Customer Expectations on a Global Scale

In today’s connected world, managing a customer’s expectation and consistently creating positive experiences has proven to be a challenge for many organisations.

Part of the challenges in customer experience can be attributed to a variance in preferences across different industries and geographies. A recent study conducted by the UK Institute of Customer Service (UKCI) revealed that customer needs for specific types of services vary by industry, country, and channel.

Importance of understanding customer differences across sectors

In the modern business context, a healthy customer experience initiative is defined by a brand’s commitment to both satisfying customers and motivating strong loyalty. This in turn requires a firm to have a strong understanding of wide-ranging customer expectations.

Today, customers expect excellent experiences from their bank, insurance provider, mobile operator, and even their electricity supplier. However, priorities and expectations of what is considered excellent vary across industries.

For instance, staff competencies are considered particularly important in the banking and insurance industries while speed of resolving complaints, product reliability, and accessibility is a top priority in retail.

However, amidst these varying expectations, there is one shared ideology that prevails — there is no business without customers. Understanding customer expectations is therefore a prerequisite to delivering a superior service which can in turn create brand advocates and prolonged customer loyalty.

In fact, a study by Wunderman found that a staggering 79 percent of customers base their initial purchase intent on how efficiently a brand understands and cares about them. Suffice to say, understanding customer expectations is a crucial ingredient to the success or failure of a business.

Different customer expectations across countries

It is imperative that customer service representatives are aware of the diverse requirements in different countries and cultures. It is especially vital for companies that wish to expand their operations globally. Understanding disparities in customer priorities will invariably help companies identify strengths and opportunities for improvement and differentiation.

These priorities can vary from price, quality, and physical presence of a representative. For instance, customers in Japan have very high expectations of customer service and do not expect to pay for it. Accordingly, service providers in Japanese markets are expected to go out of their way to serve customers and solve problems.

If a customer seeks out phone support in Japan and is dissatisfied with the outcome, the company will more often than not send someone to help them out. This may not always be expected from companies in countries like the UK or US.

Furthermore, a 2014 Global Customer Service Barometer Report by American Express revealed that 78 percent of US customers rate being connected to someone who is knowledgeable as important, whilst only 65 percent of customers in the UK agreed with this. Moreover, a study conducted by New Voice Media found only 25 percent of Americans will hold while on the phone after 10 minutes, compared to 64 percent of Brits, for whom it is a regular occurrence.

Understanding wavering emotions

Existing UKCSI research notes considerable differences in how customers describe emotions associated with positive experiences. The research showed Danish customers, for example, predominantly using the verbatim “they had what I was looking for” while Spanish customers usually stated “I am satisfied with doing what I came to do.”

Respondents were further analysed to understand which emotions they associate with brands to which they feel the most loyal. Most customers across the countries analysed rated “satisfaction” as the most common emotion they associate with brand loyalty.

Around 20 percent of UK customers associated being safe and reassured with brand loyalty, while only 17 percent of US customers agreed with this. “Entertained” was the lowest-ranked emotion overall. However, 11 percent of Finnish customers chose this emotion — nearly twice as many as the nearest customer group from another region. Meanwhile, customers in France and Finland ranked ‘excited’ higher than in other countries.

The research also suggests customers across Europe share many of the same priorities but there are also a number of nuanced priorities by each country. Differences in the way customers score each priority out of ten was also noted. For example, there is less than an average differentiation in the range of priority scores in Poland, with less than one point difference between the highest rated priority (condition of delivered goods)  and the lowest (organisation contributes to the national economy).

Communicating using the right channels

Most companies today use multiple channels to interact with customers. This has been made easier with the rapid increase in technology and the advent of social media. However, customers across different industries and countries have varied preferences on how they wish to communicate with service professionals.

For instance, banking customers prefer a complete omni-channel experience with physical branches, online banking, mobile apps, text notifications, and phone calls. However, customer expectations with a healthcare company may not go beyond the ability to contact the company via phone and receive a text with reminders of upcoming appointments.

In the UK, UKCSI research revealed that website use is higher than the European average, although this is not uniformly the case across sectors. Website use is particularly high in telecommunications, media, insurance, and utilities, but is slightly less than average for banking, retail (food), and transport. In the Netherlands, “in person” is used less than the European average, although it is still the most popular channel for interacting with organisations.

Acknowledging preferred personalisation levels

In recent years, personalisation strategies have grown in importance and have seen a significant impact on levels of advocacy and loyalty customers have towards a brand. In fact, customers today do not just expect but demand tailored services that suit personal preferences.

They also want e-commerce sites and in-person sales associates to know who they are and offer relevant assistance. UKCSI’s recent survey recognised this fact, as “personalised support” emerged as a prime priority over purchase and advertising.

The report further indicated that customers in North America and the UK chose personalised support even more often than average at 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. Moreover, 41 percent of customers in Spain value personalisation during the purchase process highest of all countries, a full six points above the average of 35 percent, while German customers weighted the different types of personalisation most equally.

It is imperative that companies today understand and respond to not just a customer’s buying habits and incomes, but also their emotions and states of mind. Acknowledging these subjective experiences and the role every function plays in shaping them is undoubtedly important in ensuring that customer satisfaction is more than just a slogan but also an attainable goal.

Retailers Are Dabbling in Facial Recognition

Walmart is the latest retailer testing facial recognition technology in an effort to create a better customer experience. Customer experience (CX) expert Brennan Wilkie says that facial recognition will be a key technology moving forward in the personalization of shopping.

