Integrated CX

Your call center has the power to shape how customers feel about your brand. Every interaction, whether it’s handling customer inquiries, resolving complaints, or acknowledging compliments, is a moment that can build trust or break it. And in a fast-paced environment, it’s not just about speed. It’s about delivering a contact center experience that balances efficiency and empathy.

If you’re seeing low customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), rising call abandonment, or more negative feedback than usual, it’s time to reset. The strategies below offer practical ways to improve customer satisfaction, reduce inefficiencies, and deliver a better customer experience without overloading your support team.

1. Use Conversational Intelligence To Uncover CX Gaps

The surest way to improve customer experience (CX) is to solve real customer problems. Conversational intelligence (CI), powered by artificial intelligence (AI), helps you do just that by analyzing interactions to uncover pain points, friction, and customer frustration.

It also highlights where your team may be missing the mark, giving you the insight you need to coach agents more effectively and improve future conversations. 

2. Train Agents for Empathy and Active Listening

There’s more to delivering good customer service than solving problems quickly. Agents also need to know how to build trust and connect with customers, and that starts with soft skills. 

Focus your training on empathy, active listening, and patience, even during tough conversations. Encourage help agents to acknowledge frustrations or concerns, paraphrase what they hear, and respond with clear, helpful solutions. 

Empathetic communication can turn a difficult moment into a trust-building experience that brings customers back.

3. Personalize the Customer Experience

81% of consumers prefer brands that offer personalized experiences. And 88% say the experience itself matters just as much as the product. In other words, personalization has a direct impact on how people choose where to spend their money.

Ditch rigid, generic scripts in favor of conversations that reflect each customer’s history and preferences. One way to make this easier is by connecting your customer relationship management (CRM) system with your CX software, giving agents instant access to relevant details during every interaction. 

Personalization shows customers they’re seen and valued, which goes a long way toward building trust and improving customer retention. 

4. Reduce Hold Times With Smarter Call Routing

With 70% of Americans choosing a phone call as their go-to for customer support, your call center is often the first and most important touchpoint. 

Long wait times and multiple transfers are quick ways to frustrate callers. Instead, use intelligent routing systems that connect people to the right department based on their needs and your agents’ skills. If there’s a delay, set clear hold-time expectations or offer a callback option. 

Respecting callers’ time helps reduce friction and leaves a stronger impression of your brand.

5. Improve First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Customers don’t want to call back multiple times to solve the same issue. That kind of back-and-forth quickly leads to frustration and can make your call center customer service team seem unprepared. 

Start with thorough training to ensure agents know your products inside and out. Give them access to internal knowledge bases during calls and encourage confident, real-time problem-solving to reduce transfers. 

When agents resolve issues on the first try, it leads to positive experiences, stronger customer satisfaction, and fewer repeat contacts. 

6. Offer and Optimize Self-Service Options

Not everyone likes to speak to a live agent. In fact, 67% of consumers say they prefer self-service over direct interactions. 

Build out helpful resources like knowledge bases, FAQ pages, and online help centers. Make sure they’re easy to navigate, address common pain points, and actually help customers solve problems without needing to call in. 

The easier it is for people to help themselves, the better their overall experience and the lighter the load on your support team.

7. Monitor and Act on Customer Feedback

Customers can be your greatest asset in the effort to improve your organization’s CX, but only if you’re listening. 

Use post-call surveys to gather feedback on what’s working and what needs improvement. Then, take action. Use those insights to adjust policies, refine training, and close the gaps that impact customer experience.

Turning feedback into meaningful change shows customers you’re paying attention—and that builds long-term trust.

8. Automate QA Scoring 

Automating quality assurance (QA) scoring with a tool like InMoment gives you a clearer, more consistent view of customer interactions.

It helps surface inconsistencies, uncover agent training opportunities, and optimize how your team shows up on every call. Automated scoring also allows you to review a much larger volume of conversations and removes human bias from the equation, making your customer insights more reliable.

With the right system in place, you can track sentiment, spot trends, and make smarter CX decisions at scale.

9. Provide Ongoing Coaching and Quality Assurance

Consumer needs, preferences, and pain points are constantly evolving, so your training shouldn’t stop after agent onboarding. 

Use surveys, call recordings, emails, and other touchpoints to identify where agents are thriving and where they’re struggling. Then, tailor your coaching to match your findings. If agents are having trouble with difficult conversations, prioritize soft skills like empathy and de-escalation.

Ongoing coaching can help keep skills sharp, build agent confidence, and help your team deliver stronger experiences across every customer interaction, potentially improving CSAT scores. 

10. Make Your Support Channels Work Together

Customers don’t always start with a phone call. They might reach out to your brand through email, social media, or even SMS before connecting with a live agent.

To give them a better experience, focus on omnichannel consistency. If someone starts a conversation with a chatbot and later calls in to speak with a human, your agents should have access to that earlier conversation for context. This helps you avoid redundant back-and-forth, reduces frustration, and helps your team deliver faster support.

Aligning your channels leads to smoother interactions and smarter CX optimization. 

11. Equip Agents With Integrated Tools

Disconnected systems slow customer service agents down and make it harder to streamline support. When they have to jump between platforms just to answer a question, it creates delays and unnecessary friction.

Integrating your CX software with tools like CRMs and feedback platforms gives agents a holistic view of each customer’s journey and sentiment. That context improves service quality and makes it easier to address customer issues quickly and effectively.

With the right tools in place, reps can spend less time switching tabs and more time solving problems.

12. Set Clear, Customer-Centric KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you track whether your CX optimization efforts are working and where to adjust. 

Balance efficiency metrics like average handle time with customer-focused indicators like customer effort score (CES), net promoter score (NPS), CSAT, and first contact resolution. These numbers give you a clearer view of how customers actually feel about their experience.

If the data points to positive progress, keep going. If not, adjust your strategy using insights from conversational intelligence and direct customer feedback. 

13. Communicate Proactively With Customers

When issues come up—like service disruptions or product delays—don’t wait for the complaints to roll in. Proactively reach out to let customers know you’re aware of the problem and working toward a resolution. 

This kind of communication can ease concerns, reduce your call center’s inbound call volume, and help lower wait times for other customer support tickets. More importantly, it builds trust by showing customers you’re in control and paying attention.

14. Celebrate Agent Wins and Promote Engagement

While it’s important to address areas where call center agents may be struggling, focusing only on what’s going wrong can hurt morale and lead to burnout. Recognition matters.

Make space to celebrate wins. Reward agent performance with incentives like gift cards, team shout-outs, or spotlight features for those who go above and beyond. Recognize the reps who consistently exceed customer expectations, and let others see what great service looks like in action.

A culture of appreciation improves the agent experience, supports retention, and motivates the entire team to keep raising the bar.

15. Address Systemic Issues That Drive Negative CX

Not all negative CX stems from call center agents. Broader issues, like faulty products, unclear company policies, shipping delays, or complicated purchasing processes can just as easily erode customer trust. 

Use conversational intelligence software to identify recurring pain points and understand what’s really driving customer dissatisfaction. Then, take direct action to fix the root causes. For example, if shipping delays are a frequent complaint, work with your logistics provider to improve delivery timelines or explore other partners.

Fixing these systemic issues improves future experiences and shows customers that your business listens and follows through.

16. Continuously Iterate Based on Data

As customers’ needs and expectations evolve, your CX optimization efforts should evolve with them. Regularly review customer data from surveys, agent-customer interactions, and KPIs to spot what’s working and where you can improve. 

Small, consistent changes based on real insights can help your customer service team stay responsive and aligned with what your audience values. Ongoing CX reviews and experimentation not only improve satisfaction but also strengthen retention over time. 

Improve Your Call Center’s Customer Experience With InMoment

Excellent customer service experiences can increase customer satisfaction, strengthen loyalty, and reduce churn. To enhance CX, use conversational intelligence to identify experience gaps, offer regular agent training focused on both hard and soft skills, act on customer feedback, ensure consistent support across communication channels, and recognize standout agent performance to keep motivation high.

InMoment’s integrated CX intelligence platform helps improve the call center experience by delivering rich customer insights. It captures customer feedback, surfaces common challenges and CX trends through conversational intelligence, and supports data-driven action plans to strengthen your overall strategy. 

Schedule a demo with InMoment today to see how our platform can power your next stage of CX optimization!

Sometimes, even the most skillful contact center agents have no choice but to escalate a call to their supervisors. However, it’s not an ideal scenario by any means, especially when it happens often. Escalated calls are time-consuming, costly, and stressful. They also lower agent confidence and increase the likelihood of customer churn.

Therefore, reducing call escalations is a mission-critical priority for contact center leaders. The good news is that with the right tools and strategies, you can definitely resolve more issues on first contact to lower costs and improve customer retention.

What is a call escalation in a call center?

Call escalation, also known as supervisor escalation, is the process of transferring a customer issue from the frontline agent to the supervisor. This typically happens when the agent lacks the authority, access, or expertise to resolve the concern on their own. Escalations can be triggered by complex issues, unresolved complaints, or an angry customer who requests to speak to someone in a higher position.

While this process is necessary in some cases, frequent escalations often signal gaps in agent training, knowledge base access, or outdated call center workflows. These gaps can lead to longer wait times, higher average handle time, and lower customer satisfaction.

With the right tools and processes, like intelligent routing and automation, call centers can take a confident step towards reducing unnecessary escalations. It also empowers agents to resolve more issues on first contact by handling routine tasks and surfacing key customer insights.

The different types of call escalation

Not all call escalations are the same. For example, an agent escalating a call because of a product malfunction outside their scope is different from an angry customer requesting to speak to the agent’s supervisor.

Therefore, effective call center management requires a structured approach to de-escalation. This is the idea behind an escalation matrix, a framework that applies the right role, responsibility, and skill set to each escalation type.

Instead of letting agents fret over who to contact, the matrix ensures that each escalation category is handled by the individuals and processes best suited for it.

Speaking of which, here’s a quick look at the three common types of escalation:

1. Technical escalations
   These occur when a customer issue is beyond the frontline agent’s expertise. If an issue involves complex systems or integrations requiring an advanced technical profile, it’s transferred to a higher-level technician or specialized team.
   
2. Procedural escalations
   When agents encounter unclear or inflexible policies, such as refund guidelines, service limits, or contractual terms, they may need to involve a higher authority to make a decision. These types of escalation are common in regulated industries where strict workflows apply.
   
3. Emotional escalations
   Sometimes, the issue is less about complexity and more about emotion. A customer who feels unheard by the agent, for instance, may demand to speak with a supervisor. Without proper de-escalation, these emotionally charged moments can spiral into conflict. Agents trained in active listening and problem-solving are better equipped to handle such interactions calmly.

Common Reasons for Call Escalations in Contact Centers

In many contact centers, escalations stem from breakdowns in training, tools, or communication. Some of the most common causes include:

• Limited agent authority or knowledge for providing support, resolving the ticket, or making decisions. The lack of access to the right information prolongs the escalation process, frustrating both the customer and the agent.
  
• Inadequate training or support resources for frontline agents makes it difficult to handle complex issues with confidence. Without the right knowledge base or support tools, even experienced agents will struggle with first contact resolution (FCR).
  
• Poor call routing or misalignment of skill sets means customer calls often go to agents ill-equipped to resolve them. This wastes time, effort, and results in escalations. Intelligent routing based on issue type and agent skill level is key to reducing this kind of friction.
  
• Complex or unclear company policies like refund rules, hidden fees, or rigid processes can make it difficult for agents to offer solutions without escalating to supervisors.
  
• Emotionally charged interactions without de-escalation tactics result in immediate customer dissatisfaction. Without proper training in active listening and emotional intelligence, agents may unintentionally escalate a situation by failing to meet an increasingly disgruntled customer’s needs.

