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Customer Experience

Customer Experience Trends Banks
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3 Employee and Customer Experience Trends for Banks, Wealth Advisors, and Credit Unions in 2022

By: The InMoment Team

What is the future for employee and customer experience trends in banks, wealth advisory firms, and credit unions? InMoment recently dove into the financial services industry’s 2022 outlook—and there’s a lot to unpack. 

Through our dedicated Strategic Insights Team, we collected data from bank, wealth advisor, and credit union consumers and employees across North America. This year’s trends report has unearthed a few key discoveries that these businesses must pay attention to if they want to differentiate themselves in this competitive market.

When you have both customer and employee perspectives, it’s easier to rethink the workplace and how one experience affects the other. Let’s think through this together to improve finserv experiences for the long haul:

Employee and Customer Experience Trend #1: Digital Experiences and Personal Engagement is Vital to Improving Experiences

One of the first questions we asked customers and employees was, “what experiences are you looking forward to in the following industries [in 2022]?” 

For Customers: Most banking customers responded with “tap-&-go or digital wallet” (Apple or Samsung). This hammers in a point this industry is all too aware of: digital transformation is a crucial element that all banks need to pay attention to as customer expectations evolve. And that extends to other types of financial services businesses as well, be it investment management or credit unions.

For Employees: On the other hand, employees have a unique perspective to add to this conversation. One stated that they would like:

“More time [spent] with customers around personal investments.” 

— Financial Services Wealth Advisor

Of course, different firms operate with different goals in mind, but what’s important to take away here is how the customer experience is impacting the employee experience and vice versa. With this insight in mind, businesses across the financial services industry should include the employee perspective in their customer experience efforts. What do your bank tellers know about friction points in the in-branch experience? What improvements do your advisors think can be made in client sessions? The answers could lead to major improvements in the customer experience and to bottom line influencing factors like customer retention.

Employee and Customer Experience Trend #2: Focus on Both Digital and In-Person Interactions to Serve All Customers

We’ve all seen the articles claiming that the “in-branch experience is dead,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. According to our data, there are those customers that prefer 100% self-service capabilities, but there are also those customers that rely on in-person interactions—and there are employees that find fulfillment in serving those customers.

When asked what their primary expectations for their experiences were, the majority of consumers voiced their desire for self-serve options, specifically with investments profiles, banking services, or credit union interactions. At the same time, employees also expressed at the same time that they want training to support customers better, whether that is in a contact center, over live chat, or in-branch. 

To satisfy both employee and customer expectations for experiences, finserv businesses need to make sure they are focused on both digital and in-person interactions, and make sure they are consistent while they’re at it.

Employee and Customer Experience Trend #3: How to Optimize Talent Acquisition for Gen Z

Employee values tend to shift from generation to generation and it’s the responsibility for businesses to acknowledge those changes if they want to last. That’s why employers everywhere have been thinking more about Gen Z and how they’ll carve out a future for the workplace, and finserv businesses are no exception. 

To help banks, investment advisors, and other finserv employers understand Gen Z, we leveraged our latest trends report to dive into Market Pulse data as well as indirect and inferred transactional data and put together a pros and cons profile for the most critical factors in recruiting a Gen Z employee specifically in the finserv industry. Check it out below!

Based on these findings, Gen Z seems likely to be attracted to a work setting that prioritizes instilling a sense of purpose in employees and supporting a collaborative work community, on top of, understandably, ensuring financial security.

There are many ways to foster these attributes in your company’s work culture, but one thing is for sure: as Gen Z grows more prominent in the workforce, it is vital that businesses shape work cultures according to Gen Z ideals if they wish to attract top talent.

Not only did InMoment feature the financial services businesses like banks, wealth advisory firms, and credit unions in its newest Customer and Employee Experience Trends Report, but the research covers ten other industries as well! If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening in 2022’s experience realm, take a look at the full online version.

Utilities Brands CX
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3 Challenges Utilities Brands Face When Aligning Strategy, Ops, and Services to CX Needs

By: The InMoment Team

Customer experience (CX) leaders from utilities brands are facing unprecedented challenges in 2022. Increased government regulation and new market entrants with unique service-based offerings are creating a disruptive wave of change that traditional utilities need to respond to. But here at InMoment, we don’t like to merely dwell on obstacles and complexities. We like to provide you with strategies and solutions.

With that being said, Graham Tutton, InMoment’s Global Head of Consumer Products, has put some thoughts together around some of the biggest challenges facing the utilities sector, and what customer experience leaders can do about these for our latest webinar. And to save you some time, we’ve taken those and compiled them into this quick article.

Let’s dive in! 

Challenge #1: Disparate Data

Utilities companies typically have a lot of data spread across multiple silos across the business. The challenge is combining the operational, technical, financial, and even the metadata (like weather data) that is currently sitting in legacy systems or different departments, and is also aggregated with feedback data. Additionally, brands have not figured out how to tap into 85% of data—the unstructured kind—so they miss out on the bigger picture. 

