line employees.   

The vice president of operations for a large franchisee with 330 restaurants across 10 states said: “We’re in a different climate of employee. They often ask, ‘What else are you going to do for me?’”

Another franchise leader chimed in: “The happier our employees are, the better they’re going to do at their job.”

This franchise said they don’t just provide restaurant-related training to keep employees happy, they also provide training on how to live a better life.

Tech Tip: In addition to capturing guest feedback, InMoment offers brands the chance to gather feedback from their employees about their own experience. The results are delivered through dashboards and reports alongside guest experience insights, providing a side-by-side view of the impact employees experience is having on the guest experience.

Trend #3: The Growth of Third Party Delivery

The third trend I noticed was the continued growth of third party delivery.

One main stage speaker joked they were required to mention delivery services at least once in every presentation.

Third party delivery is an $8 billion a year industry—which would make it among the top restaurant chains in the world.

With such growth, it’s imperative restaurateurs capture feedback from their guests in these delivery situations so they can continue to enhance the off-premise experience for their brand.

Another main stage speaker singled out Texas Roadhouse—a guest experience leader— has taken another approach, opting out of the third party delivery movement to ensure they are able to deliver on their brand promise of great food.

CEO Kent Taylor, famously stated: “We encourage all our competitors to do as much delivery as they can, so they can deliver lukewarm food to the people who order it. We’ll stick to our guns on this.”

Tech Tip: InMoment offers restaurants the ability to listen to their guests across all touchpoints, including online, in-store, and even delivery.  

Trend #4: Personalizing for Success

The last theme that stood out to me was that of personalizing the guest experience.

One speaker defined personalization as simply: “Taking care of the guest.”

With so many ways to engage guests these days—whether through email, text, loyalty programs, mobile apps and so on—brands need to be able to give their guests only what they want to see, because as another speaker said, “the consumer has gotten really good at tuning things out.”

That being said, guests still want to engage with restaurants and know they are being listened to by the brands they love. It’s all about tailoring the right message through the right channel to the right person.

Tech Tip: InMoment allows restaurants to listen to their guests through a range of multimedia feedback channels, including surveys, social reviews, contact us forms, mobile app integrations, image and video feedback, and website intercepts.

I had a great time and learned so much about improving the guest experience during my three days at the 2019 Restaurant Leadership Conference. I can’t wait for next year!

Want to learn more about what’s next for Food Service brands and their guest experience? Check out this new eBook, “Three Steps for Future-Proofing the Guest Experience in Food Service: From Operational, Experiential, to a Truly Loyal Guest Relationship!”

If you’re in the food service industry, then you’re no stranger to the guest experience. In fact, the customer experience (CX) and food service industries have evolved together overtime.

What do I mean by this? Well, the food service industry was one of the first to embrace the idea of customer experience. Some experts even believe that restaurants’ need to gather guest feedback to improve their operations pushed the customer experience (CX) industry to where it is today.

Now, CX solutions are more advanced than ever; the leading vendors can offer their clients actionable intelligence that actually impacts their bottom line. As customer experience has evolved, so has the food service industry. Brands today are facing even more complex challenges like:

• How do I attract the new wave of Millennials and Gen Z’ers to choose my restaurant over others?
• What new items should I incorporate into my menu?
• How do I protect my brand when using a third-party delivery service like UberEats or DoorDash?
• How do I improve efficiency to manage rising labor costs?

To rise to the challenge, food service brands need to evolve their approach to guest experience from operational, to experiential, to relational. Here’s the difference between these three approaches:

The Operational Approach

The operational approach to guest experience is pretty straightforward. It means that your guest experience program is largely focused on answering questions about staffing, stock, and cleanliness. This is how food service brands have historically utilized guest experience.

The Experiential Approach

The experiential approach takes it a step further by focusing on consistent experiences for guests and then understanding why guests have the experience they do. This approach answers questions about how to turn negative experiences into positive ones and incorporating employee feedback to improve the guest experience.

The Relational Approach

The relational approach is the holy grail for guest experience: it focuses all program efforts on creating loyal guest relationships. Creating this level of loyalty requires creating high quality, consistent experiences not just in-location, but at every touchpoint guests have with your brand (online, customer experience, in app, etc.)

By evolving your approach to guest experience, you can utilize your program to create what every brand dreams of: loyal guest relationships. And because loyal customers will spend more, more frequently, your guest experience program can positively impact your bottom line more than ever before!