“Installing facial recognition monitors in stores has the potential to grant retailers insight into the in-store customer experience,” Wilkie, the senior vice president of customer experience strategy at InMoment, told FierceRetail. “They can use it to determine, for example, whether customers are frustrated during self check-out and notify staff to respond with triage, pre-empting complaints and ultimately attrition.”

Retailers can then pair the facial expression data with customer demographics, loyalty metrics and other product purchase information, a brand can gain a deep understanding of the consumer.

“This intelligence could fuel action across the organization, from targeting demographics differently, to increasing access to self check-out, to deploying human talent at the specific points along the customer journey where they increase value,” he added.

However, Wilkie warns that Walmart and other retailers will need to be cautious as they test and implement these new tools in order to avoid crossing the line of customer privacy with this new tool. To address this, brands must be transparent about where, when and why they’re using this new technology, and of course, offer value in return for this privacy invasion.

There are several other challenges associated with using facial recognition. For example introducing new data when companies are already swimming in Big Data and struggling to derive value from it.

“Having a strong strategy for how to manage, access, analyze and action the information will is paramount,” Wilkie said. “Practically, there may be pushback from customers who are uncomfortable with the idea of their in-store actions being not only recorded by facial recognition monitors (often already done for security purposes), but observed and analyzed for business strategy reasons. If retailers can communicate the overall benefits of the technology as they roll it out, any negative feedback should be outweighed by the positive. This strategy has worked well with newly introduced in-store technology, such as self-checkout lines and chip readers, in the past.”

Another concern related to this infant technology is that there is the potential for the data to be misread. Therefore, the analytics software needs to be very sophisticated to be able to get results off of reading a customer’s expression.

The final challenge will be knowing when a retailer should implement new changes based on localized behaviors.

“Regionally, customer demographic preferences can differ. This should be considered as CX changes are implemented at scale as a result of learned insights from the technology,” he said.

So which retailers should be leading the way with facial recognition?

Wilkie recommends retailers with Millennials as their main demographic since study findings show that Millennials are most comfortable with the idea of sharing personal data with companies as a means to using their products or services. Additionally, retailers who are testing out the incorporation of robot assistance for processes such as self-checkout and self-price check are great candidates for using facial recognition.

“By better understanding a customer’s reactions at every point in their customer journey, retailers can assess the ideal balance of human and tech at each customer touchpoint. They may find that their demographic of customers prefers the traditional experience, unlike other retailers with more connected consumers as customers,” Wilkie said.

Using facial recognition technology for CX insights is still in its early stages. Advancements in software will add a new layer of understanding of the CX for retailers.

“Written feedback, voice feedback and body language will be the holy trinity to delivering a robust customer experience once facial recognition technology is mastered,” he added.

The Power of First-Hand Employee Knowledge

This post was written by James Bolle, VP Head of Client Services EMEA

There are many factors that go into making a customer’s overall experience a great one, but the impact of your employees might well be the biggest.

Employees are the face of your businesses and must play an important role in any CX programme. The widely accepted model “Value Profit Chain” states that if you have happy employees, you have happy customers.

However there are now many different variables that impact on this process. Customer experience will affect employee experience and vice versa. In order to understand your customers’ experiences you first need to understand your employees’ experiences.

This year’s EMEA Customer Experience Elevated conference (CXE17) highlighted the importance of employee engagement, and the huge part it plays in the CX journey. We welcomed CX experts from across the globe including Revolution Bars Group, and Tiffany & Co. Whilst each is a very different business, engaging employees was the unifying factor in all their presentations.

Employees are impacted every day by customers. They are the primary representatives of an organisation; they know what happens “behind the scenes” and can offer significant insights into what may be creating and impacting the customer experience. It is imperative companies listen to them and when they do so, they often find more specific and relevant insights to improve their business.

Revolution Bars Group told us at CXE17 that their core message is “to deliver an amazing customer experience every time.” InMoment worked with Revolution to help the business review the entire perspective of their customer experience and listen to multiple stakeholders, not just customers, to gain a much greater understanding of the overall customer journey. Revolution introduced InMoment’s Voice of Employee (VoE) programme alongside InMoment’s Active Listening to collect data from both employees and customers to develop a holistic understanding of the customer experience.

The data collected from employees as well as customers has meant Revolution has been able to make changes to its business and has seen marked improvements in its customer experience due to the direct correlation between the employee experience and customer experience.

Revolution’s use of VoE is a clear example of how tapping into employee feedback on the customer experience can have a direct impact on your business.

Employees provide brands with actionable, success-driving insights – they should be considered a key part of the CX mix.

Getting Personal: Know More Than a Customer’s Name

Despite access to more data than ever before, brands still don’t fully understand what motivates customers.

Customer Experience (CX) is now an established framework that, if managed correctly, can drive fierce loyalty and establish an unbeatable competitive advantage when it comes to developing a deep understanding of the expectations and perceptions of customers.

Over the past year, our experts have noticed customers talking about their desire for personalisation in a much broader way. We found that while customers worldwide appreciate personalised experiences along all points of their journey, some countries prioritise one type over another.

This reinforces the importance that there isn’t a one-size-fits all approach to personalisation. Brands must delve into their customer data to fully understand their customers’ needs and expectations to ensure they are providing them with an accurate personalised service.