Solve the Challenge: Combine Data Sources 

Many CX leaders in this space find it challenging to stitch together holistic customer feedback in one place, and know how to take action from it. At the end of the day, you need a single platform that can combine direct survey data from customers, but also indirect data (like social media reviews), and inferred data (like contact centre chat logs).

Challenge 2: Figuring Out Customer Trends

Because data is spread across the organisation, making sense of emerging customer trends is even harder. Businesses want to make the best decisions based on the available information. However, these decisions are often flawed because businesses do not have the ability to understand the data they’re looking at. Businesses cling to the easy insights floating at the top of their datasets, but often miss the deeper insights hidden behind unstructured data. 

According to IDC, 85% of enterprise data is unstructured and is growing at a rate of 55% every year. With this rate of growth, businesses that fail to adapt miss out on the bigger picture and are making flawed decisions based on only a small percentage of the data available.

Solve the Challenge: Text Analytics to the Rescue

Luckily, text analytics capabilities are getting better and better each year! Businesses should leverage human-led, knowledge-based taxonomies by finding a partner that offers high accuracy and actionability, offering economies of scale from a wealth of knowledge gained in your industry, language and use case. 

Challenge #3: Taking Action on Feedback

Some utilities brands find it tricky to know which actions to take after analysing their customer experience data. There are many reasons for this—most customer experience solutions require multi-language translation, human interpretation and maintenance, and continuous tuning of surveys. To make matters worse, because the process is so slow, the accuracy of the insights are impacted too. CX leaders are often stuck in the cycle of wading through data and less enabled to actually take action on it. 

Solve the Challenge: Have a Roadmap From the Beginning 

If you build your CX program around a roadmap (with clear checkpoints, of course), it will help you stay focused on your ultimate goals. You should be checking in with your roadmap monthly, and evaluating actions against the checkpoints every quarter. By constantly referring back to the original plan, it will help build your organisational culture around the customer, and this will definitely help with momentum of your program, taking you further than you could possibly go if you were shouldering the weight of the CX program alone.


To learn more, check out Graham’s full CX webinar designed just for utilities brands.

CX Trends
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How 3 CX Trends Compare from North America to Asia-Pacific in 2022

By: The InMoment Team

Earlier this year, we released a customer experience (CX) (and employee experience) trends report for both the North America and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions. These new CX trends were based on indirect and inferred data, as well as surveys across several industries. And surprisingly, there were some standout similarities that connected the two seemingly disparate customer bases. In fact, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Y, and even the up and coming Gen Z, all have their voices heard in these data insights. 

So what can we learn from a cross-continental comparison? If we investigate the CX climate in two vastly different regions, it can help bridge the expectation gaps that we have for this year. After all, issues like the pandemic are global occurrences, so how else can you make sense of such an event except by looking at that level of scale? 

InMoment invites you to think along with us about the bigger picture! Let’s scale up and dive into these CX Trends:

CX Trend #1: Consumer Comfort Level with COVID Safety Precautions

Yes, we know it’s been two years (going on the third), but COVID is still important to discuss. Safety concerns continue to vary throughout each region and they’ll certainly affect what consumers want in experiences from any brand. The question we decided was most crucial is whether consumers feel comfortable with the COVID-related safety measures put in place by various industries. Truthfully, if a customer doesn’t even feel safe to enter, it’s a safe bet you’re losing their business.

  • In ten APAC countries we discovered that 56-75% of consumers were comfortable with the safety precautions currently in place. Australia, Singapore, and Thailand were in the top, each with percentages higher than 70%.
  • But in Canada and the United States, only 51-61% of consumers were comfortable. This was found in nine different industries.

Obviously, the comparison isn’t one-to-one. But if about 2 in 3 consumers in APAC are comfortable, compared to NA’s 1 in 2, it’s worth figuring out what APAC businesses are doing differently.

CX Trend #2: The Impact of Social Media Influencers

Even with a consumer generation spanning seven decades, social media influencers are maintaining their, well, influence. Both APAC and NA regions match with 55% of consumers being somewhat or extremely likely to use influencer codes in 2022. And in APAC, there aren’t significant differences like you would expect between the four generations. Baby boomers are, predictably, at the lowest with 50% and Gen X and Y the highest with 68%. 

1 of 2 consumers in each generation are likely to use influencer codes, which means discounts, discounts, and discounts are a key incentive this year. And they don’t just want a discount sign at the front of your store, but for you to tap into the influencer market and establish a strong social media presence.

CX Trend #3: New Loyalty Indicators & Drivers Are Emerging

What experience elements would most impact a consumer’s loyalty? Here’s what stakeholders expect industries to do to maintain their loyalty:

APAC:

NA:

A lot of consumer priorities align in each region and, as expected, new loyalty drivers centralize around integrating digital options into the buyer experience. Since the pandemic, digital experiences have risen in demand and moving forward, it’s becoming an increasingly essential component of the consumer experience. One of the biggest challenges digital experience expectations pose is that consumers still want their experiences to feel personalized. Connecting those features will be critical to consumer loyalty this year.

