Thought Leadership

With over 15 years of experience in the customer experience (CX) space, I have seen multiple companies employ training efforts to get their employees involved in new CX programs and initiatives. I have witnessed this process from the perspective of an Account Manager, Implementations Manager, a member of the Product Team, a Business Operations Manager, and now as the Director of Learning Services.

Throughout my experience, I’ve seen successes, but I’ve also seen teams fail to execute a training approach that actually engages employees. The theme across these failures is that their approach is time consuming, over complicated, and essentially inactionable. The truth is that while everyone knows training is important, it is easy for it to get lost in the list of day-to-day tasks—especially if the approach isn’t accessible. 

In order to set yourself—and your business—up for success, you need to avoid over-complicating things when it comes to rolling out employee training for your new program, but that’s easier said than done. To get you started, I’ve outlined 5 easy steps to help you craft an effective CX training approach for your business.

Step #1: Designate a Training Leader

As I started above, everyone knows that training is important. However, this understanding isn’t where most companies fall short; the failure is most often in the execution.

That is why it is so important to start your efforts by naming a project manager or leader to be directly responsible for your training efforts. This person can be the program champion, someone from your internal training team, or a representative from HR. 

Regardless of who this person is, it is their job to make sure that every employee participates in the training program. This means that they need to have the tools to track employee participation effectively—and to share results. 

How you track doesn’t need to be fancy, it could be as simple as an Excel or Google Sheet housed in a common area within the company, or it could be as complex as your work’s HR portal. By monitoring who has completed what, you’ll be able to keep the ball rolling for continuous success (and you’ll be all set up to execute step two).  

Step #2: Hold People Accountable

After finding your CX training owner, you need to create a way to hold employees accountable for completing their training. At the end of the day, we are all human and most of us need a carrot or a stick to be inspired to finish a task. 

Many businesses will create a goal or key performance indicator (KPI) directly related to training—this can be something as simple as a quarterly compliance record or something a little more involved. For example, one of our clients found a way to gamify their employee training by creating a board game for team members to play together. This way, the CX training was a fun team building exercise that also got employees actively engaged in the program.

No matter what your accountability method is, it will help employees know they are responsible for completing a set amount of CX training by a certain date. Deadlines are important drivers that everyone can understand, so use them!

Step #3: Make Training Easy to Complete

Now that you’ve designated your training leader and found a way to hold your team accountable, it’s time to make training easy to complete. When faced with a large task, people will be more likely to complete it if:

1. They know what needs to be done: Make a simple list of all required training and make this list accessible.  
2. They know when it has to be done: Send regular reminders via email or program notifications into your HR platform   
3. It is easy to find and complete: Locate training links in a place people often visit during their work day (like Slack, and internal sharing site, or learning management system.)

Remember: the easier you can make training to consume, the more likely your team will be to complete it. 

Step #4: Provide Opportunities for High Performers to Help

Now that you’ve set your learning program up for success, invite others in to join the party. As you curate your program, there will be folks who naturally rise up and quickly become subject matter experts. 

Successful training programs will make an effort to hold up those CX training rockstars as an ideal that the rest of the organization can aspire to. For example, if one region is doing exceptionally well, share their success with others to inspire them to step up to the plate as well. 

Encouraging your people to celebrate high performers and come up with their own creative ways to get their coworkers involved curates a team mentality and helps to foster a customer-centric culture.

Step #5: Celebrate!

Lastly, celebrate those wins! When people have successfully completed the assigned work, reward them. When you reward them, do it publically. Everyone likes to be recognized—plus, there is nothing like a little bit of healthy competition to motivate people. 

Post results in a place all can see—this can look like sending out a congratulatory email to the team that calls out those who have finished CX training, or putting a “congratulations” in via your internal rewards program. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy—just remember to do it! 

If you follow these easy steps, you’ll be on your way to implementing a successful CX training program. Leadership, accountability, accessibility, team work, and rewards will pave the way to the desired result: a CX program that is both highly successful and fully utilized from top to bottom. 

If you’re looking for more content that will help you drive employee engagement, check out this piece on employee incentives. You’ll learn what’s wrong with traditional approaches and how you can create a system that actually works in “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? 5 Ideas for Better Engagement.” 

The Net Promoter Score® (NPS) and the wider ecosystem to which it belongs, the Net Promoter System®, have long been organizations’ preferred means of evaluating everything from employee and customer satisfaction to internal processes. The reasons for NPS’s popularity are many, but its most attractive features are its speed, ease of use, and its ability to distill the state of almost any experience, department or function into a single number.

NPS’s benefits have earned it plenty of acclaim since its 2003 debut, but the metric has faced skepticism in recent years from some CX experts. Some of these practitioners have gone so far as to proclaim that NPS is “dead” and that organizations should leave it behind. What follows is a quick, honest look at these claims and at NPS’s place in today’s experience landscape.

It’s All About the Numbers(?)

One reason some CX practitioners shy away from the Net Promoter Score is because it’s just a number. How, these experts contend, can a simple number tell organizations what changes to make or what initiatives to undertake in order to achieve transformational success, let alone improve their score?