In our 2017 Global CX Trends report, we’ve dug deep to determine how consumers and brands prioritise different aspects of personalisation. A lot of brands around the world have used data to send targeted messaging to customers across a variety of platforms, but research has shown that consumers are looking for the next level of personalisation and if brands can get it right, they’ve got the golden ticket to satisfied, reassured and most importantly, loyal customers.

The Three-Types of Personalisation

The three key pillars of personalisation that have come out of the report are support, purchase, and advertising. Interestingly, customers in every country ranked personalised support as their first priority.

Personalised support can be defined as when customers reach out for help. No matter how a customer reaches out to a brand, they already know who that customer is and what they have purchased. In particular, consumers want service companies to know their history so they don’t have to retell the same story to each successive employee they encounter.

In North America and the United Kingdom, customers ranked personalised support higher than the average (45 percent) at 54 and 53 percent, respectively.  Personalisation of this nature will not only improve the overall user experience, but will result in the customer getting the information they need in a faster and more streamlined manner.

Following support personalisation, customers ranked purchase personalisation as a key contributing factor to brand loyalty. Customers expect brands to know them and their needs, as well as offer expertise in what they are selling and make helpful recommendations.

This isn’t just a simple case of upselling products at the point of purchase, but understanding the reasoning behind the product purchase and assessing what will aid the customer in their journey.

This is of particular interest to Spanish customers, who ranked purchase personalisation at 41 percdent, compared to the global average of 35 percent. That said, customers from across the globe want e-commerce sites and in-person sales associates to know who they are and offer the relevant assistance.

Companies who can get this right can expect to reap the rewards. Research suggests that if consumers enjoy personalised interactions, they are happy to purchase more when they feel those experiences provide real value.

Finally, advertising using personal marketing messages that include being addressed by name and offers relating to suitable products is probably the most recognised form of customer personalisation, but surprisingly it was voted the least important globally at just 20 percent.

Companies such as Channel 4 have taken advertising personalisation to a new level by personalising adverts with viewers’ names as they watch content through the broadcaster’s video-on-demand service. Channel 4 has described this service as ‘an immensely powerful marketing tool’, however in the UK, only 17 percent of people thought personal marketing messages were effective.

The Insights

The key insights from the report indicate that operation leaders tend to understand personalised experiences in the support and purchase departments as they fall within their areas of responsibility.

Marketers on the other hand often associate personalised experiences with well-targeted advertising. For consumers, it’s about the total journey. The well-targeted advert may drive the traffic to a brand and get customers thinking about a product, but if the support and knowledge from staff isn’t there to make consumers feel safe and reassured, the result can be detrimental.

With the majority of organisations now reporting marketing as the ‘owner’ of the customer experience, it’s particularly important for these leaders to understand and support personalisation in a much more comprehensive way.

The Guide to Getting Personalisation Right

  • The heart of any company is its employees. To ensure they are giving your customers the best possible service, they need to be motivated and feel empowered. Make sure each individual has the skills and training they need to offer the best service possible. Encourage employees to share their experiences so they can learn from one another. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
  • Having the right people on the front lines with the right attitude sounds obvious but it can make an astounding difference to what customers think of your brand. All it takes is one disgruntled customer to have a conversation with one not-so-helpful employee and you’ve lost a customer for life. What’s more, news of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good customer experience*, so employees need to get it right every time.
  • Gathering quality customer experience data can also make a massive difference to how brands communicate with their customers. If brands have the right software in place to capture feedback and insights along every point of a customer journey, then they’ll be well on the way to offering targeted personalised support which will enhance the overall user experience.

Why Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods Is a Lesson in Committing to Employees

In the year’s growing list of mergers and acquisitions, Amazon‘s purchase of Whole Foods has dominated media attention. However, while news outlets have been quick to hypothesize what the purchase means for both brick-and-mortar and online grocery, it’s worth stepping back to think through an overlooked part of the acquisition — employees.

As the ink dries on the early August deal, attention has mostly focused on customers. This comes as little surprise, with recent price cuts and other shopping/purchasing conveniences setting the stage for a new era of grocery. With consumers and high-ranking internal players on board, Amazon and Whole Foods must now address the impacts of this acquisition on employees.

As they do, businesses of all sizes can learn a thing or two in the process.

Lesson 1: Don’t choose between customers and employees.

Amazon and Whole Foods’ priorities could not be more distinct under the old model, with the former geared toward consumers and the latter toward employees. Whole Foods has historically treated its nearly 100,000 employees lavishly, while alienating some consumers with high prices. Amazon, on the other hand, has built its empire around generous shipping speeds and return policies amid a dangerously intense internal company culture.

On paper, Whole Foods’ employee-first mentality and Amazon’s customer-first motto couldn’t be a worse match. But, with each company an expert in its own right, Amazon and Whole Foods have a unique opportunity to blend their individual approaches and bring the best of each to the forefront. Customer and employee needs are not mutually exclusive, and neither should be the strategies and solutions used to listen to them.

Instead, by listening to both groups at once, stakeholders can pursue data-driven insights that go beyond traditional feedback metrics like turnover and attrition. The right technology can not only elevate employee voices, but actually unites customer and employee feedback for an improved and more reciprocal experience.

Lesson 2: Increase calls for unstructured feedback.

To put employees and customers in conversation, businesses must seek out feedback platforms committed to not only gathering, but analyzing unstructured data.

Popular CX metrics like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are misleading and don’t adequately reveal what’s going on inside the heads of employees and customers. Conversely, unstructured data gives employees and customers the space to comment on bottom-line critical human factors like staff helpfulness, friendliness and attentiveness.