Capitalizing on CX Trends Across the Globe

Customer experience is an ever-changing field and looks differently depending on where you are on the map. But there’s always a few similar threads that consumers are pulling, and that’s what CX trends reports are all about: identifying the threads brands need to pull on to prepare for a successful year ahead. 

Interested in the specifics? You can access the full APAC or NA trends report if you’d like to learn about the other trends that match or differ!

CX Program in Uncertain Times
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How to Maintain Your CX Program’s Effectiveness in Uncertain Times

By: Jim Katzman, Principal, CX Strategy & Enablement

It’s no joke to say that we live in uncertain times. We’re hopefully turning the page on a pandemic, but steep inflation and unrest both at home and abroad are making many customers nervous about what’s around the corner. Unfortunately, this attitude and the events precipitating it have a big impact on customer experience (CX), which means that CX professionals like you face the daunting task of keeping your CX program effective in the face of multiple challenges. As a perennially “glass half full” person. I prefer to see this “daunting task” as a great opportunity!

Where to start, though? Whether you’re running an existing program or looking to start a new initiative, what steps can you take to ensure that your effective CX program gets off on the right foot? Today’s discussion focuses on achieving that start and ensuring that your CX program will bring you business value that helps you stay ahead of the competition. More specifically, we’re going to cover the first two steps in our success improvement framework:

  1. Step 1: Design
  2. Step 2: Listen

Step 1: Design

Unfortunately, we see far too many clients start a CX program by just turning on some listening posts (social media, review sites, survey feedback, etc) and hoping for relevant insights to come to the surface. However, as the old adage goes, hope is not a plan. Listening is certainly an important part of the process, but if you want your CX program to truly succeed for you in uncertain times, it’s important to actually begin a step before hitting the lights and focus on a more foundational program element: design. I often tell my clients to design with the end in mind—it’s an approach aimed at helping you first understand what you need your CX program to accomplish in specific and quantifiable business terms, then keeping that guiding ethos front of mind as you execute the rest of your program.

So, what does the end goal look like for you? Do you need to pivot to new, post-pandemic messaging with a certain audience segment? Are you a finserv brand that needs to reassure clients rattled by inflation? Whatever the case, identifying your goals before you activate your CX program is critical to ensure your program is successful. It’s always better to begin with concrete, quantifiable objectives than to listen first and try to work backwards from there.

Step 2: Listen

Taking a step back to define your program’s goals makes the next step in the process, listening, a lot easier than trying to turn all your signal sources on first. When you design with the end in mind, you give yourself an opportunity not just to define your program’s goals, but also to identify the audience segments most relevant to those goals, as well as the channels that those individuals tend to prefer. The end result of all that legwork? Much better, much cleaner, and much more relevant data.

Now you’ve reached the point where you can actually turn your listening posts on, and with this target profile handy, you’ll begin to receive data that will contain much more effective and actionable insights. This is a foundational way to keep your CX program effective, and it’ll also help you get an idea of what messaging you need to issue and what actions you need to take to keep customers feeling happy and connected to in uncertain times. It’s critical to look beyond just the survey. I believe there are three data sources to “listen” to: direct data (from surveys), indirect data (from outside sources like social media) and inferred data (operational non-customer data that can be overlayed with the other sources). 

The Next Level

To recap: it’s important to consider what you need your CX program to accomplish for your brand (especially in times like these), and to design your program with those end goals in mind before activating any listening posts. Using this strategy makes the listening stage of this process much easier, as you will have already set your program up to collect only the data most relevant to your organization’s goals and needs. 

What comes after that, though? Once you’ve completed the design legwork and gathered this ultra-pertinent data, how best can you scour it for actionable insights and meaningfully transform your brand in a way customers will appreciate? To learn more, click here for my full-length point of view document on how to apply what you’ve listened for to effective transformation, especially as it pertains to the current inflation crisis.

Women in Customer Experience
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International Women’s Day: 8 Tips for Women in Customer Experience Looking to Build Their Career

By: The InMoment Team

International Women’s Day 2022 is here! To mark the day, we asked some of our women in customer experience (CX) for the best career advice they’d like to share with our readers. Hopefully these ideas will help you take your career to the next level.

We asked our female CX leaders, “What advice do you have for female professionals starting their career in customer experience?” 

Here’s what we heard:

Tip #1: Take Control of Your Career

Wing Poon, VoC & CX Strategy Lead at Medibank

“Restructuring has become a norm which you will encounter at some point in your career. Don’t feel you have to fit into or accept a role that is not what you wanted. Shape your role proactively by talking to your manager and review your career goals and skill set every year to see if you are still growing. If not, it might be time to find another role.”

Tip #2: Bring the Passion! 

Trish Roberts, Voice of the Customer Programme Manager at New Zealand Post

“Bring your passion and care to the role. It’s been instrumental in driving engagement from stakeholders and continually connects me back to my reasons for building a career in this sector. Ultimately, my goal is to improve the customer and organisational experience. I also feel when you bring that fire and passion to everything you do in customer experience it makes it a truly exciting and fulfilling place to be!” 