Benefits of Reducing Call Escalations

Frequent call escalations increase operational costs and discourage customer loyalty. A strategic approach to reducing escalations enables call center leaders to create a more efficient and customer-centric operation. Here are four powerful benefits of improving your escalation management process:

Improved customer experience

When agents resolve customer issues within the first interaction, they significantly reduce wait times and feelings of frustration. The result is a more positive customer experience, greater customer satisfaction, and stronger loyalty.

Increased agent confidence and efficiency

The right training, knowledge base, and decision-making authority allow agents to handle complex issues independently. This builds confidence, boosts morale, and reduces average handle times, enabling more effective problem-solving.

Better use of supervisor time

When fewer calls are escalated, supervisors can shift their focus from constant firefighting to team development and process improvement. As a result, they spend more time on strategy without having to worry about handling multiple customer issues.

Lower operational costs

Each escalation increases handling time and touches multiple resources. Reducing escalations drives down repeat contacts, optimizes staffing, and helps streamline call center workflows. These results are key for lowering operational costs and encouraging better use of existing tools and talent.

Strategies to Reduce Call Escalations in a Call Center

A strategic approach is required for creating a smarter and more responsive contact center to reduce call escalations. From optimizing call routing to equipping frontline agents with better resources, these strategies can help call center management streamline operations, improve the customer experience, and build lasting customer trust.

1. Improve First Contact Resolution (FCR)

One of the most effective ways to reduce escalations is by focusing on First Contact Resolution (FCR). As one of the most crucial call center metrics, FCR measures the percentage of calls an agent resolves during the initial interaction without any follow-ups.

A high FCR suggests that calls are mostly routed to the right agents who have the necessary tools and knowledge to resolve them. This prevents additional strain on supervisors and senior staff.

Improve FCR by implementing skills-based routing to ensure each call reaches the agent best equipped to address it. Use targeted training to improve agent performance and empathy during stressful situations. Re-evaluate your policies to see if anything prevents agents from confidently resolving issues on their own.

2. Use Conversational Intelligence Software

Many call escalations stem from a lack of visibility into what’s really happening during customer interactions. With tools like InMoment’s conversational intelligence software, you can analyze 100% of customer interactions to unlock valuable insights into customer behavior. The tool uses AI-powered capabilities such as call summarization and sentiment analysis to reveal early signs of frustration, spot patterns, and surface root causes behind escalations.

These insights empower agents to proactively address concerns before they intensify. Managers, on the other hand, are able to make data-driven decisions on agent training, call center workflows, and escalation management.

As a result, conversational intelligence helps you reduce supervisor escalations and improve your team’s ability to deliver swift and empathetic support.

3. Empower Agents with Better Training and Knowledge Bases

When agents feel confident, they resolve more customer issues without needing to escalate. The best way to encourage confidence is to provide targeted training to each frontline team member. Focus on aspects like problem-solving, communication skills, and de-escalation techniques. Give them tools to recognize emotional cues and respond with empathy and clarity.

Support this training with an easy-to-navigate knowledge base providing quick access to accurate answers, process updates, and product details. The faster agents can find information, the more efficiently they can resolve complex questions.

With the right resources and training, your agents stay in control and deliver better support, without having to involve supervisors.

4. Implement Call Routing Based on Issue Complexity

Not every customer concern requires the same level of expertise. When your call routing system sends complex issues to agents without the right skills, it increases frustration and triggers unnecessary escalations.

Use intelligent routing to match calls with agents based on issue complexity, topic, or urgency. For example, product specialists are better suited to handle technical support questions, while billing concerns should be routed to agents trained in finance workflows. This alignment helps customers reach the right person faster, reducing average handle time and improving first call resolution.

5. Analyze Escalation Trends to Fix Root Causes

If you look closely at call escalations, you’re likely to see a pattern. Perhaps agents lack the right knowledge in most of the cases. Maybe a lack of empathy tends to be the main culprit. Analyzing escalation trends helps you pinpoint the root causes behind repeat problems and friction in the support experience.

Start by reviewing escalation data across all customer channels, including calls, messaging, and chat. Look for patterns to understand which product areas, topics, or workflows trigger the most supervisor involvement. See if you can identify the agents escalating more frequently due to limited training or knowledge.

Use your findings to revise policies, update workflows, and improve knowledge base content. When you address the real source of customer pain, you transform your call center into a revenue generator for the business.

6. Offer Self-Service and Omnichannel Options

Customers expect to have multiple options for issue resolution, including taking care of it themselves. This expectation is stronger in the age of artificial intelligence, where chatbots and virtual assistants are capable of addressing common queries. 

According to a 2024 Zendesk report, 83% of CX leaders expect to see a five-fold increase in customer self-service interactions. Therefore, businesses must be ready to meet this expectation with self-service tools and a seamless omnichannel support experience.

Ensure your help center, FAQs, and automated chatbots are equipped to handle common queries like policy updates or order status. These tools empower customers to resolve issues without needing to speak with a live agent.

At the same time, make it easy for customers to move between messaging, email, social media, and phone calls without losing context. Consistency across channels improves customer satisfaction and lowers the likelihood of call escalations.

When combined with real-time customer insights, self-service options help reduce call volume, shorten wait times, and allow supervisors to focus on other aspects of the business.

Reduce Call Escalations Efficiently with InMoment

Call escalations pose a significant challenge for call center management. They lower agent confidence, require extra effort from supervisors, and damage brand reputation in the long run. A clear and structured approach involving the right tools, processes, and insights is required for reducing escalations.

InMoment’s conversational intelligence tool helps you implement this approach. By analyzing every interaction in real time, it uncovers friction points, highlights coaching opportunities, and pinpoints exactly why escalations are happening. As a result, you gain a connected view of customer feedback across surveys, support channels, and call transcripts, allowing you to act on rich insights.

Schedule a demo today to see how you can reduce escalations and transform your contact center into a revenue driver!

Contact center quality assurance (QA) has become a critical driver of customer satisfaction. As expectations for personalized, efficient, and empathetic service continue to rise, businesses must ensure that every agent interaction meets a high standard. A well-executed QA program empowers teams to maintain consistency, uncover coaching opportunities, and build long-term trust with customers.

What is quality assurance in a contact center?

Quality assurance in a contact center is the structured process of monitoring, evaluating, and improving customer interactions to ensure agents consistently meet company standards. QA programs typically assess calls, chats, and emails against criteria such as communication clarity, adherence to protocols, professionalism, and issue resolution effectiveness. The goal is to foster consistent, high-quality support that reflects the brand and enhances the customer experience.

What are important call center QA metrics?

Several key QA metrics help contact centers evaluate agent performance and service quality:

• Call Quality Score: A composite score that assesses adherence to internal standards, such as tone, compliance, and problem resolution.
• Script Adherence: Measures whether agents follow the prescribed language and flow, especially in regulated industries.
• Compliance Rate: Evaluates how well agents meet legal or procedural requirements during interactions.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Based on post-interaction surveys, this metric reflects how customers feel about their experience.
• First Contact Resolution (FCR): Tracks whether the customer’s issue was resolved in the first interaction, reducing repeat calls and frustration.

These metrics give QA managers a clear view of what’s working and where to focus improvement efforts.

How can contact center QA improve customer satisfaction?

A robust QA program doesn’t just monitor performance—it actively enhances the customer experience. Here’s how:

Ensures consistent service across agents

QA establishes clear benchmarks for tone, professionalism, and solution accuracy. By holding all agents to the same standards, businesses ensure customers receive reliable service—regardless of who picks up the phone.

Identifies and corrects performance gaps

By regularly reviewing interactions and scoring them against standardized criteria, QA reveals areas where agents need coaching. These insights help contact centers implement targeted training that leads to faster, more accurate resolutions.

Reinforces empathy and active listening

QA reviews often highlight the importance of soft skills. Coaching agents on empathy, tone, and active listening creates more human-centered interactions that increase trust and loyalty.

Drives First Contact Resolution (FCR)

QA processes surface common causes of inefficiencies and missed resolutions. Addressing these patterns enables teams to reduce escalations, shorten handle time, and improve FCR—all key to customer satisfaction.

What skills are needed for call center quality assurance?

QA professionals play a vital role in maintaining service standards. The most effective QA analysts bring:

• Attention to Detail: Essential for accurately reviewing complex interactions.
• Analytical Thinking: Helps identify patterns and root causes of performance issues.
• Clear Communication: Needed to provide actionable, supportive feedback.
• Knowledge of Brand Standards: Ensures agents represent the company accurately.
• Coaching Mindset: Helps turn evaluations into growth opportunities for agents.

Contact center QA best practices

Implementing QA effectively requires more than monitoring. These best practices help ensure success:

1. Establish clear and measurable QA standards and metrics

Define specific criteria tied to business goals—like tone, issue resolution, and compliance—so every evaluation is consistent and impactful.

2. Evaluate a representative sample of interactions

Randomly reviewing a wide range of calls and chats paints a more accurate picture of performance. Modern QA programs leverage conversational intelligence to analyze 100% of interactions, uncovering trends and ensuring fairness. With full coverage, agents are less likely to feel singled out by isolated negative reviews.

3. Leverage conversational intelligence for scalable QA

Conversational intelligence is the practice of using AI to analyze large volumes of customer conversations. These tools enable automated QA reviews, identifying key phrases, emotional tone, and outcome success. The result? Scalable insights without sacrificing depth.

4. Deliver feedback that’s timely and actionable

Feedback has the most impact when it’s prompt and specific. Use QA results to deliver targeted coaching shortly after an interaction, while the context is fresh and the agent can apply changes right away.

5. Involve agents in the QA process

Transparency builds trust. Invite agents to review their scores, ask questions, and reflect on their own performance. This collaborative approach leads to stronger engagement and faster growth.

6. Calibrate QA scores for consistency

Human reviewers must regularly align their scoring criteria to ensure fairness. However, conversational intelligence-based scoring ensures consistency across all evaluations and only requires periodic audits to maintain accuracy.

7. Connect QA metrics to business outcomes

Tie QA insights directly to KPIs like CSAT, FCR, and retention. When leadership sees a clear link between QA performance and business success, QA becomes a strategic asset.

8. Use QA trends to inform coaching and training

Don’t just evaluate—act. Use recurring QA patterns to tailor team-wide training and personalize coaching plans. This helps improve weak spots before they impact more customer experiences.

Elevate your contact center processes with InMoment

When done right, contact center QA drives more than internal efficiency. It transforms every customer conversation into an opportunity to build trust, deliver value, and deepen relationships. From setting standards to leveraging AI-powered conversation analysis, effective QA is key to sustainable growth.

InMoment’s conversational intelligence tools help enterprise brands evaluate interactions at scale, reduce costs, and improve agent performance. Combined with survey insights and reputation management tools, they form a powerful, integrated CX platform that reveals the full picture of customer experience.

Ready to take your QA strategy to the next level? See how InMoment can help.

Customer surveys are a mainstay in most consumer-facing industries for good reason. They provide powerful insights into customer sentiment, buying behavior, and much more, all for a relatively small investment.

One frequent topic of debate among multi-location businesses is how to set up a customer survey program. Should you use one survey across the entire business, or should you customize surveys to each location? And if you choose to customize, how much is too much?

Do Customer Surveys Need To Be Tailored to Location?

The short version is yes, customer surveys should be tailored to location. This is true for most multi-location businesses and certainly all businesses with consumer-facing units, like restaurant and retail chains. 

Why? The biggest reason is because users’ experiences with your brand aren’t universal; they’re tailored to whichever location or locations the user interacted with. Whether you get a glowing review or a scathing one, most of the time those emotions aren’t directed at your brand in general as much as at the physical location where the customer had the experience. 

By tailoring customer surveys to individual locations, large brands can more easily zoom into challenges at the location level.

Why Customer Surveys Should Be Location-Specific

We’ve already gone on the record here: We believe customer surveys should nearly always be location-specific. Let’s drill deeper into the reasons why.

Regional Preferences and Market Differences

First, customer expectations, purchasing behaviors, and service preferences vary by region. 