Consider the following scenario: After experiencing major difficulties checking out at Whole Foods, a customer leaves the store frustrated. At first glance, this situation may seem like a one-time technical issue, but in talking to both the customer and employee present for this exchange, we can see that the best solution is hardly black and white.

After reaching out to the customers (as Amazon might), stakeholders learn that our shopper’s frustrations started well before final purchase. Not only was the store out of her favorite cereal, but she also waited for 10 minutes in the checkout queue — points of friction a traditional satisfaction scale would have missed. Then, in talking to the employee (as Whole Foods might), it’s revealed that the cashiers routinely feel understaffed. This employee also explains that he has little experience working with the store’s new automatic chip readers.

Combined, these feedback sources point to a solution that’s best for everyone. The customer’s feedback alone may have resulted in simple IT updates or better shift management. But, adding the employee’s input pushes for a more full-scale training initiative around new services and technologies — creating an improved experience for both employees and shoppers.

Putting it all together

Micro-moments like these exist throughout all stages of the grocery or retail experience, and engaged employees are eager to share when given the chance. There’s a reason two-thirds of employees would leave a job due to feeling underappreciated. Employees simply want to be heard — but don’t take my word for it. Ask them.

The same goes for customers. Offered a platform, shoppers are incredibly willing to give voice to what’s working with their relationships with brands and what’s not (this is already happening daily on Twitter). With so many voices to hear, businesses can again turn to sophisticated feedback platforms. These solutions are equipped with advanced analytics that can handle engagement needs at scale.

And with the combined reach of Amazon and Whole Foods, scale will be a top concern for the companies moving forward. While Amazon has earned access to more consumers via Whole Foods’ existing pool of shoppers, it’s also now responsible for many new employees — employees who are used to top treatment, and having their voices heard. Fortunately, all signs point to Amazon being ready to listen.

The ABCs of R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Respect is one of the key building blocks in a strong relationship, be it a marriage, friendship or business. Without it, we feel undervalued and underappreciated. In a customer-brand context, this is an incredibly important concept. Customers increasingly have opportunities to express their concerns and attitudes with brands in a multitude of ways, from a traditional survey response to a simple tweet. How brands react to this changing landscape is critical. According to the Institute of Customer Service’s (ICS) European Customer Satisfaction Index, leaders, stakeholders and organisations that build and foster relationships based on respect will be best-placed to achieve sustained customer and employee engagement.

Respect is a vital part of the customer experience mix as customers want to feel valued by the brands they interact with. Simply put, a customer that is willing to trade money for goods or services deserves to be treated as more than just a number. Feeling undervalued creates a strong, emotional state that can have a marked effect on both short- and long-term spend, loyalty and advocacy.

InMoment spoke to customers globally about how they feel following a negative experience and how this impacts on future buying prospects in our 2017 CX Trends Study. The responses clearly demonstrated the need for brands to get customer service right, with one French consumer saying “I have no desire to set foot in this store again” following a negative experience. At the end of the day, a customer has a simple expectation for the brand to deliver – be it having a product in stock or good quality food. When the brand gets that wrong, customers feel let down.

The customer-employee relationship is perhaps one of the most important relationships where respect must be a key focus. The ICS’s European Customer Satisfaction Index found that customers’ top priorities are mostly related to staff attitudes and behaviours, complaint handling and product reliability. Across eight different European countries, the three key customer priorities included:

  • Staff doing what they say they will do
  • Staff competence
  • Staff understanding a customer issue

The reason why these issues are so important to customers boils down to respect – a customer trusts a brand to deliver goods or services and be knowledgeable about those goods and services. Furthermore, if a problem occurs, a customer trusts that the brand will fix it. These expectations are infinitely reasonable so when they aren’t met, customers lose respect for the brand which can lead to them never interacting with that brand again.

It is essential that brands create a culture of respect, both organisationally and in CX in particular. There are four key steps to achieving this:

  • Empower conversation
  • Let the customer tell you their story
  • Let the customer know you have heard them
  • Take action and fix the issue (and let customers know you’ve made a change)

Empower conversation

Customer feedback is a fantastic way to demonstrate to customers that brands respect them and their opinions, however many methods of obtaining that feedback can actually work against a positive relationship. For example, surveys are often far too long, and questions don’t apply to the customer’s actual experience. When a brand asks questions, they should be tailored to the extent possible using data from CRM systems and loyalty programmes – availability of technology makes bespoke surveys possible, and customers are beginning to expect that type of personalisation.

Furthermore, brands should use a variety of methods for listening to customers, so customers can provide feedback in a way that’s easy and preferable to them. In addition to traditional surveys, brands should consider using video feedback, harnessing social media and building feedback into mobile applications. Increasingly adept mobile-embedded voice assistants like Siri are making voice feedback viable and simple. The objective with feedback should be to empower authentic conversation with your customers instead of a one-way interrogation.

Letting the customer tell you their story

Surveys traditionally ask a customer to respond to a series of questions with a numerical rating scale, providing structured data which can be easily reviewed, compared and analysed. However, structured data only touches the surface of a customer’s experience. It doesn’t highlight how or why a customer felt a particular way or the details of a particular experience.

People have told stories each other since the beginning of time – storytelling is intrinsic to being human and it should be harnessed in CX. Giving customers the flexibility to talk freely about their experiences without the constraints of numbers and direct questions does two things. Firstly, it provides unstructured data which brands can analyse at a deeper level. Secondly, allowing customers to tell their story, on their own terms, demonstrates a respect for their attitudes and makes the customer feel valued.