Tip #3: Take a Risk

Wing Poon, VOC & CX Strategy Lead at Medibank

“Don’t be afraid to apply for jobs even if your skill set doesn’t 100% fit the job description—because no one’s will perfectly fit!” 

Tip #4: Know Your Worth

Wing Poon, VOC & CX Strategy Lead at Medibank

“Don’t be afraid to proactively ask for a promotion and a raise. Arm yourself with evidence of achievements and market salary information for negotiations.”  

Tip #5: Take Opportunities When They Surface

Linda Broady, Customer Success Director at InMoment APAC 

“I discovered my passion for customer experience early in my career, but getting a foothold in the field meant taking on a couple of specialist and operational CX roles before ultimately landing my dream role as Head of CX.  My passion for customer experience has since led me in other directions, enabling me to further broaden my experience and in my current role, share that experience with my clients.” 

Tip #6: Be Human

Renee Jeffery, Senior Customer Experience Manager, ahm 

“I believe the last two years, more than ever, have demanded we put the ‘human’ back into the corporate world. We have seen pets, family, and home space merge with our work space. So, my advice to anyone starting out in the CX space is to not shy away from bringing the human into your work. Customer experience (and work in general) is so much richer when we are all our authentic selves, always.” 

Tip #7: Find Your Tribe

Trish Roberts, Voice of the Customer Programme Manager at New Zealand Post

“Surround yourself with interesting, creative and intelligent women, who lift each other up. I’m lucky to have worked with some incredibly collaborative and respected women over my career who I have learnt from and passed those skills on to others. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed.”

Tip #8: Bring Others Along the Journey

Morgan Jackson, Senior Customer Feedback Specialist, ACC

“Passion, resilience, relationships, and empathy are the four words that resonate with me as I reflect on my career in CX. Everyone I engaged with when establishing our VoC program advised us not to underestimate the culture change required to implement. If you are prepared to take the time to bring others on the journey with you, understand their challenges, explore solutions together this will result in better outcomes that enable your success long term.”

Targeted Survey Helps Improve Customer Experience CX
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How Targeted Surveys Help Improve Your Customer Experience (CX)

By: The InMoment Team

One tool is practically synonymous with the customer experience (CX) industry: surveys. Since the inception of the industry, targeted customer experience surveys have been seen as a foundational listening and research tool that leverages strategic questions to collect data from a specific group of customers.

Sending out a targeted survey is the first step to improving customer experiences, employee experiences, and even the bottom line. Once a targeted survey has collected the desired data, a top-notch Experience Improvement platform mines that data using advanced analytics to uncover actionable insights. And once an action plan is made and carried out, businesses can improve their practices and processes in a way that helps them to acquire new customers and employees, retain existing ones, identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and eliminate extra costs.

All that starts with a targeted survey. But what are the best practices for creating a targeted survey? How do you get started? Well, that’s what we will break down today!

Picking Your Audience 

The first step to a successful targeted survey? Selecting a target audience! Ask your team, “Who are we trying to appeal to? How do we want to improve their experience?” The audience in question should be one that is crucial to your strategy, so be sure to examine sales data, demographics, and other analytics to inform your decision. 

For instance, let’s say that you are a fast casual restaurant looking to launch a new menu item in a specific region. Your target audience would then be customers from that region who are regulars at your restaurant. That would be helpful to gauging interest in your new sandwich combo!

You can also leverage other, more general surveys that ask broader questions in order to identify more specific populations to survey. Additionally, it’s possible that your company already has the data you need! Check other relevant data or research that may have already been done on your desired subject. If the insights you need are already in your possession, this can help you avoid the dreaded survey fatigue in your customers (and employees).

Four Principles for Building a Good Survey

At InMoment, we often get questions like, “What is the best way to design a survey?”, “What questions should I include?”, and “What rating scales should I use?”. The quick answer to those questions is that it depends on both the type and the topic of the survey.

Principle #1: Design with the End in Mind

This principle is also referred to as the “Backward Research Process.” When you design with the end in mind, you must first think about the decisions you want to make and actions you want to take based on the information you collect. 

Are you focused on increasing customer retention by identifying customers who had a poor experience? Do you want to “grade” your outlets or employees on their ability to serve customers? Do you want to assess which specific customer-handling processes are and are not working? The content of your survey should be guided by your answers to these questions. And since you’ve already identified your target audience, you’re ahead of the game!

Principle #2: Generate Hypotheses When Designing Your Survey

While designing the survey, it is often helpful to generate some hypotheses about how you think the results might turn out. This exercise can help you define what information you need to either collect or append to your survey data.

Principle #3: Ask the Right Questions

Don’t ask all the questions. Ask the right questions. Depending on your desired outcome, you might use a variation of these question types:

  • Multiple Choice Questions
  • Text Entry Questions
  • Quotas and Qualifications

Principle #4: Don’t Forget About The Survey Invitation

One of the most neglected parts of the survey design process is the survey invitation. Often, it is designed as an after-thought. You need to design your email invitation to maximize the likelihood that customers will receive it, notice it, open it, and click the survey link.