There are countless examples of this, but let’s go with regional consumer trends. “Winter clothes” means one thing in Miami, Florida, and something entirely different in New England. The term may even have different connotations in Denver than in Seattle. 

In this scenario, lumping all survey data from different regions and demographics into one giant vat of data obscures what’s really happening. 

When a business doesn’t break up survey results by region, the data may suggest a product has mediocre performance when the reality is it’s massively popular in one region but less so elsewhere. 

Improved Personalization 

Location-specific surveys also allow businesses to customize and personalize at the location level. A brand may want to adjust its offerings, promotions, and messaging to align with regional customer needs or regional sales realities (such as an item that’s only available to U.S. customers or only those on the East Coast).  

National businesses also frequently test new offerings in one or two distinct markets before rolling out nationally. Producing localized surveys allows brands to capture specific feedback on that new item or service without confusing customers who’ve never seen or heard of it.

By producing a more personalized survey, brands can enhance customer engagement and improve customer satisfaction with the survey itself. They can also follow up on localized results by making changes their target audience wants to see.

Actionable Insights and Targeted Improvements

Geographically segmented feedback is a key source of data, too. It enables more informed decision-making based on valuable insights found in region-specific information. 

With this level of granularity, businesses can make strategic choices about how to refine the products, services, and experiences they offer based on the unique needs of different markets. For example, gauging regional performance of a buzzy or viral item can help businesses predict when and where that virality might spread.

Executive leaders, regional managers, and store managers can also benefit in unique ways from location-based survey reporting: With data broken down this way, leaders can quickly see and understand the data that’s most relevant to them.

Enhanced Performance Measurement

Analyzing survey data by location also gives businesses more granular insight into performance at multiple levels, from brand-wide to regional and all the way down to the individual store level. 

This level of analysis gives businesses deeper insight and greater flexibility, enabling them to compare customer satisfaction (CSAT) levels across different regions and customer base segments and identify areas for improvement.

Local Regulations and Compliance

Businesses engaging in different types of surveys in multiple regions have one more reason to customize their customer surveys, and it’s a big one: regulatory compliance. 

Surveys (especially digital surveys) selling to customers in some regions must comply with digital data privacy laws that may limit what kinds of information they can collect. For example, if you sell to customers in California or the European Union, you’re obligated to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

An otherwise effective survey question might be a regulatory violation in those jurisdictions.

Best Practices for Creating Location-Specific Surveys

We hope by this point you’re convinced that location-specific surveys are the right approach for your business. But for most brands, execution may be a challenge. 

Follow these best practices to get the most possible out of your location-specific surveys. 

Analyze and Identify Regional Cohorts

Proper survey methodology requires asking similar questions across all surveys so that you’re confident your metrics are all equivalent or comparable. Asking completely different sets of questions in different regions won’t allow you to (correctly) use all that data in a comparative way. 

So step one in creating effective location-specific surveys is something called cohort analysis: identifying and then grouping audience members that share a specific trait (in this case, region or location).

Once you’ve made this identification, you can start identifying regional differences in responses that can inform what kinds of adjustments you make to questions.

Adapt Survey Content for Each Cohort

It’s essential to keep questions similar, but regional differences do exist. Often you do need to adjust survey questions to fit specific regional cohorts.

This is a balancing act: you want to keep your survey as stable as possible so that you’re still comparing apples to apples, even when wording changes. But sometimes the wording must change if you want to capture regionally accurate responses.

To ensure relevance, accuracy, and positive customer experiences, consider each of these areas.

• Language & cultural sensitivity: Questions (especially when translated) need to reflect local dialects and cultural norms to avoid misinterpretation and offense.
• Regional preferences & trends: Questions may need to be adjusted to fit the most popular or relevant products or services in an area. 
• Regulatory considerations: Questions must comply with local laws and data protection requirements, even if that means weakening some questions or omitting others entirely.
• Product/service availability: Questions need to make sense based on the services, pricing, or customer experiences available in a region or at a location.

Active listening is another way to navigate adapting survey content. InMoment’s new AI-powered Active Listening Agents enable surveys to start with the same question but then (for open-text questions) dynamically prompt respondents for more contextual feedback based on the initial response. This is a powerful way to glean detail-rich insights while keeping the top-level methodology and structure of your survey intact.

One more tip: To avoid skewed response rates, keep the survey delivery method the same across all locations.

Keep Core Metrics Consistent While Adapting Certain Questions

Even though the wording and content of your survey questions changes in different locations, the core data you’re collecting should stay as consistent as possible. 

Keeping a consistent set of key performance indicators (KPIs) across all locations helps you understand performance across the organization. You just might have to use different approaches to get that information, based on regional differences in customer expectations and behaviors.

Leverage AI and Automation To Streamline Survey Customization

AI-driven survey tools can help brands scale their customer survey processes in powerful ways. For example, some tools can automatically translate customer surveys into one or more additional languages. Some tools can even personalize questions based on regional data and optimize survey distribution for different geographic audiences.

InMoment is a powerful solution for customer feedback, market research, conversational surveys that allow for open-ended question types, and much more. Our fully Integrated CX platform helps you understand audiences, gauge customer experience, and understand sentiment in conversational text.

Schedule a demo

Test Localized Versions Before Full-Scale Implementation

AI and automation are key tactics for scaling your customer survey customization. But no matter how human or how cyborg your customizations are, you still need QA, and it’s still a good idea to test them on a small scale before launching widely.

Pilot testing your brand’s localized surveys can help you identify potentially embarrassing, damaging, or just plain confusing issues related to wording, cultural relevance, or semantic clarity. This approach gives you the chance to solve these problems before they roll out to thousands or millions of inboxes.

Analyze Location-Based Survey Data To Refine Strategies Over Time

It will take time and iteration to perfect your customer feedback surveys, and it’s okay if your first crack at survey design isn’t perfect. You’ll still benefit by using the survey responses you’ve collected to keep refining your approach to numerous aspects of your business. For example, you can use survey results to adjust your marketing strategies and how you approach customer support and customer experience. 

You can even use the customer data you’ve collected to identify weak or unclear points in your customer satisfaction surveys, which you can keep refining over time.

Deliver Personalized Surveys and Uncover Meaningful Customer Insights With InMoment

Personalized, location-specific surveys can reveal granular insights that are both powerful and actionable. But it can be a significant technical and logistical challenge to execute the shift from uniform, undifferentiated questionnaires to truly customized location-based surveys.

InMoment is a different kind of survey software, a fully Integrated CX approach that helps brands ask the right questions of the right types of customers. With InMoment, brands can collect and connect feedback across the entire customer journey, then use Conversational Intelligence to understand and extract insights from that feedback.

See what InMoment can do for your brand: Schedule a demo

In any call center or contact center, performance is the engine that powers the entire operation. High-performing call centers do a great job at keeping customers satisfied, and they’re highly efficient, reducing operational costs.

But high performance doesn’t happen by chance. Analyzing call center performance is the path to improvement—but you’ve got to do it right.

Performance tracking is a powerful tool that helps you improve both ends of the call. Your agents become more productive by learning what’s going well and where they could improve, and your customers enjoy a better, more satisfactory experience.

Why Analyzing Call Center Performance Is Important 

Not yet convinced that analyzing call center performance is worth the effort? Here are a few advantages you can gain by taking a closer look under the hood.

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Performance analysis helps you identify what’s working in your contact center and what isn’t. When you find the pain points in customer interactions, you know where to focus on your quest to deliver better service, faster resolutions, and improved customer experiences. Improving customer satisfaction is the secret sauce behind a successful business: call center performance can have a massive impact on how customers feel about your brand.

Enhancing Agent Productivity 

Call center analytics give you a clearer picture of how well your agents are performing in terms of productivity and customer satisfaction. You can use this information to refine things like training programs and workload distribution. As you identify processes and tactics from high-performing agents, you can implement those in team workflows and onboarding materials.

Once you know how well your agents are performing, you can double down on the good and problem-solve the rest. The result is better training, a more evenly distributed workload, and efficiency gains everywhere you look.

Reducing Operational Costs

Higher customer satisfaction and better agent productivity both lead to fewer and shorter calls: Happy customers don’t call in with problems as frequently and productive agents can process more calls per shift—so you trim operational costs without lifting a finger!

Call performance data can also reveal inefficiencies in call management, wait times, and workflows to further help you balance available resources (agents) with demand.

Data-Informed Decision-Making

When you work with real data, you can do more than just put out fires—you can make smarter decisions before problems even start. Performance analytics give you a clear picture of the state of operations, including where you need to adjust to keep your call center running at its best.

Data-driven decision-making helps you fine-tune agent workflows and adjust staffing levels based on actual customer needs instead of just gut feelings. For example, if you’re struggling with long wait times, then you either need your agents to process calls more quickly or you need more agents. 

But which is it? Data can show you in real terms how well your agents are doing in terms of call length and first-call resolution (especially compared to historical data), giving you the insight you need to know where to start.

The result? A call center that stays one step ahead, ready to adjust to evolving trends without missing a beat.

What Tool Is Best for Analyzing Call Performance?

There is a wide range of tools and approaches out there for analyzing call performance, but how do you decide which approach is the best?

We believe the answer is obvious: You can’t truly analyze call performance unless you can analyze the content of those calls. That requires conversational intelligence software. 

Conversational intelligence software reads and interprets text-based conversational interactions using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). The goal is to better understand the conversation’s intent, participants’ sentiments, and much more. When we say “text-based,” we’re talking about audio calls in your contact center, which are automatically transcribed and processed as text (how cool is that?!).

With conversational intelligence, you can harness the power of speech analytics to group call data by feature, outcome, customer sentiment, and more. You can use this data to measure customer interactions at scale, unlocking actionable insights from call data that go far beyond mere call performance.

How Do You Analyze Call Center Performance? 7 Key Steps

Gaining a clear picture of your call center’s performance is essential in today’s customer-first environment. But you don’t get valuable insights from guessing. You need the right approach to turn data into action.

Use these seven steps to analyze call center performance the right way so you can take performance (and results) to a new level. 

1. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The first step is defining key performance indicators (KPIs). Specifically, which KPIs are the right targets for your call center and what it’s trying to achieve.

This is key because to learn the right information, businesses have to measure the right metrics. Just because you can measure it doesn’t mean it’s the right metric for what you need to learn.

For example, some call centers may be focused on a certain performance metric like speed or efficiency, while others might be prioritizing positive customer service outcomes in response to a string of unpleasant online reviews. The first center may closely monitor handle time, while the second may focus on customer satisfaction scores instead.

And of course your call center may prioritize something completely different. So start by defining exactly what it is you need to target, then identify the KPIs that correspond to the aspect of performance you want to improve.

Common KPIs for call centers may include:

• Average handle time: Average duration of call handling, working a case from first contact to resolution or conclusion
• First call resolution: Percentage of calls solved at the first point of contact
• Customer satisfaction scores: Measurement of customer sentiment after an interaction with the call center
• Total call volume: The number of calls an agent or team completes during a defined time period.

2. Use a Conversational Intelligence Tool

Some KPIs, like average handle time and first call resolution, are easy to measure with numbers alone. But numbers aren’t enough to paint a full picture. High first-call resolution scores are great, but not if the resolution left most customers angry.

Conversational intelligence tools are a smart way to engage in sentiment analysis to understand customer attitudes without manually reading and categorizing thousands of entries. Results simply feed to your call center dashboard, letting you quickly visualize them and form a plan for improvement. 

3. Gather Data

Once you know which metrics to track, the next step is collecting the right data. This includes both structured data (like call volume, average handle time, and first call resolution rates) and unstructured data from customer feedback and conversation transcripts.

Structured data is straightforward, feeding directly into databases and dashboards in real-time. The real challenge is capturing that unstructured data, which requires tools like conversational intelligence software to process insights from customer interactions.