Letting the customer know you have heard them

Giving customers the opportunity to freely and openly talk about their experiences is the first step to demonstrating respect. To truly show customers their value as a consumer, however, brands must respond to this feedback and let them know that their voice has been heard.

Firstly, brands must respond to customers in a personalised way. If a brand responds to every single piece of feedback with the exact same message, it gives the impression that the customer’s feedback isn’t truly appreciated. Automation, CRM tools and loyalty programmes make personal responses straightforward, meaning bespoke responses to feedback can be provided without impacting on a brands resources.

Additionally, transparency in response to customer complaints is essential. As previously discussed, when a customer has a bad experience, they associate negative feelings with that experience. To help turn a negative experience into a neutral, or even positive experience, brands must respond in a timely fashion – through automated prioritisation tools – and tell the customer what they will be doing to help resolve the issue. This demonstrates to customers that they are respected and valued.

Take action

Bringing customers full-circle in a journey of change is the ultimate demonstration of respect, helping foster trust and loyalty in the brand. According to the ICS, trust increases in parallel with increasing customer satisfaction levels. Much of this is due to brands making business changes on the back of customer feedback. Primark changed their staff uniforms in the past year from black shirts to blue following customer feedback that staff were difficult to find. The New York Bagel company also made the big change of ceasing all pre-slicing of their bagels after public outrage of the reduced quality in bagels when pre-sliced. Their Facebook post letting customers know they’re taking on board all feedback garnered many emotionally-charged responses to the sliced bagel debate. Whilst these are small steps in improving the customer experience, the message it communicates is significant: customers are valued and that their views are respected and listened to.

It is no surprise that brands that listen to feedback and make changes as a result do better in customer service indices. Respect, trust and loyalty are all interlinked – demonstrating to customers that they are respected will lead to greater trust in the brand and will foster brand loyalty. This will result in stronger customer satisfaction scores and an altogether better customer experience. In the UK for example, companies that rank higher on the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) rank higher for trust with the UK average being at 78.2 out of 100 for UKCSI and 7.7 for trust in July 2017.

Get respect right, and stronger CX scores and improved business performance will follow.

From Touchpoint Surveys to a Continuous Conversation: How to Use VoC Data More Strategically

The way most companies use Voice of Customer (VoC) data today is leaving opportunity the table.

Generally, VoC data is used behind the scenes to identify problems, plug holes, and get a general sense of how associates or agents are performing at one particular touchpoint.

While there is value in this approach, it remains highly reactive, and limited. It only provides brief glimpses into the customer experience—a snapshot of a single moment in time. It is looking at individual interactions rather than the entire journey.

The data tends to be siloed and used only by the team that collects it. Doing this means those valuable insights can be used to improve that touchpoint, but misses the opportunity to create a better end-to-end experience for the customer.

A more strategic approach: Using VoC—both the process of listening, and applying the resulting insight—continuously at every touchpoint along the customer journey.

By shifting your perspective from surveying customers, to being engaged in a continuous conversation, you will open a wealth of new opportunities for both operational improvements and more profitable relationships.

Transforming Customer Experiences with VoC Data

VoC insights are one of the most important tools for developing a personalized and memorable customer experience. Customer expectations continually evolve and when done right, VoC intelligence can help ensure the customer experience continues to align with those expectations.

A recent Forrester report—How to Build the Right CX Strategy—highlights just how important customer insights are in designing effective customer experiences. In particular, these insights serve as a basis for developing the right CX strategy. VoC can be used to understand the following:

  • Customers’ Emotional Needs: What are your customers’ pain points? Are there unmet expectations? Do these expectations differ across personas? VoC data is a powerful tool because it makes something seemingly intangible, such as assessing emotional connections, possible. And considering that how customers feel when interacting with a brand is a significant driver of loyalty, it’s absolutely critical to understand customers’ emotional needs and execute a strategy to deliver a more personalized, engaging experience.
  • CX Expectations: What touchpoints are the most important in your customers’ journey? Leveraging VoC feedback across the entire journey will enable brands to understand customers’ expectations and prioritize the touchpoints that have the greatest impact on loyalty. Also, focusing on open-end narrative feedback will create a deeper understanding of expectations and allow you to uncover insights you can’t get when focusing on scores. These expectations evolve quickly in today’s marketplace. By eliciting and examining customer feedback continuously, you’ll ensure you are delivering on these evolving needs.
  • Drivers of Loyalty: Today’s VoC analysis tools empower businesses to learn more from feedback. For example, you can identify specific touchpoints that have a large impact on loyalty and are likely to either create promoters or detractors. Focusing on these “moments of truth” and ensuring you exceed customer expectations will drive customer loyalty and create brand advocates. As customer feedback pours in from these important touchpoints you can deploy resources to fix issues and recover customers.

What a Continuous Approach Looks Like

VoC intelligence powers how a brand shapes and refines the customer experience. You can ensure you’re aligning with customer expectations. And when you’re constantly monitoring these expectations and emotional needs, your CX will become more dynamic and adaptable.