Email Targeted Survey Invitation
A well-designed, branded targeted survey experience is key!

Learn from the Data

You’ve zeroed in on your audience, chosen strategic questions, and sent out an optimized invitation—now the data is rolling in! This is the most exciting part of the process, because that feedback you’re receiving will be the basis of your next major improvements to the customer experience!

Your Experience Improvement (XI) tools (such as our Active Listening Studio)  will be able to ingest that data, and not only reveal insights, but will pinpoint the moments that matter (or the interactions, channels, and touchpoints that most impact your business). Prioritizing those moments helps you to take swift action to improve not only experiences, but also your bottom line.

After you’ve taken these actions toward Experience Improvement, you can also send follow up surveys to identify the effectiveness of your improvements and fuel continuous efforts toward experience excellence.

How InMoment’s Active Listening Studio Can Help

InMoment’s Active Listening Studio is a one of a kind listening suite that gives you the control to gather feedback at every touchpoint, allowing customers to tell you what matters most to them without bombarding them with survey after survey. Active Listening Studio includes:

  • DIY Survey Creation
  • Our AI-powered Engagement Engine™
  • The Rapid Resolution Engine™
  • Our Eligibility Engine™
  • Social Monitoring
  • Multimedia Feedback

Leveraging these tools allows you to create a more effective targeted survey, optimize your listening strategy, and ultimately prove that you’ve improved experiences and your business. One of our global retail clients was even able to increase survey response rates by 37% and response length by 38%!

Want to learn more about how InMoment can help you conduct a better targeted survey—and improve your customer experiences, employee experiences, and beyond? Contact our team today and we’d be happy to explore the right options for your business!

CX Value
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When CX Value Is Hard to Find: 3 Truths You Need to Hear if Your CX Program Isn’t Moving the Needle

By: The InMoment Team

Here’s a difficult truth you may be facing: “my customer experience (CX) program is just not moving the needle.” Whether it’s an inability to prove CX value or a lack of recognition for your improvement efforts, it’s a scary realization to have. At the same time, it’s also an opportunity for you to reassess and, more importantly, transform.

The beginning of a true CX transformation journey starts with facing the reality that your old ways of approaching experiences might not be the best—and being willing to adapt your approach according to best practice. 

If you find yourself at the beginning of such a journey, we’ll be diving into three truths you’ll definitely want to hear. Let’s get started!

Truth #1: Stagnant Programs Are Only Measuring and Managing Experiences

More often than not, the reason your program may not be impacting your bottom line is because you’re not actually improving experiences. Many businesses keep tabs on endless amounts of metrics. And that’s valuable information!

But measurements are not outcomes. They only tell you that there’s a problem. 

In a similar fashion, managing experiences only focuses on understanding the customer or reacting to their interactions. But how does this ensure that customer problems are solved not just in one case but in all future iterations? You see, measuring and managing is one thing—actual improvement is another. So how are the experiences you’re providing really getting better on a day to day basis?

Truth #2: Improving Experiences (and Finding CX Value) Focuses on the Big Picture

Of course, today’s experiences are crucial. But so is every future one! That’s why the big picture matters. Because if you can predict and solve future customer problems today, you’re already a few steps ahead. 

And that doesn’t just apply timewise as your customer journey develops. It’s also core to the progression and structure of your business. So many companies are organized in siloes, but it’s highly beneficial to a CX program if you close the gaps between departments. One effective strategy is to utilize a governance model that will keep your company in alignment and accountable.

Truth #3: True CX Transformation Requires Action

And finally, real Experience Improvement happens through action. People often use the Voice of Customer (VoC) and customer experience as interchangeable terms when they technically do not operate the same way. VoC is all about listening—but it doesn’t enact the necessary shift to concrete action. 

Our Continuous Improvement Framework maps out the steps you need to take to actually see success: design, listen, understand, transform, and realize. You can see here that listening is only the second step! To have a successful program, there are three more steps to complete the full process and improve experiences.

Give yourself a pat on the shoulder for getting through these truth bombs with us. But it doesn’t end there! It’s now your chance to transform customer experiences for the better. 

And if you’re vying for more CX insight, check out this webinar where Eric Smuda (Principal, CX Strategy & Enablement) speaks on “CX Transformation: The Key to a Truly Valuable Program.”

Customer Experience Governance
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3 Ways to Make Customer Experience Governance Work for You

By: The InMoment Team

Whether you’re just getting started on your customer experience (CX) initiative or hitting pause to see how things are going, the term “customer experience governance” is probably something you hear your team bring up all the time. You probably also already know that customer experience governance refers to the system that sends insights to where they need to go and that holds certain team members accountable for different aspects of your initiative.

But which governance style works best for you? No two organizations are the same, which means that a governance style that works for another brand’s CX program may not be your organization’s cup of tea! We’ve got you covered, though—here’s three different customer experience governance approaches you can take a look at as you evaluate your program.