It’s true that the Net Promoter Score is “just” a number, but companies that focus solely on the metric aren’t tapping its full potential to begin with. Instead, organizations need to look to the deeper movement behind that number: the Net Promoter System. The Net Promoter System promotes customer centricity, continuous improvement, and learning from customer feedback. These principles are hardly outdated in today’s experience landscape, especially since they espouse finding meaning beyond the metric.

The Perils of Scoreboard-Watching

Relying more on the Net Promoter System’s values than the Net Promoter Score may sound well and good, but it also raises a natural question: if the System promotes the principles that the modern experience landscape thrives on, what’s the point of using the score at all?

First, let’s take a step back to discuss the relationship between the Net Promoter Score and companies’ expectations of it. Far too many organizations expect change to come about as a result of merely observing their score. Frankly, this expectation is a cultural problem, not the fault of NPS. Change is no less difficult to attain within an organization than in any other arena of life or business, and as with those other arenas, the only thing organizations can do to affect change is to work hard. Once organizations labor to apply the Net Promoter System’s principles, the metric will take care of itself and finally become an accurate indicator of a company’s standing.

Additionally, while endeavoring to understand the relationship between NPS and a brand’s financial incomes, some organizations may find that another metric, such as OSAT or Likelihood to Repurchase, suits them better. That’s great, but the principles behind the Net Promoter System still apply and can be leveraged even in those other contexts.

NPS Lives

Organizations that shift their focus from the metric to the meaning that the Net Promoter System provides can execute NPS with modern, data-ingesting experience intelligence tools. After all, the Net Promoter System helped bring about the wider customer experience world to begin with (it’s no coincidence that CX began proliferating shortly after NPS’s introduction).

Organizations can use the Net Promoter System and data-ingesting platforms toward the same end: capturing the voice of the customer at its most relevant moments, analyzing sentiments, and delivering those insights to stakeholders that can turn them into action. Because of this, NPS is far from dead—the values and internal business practices it promulgates are relevant to any organization that seeks meaningful, transformational success.

Want to read more about the state of NPS in 2020? Read the full article for free today!

Optimizing the customer experience for success is a necessity in today’s competitive business environment. And, for any initiative, customer data is the perfect place to start adjusting your strategy. With careful planning, analysis, and execution, you can transform CX intelligence into effective product innovation.

Our webinar, “From Information to Innovation: Using Customer Data to Drive Product Innovation,” helps you identify ways to leverage your CX program to sustain product enhancements that delight customers and drive loyalty. What follows are three notable, in-depth takeaways from that webinar that your organization can leverage to optimize its customer experience strategy.

Start with customer data.

It’s no secret there’s an abundance of data, but it’s rare for that data to produce any drastic change by itself. Often, the hardest part of listening to customers is figuring out which information to utilize and how. Start by taking a hard look at the data you have available, whether it’s surveys, comments, or employee feedback. Then, with either a skilled CX professional or a data-ingesting experience intelligence platform (or, ideally, both), you can begin to piece together information to find common themes.

Scrutinizing the information you already have allows your business to identify problem areas and to improve. Be sure to prioritize the most prevalent issues your company is facing that also have the biggest impact on customer experience. With solid listening tools in place, you can leverage existing insights to drive a better experience for customers across all facets of your organization.  Sometimes, the customer voice at one touch point may even provide insight for a completely different improvement opportunity!

Leverage intelligence tools to fuel strategy.

To go from knowing about a problem to fixing it, you need a plan. Fueling your business with CX intelligence resources and professionals gives product teams specific goals to work toward and issues to resolve. For example, the goal of fixing your product’s layout is much more tangible than broadly improving customer satisfaction (though a properly packaged CX business intelligence tool can enable both).  “Artful” listening allows teams to transcend the superficial to find both deep insights and the root causes of problems.

Your organization’s issues are unique and complex, and should be treated as such. With the right tools, authority, and people, problems can be squashed quicker and more efficiently. Specificity, context, and attention to detail are all unique to CX intelligence—and by leveraging these elements, you can improve your product.

Act quickly, but consistently. 

Achievable success is always the goal, but sustainable growth can be particularly elusive. The key? Proactivity. Data-ingesting experience platforms allow organizations to identify problem areas and develop specific improvement initiatives, but it’s what your teams do after that that really counts.  Bring cross-functional teams together to digest data, tie it to operational processes, and help product teams prioritize long-term change.

Additionally, be sure to measure success so that a model of “listen-understand-improve-monetize” can be repeated. Oftentimes, when working with smart tools, smart people are underutilized. It’s important that your organization treats intelligence as an enabler for customer experience, not a replacement for it.

When companies prioritize CX innovation, they have a much easier time turning hard-won insights into meaningful innovation. After that first win, CX practitioners can establish enough credibility to drive even more success for their organization. Use your wins to both justify the importance of CX to executives and to see the business grow firsthand.

To hear more about how you can utilize your customer feedback to transform your product, watch the full webinar for free today!