This data could include:

• Customer call recordings (or transcriptions of those recordings)
• Customer feedback (surveys)
• Written customer interactions (email, chat, helpdesk)

4. Analyze Data

Interpreting call center metrics starts with identifying patterns: what issues surface the most frequently? Are certain customer issues leading to negative customer sentiment? Do some call center agents consistently lag behind average response times, and does the qualitative call center data suggest how that can be addressed?

Essentially, you’re looking for trends to show you what’s working well, where processes break down, and what adjustments you can make to improve both customer satisfaction and call center productivity.

5. Implement a QA Scoring Rubric 

As you dig deeper into the data you’ve collected, it’s a good idea to implement a quality assurance (QA) scoring rubric for even more insights. But how do you do that?

Partnering with a conversational intelligence provider like InMoment allows contact centers to automatically QA 100% of calls rather than the typical 5% most businesses settle for. InMoment rolls performance metrics into a customized QA scoring rubric that aligns with your company’s specific service standards and operational goals, helping you track the individual call center agents’ performance over time.

Our QA Scoring Rubric includes specific QA categories. Our out-of-the-box methodology focuses on:

• Connection to the customer
• Asking probing questions
• Reducing customer effort

Each of these categories has an associated score, which is customized based on relative importance to your business. From there, you can slice and dice the data however you want: individual agents, entire teams, or segments like team level, region, business unit, and more. 

6. Identify Areas for Improvement

Performance data can reveal inefficiencies, agent training gaps, or consistent customer frustrations that need attention. If agents repeatedly struggle with certain issues, it’s a sign they need better training or clearer guidance. If the same customer complaints keep coming up, there may be a bigger problem with your product or service that needs fixing.

The goal is to make interactions easier for both customers and agents. By tackling these pain points, you can make customers happier, reduce call volumes, and cut down on operational costs.

7. Implement Changes and Monitor Results

Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, it’s time to take action. Some fixes will be quick and obvious, but others may require testing different solutions to see what works best.

For example, you might identify a gap in your agent training. Do you send an email? Create a course or module? Post to your knowledge base? 

Treat every change as an opportunity to learn. Roll out updates, track their impact, and keep an eye on performance data to see if they’re moving the needle. If something doesn’t deliver the results you expected, adjust and try again. 

Think of call center performance as an ongoing process of adapting strategies to help both customers and agents have the best possible experience.

Key Call Center Metrics To Measure

As you set up your call center analytics, keep an eye on these mission-critical metrics:

Customer Experience Metrics

First up are the metrics about customer behavior and how they feel after interacting with your call center. These include:

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• First Call Resolution (FCR)
• Customer Effort Score

Each of these metrics measures the quality of customer interactions, putting qualitative and emotional data into measurable formats.

Agent Performance Metrics

Next are the metrics that show how well your agents are doing. These include:

• Average Handle Time (AHT)
• Call Resolution Rate
• Adherence to Schedule
• Call Duration

You can measure these at both the individual and team levels, either for individual coaching or general improvement purposes.

With InMoment, you can connect agent performance metrics to service standards and QA Scoring. We can also identify the topic, tone, and overall success of a call on a hyper-granular level:

In our default configuration, the portion in the box in the above graphic is what rolls up into the agent’s QA Score.

Operational Efficiency Metrics

Last, consider the metrics that show how efficiently your call center is operating, including:

• Call Abandonment Rate
• Service Level
• Cost Per Call

These metrics likely won’t tell much of a story on day one, and they won’t immediately reveal root causes. But monitoring trends over time can give you and your call center managers clarity about which direction the ship is headed. 

Unlock Call Performance Insights and Improve CX with InMoment

Analyzing call performance is the key to improving CX and operational performance simultaneously, but doing effective analysis work requires the right tools and systems.

InMoment is the AI-driven Experience Improvement platform that turns all of your unstructured CX data into valuable, actionable insights. Our Conversational Intelligence tools can interpret, summarize, and extract data from every source of conversational data, unlocking a level of insight that didn’t seem possible before.

And InMoment doesn’t stop there: Our platform is a fully Integrated CX Intelligence platform built for the enterprise, with a suite of tools and capabilities designed to help you thrive.

Explore how InMoment can unlock call performance insights and help you improve CX with conversation analytics software: Learn More Now

Local listing management is crucial for any business that relies on local foot traffic. That makes it an essential function for supermarkets and grocery stores, whose revenue is almost entirely local.

But keeping listings accurate and up to date across every possible service, directory, and platform isn’t easy to do. For supermarkets with numerous locations, the job becomes nearly impossible without the right local listing management software.

What Is Local Listing Management Software?

Local listing management software is a tool that helps businesses manage their online information (name, address, phone number, and other key details) across multiple directories and platforms. 

It’s an ideal solution for keeping listings consistent and accurate across all the online channels where customers may search for a local physical store. These tools are especially useful for multi-location businesses that need to maintain and update separate pages for each location.

Local Listing Management for Supermarkets vs. Other Businesses

Supermarkets and grocery stores can benefit greatly from local listing management software, as this industry deals with some unique complexities and challenges like:

• Frequent updates to business information: Hours of operation may change with some frequency (holidays, inclement weather), and consumers want confidence the supermarket will be open before they make the trip.
• Real-time inventory and product listings: Supermarkets have massive inventories with thousands of SKUs (the 2023 average was 31,704 unique items). Keeping this information up to date is a huge task.
• Promotions and deals integration: Showcasing deals and promotions in local listings can be a big boost to foot traffic, but watch out for a backlash if these fall out of date.

Why Supermarket Businesses Should Use Local Listing Management Software

Despite the complexities of managing local listings in the grocery industry, supermarkets stand to benefit significantly from using local listing management software. The key is to choose a software platform that understands and effectively solves these industry challenges.

Here are some ways supermarkets benefit from local listing management software:  

Boosting Visibility in Local Search Results

First up, local listing management software is the most efficient way to improve a physical store’s visibility in local search. 

Local business listings are a significant part of optimizing for local search, also called local SEO. The more accurate and consistent these listings are, the better they look to the search engines, which tends to improve rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

This is especially important for supermarkets. In the broader retail industry, some stores and brands rely on local traffic more than others. But for supermarkets, local traffic is pretty much the only traffic! Boosting visibility in local search (including Google and Apple Maps) enables customers searching in a specific geographic area to find your store.

Managing Multiple Locations Efficiently

For supermarket businesses with multiple locations, the challenges of manually managing local listings grow exponentially. Every single change must be made to each listing for every physical location. 

A local business listing management solution streamlines all of this, allowing you to batch update similar information across multiple stores. This is a great way to save time and reduce errors when updating any information that’s similar for all locations.

Enhancing Customer Trust

If a customer (or prospective customer) is taking the time to look up your local listing, it’s because they want to know something before heading to your store. If the information they’re seeking is presented consistently and accurately, you’ll build confidence, trust, and loyalty. 

That’s the positive news, but we need to look at the negative too, because plenty can go wrong here. If that potential customer lands on a listing that’s talking about a holiday from six months ago or features a phone number or URL that doesn’t work, it doesn’t inspire confidence. 

Worse, if they see incorrect information and take action based on it, the negative experience (e.g., driving across town only to find the supermarket doors locked) can damage your brand’s reputation and even sever a customer relationship.

In other words, your local listings can either build or destroy trust—local listing management software helps you tilt the scale toward building trust.

Increasing Foot Traffic and Driving Sales

Improving local listings means better search visibility and stronger customer trust, and both of these support the ultimate goal of getting more people into your stores and selling more products to them. After all, locals can’t become customers if they don’t know you exist.

Best Local Listing Management Services for Supermarkets and Grocery Stores

There are dozens of listing management services available, but not every option out there is a good fit for supermarkets and grocery stores. The seven reviewed below are top contenders in the grocery niche.

1. InMoment

InMoment is a full-service integrated customer experience (CX) platform designed for the needs of multi-location businesses, including supermarkets of all sizes—all the way up to enterprise scale. InMoment’s Integrated CX suite has everything you need, including listings management, competitor analysis, reputation management, and more.

With InMoment, supermarkets can keep business listings full of accurate information and stay consistent across the entire web. The platform also provides the best of both worlds in terms of automation vs. control. Updates can push automatically to any and all listings, or brands can keep granular control, fine-tuning listing updates at the directory level. 

Rich ROI-focused data insights, keyword tracking, and powerful connections to other InMoment tools round out this powerful platform that drives results.

Learn more about InMoment’s local listing management capabilities.

Key Features 

• Unique map ranking view: See where you rank against the competition on the map.
• Auto-fix information: Identify out-of-sync information and automatically fix those inconsistencies.
• Robust ROI-centric analytics: Learn from your Google listings and Google Maps performance with metrics that stay focused on what matters most: ROI.
• Keyword rank tracking: Identify how you’re ranking vs. the competition on specified keywords, then track progress over time.
• Real-time automatic push changes: Change business hours, add photos, and more, then automatically push those changes to all relevant listings.
• Granular directory-level control: Gain full control at the directory level, auto-publishing information as unique as you need it to be for each directory.

2. Yext

Yext focuses on automated listing management, and its thorough citation network helps supermarkets build search authority. With Yext, businesses pay per listing service, enabling an a la carte approach where a business can choose to focus on Google Business, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, or a hundred other services—whichever best supports their goals.

Yext is big on AI, with AI insights, an AI-powered Listings Recommendations tool, and AI-search compatibility (meaning generative results on Google and elsewhere can find and pull from your local listings).

Key Features 

• AI-search: Google Gemini and other AI search tools can read and understand Yext-made listings.
• Full automation: Listing management is 100% automated, saving time but limiting your ability to manually intervene.
• Listings Recommendations: AI-powered suggestions based on current performance.
• Data cleansing/duplicate prevention: Avoid headaches associated with duplicate listings and old data hanging around.

3. Moz Local

Moz is one of the longest-standing and biggest names in SEO strategy, and Moz Local is the company’s set of local SEO tools, which includes listing management.

Moz Local centralizes listing management, allowing supermarkets to update business information once and then push that update to more than 70 listing destinations (including online directories, search engines, social media platforms, and more). Like Yext, Moz Local includes tools for identifying and removing duplicate listings, and it will help you refine existing listings so they perform better.

Moz Local works in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., making it an ideal choice for businesses with a presence in multiple countries. Like InMoment, Moz Local enables supermarkets to monitor and interact with reviews and publish Google Posts updates—but only at the higher price tiers.

Key Features 

• Familiar Moz interface: Businesses already using Moz can quickly adapt to Moz Local.
• Search Visibility Score: Moz Local continually monitors search visibility and updates businesses with an easy-to-read score.
• Data-rich reporting and insights: Moz Local’s robust insights outperform many others.

4. Whitespark

Whitespark is a little different from the listing management tools reviewed thus far. It’s a local search service with a big focus on local citations, which are separate instances of name, address, and phone number (collectively known as NAP) across the web. It also allows businesses to manage Google Business Profiles centrally, and you’ll find other tools like review collection and management and local rank tracking.

But what sets Whitespark apart is that it isn’t automated in the way Yext and Moz Local are. Working with Whitespark means working with (and, yes, waiting on) a real team of humans who intelligently refine your listings and help you improve. 

You also own your listings, which means they don’t disappear when you cancel your subscription. So Whitespark is a good choice for businesses that want a more hands-on approach.

Key Features 

• Local Citation Finder: Build a better network of local citations.
• Local Platform: It’s a powerful way to manage Google Business Profiles, including rejecting unwanted automatic updates.
• Listings service: Enjoy a hands-on, nearly bespoke refresh of your business listings.

5. Brightlocal

Brightlocal is a popular and affordable solution for listing management built around three primary tools: Citation Builder, Active Sync, and GBP Post Scheduler.

Like Whitespark, Brightlocal uses a one-time payment structure for building citations and gives businesses ownership of their listings. The other tools (Active Sync and the post scheduler) do carry a monthly cost, but many businesses find BrightLocal to be the most affordable option for the services it provides.