To read more about the specific CX solutions you can master to move from operational, to experiential, to loyal guest relationships, read the full “Three Steps to Future Proofing the Guest Experience in Food Service” eBook here!

We all know it takes a village to drive improvements in customer experience (CX) within an organization. Creating that sense of purpose and collective responsibility requires great communication. Well, the latest research shows that using storytelling in presentations allows you to be a knowledgeable and convincing leader who will influence key audiences in the CX process.

A Stanford Research study shows that statistics alone have a retention rate between 5 and 10%; when coupled with anecdotes, the retention rate rises to 65-70%. Storytelling is relatable and makes data easy to understand. Put simply, you will increase memorability for your audience by creating stories around your data.

If that wasn’t enough evidence for you, Forrester says that “data storytelling not only persuades the analytical part of the brain; it also uses emotion, a key driver of decision making.” Humans are emotionally driven, so impact and action come from stories, not just the facts.

For CX leaders, I believe that applying the following three key elements will make creating an effective story for your audience simple.

Understand Your Audience

As a CX professional, you work hand in hand with various key contributors to the customer experience. This means that you could be presenting to anyone from the C Suite to a regional manager. Identifying the specific audience’s needs, and addressing what is important to them is critical when crafting a story for your presentations.

When customizing a story, you should highlight the key benefits that are most relevant for your audience. What do they care about? For example, you can show the C Suite how your work boosts customer satisfaction and key metrics, increases demand for their product, expands their market, and benefits the bottomline. By outlining the central benefits, you are building increased value for your audience.

But it is not all about the head and facts, make sure you think about how you want your audience to feel. You want to use stories that specifically pertain to them and motivate them —as well as appeal to the heart. As you build trust, you need to be aware of what you want to happen next. Are you looking for more funding? Do you want increased support? Are you trying to expand your CX program?

Don’t forget to tune your story to address the outcome you want. Understanding your audience is crucial in storytelling if you want to have a relevant presentation.

Remember Your Central Question

As you use a story to present to your target audience, make sure you remember to anchor your presentation around a central question; what are you asking for?

When you think of a story it follows a familiar pattern. There is always a rise to a climax and then a fall to a resolution. It is important that you remember to structure your story with the identified theme or idea that you are addressing in mind. You want to have a rise in story that introduces the main question you are addressing for the audience. Then as you finish the story you can propose a resolution to take action on.

People like familiarity. Just as your audience knows a story rises and falls, you should pose a question and then resolve it. You will enhance your CX presentation by following this pattern and remembering your central question.

Create a Checklist for Your Presentation

Finally, it’s not just about what you present, it’s how you present it. There are a few checklist items you need to fulfill when presenting to make sure your delivery is pristine.

Firstly, make sure you are providing an organized map that is well paced and logical. Your audience needs to be able to follow your story effortlessly while recognizing the key points. This also helps you to spend more time on the points that really matter to your narrative instead of spending time on tangents that won’t get you where you want to go.

Secondly, a story is nothing without evidence. Stakeholders are looking for a reason to support you. Without anything backing up your claims, it’s hard for decision makers to commit. Providing solutions to their problems and proof that those solutions are viable creates trust that is crucial.

Lastly, recognize that questions and concerns will arise during your presentation. We will all agree that one of the best moments in a presentation is when you’re asked a question and the next slide addresses that specific ask. In that moment, you’re able to show that you get the audience, and know how they will be thinking. To accomplish this, you want to have additional, relevant stories on hand that can provide solutions to potential asks in a memorable and actionable way.

Applying these three key elements of storytelling can help you rock your presentation. At the same time, being given the time to communicate is a gift that should never be taken lightly, so remember to identify the audience, their primary concerns, and tell a story that addresses concerns with a balance of emotion and facts. Use a story and your audience won’t be able to  forget your call to action!

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

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

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

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

Stop interrogating. Start conversations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consistency makes you reliable.

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

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

Consistency makes you recognizable.

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

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

Consistency makes you a part of their lifestyle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotional Context

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

Convenient for Customers

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

Stay Current

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

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

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

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

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

One of the most basic ingredients for successfully improving the customer experience is actually providing opportunities for interaction. It’s simple: You can have the most sophisticated analytics in the world, but if you have nothing to analyze, it will be impossible to unearth insights that will improve your customer experience.