We live in a fast-paced and sometimes disconnected, impersonal world. Many prefer texting to calling or face-to-face communication.  We shop online for convenience—and because some of us just don’t feel like interacting with a sales associate. Waiting in line at a store or having to call into a service center can be painful. When the retail experience can sometimes be a hassle, why would we bother buying at brick and mortar when we can from the comfort of our homes?

Retailers are struggling to find their fit in this new world: How do they overhaul the retail experience, bring it into the 21st century, and re-engage with this new type of customer in a personalized and inclusive way?

Customer feedback across many different industries shows one common thread: People want to connect with the brands they love in more than just a transactional way. CX intelligence can help revamp the entire experience, from in-store to online—even in the way brands listen to customers.

Our focus at InMoment is to help retailers embrace the future of feedback and create inclusive and personalized experiences for every type of customer. At Forrester CXSF, we partnered with Foot Locker to share how the global retailer is innovating the customer experience at three main touchpoints to bring about a retail transformation.                

How Consolidated Data Helps Foot Locker Gain Holistic Insights

Consolidating its siloed data into one platform with InMoment, Foot Locker was able to carefully identify a diverse array of customer types, from the sneakerhead who wants the latest and greatest in footwear to up their street cred, to the senior citizen who just wants a comfy pair of kicks. In between are the in and out power shoppers, non-sneakerheads, and many others.

 By specifying different categories of customers, Foot Locker has been able to design personalized and inclusive experiences in-store, online, and during the feedback process. 

Foot Locker’s Power Stores and pop-up retail spots are celebrating the local culture of the neighborhoods they serve. Different from the traditional brick and mortar store, Power Stores are a hub for local sneaker culture, art, music, and sports—featuring wall designs from local artists, and custom shoe designs celebrating their hometown. 

With its pop-up stores, Foot Locker is literally meeting customers where they are, setting up shop for instance in parks where kids are playing ball. By partnering with big brands like Nike, sports stars, and other celebrities, Foot Locker is building a stronger brand connection for its customers, building relationships that will continue to attract them to brick and mortar stores. 

These innovative in-store designs are the result of Foot Locker truly understanding who its customers are, thanks to data consolidation. 

When it comes to feedback, Foot Locker partnered with InMoment to create a more personalized and engaging survey experience. Using InMoment’s Video Feedback and Image Upload capabilities, customers can tell their own stories in their own way.  For example, Video Feedback helped customers alert Foot Locker about online orders that arrived in damaged or crumpled shoeboxes. With Video Feedback, Foot Locker can see, hear, and better understand the customer’s emotion by their tone of voice and body language, and it’s a fast and easy way for customers of all ages to interact with the retailer without having to go to the store or call customer service. 

With Image Upload, one customer shared with Foot Locker how excited she was that her son with cerebral palsy was able to find brand-name shoes that fit over his leg braces. In response, Foot Locker reached out to him directly and sent him a gift card to get another pair. The boy’s mother then sang Foot Locker’s praises on Facebook, reminding everyone to “fill out those surveys…someone is listening!”

If the Shoe Fits, Wear It

InMoment CEO Andrew Joiner believes retailers will only succeed in the future if they follow Foot Locker’s example by looking at the big picture: Who customers are and where they’re connecting with the brand. 

“Don’t just collect feedback from a single point – you will get data in multiple channels, but if you look at it holistically and across every point you’re talking to customers through, you get amazing results,” said Joiner. 

By cultivating holistic data with InMoment, Foot Locker is embracing this changing retail world. It’s promising customers through action that interacting with its team in person, online or through feedback is going to be an excellent experience—something many retailers are failing to do in this new retail atmosphere. 

Creating these personalized and inclusive experiences has kept Foot Locker at No. 4 on Forbes’ Most Engaged Companies List, and has increased its OSAT score by six points since 2018. 

But scores aren’t important. What’s vital is that customers feel that brands are stepping into their shoes and connecting with them on a more personal level. That’s what locks in customer loyalty. That’s why Foot Locker is changing the game. And InMoment is honored to be a part of it. 

Last week, I led a roundtable discussion at the Future Guest Experience 2019 conference, where I had a chance to chat with executives and CX experts who are searching for ways to future-proof their guest experiences.

One of the biggest challenges that I’ve seen businesses face today is creating experiences that are both consistent and memorable. The truth is that it’s no longer enough to provide an experience that is solely consistent or memorable; the former lacks novelty, while the latter lacks, well, consistency. At the same time, companies must also strive to provide these experiences today and in the future—essentially “future-proofing” their brand against issues that guests might experience with it.

Fortunately, there’s a path to providing better guest experience, and it begins with considering what guests are truly after (it’s much more than a purchase) and leveraging the right strategies that can help you improve the guest experience today and redesign it for tomorrow.

Here are a few strategies to get you started:

Improving Experiences Today

In today’s experience economy, it’s no longer enough for a business to merely provide products. Guests seek much more than a transaction; they’re after an emotional connection that creates a memorable experience.

Consider a guest who meets with their friends regularly at a restaurant; eventually, their experience transcends ordering an appetizer and becomes fond memories of dinnertime conversation. Unfortunately, typical survey approaches cannot capture the emotion that makes these experiences memorable.