A continuous approach requires VoC data to be plugged into the entire customer journey. So beyond merely just researching and designing CX opportunities, you can use customer feedback for:

  • Discovering Opportunities: Rich customer feedback data can reveal what your customers want and where opportunities exist. New products, new features, or servicing options can all be discovered through effective analysis of customer feedback when listening across the entire journey.
  • Identifying Solutions to Problems: You know the types of feedback detractors are sharing. This information can help you in the moment to isolate problems and provide quick solutions. For example, let’s say in Region A, you see a spiking number of customers are having trouble getting answers to a particular product issue. You can use this insight in real time to optimize your workforce and deploy targeted training to address customer concerns.
  • Relationship Monitoring: VoC data can also help us nurture relationships at the individual customer level. You can use it to check in with customers throughout the customer lifecycle and determine how you’re delivering on their expectations over time.
  • Identifying Differentiators: One of the most profound insights you can discover by listening to customers are your differentiators. What makes you special? What makes you stand out? Many brands do this with no or very little customer input, which is a huge mistake. Customers are telling you. All it takes is the willingness to listen.

Bottom Line: A Strategic Approach to VoC Data Starts with a Mindset

Looking at VoC data differently can help you glean more strategic value from customer insights. The data and the tools are at your fingertips. The key, though, is mindset. A reactive-only approach leaves opportunity on the table. Instead, we should approach VoC data with a mindset that customer insights are a source of intelligence for the entire enterprise.

Your customers are your best partners. And that means they must have a permanent seat at the table. Their voices should be heard. Every day. Across all areas of your business.

If your organization isn’t currently taking this approach, take the first step. Look at what customers are telling you, and connect that intelligence to one new initiative or area of your business. Share those insights, and you’re on your way to a more strategic and vastly more beneficial way of bringing the voice of your customers into your business.

3 Major Findings from Our New CX Telecom Report

Telecommunications companies (aka “telecoms”) have the most fickle customer relationships of any industry. Fair or not, telecommunications companies are the ones that consumers can’t live with—and most definitely can’t live without.

Consumer ire toward telecoms can largely be attributed to unaligned industry expectations. Today’s consumer holds telecoms to the same standard as other industries, which have much simpler business and delivery models. As a result, other industries such as retail and food service have fewer variables preventing them from providing positive customer experiences.

To gain a better understanding of where the telecom industry stands in terms of customer experience (CX), InMoment’s team of data scientists conducted a study of 11,000+ consumers regarding their experiences with telecom providers.  

Here are three major findings from our Customer Experience in the Telecom Industry report:

1. That one-year mark is critical.

As with any consumer/brand connection, there are key benchmarks that make—or break—the relationship. For telecoms, that benchmark is the one-year anniversary when consumers typically recollect their experiences with your brand throughout the year and determine whether or not your organization has done enough to earn brand loyalty.

According to our study, “Satisfaction decreases universally for the first time at the one-year mark, no matter the line of service. The same pattern occurs with a customer’s likelihood to recommend.”

2. Customers are harder to impress the second time around.

There are many reasons customers might switch internet, TV, or mobile phone providers. Whether it was slow internet speed or rude support staff, each poor experience of a switching customer puts pressure on telecoms to provide a comparably better experience. And one thing is clear across all service lines: New customers who switch from other providers bring an expectation of a better experience.

However, our study finds that those customer don’t always find greener grass on the other side of the provider fence.  

3. People still like people.

According to the study, “With the exception of landlines, customers across all service lines who’d had a personal interaction with a brand representative reported higher satisfaction levels than those who had not.”

Like most industries, staff engagement is absolutely key in a provider’s ability to positively impact customers. And while chatbots and other automated technologies are a hot topic right now, those solutions should be implemented in very specific scenarios, and always in balance.

Telecom providers who focus attention and resources on empowering humans to resolve customer concerns will fix an obvious but prevalent problem in the overall engagement and satisfaction of their customers.

The Importance of Aligning Promise and Expectation

Customers expect consistency. If these expectations aren’t met, a hostile relationship can occur between a customer and brand. Meeting expectations consistently, across all platforms and channels is, therefore, key to driving trust and loyalty with customers.

Understanding Expectations

InMoment’s 2017 CX Trends Report highlights that brand and customer perceptions are beginning to align more closely in some areas, such as personalisation and feedback responses. However, it also reveals some significant disconnects. One such disconnect is that brands do not fully understand customer expectations, or the positive and negative emotions that can arise from meeting, or breaking, those expectations.

Our Trends Report shows that satisfaction tops the list of emotions customers associate with brands with which they feel most loyal. At the end of the day, customers aren’t asking for much – they want the brand’s promise to be delivered and, most importantly, they want to be satisfied.

Alignment

A company may have multiple platforms of communication with its customers. On a daily basis customers may interact with a company through different media channels, different devices and even through visiting brick and mortar locations. Whilst these channels are all different, customers conceive a company as a single entity. If they have a bad experience with one channel, this could impact their experience with the wider business. No matter how many channels a company has to communicate with its customers, if there is no alignment between these channels, the overall experience is diminished.

Before brands divert resources in an attempt to delight customers, they must master alignment of both promises and expectation. The key is in knowing what customers want from each brand touchpoint, using CX data, and ensuring the brand promise is being delivered accordingly.

In addition, with many companies looking to use customer experience as an important differentiator, getting every employee on the same page should be a top priority. Employee alignment is key in order for this to happen. Brands need to foster an environment where all employees are focussed on helping customers succeed if they are to create a consistent experience regardless of product, location, channel or platform.

Building trust with your customers

The ultimate goal of most companies is to build trust with customers (as trust can lead to loyalty). Trust, however, doesn’t just happen – it must be earned through a series of good experiences, over time.