Omnichannel touchpoints not only provide more customer data, but they encourage relationships and, therefore, brand loyalty. This is true for all industries, but research shows having multiple options for interaction can make all the difference for insurance providers in particular.

A study of 2,000 health insurance customers found that “interaction options” is one of the three most important factors to customers when it came to choosing a health insurance provider. This finding is impressive on its own, but what’s even more surprising  is that “interaction options” out-ranked “brand” in terms of differentiators.

Additionally, the study found that customers are even willing to pay more for additional interaction options. I found this to be both validating and shocking for a few reasons. First, it confirms a belief that we have at InMoment: you need to make it easy for your customers to interact with you whenever, wherever, and however they want.

Second, there has been a lot of talk recently that digital is taking over. While that may be true to a certain extent, this study found that in actuality, customers still want the choice between digital and traditional interaction options, because they prefer different touchpoints for different conversations. For example, customers said they generally prefer digital touchpoints for simple interactions like changing contact information, but they prefer a telephone call to address larger and more complex concerns.

Of course, providing all these touchpoints can get down-right expensive and it can be challenging to provide the same level of service across a variety of touchpoints.

This is a legitimate business concern, but in light of these recent findings, it is clear that having multiple methods of interaction is a differentiator for health insurance customers. Touchpoints can be costly, but failing to provide customers with the service they want is even more risky.

Healthcare is an incredibly personal industry and choosing a health insurance provider can be especially stressful for customers. Therefore, it’s even more important to make customers feel heard and cared for, while also allowing them to reach out in the way they feel most comfortable.

To learn more about what customers want from their customer experience, check out the 2018 CX Trends Report!

As a customer success manager at InMoment, I’m always looking for new ways to help my clients optimize their customer experience. Luckily, I hit the insights jackpot when I was able to attend the Marketing Executives Group (MEG) conference earlier this month!

As a part of this conference, my colleagues and other restaurant marketing professionals were able to listen in on some of the latest and greatest industry research, thought leadership, and best practices for the food services industry. 

Here are my top three takeaways from the 2018 MEG conference that will help improve restaurant customer experience:

Food is more culturally relevant than ever.

One of the first sessions I attended was “Culture in the Digital Age” with author and food culture expert Eve Turow Paul of ETG Insights. This presentation discussed the millennial generation’s relationship with food and how it is influenced by social media. Millennials are especially invested in food, and by that I mean that they are spending more money on food than ever before. Yes, this is partially because they eat out, but they also care about the quality of food.

In the new age of social media, food has become identity and a part of self-branding. When millennials post pictures of their food online, they are trying to present a version of themselves that shows they are educated, well-traveled, and environmentally conscious. In short, the food they want to be seen consuming is food that helps them present an idealized version of themselves.

Off-premise dining is the new frontier.

Another session I attended, “New Dynamics of Off-Premise Dining” with Melissa Wilson and Donna Hood Crecca of Technomic Inc., discussed the incredible growth we’re seeing in off-premise dining. Here are just a few stats: Of the 519 billion dollars that restaurants make, off-premise restaurants account for 228 billion (44%) of those dollars. This huge percentage is understandable, especially considering that people are ordering delivery 28% more than they were just a year ago.

Food kits contribute to the off-premise trend, but the real game changer has been third-party delivery. This option is great for restaurants, but it also means that a few adjustments need to be made. Users blame the restaurant—not the third party—for negative experiences, meaning that restaurants need to take special care with takeaway packaging, creating dedicated systems for third-party pickup, and maintaining customer connection.

Employees MUST be empowered to solve problems.

I think we’ve all had an experience with a company where we have hit some sort of road block and the frontline employee who has been working with us says, “this is company policy; let me talk to my manager.” Turns out this is the worst possible thing to say according to Scott Stratten, President of Un-Marketing. His session “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing and Start Engaging,” addressed how you can build relationships with your target audience so they become loyal customers.

My favorite takeaway from this session is that your employees need to be able to make things right immediately; in other words they need to be empowered. Stratten suggested that today’s brands should attempt to improve the bottom line by improving the front line because branding isn’t about the logo, it’s about the guest’s last experience with you. If you want guest experiences to be positive so they create a positive perception of your brand, your employees need to be able to fix problems immediately wherever they are. This ensures that a customer leaves validated, knowing that their issue was important to your brand.