You’ll have to sacrifice some features for cost savings though, as analytics, listing recommendations, and AI capabilities aren’t available here.

Key Features 

• Citation Builder: Build and manage a network of local citations and remove inaccurate information.
• Active Sync: Centralize business listing management and sync changes across multiple sites and services. 
• GBP Post Scheduler: Create, schedule, and post Google Posts to one or more Google Business Profiles simultaneously.

6. Uberall

Uberall is another AI-powered and mostly automated solution, but this platform is designed specifically for multi-location businesses (like restaurant franchises and national brands). The tools may feel geared toward restaurants and banks more than supermarkets, but if you’re a leader at a supermarket chain of any size, then Uberall may be worth a closer look.

The platform helps protect against suggested edits in Google Business Profiles, runs duplication checks, delivers performance insights, and offers suggestions for improving listings—all geared toward businesses with multiple locations. Bulk changes to listings can be extremely helpful, though some businesses may chafe at the lack of customization or flexibility.

Key Features 

• Automated review response: Create prebuilt answers and let Uberall handle the rest.
• Voice assistant integration: Uberall connects to Alexa and others, giving brands greater exposure to audiences using these devices and services.
• Bulk GBP management: Make adjustments to multiple local listings simultaneously.

7. Birdeye

Birdeye is much more than just local listing management software. Its primary features revolve around social media management and online reputation management (both powered by AI). Local listing management is a complementary tool, but it works well. 

Birdeye takes a heavily automated approach to creating and maintaining listings on all major platforms and in many industry-specific directories. Other notable capabilities include image uploads, appointment request links, and a deep scan tool that puts your listings up against relevant benchmarks in your industry. 

Key Features 

• Automated listings management: Create listings at scale with generative AI.
• Reputation management: Automatically respond to reviews across multiple platforms.
• Social media management: Create and schedule social media posts from a central interface.

Manage Your Local Businesses and Drive Revenue With InMoment

Supermarkets face unique barriers when it comes to managing their local listings, so they need a uniquely powerful solution that equips them to solve those challenges, thrive, and scale. 

InMoment combines powerful listings automation, granular control, stellar visibility, ROI-focused analytics, and much more into a feature-packed solution. And for brands that need additional reputation management capabilities and a fully integrated CX, InMoment delivers it all through one comprehensive, intuitive platform.

It’s time to see what InMoment can do for your supermarket brand: Schedule your free demo now.

For enterprise grocery businesses with hundreds or even thousands of individual stores, local SEO is tricky business.

Maintaining an effective online presence is crucial for increasing foot traffic and online visibility. But manually keeping every listing on every site and service up to date is challenging with a single store. Scaled up to hundreds or thousands, it starts to seem impossible!

Plus, due to several unique characteristics of the industry, grocers must contend with extra logistical challenges in their local SEO compared to other businesses.

Local SEO for Grocery Stores vs. Other Types of Businesses

Local SEO is strategically important for any business that relies on local foot traffic, grocery stores and supermarkets included. Yet, in the grocery industry, local SEO is even more important—and simultaneously more complex to get right. Here’s why:

• Hyperlocal focus: Supermarkets generally pull from a smaller geographic footprint, requiring a focus on neighborhoods, villages, townships, shopping districts, street names, and so on—not just on big city names.
• Real-time updates for inventory and promotions: Sales change weekly, and inventory changes constantly. Keeping digital materials consistent and up to date is a challenge.
• Importance of reviews for freshness and quality: Potential customers are especially concerned about freshness and quality, so grocery stores need reviews that mention these elements positively, not just generically good reviews.
• Visual content optimization: The age-old truism, “We eat with our eyes,” affects how grocers approach print and digital marketing. No matter where viewers are finding information about a store, the visuals must be appealing and on target.

The Top Local SEO Challenges for Grocery Store Businesses

As supermarkets and grocery stores (from enterprises down to local multi-store businesses) seek to implement effective local SEO strategies, these are the 12 most pressing challenges they face.

1. Optimizing Both Your Overall SEO and Local SEO Strategy

Overall search engine optimization (SEO) works differently than local SEO, and it can be tricky to balance the two or, better yet, to build them into a cohesive SEO strategy that supports both well.

Especially for enterprise grocery businesses, overall SEO focuses on brand-wide goals, such as brand awareness, prestige, and dominance in specific search categories. Local SEO involves a different set of priorities centered around helping prospective local customers find specific locations based on both branded and unbranded search queries.

Both are important, and it’s tough to strike the right balance.

2. Multi-Location Management

Another challenge is managing SEO effectively for multiple locations. Each store needs its own optimized online presence and local business listings. 

A Google Business Profile (formerly called Google My Business) is especially essential, as it allows stores to collect Google Reviews and communicate information to searchers, like the business name, address, phone number, and hours.

Numerous other services and directories have similar functions, and they all need to be kept current—for every location.

3. Optimizing Google Business Profiles

Speaking of Google Business Profiles (GBPs), they need to be optimized for each store. These listings provide information in Google Maps and location-oriented Google searches, popping up as a sidebar or card, depending on the service and device people use. 

Optimized profiles are a key way to increase location visibility and store traffic. Brands can control most of the content that appears in their GBPs, but keeping everything accurate, visually pleasing, and search-optimized is difficult at scale.

4. Review and Reputation Management Across Various Platforms

Reviews are another tool that consumers use to decide where to shop. The trouble for brands is that these reviews pop up everywhere, and no matter how well-run the business is, not every review is positive.

Monitoring reviews across numerous platforms and sites, for dozens or even hundreds of unique stores, is daunting and difficult to scale while maintaining brand consistency. The same goes for responding to reviews and other reputation management activities.

5. Ensuring Consistency in Business Listings Across Online Directories

Local citations are one factor that helps determine placement in local search engine results pages (local SERPs). Search engines identify as many mentions as they can find of a local business across website content, review sites, directory services, mapping services, and more. They’re looking for consistency in certain elements, like name, hours, address, and phone number.

To rank higher, a location needs lots of local citations that are extremely consistent. When a search engine doesn’t find enough citations or finds too many discrepancies, SERP suffers. So consistency in business listings across directories and destinations is crucial.

6. Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is vital just about everywhere. Around 65% of internet traffic comes from a mobile device, leaving roughly 35% for full-sized browser windows on laptops and desktops.

The mobile split is certainly higher in the grocery space, where an everyday use case for most consumers is pulling out their phone, opening their preferred navigational app, and searching for what they need.

So, to rank well and provide a good experience for searchers who land on your properties (websites and listings), grocery brands must prioritize responsive design and mobile optimization.

7. Managing Seasonal Campaigns and Promotions

Seasonal sales and promotions are a huge driver for grocery stores—but they can be a logistical nightmare for brands that need to ensure these campaigns are: 

• Accurate at stores of varying sizes and differing inventories 
• Optimized for local search across hundreds of locations
• Kept up to date on any third-party services that list promotional information

Missing the mark in any of these areas means missed traffic and revenue opportunities during key shopping periods.

8. Proving ROI for Local SEO Efforts

It’s just good common sense that improving an individual store’s search visibility in maps and elsewhere will improve foot traffic to that store. But proving exactly how much of a difference it makes is nearly impossible. 

The change happens over time, not instantly, and there are always concurring factors—maybe there was a good sale or big event or snowstorm that coincided with the changes. Without clear insights, it’s hard to prioritize what’s actually driving results (and hard to allocate budget accordingly).

9. Competing with Local Independents

Competing with local independents is a unique challenge for enterprise grocers. Independent grocery stores often dominate search results in their local communities thanks to proximity, preferences, and a loyal customer base. Competing in search against these hyper-local small businesses takes a well-tuned, location-specific SEO strategy.

10. Managing Location-Specific Social Media

Social media may not be a direct ranking factor, but it does a lot in terms of visibility and can create a hometown feel and familiarity for individual physical locations of otherwise impersonal large brands. But keeping up with comments, tags, and location-specific content across multiple platforms adds another layer to the challenge. 

11. Staying Ahead of Algorithm Changes

The big local search algorithms are always evolving, and even a small change to what Google prefers can mean big adjustments to hundreds of profiles. Keeping them all updated and compliant with the latest requirements is a constant uphill battle.

12. Leveraging User-Generated Content

Customer reviews, photos, and questions can boost visibility, but they need to be managed well. Good photos are great, but bad user-generated content (UGC) of an icy parking lot or messy store shelf is less than helpful. 

Then there’s the issue of responding to reviews and other UGC. It’s essential to respond, especially to negative reviews, but poorly moderated or inconsistent responses can do more harm than good.

How Grocery Businesses Can Overcome Local SEO Challenges and Improve Online Visibility

The barriers to successfully executing local SEO are real, but these proven strategies can help grocery store and supermarket businesses overcome those challenges and start achieving more online visibility through local SEO. 

Unify Efforts With Local Listing Management Software

Many of the challenges grocery businesses face boil down to issues of scale. There are so many local listing services to keep track of, and it has to be done for every single location.

Local listing management software is the solution to scalability challenges. It’s also the single most impactful technology businesses can use to improve local SEO. These solutions help multi-location businesses update listings in bulk, monitor and respond to online reviews and comments, and fine-tune business listings based on the needs and priorities of each platform.

Listing management software solves both types of scalability issues, making it much easier to update all platforms and listings for an individual store and make mass updates to all stores in a group or region.

Features of Local Listing Management Software

• Local business listing management: Seamlessly manage and automate business listings on various local directories, review sites, and other online platforms, keeping business information maintained and current.
• Streamlined Google post management: Create these SEO-boosting mini-posts in a central platform, then publish them to one or many GBPs.
• Customer review monitoring and response: Receive notifications when customers post reviews on various sites so you can respond promptly. Some tools include automated or partially automated responses.
• Advanced geotargeting features: Target specific local and hyperlocal areas with SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) efforts, such as location-specific landing pages and highly targeted ads.
• Local search ranking insights: Understand how stores are ranking compared to local competitors over time.
• Reporting and analytics: Access robust information on local SEO performance and ROI to justify efforts and investments and fuel optimization.

Explore InMoment’s local listings management software

Engage With Local Audiences 

No matter how large an enterprise grocer grows, individual stores can still connect with organizations and community members in their immediate local area, building a sense of local camaraderie and even loyalty. Here are a few ideas stores and corporate teams can implement:

• Create a local store presence on social media and post local content.
• Regularly and promptly respond to reviews, using personal/first-person language where appropriate.
• Host local in-store events.
• Partner with and support local mission-driven organizations.

Enhance the Mobile Experience

A seamless mobile experience is critical because searching for grocery stores via a smartphone browser or map app is the default method for many customers. 

Practically speaking, this means prioritizing fast-loading pages, easy navigation, and mobile-friendly design. All three are essential for improving local visibility and conversion rates.

Leverage Schema Markup

Using local business schema markup on individual store pages can help search engines better understand and display essential information like store hours, locations, and services in search results. Providing this data in the right format improves the likelihood of ranking highly in local search and map searches. 

Implement Location-Specific PPC Campaigns

Paid search campaigns targeting local audiences can complement organic efforts by getting local stores in front of local eyes. This approach is especially effective when promoting new stores, seasonal events, or time-sensitive deals.

Encourage and Amplify Customer Photos

UGC can be a powerful tool, especially when you encourage it from your biggest fans. Including customer-generated photos in reviews and social media posts can boost engagement and improve local search rankings. 

Put systems in place that incentivize customers to share positive reviews (and associated photos) with stores, then showcase those photos across numerous platforms.

Utilize Hyper-Local Keywords

Unless you’re managing high-end, unique, or specialty grocery stores, customers in a typical city aren’t going to drive an hour across town (passing 20–30 competitors along the way) to visit a specific grocery store. So it pays to be specific.