Understanding customer expectations is just the starting point for most companies. Aligning the brand promise and messaging comes next. Then, and only then, can a company start to build customer trust.

Customers vs. Employees: What People Aren’t Saying about Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods

Which list would your company rather make: Best Places to Work or Best Customer Experience?

The good news is, companies don’t have to choose—they can make both lists. They can satisfy their employees and customers, and come out on top in both realms. In fact, the relationship between employee and customer experiences can and should be reciprocal.

Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, after the company’s recent acquisition by Amazon, said Whole Foods focused on its employees at the “expense of our customers.” Whereas Amazon, year after year, ranks at or near the top of every evaluation of world-class customer experience, but hasn’t achieved that same level of recognition for its employee practices.

Working at Whole Foods is a pretty good gig. Employees receive many perks, from in-store discounts of up to 30 percent, affordable health insurance, and stock options, to massage therapy, yoga, and language classes. Employees have a voice (that’s actually heard) when it comes to their benefits packages, process improvements, and even new recipes.

Not to be mistaken, there’s nothing wrong—and a lot right—with treating your employees fairly with competitive wages, generous perks, and a genuinely caring work environment. But the company didn’t earn the nickname “Whole Paycheck” without good reason. Someone has to pay for all of those employee niceties. And over time, costly perks often lack the motivational aspect that companies seek from them, forcing leaders to focus on what really creates sustained employee engagement. And sometimes they’re simply uncertain where to turn.

A few months ago I wrote an article entitled, “What They Really Want: The Business Case for Elevating Employees’ Role in CX,” in which I discussed this exact topic. I acknowledge that companies are thinking further outside the box than ever to engage employees (e.g., company game rooms, always-full snack closets), but question whether these efforts are truly delivering the return on employee loyalty companies seek.

In the case of Whole Foods (and many other brands across the world) I would argue no. Did employee perks translate to positive experiences for customers? Not necessarily. And great customer experiences don’t always result in fulfilling employment, either. And at the end of the day, isn’t creating positive customer experiences that drive brand loyalty and high-value customer relationships what running a business is all about?

So how do you create this environment where employees are engaged, empowered, and motivated to deliver frictionless, individualized customer experiences? For the complete run down, read the aforementioned article, but in summary: ensure your employees know they are valued. Make them a part of the creation and evolution of the customer experiences your company delivers. Invite them to the conversation by asking for their feedback. Asking for the employee’s perspective on improving the brand’s delivery of customer experience—known as Voice of the Employee (VoE)—empowers employees to take ownership of CX outcomes. If employees are not bought in, initiatives meant to improve the customer experience could actually have the opposite effect.

Making data-driven decisions requires listening to your customers and your employees, and going deeper than traditional metrics. On the employee side, gauging your employee experience based on turnover and attrition can be misleading for a number of reasons (e.g., a dissatisfied employee who sticks around or an engaged employee who leaves to return to school). When measuring CX, metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Overall Satisfaction (OSAT) can be misleading as well—they miss the nuances of the customer experience. Dig deeper into the unstructured feedback on human factors: staff helpfulness, friendliness, and attentiveness. Engaged employees with high levels of morale are more likely to shine in these areas, creating a reciprocal relationship that leads to an enviable cycle of positive customer and employee experiences.

As Amazon ventures into more brick-and-mortar endeavors, will its customer-first model continue working? Retail is a completely different animal than e-commerce—you must have your best, brightest, and strongest brand advocates at the front line. They are the representation and personification of your company—much different and more personal than a customer experience over the phone, email, or chat. For this reason, keeping staff engaged through an open and inclusive culture is paramount.

While Whole Foods may be a cautionary tale to other employee-first brands, it should not abandon the foundation that made it a success for so many years. If it’s going to scale back its employee-centricity, it needs to do so methodically and backed by data to ensure it invests in what creates highly engaged employees. I believe what it will ultimately learn is that making employees a part of customer experience creation is what truly keeps them happy and productive—not the perks.

What happens when you merge the world’s most customer-centric brand with one of the most employee-centric? Only time will tell, but the result could be revolutionary for both these brands, as well as the people who work for and buy from them.

Be Careful How You Ask for Customer Feedback

In its recent report, How to Build the Right CX Strategy, Forrester declares, “Customers are your best source for identifying unmet expectations and needs.”

It’s clear that measuring customer experience (CX) through customer feedback has become a key focus as organisations aim to gain a competitive advantage. However, as more organisations request feedback from consumers one of the growing challenges I hear is that businesses are worried about “survey fatigue” and saturation. In our experience, programmes that evolve in line with business requirements are able to grow both responses and actionable insights.

Customers give feedback for four principal reasons:

  • They have something positive to share and want to feel connected to your brand.
  • They have something negative to share and want you to act on it!
  • You incentivise them.
  • They are asked.

If they are connected to your brand, you provide memorable experiences, and you ask for it, there is no reason why “survey fatigue” should set in, as long as you use the right technology to connect with customers and ask the right questions in a timely and engaging way.

The bigger threat to CX programmes is how you ask for feedback, and the impact this has on the customer experience and customers’ perception of your brand. How you ask for feedback has a big impact on the quality and amount of feedback gained.