Just so we’re clear, questions that offer guests a zero-to-ten scale to define their satisfaction aren’t going to properly reflect those guests’ true feelings. The best way to capture a guest’s experience is to let them describe it in their own terms. 

In my experience, providing surveys with open-ended questions, reading comments and analyzing the common themes therein are an effective means of identifying today’s drawbacks and successes. Using this method, businesses can pinpoint where they might be coming up short and—thanks to that aforementioned feedback—create plans that result in transformative change and consistent, memorable experiences.

Redesigning for Tomorrow

Companies that leverage CX technology to staunch today’s problems are well-positioned to keep them from popping back up tomorrow. The only way to truly future-proof an experience, though, is to stay proactive. 

Future proofing starts with combining guest and loyalty data. Companies that can accomplish this will achieve an unparalleled view of the brand experience that their guests are having. That’s what future-proofing is really about: capturing guest data and preferences at the point of contact, then using that information to design new, more personalized experiences.

Numerous companies are taking advantage of future-proofing. For example, several retailers have begun combining facial recognition technology with CRM data; this information is then forwarded to frontline employees to ensure a more personalized experience.

What You Need to Future-Proof Tomorrow—Now

I’ve seen companies that take the time and effort to use unstructured guest feedback capabilities reap sizable benefits. At the same time, it is important to remember that the intelligence you receive from your guest experience efforts is only effective if you act on it.

That proactivity shouldn’t be limited to guest experience, either. Companies that can combine CX data with the right hiring, onboarding, and training processes to deliver a better employee experience will be best-positioned to future-proof their experiences. The more of these pieces that businesses have in place, the better off their future-proofing will be.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Even the most CX-savvy companies may find it challenging to isolate their brand’s signal from the noise and balance short-term fixes with long-term improvements. InMoment’s customizable guest experience platform and inveterate consultants make it an ideal place to start for any company considering future-proofing. 

If you’re ready to take the next step toward improving your guest experience today and creating memorable experiences tomorrow, reach out and schedule a demo today to see how the InMoment platform can work for you!

Eric Smuda has built a distinguished career out of turning venerable brands into CX powerhouses. His novel, impassioned approach to customer experience implementation changed the face of the rental car industry, in which he found award-winning ways to connect customers and companies. It’s only fitting, then, that Eric serves as a Principal of CX Strategy & Enablement at InMoment, lending his seasoned perspective to many of the company’s strategies.

Employee experience (EX) is quickly becoming a mainstay metric for businesses. Much like customer experience, EX is a critical factor for success with its ability to identify and drive impactful change within organizations. Why? Because employees are the most prevalent factor in making–or breaking–memorable, positive experiences for customers. 

5 Elements for Employee Experience Measurement

The average employee spends just over four years at a given job, and the experiences they have during their tenure are a crucial part of retaining them as part of your staff. Creating a positive environment for employees inspires passion and commitment toward their work–which results in better customer service and stronger performance, both of which contribute to the overall success of the organization. 

Our latest PoV, “The EX Factor: 5 Areas That Effectively Measure the Employee Experience,” takes an in-depth look at the five key elements companies should consider when measuring employee experience. The first three areas were developed by Dr. Wilmar Schaufeli, professor of work and organizational psychology; the last two areas are derived by our InMoment Employee Experience Experts. Whether you regularly distribute surveys or collect feedback on a one-to-one basis, incorporating these elements into your employee experience strategy can help keep workers engaged and interested in their job: 

• Vigor (Emotion): Measuring employee vigor is about determining their feelings toward work, how energized they are by their tasks, and if they feel their work contributes to their overall career goals. Vigor directly ties to employees’ investment in their job, ensuring they remain enthusiastic and optimistic in their role. 
• Absorption (Action): Absorption measures how immersed employees are in their work. This allows you to uncover the parts of the job where they feel fully invested, tasks they enjoy, and general sentiment and enthusiasm. Absorption also ties back to vigor, allowing you to pinpoint where–and to what extent–emotions appear regarding work. 
• Dedication (Commitment): In addition to understanding how excited and invested employees are at your company, it’s also important to gauge their dedication. For employee experience, dedication is defined as the involvement in one’s work and the accompanying sense of significance, pride, and inspiration. Measuring employee dedication allows you to see how their emotions and actions develop over time. 
• Culture (Support System): Strong company culture isn’t strictly about benefits and perks. It’s about the support your organization provides for employees. Do you have strong corporate values that employees support? Is there a clearly defined corporate identity, mission statement, and brand promise that employees are aligned with? Employees can only sustain ongoing levels of vigor, absorption, and dedication if they feel strongly about a positive culture that they want to be part of. 
• Orientation to the Customer (Impact): There are plenty of instances where employees are happy with their managers, team, and overall company environment, but feel less-than-enthusiastic about customer interactions. It’s important to survey employees to understand how and where they channel feelings about work–both good and bad. It’s important to gauge employee engagement as it relates to internal team members, as well as how it relates to delivering excellent value and experiences for customers.