Include highly specific keywords focused on neighborhoods, villages, townships, and the like—not just the name of the nearest big city. It’s the difference between “grocery stores in Cincinnati” and “grocery stores in Hyde Park / Eastgate / Westchester.” Both matter, and it’s crucial not to overlook the latter.

Using hyper-local, neighborhood-focused keywords will help your content, listings, and ads better align with the localized search intent of your target audience.

Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search (think questions to phones or smart devices, most of which begin with “Hey Siri,” “OK Google,” or “Alexa”) is becoming a dominant way customers find local businesses. For many consumers, it’s just easier to ask their living room speaker for a recommendation than it is to open up a laptop, find a browser window, open a new tab, type in a URL, and then ask the question.

Sure, these kinds of searches can’t provide visually rich map information (at least not directly), so a follow-up search in Google or Apple Maps is likely. But the first question—“Where should I go for groceries?”—is increasingly happening via voice search.

So what should grocery stores do about it? Optimize their websites and listing pages for voice search. Include easy, helpful answers to natural language queries like “near me” searches, and implement the right tools to help format and technically optimize your online content.

Integrate Geotargeted Offers

Businesses can also use geotargeting to create promotions and offers tailored to specific regions or demographics. This is a great way to drive foot traffic and improve engagement, and it also reinforces local relevance to search engines.

Regularly Audit Online Listings

Last, make sure to perform frequent audits of business listings to ensure consistent and accurate information across platforms. Keeping up with this reduces the risk of ranking penalties due to discrepancies. Many listing management tools automatically perform these audits, and some even auto-fix problems when found.

Simplify Your Local SEO Efforts and Drive Revenue With InMoment

The challenges large grocery chains face in local SEO are significant and surprisingly complex. But by following the right best practices—and implementing the right tech tools—grocery businesses can simplify, streamline, automate, and start excelling at local SEO across their entire fleet of locations.

InMoment is the perfect solution for local listing management across all locations, ideal for enterprise grocery businesses, local multi-location grocers, and everything in between. Our full suite of Integrated CX tools transforms every aspect of your CX approach, enabling your business to form better, more meaningful connections at scale.

Ready to simplify your local SEO management? See InMoment in action.

Losing customers never feels good, especially in a hyper-competitive market. You could replace them, but that’s easier said than done. In fact, it costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does to keep an existing one. But, what if you could predict and reduce customer churn to retain customers at risk of leaving you?

With the right strategies and tools, you can prevent customers from taking their business elsewhere. The key is to build trust and loyalty through positive experiences that convert potential losses into growth opportunities.

The Importance of Reducing Customer Churn

A customer-centric approach can’t succeed without addressing customer churn. High churn rates indicate dissatisfaction and missed opportunities to strengthen relationships. Here are a few reasons why reducing churn is essential for business gains:

• It increases revenue stability: Retaining customers ensures a steady revenue stream, helping you minimize acquisition costs.
• It boosts Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Loyal customers spend more over time, creating a positive impact on your bottom line.
• It encourages product improvement: When you address churn, you can identify specific pain points leading to dissatisfaction. This information guides product development to better fulfill customer needs and goals.
• It gives you a competitive advantage: Your product and business improvements will likely enhance customer satisfaction. As a result, you’ll succeed in retaining and acquiring customers to increase your market share.
• It improves your brand image: Happy customers are more likely to recommend your business, helping support brand reputation management efforts.

What Is Customer Churn?

Customer churn occurs when customers stop using your product or cancel their subscriptions. It’s an important metric to track because it highlights the number of customers leaving you. You can calculate it by dividing the number of customers you lost over a specific period by the number of active customers at the start of that period.

Types of Customer Churn

Several types of churn can affect your bottom line, including:

• Customer churn describes the decline in customer count during a specific period. It doesn’t address a drop in revenue, only focusing on the raw number of customers lost.
  
• Revenue churn represents revenue lost due to customers downgrading their plans or leaving the business altogether. Businesses with tiered pricing models typically focus on this type of churn.

• Early churn occurs when customers leave the business during their initial experience with the product or service. It highlights an issue with product onboarding and time to value since the product fails to demonstrate immediate utility to the customer.
  
• Active churn is when customers voluntarily stop using a service or product. The most straightforward example is when a customer decides to cancel their subscription. This decision could reflect dissatisfaction, finding a better alternative, or changing requirements.
  
• Passive churn is also described as involuntary churn. It occurs when customers don’t explicitly cancel their service. For example, a subscription that ends due to failure to update credit card details. This type of churn indicates issues beyond dissatisfaction, such as inadequate payment processing.

How to Reduce Customer Churn

1. Identify At-Risk Customers
2. Analyze Churn Drivers
3. Collect Regular Feedback
4. Identify Your Target Audience
5. Focus on Proactive Outreach
6. Deliver Excellent Customer Service
7. Understand Your Competition
8. Highlight Your Value
9. Invest in Customer Loyalty
10. Improve Onboarding
11. Educate Your Customers
12. Encourage Long-Term Engagement

Customer churn is a serious challenge, with U.S. businesses losing $136 billion annually due to avoidable churn. Here are 12 impactful ways to reduce churn and prevent it from impacting your revenue streams.

Identify At-Risk Customers

Knowing who is likely to leave helps you optimize your churn reduction efforts. It enables you to pinpoint specific user profiles for re-engagement. Tracking activity levels is a straightforward way to recognize at-risk customers. For example, if they haven’t renewed their subscription or completed a survey in a while, they might be losing interest in your product.

A churn prediction tool like InMoment simplifies this process by leveraging analytics to highlight these at-risk profiles and segments. It also helps you understand why churn occurs, which gives you an opportunity to take preventative action.

Analyze Churn Drivers

Churn occurs for various reasons that can highlight significant areas for improvement. Customers may leave due to product dissatisfaction, poor service quality, high pricing, or simply because a competitor offers more value. 

Leverage churn prediction tools, feedback, and usage data to analyze key factors driving customers away. For example, if customers complain about a lack of features, it signals a need for product improvements. Addressing these drivers allows you to enhance satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. 

To see what this can look like in action, read this customer story to learn how this large Telecommunications organization parted with InMoment to identify the root cause of customer churn and identified $6 million in at-risk revenue!

Collect Regular Feedback

Consistent feedback collection is essential for tracking customer expectations and behavior. Businesses that actively use customer feedback for improvements experience a 10% increase in retention rates.

Use surveys and social media monitoring to capture insights into customer experiences. Leverage analytics to understand their pain points and goals. For example, if feedback reveals confusion during onboarding, you can improve your processes to make them more intuitive.

InMoment’s XI platform enables you to collect and analyze customer insights effectively. It leverages CX integrations to connect and collect feedback from every channel, making it easier to act on. As a result, you build trust, improve retention, and reduce the likelihood of customers leaving.

Fill out the calculator below to reveal how much ROI you can get from utilizing InMoment’s platform: 

Identify Your Target Audience

You can build the best product with high-quality customer support behind it. However, it’ll struggle to keep target customers on board if it doesn’t resonate with them. Therefore, you must recognize the user profiles that can make the most of your product. These customers are less likely to be swayed by lower prices elsewhere because they see genuine value in your business.

Focus on Proactive Outreach

Proactive communication is an important part of re-engaging at-risk customers. It shows your awareness of potential issues, making customers feel valued and heard. Stay ahead of customer needs with regular check-ins and possible solutions.

The best way to recognize issues before they become churn drivers is to monitor customer sentiment online. With InMoment’s social listening tool, you can track brand and product mentions to see what customers have to say. This approach keeps you in the loop regarding customer experiences so that you can make proactive improvements.

Deliver Excellent Customer Service

Feedback collection, analysis, and social listening provide the insights you need to improve customer experiences. In fact, 77% of customers are willing to share personal information as long as they receive better experiences in return. For example, improving your e-commerce website’s user interface after listening to customers will improve your chances of retaining many of them.

Understand Your Competition

If customers are considering leaving you, guess where they might go next? Your competitors! Analyzing the major players in your space will help you stay competitive by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. It will also help you see how you can differentiate your product and service to stand out.

For example, if your competitor is receiving criticism for slow customer support, you can use the opportunity to market your 24/7 multi-channel service. Competitive analysis allows you to address market gaps and remain relevant for existing and potential customers.

Highlight Your Value

We just discussed how competitor analysis provides opportunities to establish yourself as a viable alternative. This is where you must communicate your product’s or service’s long-term value. Leverage marketing channels to highlight impactful ways in which you solve customer pain points. Your online reputation management efforts will also be crucial, as they yield positive reviews that you can use to reinforce value and reduce churn. 

Invest in Customer Loyalty

Strong customer loyalty is key to reducing churn. 64% of loyal customers are more likely to purchase frequently. Besides improving customer experiences, you can encourage loyalty with rewards and incentives. A good loyalty program goes a long way toward strengthening relationships and increasing customer lifetime value. Incentives like discounts and loyalty points encourage customers to stick with your brand over the long term.

Improve Onboarding

The onboarding process sets the tone for the customer journey with your brand. An effective product onboarding experience ensures a short time to value and reduces the chances of early churn.

For example, you can create step-by-step tutorials, welcome emails, or in-app guides tailored to new users. Proactively address common questions and offer easy access to support during onboarding to build trust. This approach sets the groundwork for long-term satisfaction by empowering customers to achieve their goals early on.

Educate Your Customers

Customers who understand how to capture value through your product are more likely to stay long-term. Educating your audience ensures they use it effectively to fulfill their needs. Leverage guides, webinars, video tutorials, and newsletters to inform customers.

Another benefit of educating your customers is brand credibility. Customers and prospects are likely to view you as a trusted authority in your space. As a result, educational initiatives promote trust and long-term loyalty.

Encourage Long-Term Engagement

Engagement is crucial to keeping customers connected to your brand. Regular interactions remind customers of the value you offer and encourage long-term loyalty. Personalized recommendations, gamification, or exclusive community access can help foster long-term relationships. This approach helps reduce churn likelihood by making customers feel invested in your brand.

How Does Improving the Overall Customer Experience Reduce Customer Churn?

The best way to hold on to a customer is to deliver consistent and positive experiences. Excellent customer experience management is key to customer satisfaction and staying ahead of competitors. Here are four key ways in which CX improvements help reduce customer churn:

• It enhances customer loyalty: Loyal customers spend more frequently and are likelier to recommend your brand to others. As a result, they are far less likely to switch to competitors.
• It flags potential pain points early: Analyzing the customer journey helps you spot and address issues that might lead to churn. Proactive communication and problem-solving play a huge role in retaining at-risk customers.
• It strengthens customer relationships: Delivering personalized interactions creates an emotional bond between customers and the brand. This connection encourages long-term relationships.
• It highlights your unique value to customers: Positive customer experiences highlight the unique benefits of your product or service. They help customers recognize your value in their daily lives, reducing their likelihood of seeking alternatives.

How to Reduce Customer Churn Using Customer Journey Analytics

Customer journey analytics helps businesses map and understand the end-to-end customer experience. It pinpoints glaring issues, tracks customer behavior, and highlights where customers might churn.

For example, if analytics reveal a pattern of early churn, you can address the issue with clearer onboarding instructions or proactive support. These insights enable you to personalize interactions and improve weak touchpoints.

You can identify at-risk customers early with customer experience journey mapping and churn prediction. InMoment combines both processes in an intuitive CX platform to enable a better understanding of user journeys. Its advanced text analytics and AI Journey Insights help identify churn drivers and hidden pain points to improve retention rates.

How to Use NPS to Reduce Customer Churn

Net promoter score (NPS) is a valuable metric for understanding customer loyalty and reducing churn. It categorizes customers as promoters, passives, and detractors to highlight the likelihood of customer retention. Promoters are loyal advocates, while detractors are disgruntled customers at risk of churning.

NPS surveys help collect feedback from both types of customers. Following up with detractors and resolving their issues on a priority basis can convert them into loyal customers. Analyzing the change in NPS over a specific period is also helpful in tracking the success of retention strategies.