I was recently asked for feedback following a call I had with my TV and broadband provider. The call lasted around three minutes, during which I successfully negotiated a price reduction. I was happy. However, the agent then insisted I wait in silence for another minute whilst he typed up the notes before he finally asked me if I would stay on the line to complete a survey. His pitch for getting some feedback went something like this: “Would you mind completing a survey on how I helped today? I’m pretty sure we only do this so my boss can check up on me.” Whilst this comment might have been made in jest there was probably some level of truth in it. It did nothing but annoy me and ruined what had been a good call.

I have also had a number of experiences in retail shops and restaurants where I’ve been asked to give feedback with the comment, “Please tick ‘Very Satisfied’ or it doesn’t count and I don’t get a bonus.”

What do these messages say about your brand?

In the drive to collect feedback, it appears many organisations are forgetting one important factor: The way you ask for feedback has an impact on the customer experience. When done poorly, this can be one of the biggest dangers to CX programmes.

At InMoment, we have successfully enabled many brands to shift their collection methods from traditional paper and agent interactions into digital invites. Using eReceipts, emails, or automated telephone solutions can be very useful in not only achieving healthy response rates but also protecting the customer experience through a more focused effort.

Whatever your situation, it’s worth asking how much feedback you actually need. Are we putting too much pressure on our teams to collect lots of feedback for the sake of having more data?

Whilst more feedback can give you richer customer stories and comments, and thus insights, be aware of the number of responses you need to be statistically confident in the scores your programme is generating, and resist the urge to keep asking.

There is a cost to your brand if the wrong behaviors are adopted in the push for feedback.

A bonus culture around CX programmes is often what drives these bad behaviors. In my next article, I will focus on how to get the culture of transparency right to ensure your CX programme avoids some of these issues. This will focus on moving away from pushing feedback to pulling it in, and how some organisations have created a culture of welcoming “bad” feedback so they can correct their mistakes and improve.

Is Your Company Really Customer-Centric? How You Handle Complaints Is the True Test

As long as there are customers, there will always be issues, complaints, and disagreements.

In fact, nearly every morning’s news report brings another example of a self-proclaimed “customer-centric” company failing—and shockingly, sometimes injuring—its customers.

Let’s be honest: Pleasing every customer, every time—while an admirable goal—is simply not possible. But failing to meet customer expectations doesn’t have to be all bad. In fact, it’s an opportunity to not only redeem the customer relationship, but—when handled with skill—also significantly improve it. There’s another, nearly-untapped benefit: It’s a chance to empower employees to take greater ownership of the customer experience (CX) and increase their own engagement in the process.

Customer complaints typically end one of two ways: They’re either resolved satisfactorily…or they’re not. When resolved successfully, customers are turned into loyal brand advocates while employees receive an enhanced sense of self-efficacy, a more positive CX orientation, and experience higher levels of motivation, confidence, and morale. However, a lack of resolution can drive customer churn and cause emotional exhaustion, frustration, and disengagement for employees over time.

A few years ago, we were working with the contact center of a leading financial services company and quickly identified an increase in the number of customers calling to check on the arrival statuses of their new credit cards. In an attempt to quell customer concerns over potentially lost or stolen cards, the company’s service agents acted quickly to void the original cards and ship new cardsovernightto anxious customers. They were handling the situation exactly how they had been trained.

Taking additional calls, issuing new cards, and utilizing expedited shipping were additional expenses for the companyand were ultimately not addressing the root of customer concerns. In fact, immediately shipping a new card perpetuated the perception that the original card had been lost or stolen, and customer satisfaction continued to lag.

Aside from salvaging individual customer relationships, there’s much more to be gained from customer complaints. The one-on-one interaction between an employee and a customer is a unique, individualized, and often emotionally charged experience. And it turns out employees have a lot to say about it. In fact, one InMoment study found that 33% of employee engagement surveys contain feedback relating to an aspect of the customer experience. Frontline staff have a range of perspectives on the multitude of factors influencing the customer experience that individual departments or leaders simply cannot know. But collecting the intelligence that comes from this interaction—in a systematic, in-the-moment way—is rarely accomplished.

Back to the financial services company…Ultimately, it came down to trust. From the customer’s perspective: You sent me a new card, but what happened to my original? Why didn’t you do enough to protect my personal information and finances in the first place? However, in actuality, cards are very rarely lost or stolen in transit.

Using feedback collected from call center staff—both supervisors and agents—the company implemented new protocols to reinforce customer trust. It sent regular text and email tracking updates for cards. It retrained agents to place a special emphasis on the shipping window/anticipated delivery date of the original card and coached them to reiterate that timeframe to customers who called prior to the deadline. Not only did the company see a cumulative savings of approximately $3.5 million in a single year, but it increased customer satisfaction, trustand employee moral.

How this particular organization handled these customer complaints said a lot about its culture. It listened to its customers and employees, empathized with the pain points of the customer experience, and worked together across the enterprise to take action. Most importantly, it promoted a culture where people felt empowered to speak up because they knew that the company had their backs.

How customer complaints are handled is the ultimate test of your company’s culture. It’s a microcosm of how your company thinks, feels, behaves, and adjusts. When opportunities present themselves, how do you respond? Are you reactive or proactive? What sorts of relationships do you have with your customers? Are you able to identify areas for improvement, notify key stakeholders, and take action? Do you have clear resolution practices that address specific complaints but surface broader insights? And most importantly, do your employees receive the training, support, and guidance they need to effectively solve customer concerns with genuine care?

By empowering your employees to have a voice in CX, and equipping them with the necessary tools to not only appease—but truly please—customers, everybody wins.

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