Employee experience is about the people behind the company, much in the same way that customer experience is about the people behind the purchase. Understanding what motivates, inspires, and drives action for employees is key to creating better, lasting experiences for them. 

Interested in more tips and insights on measuring employee engagement? Download our PoV, “The EX Factor: 5 Areas That Effectively Measure the Employee Experience” today.

What do you think of when you hear “radical innovation?” When you look past the buzzwords, you’ll find an idea that is at the heart of technology—the idea that humans can create something that breaks the mold and changes the way we complete tasks in everyday life. 

The theme of this year’s Forrester CXNYC conference was “Changing the Game—Leading Radical CX Innovation,” and since then, I have found myself thinking more and more about what radical innovation looks like in our space.

If you were to look at customer experience from a bird’s eye view, you would see a mass of legacy approaches. Why? Because most companies are still talking about CX in a vacuum. The truth is that experience data is everywhere; it’s in different languages and on different channels and forums, comes from a variety of audiences, and lives both inside and outside of traditional Voice of Customer programs. 

Customer feedback data is important, but it is also limited. It only offers one perspective on how to leverage CX to improve relationships and business outcomes. To be innovative, CX professionals need to tap into the full experience ecosystem, harnessing intelligence across channels,  from whenever, wherever, and however your customers are talking to and about your brand, and integrate that with other sources of customer data and analytics—clickstream data, CRM data, etc. To be radically innovative, however, requires CX professionals to think even bigger—expanding their perspective to also include employee and market intelligence.

This is our focus at InMoment; to look beyond what CX has been to envision the future of feedback, and then create the technology that realizes that future. At Forrester CXNYC, we presented an example of how we are empowering our client Massage Envy to be radically innovative by looking at their brand experience from both a customer experience and employee perspective finding the critical intersections.

The Inseparable Relationship Between CX and EX

The connection between customer experience and employee experience has long been discussed, but what does that actually look like in the data? Our client Massage Envy was able to paint a picture of this connection and discover actionable intelligence when they implemented an EX program to complement their existing CX program.

Massage Envy had been using InMoment to measure points on the customer journey for more than four years. There were strong indicators in their customer data regarding the connection between customer turnover and employee turnover and customer satisfaction. 

Using these indicators, the Massage Envy team partnered with InMoment Employee Experience and Data Sciences team to implement an employee experience program that would mirror the path of the customer journey. 

In the course of the analysis, the team was able to identify key drivers of employee satisfaction and correlate them to customer satisfaction. Massage Envy was then able to act on this intelligence by implementing improved training procedures, which in turn lead to higher employee satisfaction, improved customer experience and better profitability for their business—a definite win-win-win result! 

Combining Strategic Services with Sophisticated Technology

Brands like Massage Envy are truly leading radical CX innovation by implementing technology that assesses the entire experience (customer, employee, and beyond) and delivers true intelligence. 

This success was made possible not only by innovative technology, but also by the philosophy behind our solution: “Machine-driven, human assisted.” This idea of combining strategic services with sophisticated technology is crucial given the sheer amount of complex data today’s companies take in, as well as the amount of meaning we need to derive from it to make it actionable. 

If we rely solely on human analysis, getting meaning from this mountain of data is impossible. There simply aren’t enough data scientists in the world or hours in the day to process the amount of data companies gather. On the other hand, computers on their own are fallible. 

The InMoment solution uses data science—algorithms, machine learning, neural nets, and others—to create smarter, better analytics that are carefully curated by trained data scientists. The machine-driven approach allows businesses to address the complexities of data overload while the human assistance provides the context and direction that delivers truly actionable results.

The success Massage Envy had with this solution is proof that the industry is changing. Relying solely on technology and customer feedback isn’t going to cut it in today’s experience economy. I believe our VP of Data Science, Levi Roberts, said it best: 

“The future of feedback is coming, and it’s becoming more and more clear that technology cannot be the only solution to solve experiences that are emotionally charged. In a world where consumer expectations are rising faster than brands can keep up, it is the right combination of strategic services and tech that will drive experiences forward and unlock future success.”

With a 360 view of experience and the combination of strategic services and sophisticated technology, InMoment is leading in radical CX innovation, realizing the future of feedback today.

The ability to connect employee and customer data and combine strategic services with sophisticated technology are just a few of the many analyses available in the InMoment Experience Intelligence (XI) Platform. To learn about more about how we are radically innovating the world of CX, read the full platform eBook today!

As a CX professional, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about your customers’ increasing expectations. Well, I’m right here with you. This statement may be common, but it’s incredibly over simplified.

Yes, customers expect more from brands, but they do so because there are brands out there delivering phenomenally simple, fast, different and even profound experiences. As Paul Papas, global leader of IBM Interactive Experience said: “The last best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they want everywhere.”

By these new measures, when a brand doesn’t keep up, gets sloppy, or doesn’t do the work to understand what its customers really value, those customers notice — and they put the culprit on notice.