Three Ways to Approach CX Governance 

  1. Approach #1: Directive
  2. Approach #2: Consensus-Based
  3. Approach #3: Dispersed

Customer Experience Governance Approach #1: Directive

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, and ideal for companies that are highly centralized. Simply put, a directive governance approach is a top-down model that gives the same parameters and goals to every piece of your CX program in every region your company has a foot in. This model makes room for some localization, but espouses a direct-line approach from one team and clear sponsorship from at least one member of the executive team.

The advantage to a setup like this, especially if your initiative sounds like what we’ve laid out, is that all program abilities are managed as one function and the team at the heart of it all is highly collaborative. This can make it easier for your team to roll out improvements and quickly hand initiative changes down across multiple facets of your program. On the flip side, though, the folks implementing those changes on the ground may disengage if they feel too far removed from this centralized decision-making process. 

Customer Experience Governance Approach #2: Consensus-Based

This governance style is a bit more loosey-goosey compared to the directive approach. Rather than rely strictly on a single, centralized team, the consensus-based approach gives regional teams greater autonomy. Whereas the directive approach we talked about earlier is great for brands whose regional operations are more or less the same, the consensus-based style is ideal for organizations whose regional teams work in much more varied conditions.

You probably already see where this is going when it comes to advantages and disadvantages—on one hand, this style is great for making regional teams feel included and for gaining on-the-ground insights that make your program better! But, by the same token, decentralizing decision-making power can result in lengthier deliberations, knowledge gaps, and the chance that some regional teams stray a bit too far from the path. Still, it’s a style well-worth considering if that different regional ops environment sounds like your organization.

Customer Experience Governance Approach #3: Local

This one’s on the opposite end of our spectrum from the directive approach, and encourages local/regional teams to take up the lion’s share of CX responsibilities. A central team may still exist somewhere in the initiative hierarchy, but with this style, its main task is mostly to share data, tools, and coaching. The heavy lifting, the action-taking, is left to groups and individuals outside of that team.

If your brand consists of, say, locally owned and operated franchises, or simply has a history of reduced central control, you might find this style most to your liking. It can enable franchisees and regional managers to turn their locations into CX powerhouses that are each very tailored to the areas they serve. However, this also creates the danger of program and experience inconsistency, both of which risk leaving customers confused and disengaged if they frequent multiple locales. Making group decisions is also, of course, more difficult with an approach this decentralized.

Decisions, Decisions

So, which of these sounds most like your organization, or most like the setup that would be great for a new or refurbished CX program? If you’re still on the fence and want to learn more, click here to see our new infographic on the subject, with more details and considerations for each customer experience governance approach. Customer experience governance is a challenge at the best of times, but if you can find the approach that works best for you, you’ll be well on your way to achieving continuous Experience Improvement (XI).

CX Team
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3 Tips to Bridge the Gap Between Your CX Team & C-Suite

By: The InMoment Team

Oftentimes, the c-suite and the customer experience (CX) or customer success team live on the same planet, but almost in separate countries—they simply speak different languages. The former is interested in counting dollars and profitability and the latter with measuring metrics. So how should a CX practitioner go about bridging that gap in communication? How can you take the invaluable insights your CX team is discovering and translate it into meaning that executives will understand and act on? 

We know that customer experience can be a tough sell—after all, your business has so many priorities! Proving that your CX program has direct ROI and impact on your bottom line can be nebulous at best. But when your CX team has the c-suite’s backing, many organizational walls are broken and it becomes easier to demonstrate the insurmountable value that a successful CX program produces for a business. To help your brand along, here are three essential tips to close the gap between the C-Suite and CX teams.

Tip #1: Break Down Metrics

Metrics are core to any CX program—whether it’s NPS, CSAT, CES, etc. The challenge is how do you present those metrics in a way that makes executives regard them as crucial data points? At InMoment, we start with an approach we like to call the “Solving for X:” take your executives through your business objectives and what you’re truly trying to solve for customers. Then put it under categories like customer acquisition, customer retention, cross-sell and up-sell, cross-savings, etc. By parsing out the problems your team is solving for, you can show executives how they map onto the customer journey. And eventually, how those metrics directly inform the important touchpoints in that journey.

Tip #2: Tell Stories

Beyond all the data, numbers, and statistics, there’s a human customer at the heart of your CX program. So how do you get executives to see and empathize with the customers they don’t interact with on a daily basis? Stories, stories, stories. It can be a customer story, verbatims, videos, etc., but the point is that storytelling connects humans together—and it can do the same with your customers and executives.

And it doesn’t have to stop at just customers. Employees play a significant role as customer experience providers, especially as frontline ones. Getting executives to understand a day in the life of frontline employees or customers can shift their perspective on how your program is adding value to the company. It’s easy to latch onto numbers as concrete evidence, but stories can make the numbers come alive.

Tip #3: Use Small, Real Money Examples

When you’re presenting a business case, the goal shouldn’t be complexity. Even the most simple of cases can prove to be a persuasive argument. For example, let’s say there’s a rental car business that sells at airports. What if we could save one customer per month at each of the top airport rental locations? If you multiply that customer by ten and then by hundred, that’s millions of dollars of value saved. So asking small questions like that can be a huge game changer in how your executives understand the value in a successful customer journey.