How InMoment Can Help Reduce Customer Churn

Customer churn results in significant business losses that make it difficult to survive in a competitive market. While you can’t completely eliminate churn, you can reduce it to grow your revenue and market share. InMoment provides industry-recognized churn prediction software that enables early identification of churn drivers and at-risk customers. Schedule a demo of our text analytics solution today to see how it can help boost retention rates!

References 

Forbes. Customer Retention Versus Customer Acquisition (https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/12/customer-retention-versus-customer-acquisition). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Desk365. 101 Customer Service Statistics You Need to Know in 2024 (https://www.desk365.io/blog/customer-service-statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Freshworks. 50 Essential customer service statistics to know for 2024 (https://www.freshworks.com/customer-service/statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Emarsys. 32 Customer Loyalty Statistics Your Business Needs to Know in 2025 (https://emarsys.com/learn/blog/customer-loyalty-statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Your social media channels aren’t just for scrolling through your feeds. With 74% of consumers relying on social media to guide their purchasing decisions, these platforms host valuable customer experience data. Social media intelligence is a powerful tool for leveraging this data to make informed business decisions.

What is Social Media Intelligence?

Social media intelligence is the analysis of data from social media conversations to guide marketing strategy. Your brand can better connect with your audience by tracking trends in online conversations around your product and industry. 

For example, identifying negative sentiment toward your latest feature can help you spot areas for improvement. It’s also possible that your product is fine but your team is marketing it to the wrong demographic. As a result, these insights also enable effective marketing and lead generation.

Here’s a breakdown of the four key components of social media intelligence:

1. Monitoring
2. Data Collection
3. Data Analysis
4. Actionable Insights

Monitoring 

Monitoring your social media channels is the first step in identifying and analyzing audience activity. What are your target customers talking about? What are their opinions on your brand and your competitors? How do they feel about your products and services? You can answer these questions by monitoring brand mentions and keywords on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).

Data Collection 

Collecting data is necessary for generating analytical insights from social media conversations. InMoment’s comprehensive social listening tool can help pull mentions of your brand and competitor, track relevant keywords, and connect data from various channels in one place. The regular, real-time data collection ensures you have a rich dataset for the analytical phase.

Data Analysis 

Analysis is at the core of social media intelligence, enabling you to capture AI-enabled insights into customer behavior. For example, you can leverage sentiment analysis algorithms to understand public opinion around your brand. You can execute similar algorithms on competitor data to identify differences in online perception.

Actionable Insights 

Actionable insights are the fruit of your analytical labor, showing you how to stay competitive and win over more customers. These insights help you take immediate and effective action for feature improvements or a better marketing campaign. The main aim is to invest in activities that increase customer loyalty and engagement.

How Does Social Media Intelligence Differ from Social Media Listening and Social Media Monitoring?

Social media intelligence, social listening, and social monitoring are used interchangeably. However, they serve different purposes for brands looking to understand online conversations.

• Social Media Intelligence is the comprehensive collection and analysis of social media data for actionable insights. It helps brands analyze customer sentiment, trends, and competitors to make data-driven business decisions.
• Social Listening is the analysis of social media conversations around your brand, product, or service. It helps businesses see what customers are talking about to identify opportunities and pain points.
• Social Media Monitoring is the tracking of brand and product mentions through keywords and hashtags. Social media monitoring enables brands to find customer queries and complaints so they can provide immediate responses.

Benefits of Social Media Intelligence

• Stronger Customer Relationships
• Lead Generation
• Staying Competitive
• Proactive Crisis Management

Social media intelligence helps unlock valuable insights into customers, prospects, and competitors. Key benefits include:

Stronger Customer Relationships

You may have the best customer feedback questionnaire for collecting structured CX data. However, the reality is that customers are more likely to be honest and open about their experiences on social media. 

Listening to their online voice ensures you better understand your customers’ expectations. You get to capture honest insights to deliver more value, which in turn helps build stronger relationships and brand loyalty.

Lead Generation

Social media intelligence provides insights that help tailor your marketing efforts to your target audience. 

For example, a fashion retailer can leverage data analysis to identify demographics expressing interest in its premium suits and dresses. The retailer can invest in targeted ad campaigns to attract these user profiles and convert them into valuable customers. This effective lead generation also helps increase your market share as your campaign draws in more prospects.

Staying Competitive 

Your competitors’ social media activity highlights opportunities to improve your own brand. Tracking competitor mentions keeps you in the loop regarding key developments and issues. You can use this information to improve on their current offerings or fulfill a need they are neglecting. 

For example, let’s say several comments and posts are complaining about the use of leather in your competitors’ handbags. You can leverage this opportunity to promote your vegan fashion items to disgruntled users. The resulting competitive edge will help you win over customers to your side.

Proactive Crisis Management

Social media intelligence provides real-time monitoring of sentiment and conversations around your brand. By identifying negative trends early, you can address issues proactively before they escalate.

For example, if you identify growing frustration about a bug in your app, you can release a prompt update to reassure customers. This practice helps build consumer trust and supports brand reputation management efforts.

How is Artificial Intelligence Used for Social Media?

• Sentiment Analysis
• Content Creation
• Customer Engagement
• Analytics and Reporting

Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables social media intelligence by automating crucial tasks and uncovering CX insights. Primary applications of AI for businesses include:

Content Creation

AI helps businesses streamline various tasks, including content creation and scheduling. Generative AI drastically reduces the time it takes to produce impactful content that engages your target audience. Meanwhile, automation enables quick and effective scheduling of posts for enhanced interactions.

InMoment’s social media management tool tracks trending keywords and topics to generate fresh, engaging content. As a result, it helps you stay relevant to your audience while saving time that you can invest in other operations.

Sentiment Analysis

AI-powered sentiment analysis highlights customer feelings towards your products, services, or brand. It categorizes comments, posts, or social media content as positive, neutral, or negative. This categorization is useful for filtering out user profiles and managing their experiences.

For example, you can quickly identify customers expressing negative sentiments to resolve their issues. Monitoring customer health and journeys regularly helps companies reduce churn by over 34% for at-risk clients. Therefore, sentiment analysis helps boost retention by keeping businesses up-to-date on customer behaviors and reactions.

Customer Engagement

Chatbots and virtual assistants improve engagement by instantly addressing customer queries. With a comprehensive knowledge base, they can even guide customers through complex processes without human intervention. 

AI-powered chatbots learn from customer questions to provide targeted responses and recommendations. InMoment’s Active Listening™ is a conversational AI agent that provides context-aware follow-up questions to engage customers. As a result, it enables detailed feedback collection to help businesses make informed decisions.

Analytics and Reporting

AI simplifies analyzing large volumes of social media data to generate actionable insights. It helps you understand content performance, trends, and demographics to make data-driven decisions.

For example, analytics can show you which type of content receives the most engagement to help you optimize marketing campaigns. Similarly, it can highlight products receiving the most attention to guide inventory decisions. Visualizing these insights and sharing them with stakeholders can help brands track the effectiveness of their social media management.

How are CX Teams Benefiting from Social Media Intelligence?

• Competitor Analysis
• Reputation Management
• Trend Analysis
• Targeted Outreach

CX teams collaborate with multiple departments to improve customer experiences. Their cross-functional nature makes them a great fit for social media intelligence. Key benefits for CX teams include:

Competitor Analysis

Social media intelligence highlights competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This analysis empowers CX teams to identify gaps in the market and proactively address them. 

For example, CX teams in an organization can discover potential pain points by tracking competitors’ customer feedback. They can use this information to resolve issues before they affect their own customers. Additionally, they can position their brand as a more reliable alternative, helping them acquire new clients.

Reputation Management

Social networks can amplify wins and crises for brands. Therefore, staying on top of conversations and tracking customer sentiment is essential for brand reputation management. 

Analyzing comments, reviews, and brand mentions can help CX teams detect crises early and manage them before it’s too late. It also enables them to highlight their wins and demonstrate their value through testimonials. This approach builds customer trust and enhances the company’s public perception.

Trend Analysis

Social media intelligence tools track trending topics and emerging themes. This analysis provides CX teams with valuable insights into customer interests and behaviors.

For example, a fitness app’s CX team might notice a rising interest in mindfulness and meditation. This trend could guide the development of new app features or content to align with customer demands. As a result, trend analysis allows CX teams to position their company as a relevant business that understands modern customer needs.

Targeted Outreach

CX teams leverage social media intelligence to identify specific demographics for targeted outreach. Positive interactions with these groups can strengthen loyalty and turn satisfied customers into brand advocates. For example, your CX team can identify the top influencers frequently mentioning your brand and contact them for a collaboration.

Social Media Intelligence Tools

1. InMoment
2. Mentionlytics
3. Hootsuite
4. Sprout Social
5. Brandwatch
6. Sprinklr

A social media intelligence tool makes it easy to better understand customer expectations. It handles everything from social media monitoring to data analysis. Here are six of the best tools to help you choose the right one for your business needs.

InMoment

InMoment’s XI Platform software offers a comprehensive social media intelligence solution. Unlike other platforms, it lets you control how frequently you want to pull and analyze data from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. This level of control is key to building rich customer experience datasets.

The XI Platform also leverages sentiment analysis to provide insights into customer feelings around your brand. This analysis helps you identify disgruntled customers so that you can work on retaining them before it’s too late. In the XI Platform, you can also track trending keywords that can help you identify the biggest impacts on your customer experience. 

The ability to track keywords and brand mentions means you can keep an eye on competitor activity. This competitive analysis empowers your CX teams to learn from their strengths and capitalize on their weaknesses. 

For example, if your competitor is going through a PR crisis due to a recent data breach, you can use this opportunity to gain a competitive edge. Your marketing teams could communicate the superiority of your data protection technology.

Finally, InMoment’s social media intelligence tool enables high-quality lead generation. The insights gained from data analysis can highlight user profiles interested in your brand or offerings. 

By targeting these profiles with effective marketing, you can convert them into valuable customers. Similarly, the tool can help you identify top influencers in your space so that you can work with them to boost your brand reputation.

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics allows businesses to monitor and analyze conversations on social media. Key features include real-time sentiment analysis, multi-channel monitoring, and competitor comparison reports. These features help companies make data-driven decisions to stay competitive and improve customer experiences.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media intelligence platform that combines data collection and analysis. Its Listening Basics feature allows businesses to track keywords and hashtags on social media channels. CX teams using Hootsuite to manage social media can leverage the InMoment integration to monitor comments and reviews in one place. The integration helps filter out the best reviews and share them on social media to enhance online reputation.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a versatile platform that helps brands track and analyze social media conversations in real-time. Its standout feature is a trend-identifying tool that generates a word cloud highlighting topics relevant to the brand and industry. This trend analysis is helpful for staying competitive and managing customer interactions.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch uses advanced search options to help CX teams monitor vast amounts of social media conversations. It also enables trend analysis, influencer identification, and crisis management. It offers multilingual support to help businesses with multiple global locations manage their social media presence.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a social media management tool that enables businesses to track mentions, trends, and competitor activity. It uses AI algorithms to perform sentiment analysis on user-generated content. This analysis helps brands understand customer emotions and tailor their marketing strategy accordingly.

Get Better Insights to Transform Your Customer Experience with InMoment

Your social media channels are a treasure trove of customer experiences. Unlocking this data can help you win over customers, move past competitors, and boost your bottom line. InMoment’s social media intelligence tool gives you the key to access and analyze this valuable data. Schedule a product tour today to see how it can transform social media management for your brand.

References 

WebFX. 100+ Social Media Statistics You Should Know for 2024 (https://www.webfx.com/social-media/statistics). Accessed 11/26/2024.

InMoment. InMoment Market Pulse (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/weareinmoment_b2b-customersuccess-ai-activity-7251989745914818560-haGe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop). Accessed 11/26/2024.