For our 2019 CX Trends Report, InMoment surveyed both consumers and brands to understand the alignments and disconnects in how well or poorly customer experience is delivered. While there are some bright spots, the overall takeaway is that most brands are still struggling to find ways to do right by their own needs while also serving the evolving needs and expectations of their customers.

One big red flag was the mismatch in how companies and consumers responded to whether brands are getting better at delivering an excellent customer experience versus just completing a transaction.

Fifty percent of brands responded that they are “definitely” doing better, but only 11 percent of consumers said the same.

Worse, nearly 10 times as many consumers than brands believe that experiences are definitely not getting better.

It doesn’t help that brands aren’t taking the right accountability for falling short. When asked how much responsibility customers have in helping create better experiences, 40 percent of brands reported that that customers were “very” responsible, with an unbelievable 12 percent stating that customers are “completely” responsible. Customers, on the other hand, see responsibility as a shared endeavor.

While these statistics make the state of CX may sound bleak, our research also uncovered wise counsel on how brands can reverse unproductive practices and make serious strides in the other direction.

Download the full “2019 CX Trends Report” to learn about the five trends you need to know as well as actionable takeaways to help you bridge the gap with your customers and create excellent customer experiences!

Could there be value lying dormant in your company? Claire Fastier gives three examples of AI unlocking efficiency and opening avenues for your customer like never before.

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

In Australia, AI is hot on the agenda. The Federal Government’s 2018-19 budget revealed a $29.9 million investment over the next four years to strengthen Australia’s capability in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning – and a recent report from AlphaBeta reveals that Australia could reap a $2.2 trillion opportunity by 2030 with greater investment in AI.

The application of AI to improve customer experience is particularly on the rise. In fact, this year the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), held in Las Vegas and possibly the most notable conference in the world for showcasing the latest in consumer technology, featured its first ever Artificial Intelligence Marketplace to showcase the latest innovations designed to perform human tasks.

Products ranged from big data analytics to speech recognition to advanced decision making to predictive technology. Many of these solutions are already being leveraged by great companies to add a magic touch to their services.

The question you should be asking yourself is: are you taking advantage of this? If not, here are three ways you can apply AI, and examples of companies which have done so effectively, to improve customer experience right now.

1. Automate simple customer interactions

There’s nothing less efficient than bogging down highly-skilled, highly-paid employees with basic tasks. Emerging technology in artificial intelligence can automate simple interactions, allowing your people to focus on more complex and nuanced customer interactions.

Gartner predicts that 95% of customer interactions will be driven by AI by 2025, leveraging chatbots and mobile messaging to complete simple tasks. A strong local example of this is superannuation firm AustralianSuper, which launched its chatbot, ‘Ash’, earlier this year and has seen more than 50,000 messages sent, achieving a 92% overall customer satisfaction rate.

Over in the US, supermarket chain Kroger announced its new Kroger Edge technology, which, among other things, will enable the company to instantly change prices and activate promotions on digital displays, freeing up employees who would otherwise change prices by hand.

This sort of automation can deliver a more consistent experience and a huge financial impact according to Juniper Research, which estimates cost savings of more than US$8 (AU$11.27) billion annually by 2022, up from US$20 (AU$28.19) million in 2017.

2. Augment your service employees

Another powerful application of AI is within your own organisation. By leveraging solutions that enable you to proactively anticipate customers’ needs and engage on an emotional level, customer experiences will shift from mundane to exceptional.

Some of the world’s largest retail, hospitality and financial services brands, for example, use InMoment’s AI-powered technology to analyse unstructured (text-heavy) data and surface critical information when action is needed. Being able to pinpoint and act accordingly when customers are unhappy or in need of assistance is critical if you are to maintain and develop strong customer relationships.

3. Enrich your existing data

Finally, you can take all the data you have and put it to new use. As Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, notes, “there are a lot of places where AI simply lets companies use their data better, and AI usage is largely invisible to the customer. Retail sites, for instance, can observe the products people are viewing, and use that data to begin suggesting other, more relevant products to them than was previously possible.”

Recently, in addition to making targeted content suggestions, Netflix began tailoring the ‘cover art’ associated with a recommended movie or TV show, based on the user’s viewing history.

For example: the image displayed for a romantic comedy (I’m partial to The Truth About Cats and Dogs), will either play to the ‘romance’ or the ‘comedy’ of the film.

Or, it may feature the image of an actor who starred in other movies you’ve watched. For what it’s worth, Stranger Things has nine different cover art options.

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

It used to be that retailers considered the four “P’s” of marketing when pushing their wares to consumers: product, price, promotion and place. Today, however, not many brands can rely on a single “P” to differentiate, but are instead dependent on one big “E:” experience.   

While the rise of Amazon originally created a serious question about whether fast, easy, and varied e-buying would largely replace traditional brick-and-mortar retail, the last year has turned the conversation to something more complex. Amazon, Warby Parker, and other born-digital brands have increased their investment in physical stores, bowing to the undeniable fact that some experiences — or components of the experience — simply can’t happen in the digital sphere.

Our 2018 Retail CX Trends study asked consumers whether a “recent, enjoyable” shopping experience occured at a physical store, digitally, or through a combination of physical and digital.  More than half of consumers (53 percent) said it was in a store.