Building a Strong CX Foundation with the C-Suite

Luckily, your relationship with executives is an ongoing one. Which means there will be countless meetings and presentations, and most importantly chances to learn to speak in the C-Suite language. Each conversation is an opportunity for your CX team to prove that CX value and business value is one and the same. So don’t be devastated if it takes a few swings. Fail and adjust your strategy for the next meeting.

And when you’re looking for a boost of confidence and CX expertise, watch this webinar: Eric Smuda (Principal, CX Strategy & Enablement) speaks on Translating CX Value into the C-Suite’s Language.

Text Analytics Software
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Natural Language Processing 101: Three Tips for Optimising Your Text Analytics Software

By: Siobhan May Jones, Customer Success Director

When it comes to experience programs, text analytics software has been revolutionising data interpretation since the capability arrived on the scene. I’m Siobhan May Jones, one of InMoment’s Customer Success Directors, and over my career, I’ve seen this transition up close.

One of my first jobs whilst studying at university was manually coding thousands of verbatims about pet food. While this was great financially because I got paid by the hour, it wasn’t a good use of time by today’s standards. Over the next five years, I worked in the market research industry and found that too many tasks are manual process-rich, as well as subject to human error. It has taken years of discipline to rewire my brain from manual work to working with experts and tools to achieve the right goal. 

Let me give you an example—let’s say you need to understand what customers are saying about your employees each month. Your goal is to track which employees you need to support, and which ones need to be celebrated. 

You have two options:

 1) Download a raw extract of the verbatim and read through it month by month, gain an understanding of what customers are saying, then talk to the team about it. 

 2) Use natural language processing tools to visualise where and why these comments are showing excellence or areas requiring improvement.

It’s not really a choice between these two options, as the first scenario has you spending hours clicking buttons and cleaning or filtering data, while the second forces you to make an action plan. 

So how can you optimise your text analytics software and, ultimately, strengthen your customer experience (CX) program? I have three tips for you:

Tip #1: Confirm You’re Using the Latest and Greatest Software 

Before taking any action with text analytics, we recommend chatting with experts in your field to make sure you have the latest tools, processes, software, and overall capability. Your text analytics software should have these four features:

Scalability

A solution that supports all of the countries and languages your customers work and buy in—at an acceptable level of quality and price.

Quality

Your text analytics solution must be able to surface important trends and patterns based on individual comments and the sentiments behind them.

Actionability

You need a layer of sophisticated analytics that can add tags and themes on a granular level, uncover sentiment, assign categories, identify intent, spot legal issues, and pick up on possible customer churn.

Speed

A solution with real-time analysis, reporting and action. This is specifically relevant when considering translations for global companies.

If your text analytics software is missing any of these features, you’ll be starting at a disadvantage. Here at InMoment, we’re constantly innovating based on clients’ specific needs to ensure we’re helping reduce processes and increase action. 

Tip #2: Keep Your Goal Front of Mind When Processing Customer Feedback

When you designed your customer experience program, you no doubt started with a goal in mind. And when it comes to processing thousands of unstructured pieces of customer feedback, it can be easy to lose sight of the original goal. 

We recommend being honest and clear with your team (and yourself) about what your primary goal is, then using the right approach for that goal. Are you looking to add qualitative information to bring life to your metrics, trying to understand what makes customers angry or frustrated, or are you looking to track a recent frontline training initiative and see if customers noticed enough to talk about it? 

Alternatively, are you looking to set up alerts based on topics (regardless of the many possible typos)? Text analytics is a powerful tool that will help you with any of the above goals.  

Tip #3: Be On The Lookout For New Updates

When it comes to text analytics software, there will always be new updates, new features, and new opportunities. We recommend adding a biannual calendar note to yourself to proactively identify how text analytics software is changing over time. By being open to change and by constantly onboarding new features, you have a real opportunity to stay ahead of the competition by keeping focus on continuous Experience Improvement (XI). 

For more information on text analytics, check out this eBook!

Blended Experience
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The Top 3 “Blended Experiences” Retail Consumers & Employees Expect This Year

By: The InMoment Team

In 2022, modern retailers will face many challenges as the industry continues to recover from the global pandemic. During the unpredictable lockdown, retail brands were forced to transform their in-person experiences to digital ones. And now, according to our most recent EX & CX Retail Trends research, both customers and employees expect a blended experience.

But what does the term “blended experience” really mean? Well, it’s essentially bringing the digital experience to the in-store experience. Hence, “blended”. Still not getting the gist of it? Then let’s take a look at three concrete examples we’ve discovered based on data our Strategic Insights Team collected from consumers and employees across North America. Here’s what people are truly expecting:

Blended Experience #1: Buy Online, Pick Up Instore

It’s no surprise that being able to buy products online is an expectation, but customers also want options on how to receive said product. During quarantine, retail stores often offered same-day home delivery, curbside pick up, and buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS). The question is, which of these will last? 