Hopefully these takeaways are as inspiring to you as they are to me. With restaurant customer experience advancing at what seems to be the speed of light, it is more important than ever to stay up-to-date with the latest best practices so you can differentiate your brand.

For more tips, check out this InMoment case study that highlights how our client, Pizza Hut, leverages employee stories to improve their guest experience!

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. From Google’s Arts & Culture App—which uses facial recognition technology to match selfies to thousands of artworks—to Pizza Hut’s plans for driverless pizza delivery.

The application of Artificial Intelligence to improve the customer experience is on the rise. In fact, this year the Consumer Electronic Show featured its first ever Artificial Intelligence Marketplace to showcase the latest innovations designed to perform human tasks. Products ranged from big data analytics to speech recognition to advanced decision-making to predictive technology. Many of these solutions are already being leveraged by great companies to add a magic touch to their services.

Are you taking advantage? If not, here are three ways you can apply Artificial Intelligence to improve your customer experience.

1. Automate Simple Customer Interactions

There’s nothing less efficient than bogging down highly-skilled, highly-paid employees with basic tasks. Emerging technology in artificial intelligence can automate simple interactions, allowing your people to focus on more complex and nuanced customer interactions. Gartner predicts that 95 percent of customer interactions will be driven by Artificial Intelligence by 2025, leveraging chatbots and mobile messaging to complete simple tasks (e.g., the reminder call from your doctor’s office or paying your tab using Ziosk, a pay-at-the-table tablet for restaurants).

Recently, Kroger announced its new Kroger Edge technology, which, among other things, will enable the grocer to instantly change prices and activate promotions on digital displays, freeing up employees who would otherwise change prices by hand. This sort of automation can deliver a more a consistent experience and a huge financial impact according to Juniper Research, who estimates cost savings of more than $8 billion annually by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017.

2. Augment Your Service Employees

Another powerful application of AI is within your own organization. By leveraging solutions that enable you to proactively listen to the voice of the customer and engage on an emotional level, customer experiences will shift from mundane to exceptional.

Recently, TD Bank acquired artificial intelligence startup, Layer 6. While it’s still uncertain exactly how the technology will be applied, Michael Rhodes, group head of innovation, technology, and shared services for TD Bank said the company would be able to do things such as detect spending patterns that indicate a customer may be looking to purchase a home, and then offer that customer a mortgage. This type of intelligence enables you to be proactive, engaging, and in-tune with your customers’ needs.

3. Enrich the Data You Already Have

Finally, you can take all the data you have, such as customer feedback and net promoter score, and put it to new use. As Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, notes, “There are a lot of places where AI simply lets companies use their data better, and AI usage is largely invisible to the customer. Retail sites, for instance, can observe the products people are viewing, and use that data to begin suggesting other, more relevant products to them than was previously possible.” Recently, in addition to making targeted content suggestions, Netflix began tailoring the “cover art” associated with a recommended movie or TV show, based on the user’s viewing history.

For example: the image displayed for a romantic comedy (I’m partial to The Truth About Cats and Dogs), will either play to the “romance” or the “comedy” of the film. Or, it may feature the image of an actor who starred in other movies you’ve watched. For what it’s worth, Stranger Things has nine different cover art options (check to see which one appears on your stream!).

There’s more need—and competition—than ever to deliver meaningful and powerful customer experiences. Fortunately, technology like artificial intelligence is helping bridge the gap, creating more value for both companies and customers, and allowing brands the opportunity to truly differentiate on customer experience.

It’s common knowledge in the CX community that your efforts can’t just sit in a silo; the entire organization needs to be invested in the customer and play a part in the greater scheme of things.

In a previous article, I discussed the three C’s brands should consider when guiding their entire organization to a great customer experience: culture/capacity (an organization’s overall framework, culture, and essence), competence (the knowledge, skills, attributes, mindsets and behaviors an organization offers), and capability (what makes a brand unique, or what the brand is known for when it’s at its best).

These three areas are essential for awareness (the bedrock of organization wide transformation), but what do CX efforts look like when attempting to involve different areas of your organization? The fact is that getting c-suite buy-in for your CX program is going to look completely different from engaging your front of line employees. Where the c-suite and leadership may assess the three C’s in the boardroom, there needs to be another approach for the breakroom.