The research also showed an interesting trend: The younger the consumer, the more likely they are to have enjoyable retail experiences in the digital realm alone, and as a hybrid blend of digital-physical. Brick-and-mortar stores will continue to be essential touchpoints, but retailers must elevate and embed digital elements to become and stay relevant to their next-gen customers.

Our researchers wanted to know what elements of a retail interaction elevate a mere purchase to an experience. In looking at both the quantitative and qualitative data, we saw a interesting story emerge.  Coming in at No. 2 was Personalization. Part of what elevates a brand experience is making customers feel special. And while retailers are directing the large majority of resources toward digital personalization, 30 percent of respondents said personalized treatment in stores is what elevates a mere purchase to an “experience.”

Now for the top-ranked response: Product quality. At first read, this may feel anticlimactic. After all, quality doesn’t have the same sparkle as some of the other options, like multisensory elements like smell, taste, touch, or access to experts. What this rather mundane-sounding selection indicates consumers’ focus on the experience beyond the initial purchase — the enduring impression that a good, quality take-away creates long after the transaction.  Each time your customers engage with the item or service reinforces a positive or negative impression toward the brand.

The Forgotten Experience

Retailers often forget that giving feedback about an experience is actually part of the experience. They over-survey their customers with questions that they want answers to, and do so in old-school, multiple choice formats.  

Our researchers wanted to know what kind of feedback experience consumers consider the “ultimate” experience. The top pick, by far, was the ability to give ratings at 88 percent. Thanks to the ease, quickness, and increasing gamification of ratings, this was not a surprise.

The next three picks included participating in focus groups (35 percent), speaking naturally via voice assistants like Siri or Alexa (26 percent), and sharing images (25 percent).

While making feedback fun and simple is nice for customers and can produce a mountain of valuable structured data to analyze, their stated willingness to use new technologies to share more detailed, more personal data is worth noting.  In line with other topics in the study, younger consumers are more willing to engage with brands in “intelligent” conversations; a gift that brands should embrace.

To learn more about what your consumers need and want from their retail experiences, get your free copy of “The 2018 Retail CX Trends Report” today!

Last week, I covered findings from InMoment’s 2018 US Retail CX Trends Report that discussed how brands can earn their customers’ trust. This time I’ll delve into the second theme: Loyalty.

I’ve heard a lot of CX and marketing pros declare the old-school type of loyalty — “faithfulness to which one is bound by pledge or duty” according to Merriam-Webster — is dead. We wanted test this assumption while also exploring whether there might just be more complexity to customers’ commitments.

We started by asking about the object of consumers’ loyalty: do they feel more connected to brands, or to they tend to gravitate to specific products or services?

More than half of consumers gave a mixed response, saying that it depends on the brand or product/service. Slightly more (26 percent versus 21 percent) of customers said they tend to feel more loyalty to brands versus products.  Millennials were the most definitive group, with 30 percent saying they feel loyal to brands.  

For retailers, this is a critical distinction. Consumers are loyal to what and where they find value. Brand-level loyalty may be more about lifestyle or aspiration, while fealty to specific products may be more about efficacy. Of course there are products that have achieved near-brand status like iPhones that probably combine both motivators.

Knowing why customers commit can inform an incredible range of business activities, from brand messages and new product development, to demand generation campaigns and experience design.  

The next topic we looked at round loyalty is how and why it develops, anas well as  unravels.

The data revealed that for both scenarios, it’s a journey. The large majority of shoppers — 80 percent — said they “grew to love” a brand over time; the cumulative effect of great products, service, buying experiences, positive reviews and recommendations from others. Fifteen percent experienced “love at first sight,” and 7 percent committed after a glowing recommendation from a trusted source.

When it comes to breaking up with a brand, nearly two thirds (58 percent) of US consumers said it takes several “really bad” experiences in order to make the hard choice to leave; with 34 percent saying it’s more a matter of “growing apart” as they experienced a gradual decrease in what was special. Just 19 percent of customers said they only give a brand one chance to fail before they leave.

So what does this mean? Brands shouldn’t get too comfortable, though. While the research demonstrates that today’s retail customers can be quite loyal, there’s a limit to their commitment. Nearly 50 percent of customers say they’ve left a brand to which they were loyal to go to a competitor that is better at meeting their needs. Failing to stay relevant will accelerate the exit of even your most loyal customers.

For those fortunate brands that achieve loyalty status with their customers, the benefits are tangible and significant.   

• Long-term Relationships: A whopping 77 percent of consumers say they’ve held relationships with specific brands for 10 or more years. This is even true of 60 percent of Millennials, despite being relatively young.
• More, More, More: 61 percent of loyal customers go out of their way to buy from them, and 60 percent will make more frequent purchases (that number rises to 70 percent among Millennials); 50 percent will purchase more products.
• Tell a Friend: 75 percent of loyal customers will recommend a brand to friends and family.    