For employees, curbside and delivery have proven expensive to operate and don’t drive sales like in-store traffic does (especially if retail employees are working commission).  Meanwhile, because delivery is no longer considered a free necessity, and because curbside pick-up times aren’t as flexible, customers are less impressed with these options. So, BOPIS is a compromise: customers get to easily buy products online and receive their items relatively quickly, while employees get to engage with customers in-store while avoiding the obstacles those pickup types present.

Blended Experience #2: Pick Up, Walk Out (Automatic Payment)

After a long two years, customers and employees are used to a contactless experience and find it convenient for reasons beyond COVID. Additionally, with grocery stores continuing to capitalize on self-checkout experiences and innovations like Amazon Go’s Just Walk Out technology, more customers are expecting the retail industry to follow suit. Simply removing checkout lines can save retail stores over $37.7 billion and allow customers to shop without the hindrance of wasting time waiting in line.

Blended Experience #3: Virtual Try-On

Augmented reality in retail blew up during the pandemic. And, with the many social media filters that younger customers use daily, it’s no wonder that virtual try-on capability has emerged as a top expectation. Of course, customers would rather not wait to change in a stall or travel all the way to a store, but the real kicker is that virtual try-on actually minimizes a lot of risk for them.

One of the greatest barriers for online retail experiences is the reality that customers can’t really try on what they buy. With a virtual feature like this, customers get a visual sense of how the items they’re eyeing could fit in their lives, without ever having to leave home. After a virtual try-on experience, customers are reassured that their purchases truly suit their desires, reducing the chance of returns.

The In-Store Experience of the Future

It’s clear that, when it comes to retail, customers want a blend of digital and in-person experiences, not just one or the other. Both types of experiences have their pros and cons, and it’s our job as experience professionals to deliver an integrated interaction that brings forth each of their valuable qualities. Hopefully, these examples can help your brand take a second look at the experience you’re currently providing customers and spark meaningful Experience Improvement (XI) this year.

But this dynamic doesn’t stop at just blended experiences. The retail world is being impacted by changes in feedback methods, the influence of social media, and the Gen Z perspective. There are many opportunities beyond blended experiences for retail stores to meet customer needs, which you can learn more about in our new eBook: EX & CX Trends: What Retail Brands Need to Know in 2022.

Regulatory Compliance
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Three Considerations When Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Regulatory Compliance

By: The InMoment Team

Companies are investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to save money and time—especially those in industries who have to constantly deal with regulatory compliance documents. After all, who wants to sift through endless amounts of tables and lists? Those working in legal, medical, or financial sectors are often all too familiar with this infamous struggle. And considering this, it makes sense that PwC predicts AI could contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy in the near future. Busy work, laborious practices, and the humdrum of paperwork are not the most ideal job duty for any employee. This poses an important question: is AI powerful enough so that no employee will ever have to touch a regulatory compliance document again?

To help you answer that question, here are the top three things you need to consider:

Consideration #1: What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Fundamentally, we should think of artificial intelligence as a tool rather than a replacement for human expertise. AI doesn’t accomplish anything without a proper wielder to fully comprehend how to use it. Therefore, it’s key to rethink your AI strategy. Ask yourself, how are you approaching AI? 

Let’s first take a look at the problem at hand. Regulatory compliance documents require an extreme attention to detail due to their naturally complex text structure. That’s why traditional text analytics don’t necessarily do the trick. Essentially, what you want AI to do is to read, check, and extract data from a document that’s written and filled out by humans. 

The thing is these documents aren’t standardized, resulting in arbitrary changes in format and other elements. This puts AI in a tough situation. As a technology that functions through learning from examples, how can it learn if the examples change unpredictably?

Consideration #2: AI Cannot Succeed Alone

That doesn’t mean you should totally scrap AI, it just needs a little help. In the case of regulatory compliance, AI cannot succeed alone, but it can be a core part of your success. To tackle regulatory compliance documents, you need a combination of three technologies: 

  • Semi-Structured Data Parsing
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning and AI

Each of these technologies supply needed functions, such as extracting text, understanding the meaning of a text, pattern recognition and response, etc. But with all these helpful aids, the human eye still remains the most reliable. Technology may not be able to totally replace humans in this context, but it can certainly provide a solution that mitigates the heavy burden of regulatory compliance.

Consideration #3: Designing an Effective and Personal AI Strategy

It’s likely that your specific industry and country encounters problems other companies outside of your field or location don’t. In that way, making sure that your AI implementation covers all bases in the documents you process can feel like a solo battle. And that’s why you need to invest in a platform that will allow for the customization your brand needs. Regulatory compliance documents vary depending on the business setting and thus have unique requirements for AI to fulfill.

Wrapping It Up

So the short answer is no, in this case AI cannot fully replace humans in regulatory compliance. But it can certainly aid businesses in working more efficiently and effectively. Rather than approaching this as AI or humans, one or the other, it should instead be AI for humans. Many AI for compliance tools fail to provide useful solutions because they don’t understand this complex relationship.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to sharpen your approach to AI for regulatory compliance, read the full white paper where we also include specific case examples!

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