Here are four tips to inspire and engage employees in your CX program starting in the breakroom:

1. Hire and Retain Customer Centric Talent

Placing customer experience at front-of-mind starts at the very beginning of the employee journey. Make sure that your hiring process assesses candidates based on their ability to provide the kind of positive experiences your company strives for. If you make it obvious from the start that your company culture emphasizes the value of your customers, your employees will know that they have to keep up with the needs of the customer in order to meet their job requirements.

There is a misconception around the value of industry experience vs. customer centric attributes when evaluating candidates. Those brands that are winning in customer experience have recruited beyond the talent pool in their particular industries and have sought after individuals who have the right mix of personality characteristics and skills; regardless of the their industry of origin.

2. Implement Consistent Rituals

Make sure to put specific steps and processes in place for employees to follow in specific customer interactions. This keeps your employees from feeling caught off guard and can also increase their confidence in customer-facing situations. Additionally, this creates a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints, which sets a standard of customer service upon which your customers can depend (and share with their friends).

3. Share Stories

When customers share an exceptional experience they had with one of your employees, pass it on! Institute a method for these exemplary staff members to be showcased, such as dedicating time in every team meeting to mention that person or posting those stories in the breakroom itself. This not only rewards the employee for their hard work, but it also inspires other employees to strive for the same excellence. Even more so, it takes your customer experience policies out of the employee handbook and into an everyday context that is more relatable for your employees.

4. Provide the Right Incentives

With the right incentives in place, you can go beyond just a pat on the back and provide tangible benefits for employees that are consistent CX allstars. A mistake that many organizations make is linking CX metrics to incentives (e.g. bonus for reaching an NPS target) rather than behaviors. Human nature suggests that individuals respond better to rewards based on things they can control (in this case, the way they act with customers) vs. a number which may be influenced by a number of exogenous factors.

A great example comes from one of our clients.  They approached incentives by creating a central system in which employees can receive points for embodying their company’s CX emphasis. These points can then be cashed for a plethora of prizes. Additionally, employees can recognize each other, adding to company comradery.

When you make inspiring your front-line employees a priority, you are powering your greatest tool in the the quest for CX excellence. Implementing these four tips into your company culture can contribute to morale, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, your bottom line.

To learn more about the importance of employee engagement, check out the InMoment eBook, “Understanding the Power of Employee Engagement: The Employee-Customer Equation.”

I think we can all agree that the first step in measuring the customer experience is compiling your customer data, but not all data is equal (especially when it comes to customer feedback data). Why? Because the way you collect your customer feedback matters!

The means of collection often dictate the quality, depth, and helpfulness of the feedback. From there, it affects the quality of the insights you get when you analyze that same data.

If it all comes back to the “how,” then it’s clear that you need to be selective about your listening methods so you can get to the “why” behind your customer feedback.

One place where you need to be especially selective about your “how” is with the intercepts on your website. The ultimate goal of intercepts is to get valuable feedback about your website and user experience so you can innovate and improve. However, we are finding that the common intercept practice of a pop-up window appearing immediately upon entering a website is problematic; it could be disruptive and defeat the purpose of an intercept.

Here’s why this common practice could be harming your user experience:

It’s Intrusive

When a customer is casually perusing a site, a random pop up can feel intrusive to the overall experience; they can feel hassled or like their interaction with your site has been interrupted. Ultimately, what may have been meant as a well-intentioned prompt can feel invasive and could cause a customer to abandon your page to go elsewhere.

It’s Ill-timed

If a survey window pops up as soon as a customer arrives at your homepage, your customer has not been able to get a look at the full page, much less get an impression of how it functions or if they have any suggestions. Therefore, they most likely won’t have much feedback to give you —if they choose to participate in the survey at all.

It’s Irrelevant

Traditional practices with intercepts are one-size-fits-all; very rarely are they customized to ask the right questions at the right time. This lack of customization means the questions asked are not directly relevant to a customer’s individual experience, leaving the brand with shallow feedback that won’t make a real difference.

Long story short, if you’re collecting feedback using this intercept method, you could be stunting your CX efforts before they even start.

When your prompts feel intrusive, ill-timed, and irrelevant to a customer’s journey, customers could ignore the survey entirely or give low-quality feedback because they feel rushed or haven’t had enough time to really experience your brand. However, when intercepts are used correctly in a way that enhances user experience instead of interrupting it, they can prove to be a powerful tool.

To learn how you can create timely, customized, and inviting intercepts, download InMoments newest eBook, “Digital Intercept: How to Collect Customer Feedback Without Ruining the Experience” today!