Because we’re in the business of customer feedback,  we also wanted to know how loyalty affects customers’ willingness to share data generally, and their feedback about their experience specifically. Here’s what the data revealed:  Customers who feel high levels of trust and loyalty are significantly more likely to share ratings (in the 90 percent range for both) and detailed commentary (both exceeded 70 percent) about their experiences.  A good number (30%) are also willing to hand over personal data (name, age, location, etc.), and 41% are up for sharing their purchase data (how much, what, where) with trusted brands.

While these numbers aren’t astronomical, they’re an important place to start. Establish trust first, and then deliver consistent value over time. It’s a long and complex road, but one brands must travel if they expect savvy customers to had over something they realize is precious.

To learn more about the latest retail CX trends,—including more statistics from our study on consumer loyalty—download the full report: “2018 Retail CX Trends: Trust and Loyalty in the Experience Economy”

When it comes to metrics, the human race is a little obsessed. We measure our weight, height, IQ, wealth, and now our followers on social media. Those of us in customer experience (CX) take metrics even more seriously, and for good reason.

CX metrics help us understand our company’s relative position, reinforce expectations and key behaviors in our teams, and quantify our level of impact and achievement.  Because of this, many program owners and stakeholders spend their time agonizing over what questions to ask of their customers. Though this is important, I would like to suggest that CX experts begin with a different approach, asking: What business outcome do we want to influence and why?

It’s easy to get stuck on what your measuring. After all, it makes your CX program tangible, but when it comes down to it, you want your program to create real impact. That impact can only be shown with the right metrics.

You may be creating the first ever metric framework for your company or you may have historically tracked certain metrics, but have a feeling they just aren’t working for you any more. Either way, if you want to elevate your programs and practices, you’ve got to be deliberate about your metrics. How? Here are four guiding principles for choosing and implementing metrics with meaning:

Principle #1: Design with the End in Mind

It used to be that program owners would start their programs off by turning to each other and asking, “what have we always wanted to know about our customers?” The result was surveys populated with “best guess” questions that provided some information, but not much direction. This method causes a disconnect in the relationship between customer listening, CX improvement, and ROI understanding.

To avoid this confusion, it’s important to start at the end by defining what you want to achieve before you even start. What meaningful financial and intrinsic value can this program drive for your organization? The answer to this question should point you towards more specific metrics; choose the ones that are closely tied to your value proposition, customer promise, and are aligned with your strategy. If you start with your goals in mind, you’ll be able to make sure your metric framework will provide real meaning by helping further your greater goals as a company.

Principle #2: Give the People What They Want

This point may seem obvious for any industry, but it’s meaning requires a little more explanation when it comes to metrics. By this point, I mean that you need to be hypersensitive as to who your stakeholders are when you select metrics for your program. The three most common stakeholder groups I’ve seen in my experience are the company as a whole, it’s employees, and, of course, your customers.

Each of these groups will have specific sets of needs. When selecting metrics, you need to tailor your choices—and the messaging with which you deliver them— to align with the assets of the business and experience those groups most care about. For example: the metrics you choose for your company will align more with business results, whereas for your customers it will concern more of overall satisfaction or ease.

Principle #3: Quit Living in the Past

I like to follow up this third principle, “quit living in the past,” with “unless your boss says you have to.” When I say the past, I am referencing past data and practices. Most often people don’t want to mess with their historical data, so they’re afraid to ask questions in new ways or start new initiatives for fear that the data won’t match up. To them I say that if you allow yourself to be paralyzed by the politics of historical data, your program will never evolve and therefore will never improve.

The way forward is to have an honest conversation about metrics with meaning. In this conversation, you and your other stakeholders will find that your metrics have to change as your business changes. Otherwise, your metric framework will be out of context, therefore limiting the value of any insight gained from that framework. Living in the past is then the common culprit of flat metrics; whereas adapting, insightful metrics evolve with your business so they can inform and inspire real change.

Principle #4: There’s Value in a Good Story

Although metrics are vital for you program, it’s important to remember this Albert Einstein quote: “Not everything that counts can be counted.” Traditional scales, ratings, and numbers may only take you so far. The future of metrics lies in your ability to leverage unstructured feedback to shape what you will measure and why.  In other words, we can modernize the approach and use customer’s qualitative story about their experience to create metrics that matter.

In unstructured feedback, customers are already telling you what they care about most. At InMoment, we have developed a sentiment scoring algorithm that interprets the value of the customer experience based on what they write (or tell you via voice or video feedback) instead of just what they score. In a very compelling case study with an InMoment client, we found that our sentiment score trends exactly as NPS and OSAT scoring; and can even be used to predict scores, forward and back. How’s that for a game changing approach to metrics?!

When it comes to deciding on your metric framework, you have two choices: are you curious about your customer experience, or are you serious about using the right metrics to get the right intelligence for real business impact? I don’t know about you, but the decision seems pretty obvious to me. When you choose your metrics based on the value and meaning they present, you set yourself up for a CX program that will propel your organization into a future of success.

If you want to learn more about crafting metrics with meaning—including specific case studies and practical approaches—watch the full webinar, “CX Metrics: Choosing and Implementing the Right Ones for Your Business!” Click here to access!