Did you know that only 20% of CX teams report directly to the CEO? The other 80% of CX teams report to 15 different leadership functions, with CTO and Chief Customer Officer being the second and third most common leadership functions. 

These statistics show that there is no standard for where a CX team should live within your organization. To accurately place a CX team, you need to have a firm understanding of what CX teams do, what the customer experience goals of your organization are, and where those two overlap. 

What Is A CX Team?

A CX team is a group of customer experience professionals who work to improve customer experience by sharing customer insights throughout the organization. They analyze customer feedback, customer journeys, and more to get the most up-to-date information about the current customer experience and where it can be improved. 

Who Is On A CX Team?

The number of employees on a CX team and their respective titles will vary depending on the company. For example, a company that just established a CX team will have fewer employees than a company with an enterprise-wide CX team. 

Regardless, the core team members of a CX team are: 

• CX Managers: Oversee strategy and execution.
• Data Analysts: Dive deep into customer data to uncover actionable insights.
• Journey Designers: Map out customer interactions to identify gaps and opportunities.
• VoC Specialists: Ensure customer feedback is heard and acted upon.

What Skills Are Needed on A CX Team?

Members of a CX team need to be versatile employees who can examine different types of data. These employees must be able to research, analyze, and prevent all customer-related findings to organizational stakeholders. A recent study of CX teams said the three most common skills of employees on a CX team are: 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Project management

What Skills Will Be Needed On A CX Team In the Future?

To keep up with ever-evolving customer expectations, CX teams will need employees who can grow and ensure that an organization can still be successful. The three skills that CX team employees need to have in the future are: 

• Data science or analytics
• Business case development
• Inclusive design/accessibility testing

These skills reflect changes in the customer experience market and what is going to needed of organizations to stay successful.

How to Build a CX Team

Building an effective CX team requires careful planning and alignment with your organization’s goals and customer needs. Follow these steps to ensure you assemble a team that will drive meaningful results: 

1. Secure leadership buy-in
2. Define the team’s purpose and goals
3. Identify the right roles and skills
4. Select the right tools and technology
5. Establish clear processes
6. Foster cross-department collaboration
7. Continuously train and develop the team
8. Measure and Optimize

1. Secure Leadership Buy-In

For a CX team to succeed, you need the full support of senior leadership. The executives must understand the importance of a CX team and be willing to provide the necessary resources. In this step, you will also decide which executive leader the CX team will report to. 

2. Define the Team’s Purpose and Goals

Before you can hire and assign roles to employees, you need to clearly define your CX team’s mission. Determine what customer challenges the team will address, how success will be measured, and how the team aligns with broader business goals. Examples of CX team goals include: 

• Increasing customer retention by improving satisfaction
• Increase customer acquisition by improving the customer journey
• Driving higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) through targeted strategies

Clearly defined goals will guide the hiring process and set the foundation for CX success. 

3. Identify the Right Roles and Skills

With the purpose of your CX team defined, you can now begin the hiring process. Your CX team should include diverse roles that collectively address all aspects of the customer experience. Common roles on a CX team include:

• CX Manager
• Data Analyst
• Customer Journey Designer
• VoC Specialist 

In addition to technical skills, look for individuals who can perform qualitative and quantitative research, possess great communication skills, and are experienced in project management. 

4. Select the Right Tools and Technology

In order to give your CX team the best chance to succeed, you need to have the right tools at your disposal. These tools might include Voice of the Customer platform, journey mapping software, conversational intelligence, or data analytics tools. 

InMoment’s customer experience platform is an all-in-one solution that lets you collect and connect customer experience data in every format across every customer interaction. InMoment’s integrated CX approach helps organizations realize ROI in just 12 months, which is more than twice as fast as the industry average.

5. Establish Clear Processes

It is important to develop workflows to guide a CX team’s activities. For example, you will need to define how customer feedback will be collected, analyzed, and shared. You will also need to create a process for collaborating with other departments to address CX challenges across the organization. 

6. Foster Cross-Department Collaboration

CX teams don’t operate in isolation. They must collaborate with other departments, including marketing, sales, product development, and customer service. Encourage open communication and shared accountability by hosting regular meetings to align on customer-centric strategies, using collaborative tools to ensure visibility, and more. 

7. Continuously Train and Develop the Team

The customer experience market is constantly changing. It is important to invest in skill development. This can be done by attending customer experience events, training on new tools and technologies, and getting certifications in CX methodologies.  

8. Measure and Optimize Performance

Being able to measure the performance of a CX team against customer experience KPIs is crucial for the longevity of a CX team. Regularly review these metrics and gather team feedback to refine processes and improve outcomes. 

CX Team Challenges

Although they are important to the success of an organization, even the best CX teams do not come without challenges. These challenges can affect CX teams across all organizations, here are the main ones to be aware of: 

Lack of Executive Support

Over 40% of CX teams in an organization that prioritizes CX say they do not have consistent executive support. This suggests that despite the organization’s overall commitment to enhancing customer experience, there remains a significant gap in the backing and resources that these teams receive from higher management, which can ultimately hinder their effectiveness and the overall success of CX initiatives.

Inconsistent Business Case Development

A recent study found that only 22% of CX decision-makers make a business case for customer experience for every project or initiative and that only a third of them make a business case for major initiatives. 

In order CX teams to become an integral part of the organization, it is important to make business cases for all initiatives on how they will impact the customer experience at your organization. 

Misaligned Priorities

When prioritizing customer experience initiatives, most CX teams primarily concentrate on customer impact. However, almost half of CX teams often overlook three important criteria: return on investment, feasibility, and risk. To gain and maintain the support of key stakeholders within the organization, CX teams need to give more attention to these three factors.

Considering ROI is vital for justifying CX efforts to key stakeholders concerned about any initiative’s financial implications. Assessing feasibility includes evaluating the existing operational capabilities and potential barriers that could hinder the execution of the initiatives. Lastly, risk assessment is an essential component that cannot be neglected. Every initiative carries inherent risks that could impact customer satisfaction, brand reputation, or financial performance.

Lastly, risk assessment is an essential component that cannot be neglected. Every initiative carries inherent risks that could impact customer satisfaction, brand reputation, or financial performance.

By considering ROI, feasibility, and risk alongside customer impact, CX teams can enhance their strategic planning. This comprehensive approach not only helps secure the support of key stakeholders but also ensures that CX initiatives are sustainable and aligned with the broader business objectives.

Where Should CX Teams Report?

Regardless of where your CX team lives, the team must remain unbiased and have the purview to work cross-functionally to drive collaboration and break down silos. Without that organizational freedom and neutrality, the team’s efforts are already handcuffed, and the chances of CX success are greatly diminished.

While many companies have added a seat at the table for a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) or Chief Experience Officer (CXO) in recent years, we still see most CX functions report to either marketing (the CMO) or operations (the COO). There are pros and cons to each of these reporting relationships:

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Marketing & the CMO: 

Pros:

• Tied More Closely to the brand promise of the organization (since CX is the fulfillment of that promise)
• Tied more closely to the communication function. Too many CX functions don’t think about the role communication plays in the overall experience, but this is where the customer expectations get set
• Part of a more holistic view of the company and the customer journey
• Marketing (or strategy) is more likely to consider the experience of the future as opposed to only today’s experience

Cons:

• May be too far removed from the actual frontline customer interactions, so it can be more difficult to implement change
• Often too closely tied to marketing’s priorities and budget
• Can marketing enforce an effective closed-loop process if that work happens elsewhere in the organization?
• Marketing is often more focused on customer acquisition and top-of-funnel activities

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Operations & the COO:

Pros:

• More closely tied to frontline customer interactions
• Typically has good success with enforcing a strong closed-loop process (if staffed and funded properly)
• Operations typically focused and measured on customer retention

Cons:

• Unless digital and call centers report to the COO, the program can get too focused on in-person or physical interactions
• Can be too focused on break/fix of today’s experience and not focused on overall CX strategy, process redesign, or experience design. Programs can get very tactical
• Susceptible to budget cuts and quarterly targets, whereas CX tends to be a medium-to-long term proposition

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Executives Such as the CEO:

Pros:

• Easier alignment to executive goals and buy-in
• Budget is set aside specifically for one purpose and can have less constraints
• Easier to build relationships around CX with each department to break down silos

Cons:

• Difficult to get all departments aligned to taking action as they can be seen as an outsider
• More difficult to be in synch with the day-to-day business rhythm
• Focus often on medium- or long-term initiatives while peers focus on quarterly results

CX Team Best Practices  

While the focuses and goals of CX teams can change from organization to organization, certain things will set you up for success regardless of your objectives. Here are some best practices to ensure your CX team can succeed in any environment: 

Democratize Data

Democratizing data is an important step for protecting your teams’ time and resources, and it can be performed at any stage of CX maturity! 

Invest the time needed with key stakeholders to explain the importance of customer experience, co-create dashboards, and reduce any ambiguity about CX programs. By spreading the responsibility between team members throughout your business, you will save time both now and down the line with fewer emails, more empowered colleagues, and more visibility of your hard work. 

Leverage Available Resources 

Technology alone won’t help with demonstrating a return on investment. The most effective programs have a strategic partner to help map the initial CX framework, discover those actionable insights and point out the cost savings along the way.

You need a motivated team behind yours to design the roadmap of experience management success. Best practices show that the financial impact of the CX capability is outlined in the onboarding process, tested and controlled along the way, and measured and reported quarterly.

Create CX Champions

Take time upfront to educate teammates on the importance of customer experience and ask for volunteers to champion such initiatives across various departments. The more stakeholders invested in a CX program, the more time practitioners will have to delegate responsibilities across a business.

See which people in your business are organically gravitating toward your CX program and formalize their role as a CX champion. Empower these individuals to access the CX data anytime, anyplace to drive action.

Level-Up Your Dashboards

When you have a customer experience dashboard that is intuitive and easy to understand, stakeholders can easily circulate them within the organization. An effective dashboard is designed to guide the user, not overload the user with data. 

We recommend you follow this design structure where possible:

• Main KPI: Where are we? How has our performance changed over time?
• Main KPI & Main Segment: Who/what should we focus on?
• Sub KPIs: What is contributing to our core metric?
• High-Level Text Analytics: What overall are our customers telling us?
• Verbatim: What are our customers actually saying about their experience?
• Deep Analysis: Splitting KPIs up by pre-pop data.

To learn more about best practices and how to succeed as a CX team, download the checklist below:

How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team

Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.

How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team

Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.

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Customizing CX Team Organization: Considerations for Success

Regarding the reporting relationship of the CX function, one size doesn’t fit all. Every organization, leadership dynamic, employee culture, and business is different. We mentioned above that we have led CX, reporting to the CMO, reporting to the COO, and as an independent function. What we learned is that it can be successful in any of these reporting relationships, though we suggest it has a head start if it reports into the predominant power core of the organization.

Some companies are operations-led, others are sales & marketing-led, while others are product-led. Tying CX to the true cultural and power core of the company, though it brings some of the bias mentioned above, aligns it better with the core of the company.

Regardless of where your CX function reports, there are key organizational elements that must be present and the CX leader also has to have certain key skills, strengths and characteristics for it to be successful.

Improve Your CX Team with InMoment

If your customer experience (CX) team is just starting out or expanding an existing team, InMoment is the top choice for a CX partner. With over 50 years of experience across various industries and a best-in-class solution, InMoment will guide your company in the right direction. To discover how InMoment can benefit your organization, schedule a demo today!

References 

Forrester. Predictions 2025: Customer Experience. (https://www.forrester.com/report/predictions-2025-customer-experience/RES181533). Accessed 11/20/2024. 

Forrester. Customer Experience Market Insights, 2024. (https://www.forrester.com/report/customer-experience-market-insights-2024/RES181199). Accessed 11/20/2024.

Forrester. The State Of Customer Experience Teams, 2023. (https://www.forrester.com/report/the-state-of-customer-experience-teams-2023/RES180035). Accessed 11/20/2024.