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2025 Consumer Experience Trends

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5 Factors to Successfully Measure Employee Experience in Your Organization

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. 

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.

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How Today’s CX Leaders Can Connect Customer and Employee Experience for Radical CX Innovation

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. To be radically innovative, however, requires CX professionals to think even bigger—expanding their perspective to also include employee and market intelligence.

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!

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Customer Experience Enablement: What it is and How it Can Help Your Business Bottom Line

Since you’re here on the Wootric blog, you probably already know that providing a high-quality experience to your customers is vital to your business.

You’ve heard people talk about CX becoming the key differentiator for brands in the coming years.

Stats on how customers values CX

(Source)

You’ve watched brands in a variety of industries revamp their customer-facing operations to improve the consumer’s experience.

You may have even begun investing in improving your brand’s customer experience in a variety of different ways.

But, when it comes down to it, you still aren’t exactly sure if your efforts are paying off for the customer—or for your business.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone: According to a 2018 report from CustomerThink, only 30% of brands report experiencing enhanced differentiation or any other tangible benefit from their CX-related initiatives. Moreover, Oracle reports that only 43% of CX executives are highly confident in their organization’s preparedness and ability to provide an enhanced CX as time goes on.

While there are a number of reasons this is (which we’ll get to), the overarching takeaway is that improving the overall customer experience requires much more from an organization than most realize. In order for a company to make sustainable improvements to its CX—improvements that lead to tangible benefits for the business—a fundamental shift within the organization must occur.

This is where customer experience enablement comes in.

What is Customer Experience Enablement?

Customer experience enablement is an holistic approach to improving CX by making foundational changes to both customer-facing and internal processes within a company. It is worth noting that approach is sometimes known as customer experience management (CXM or CEM). So many acronyms!

Breaking that down a bit more, customer experience enablement (CXE) is all about:

  1. Providing a branded experience that aligns with both the customer’s expectations and the experience the company intended the customer to have
  2. Enabling teams and individual employees within an organization to provide this experience to the customer effectively and efficiently—so that the customer’s experience is equally as efficient throughout their buyer’s journey

As we mentioned above, it’s the second part of our breakdown that organizations often overlook. Unfortunately, this leads said companies into a situation in which they have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to improve their CX—but are unable to actually put these initiatives into action in ways that benefit both the customer and the business.

That being said, let’s now dig into the key components of customer experience enablement—and why becoming more aligned with these components is essential to the growth of your business.

3 Key Components of Customer Experience Enablement

In the previous section, we broke down customer experience enablement into the customer-facing and internal sides of the same coin.

As you’ll see as you read through the rest of this article, the key components of CXE can touch on either side of this coin—and can sometimes touch on both at the same time, as well.

(If this is a bit confusing, don’t worry: It will start to make sense right away. We promise.)

Without further ado, let’s dig into the three key components of customer experience enablement.

1. Organizational Alignment

In order for an organization to become truly able to enhance the experience they provide their customers, everyone within the organization needs to be on board with the initiative.

Instill Ownership of CX Throughout Your Organization

In some cases, this is pretty obvious. Of course your marketing, sales, and support staff will be involved in CX-related initiatives; they do engage directly with the customer, after all.

In other cases, though, it can be a bit difficult to get certain team members on board. That is, it’s not exactly uncommon for teams that don’t interact with the customer (e.g., accounting, logistics, etc.) to overlook the role they play in the customer experience.

The thing is:

Your team needs to be willing to put in the effort required to improve your CX before they are able to do so. Or, more accurately, if your various teams aren’t willing to work toward improving your brand’s CX, it won’t matter if they’re able to or not: it’s just not going to happen.

Unfortunately, data collected by Adobe shows that a “lack of clear ownership of the customer…holds companies back from a true customer focus,” with nearly half of responding organizations denoting this as a problem.

Furthermore, Kapost’s 2016 B2B Benchmark report found that only 12% of B2B marketers believe that they’re “very effective at delivering a consistent customer experience.”

Only 12% of B2B marketers say they are delivering consistent CX

(Source)

The silver lining of all this is that, if you can instill ownership of the customer throughout your organization, you’ll be a step ahead of half of your competitors.

Communicate the Benefits of CX Ownership

Another area in which generating buy-in is vital to your CX-related initiatives is in proving the value of doing so to your company’s various stakeholders.

At this point, it’s important to frame the benefits of CXE in ways that matter to a specific team or individual. For example, marketing managers will likely care more about engagement metrics, while executives will be focused on revenues and profit margins of the potential initiative. For teams responsible for internal processes, this value likely comes in an ability to be more efficient in their duties, overall.

(Keep this all in mind, as we’ll talk a bit more about it toward the end of this post.)

Enabling Your Teams and Facilitating Ownership

Once you’ve generated buy-in throughout your organization, the next step is enabling all of your teams to actually play a more active role in creating a top-notch experience for your customers.

As CXE specialist Melissa Madian explains in an interview with Vision Critical, CXE is about enabling “revenue-generating and customer-facing teams with the processes, tools and training they need to help close business faster and deliver a superior customer experience.”

While “playing a more active role” can mean different things to different team members (and different organizations), the key to being able to do so is active, intentional, cross-team communication throughout a given organization.

For one thing, this means building avenues of communication between all teams—and breaking down any barriers to communication that may exist within your organization. In a literal sense, this may mean making it easier for your various teams to interact with each other (whether physically or via technology). More symbolically, this means breaking down silos and cutting through any red tape that may hinder communication between certain teams.

Secondly, you’ll need to actively facilitate and systematize internal communication processes (as opposed to just hoping it occurs organically simply because you’ve “enabled it”).

This may mean restructuring processes to include more of your team members as needed—with the focus remaining on the customer experience at all times. Again, even if a certain internal process doesn’t seem to impact CX all that much, your marketing, sales, and support teams might discover otherwise when an internal decision ends up causing chaos for your customers.

Going along with this, another way to facilitate and enhance internal communications is via knowledge management, specifically by making use of knowledge sharing and knowledge transferring systems. Doing so will allow various teams to stay apprised of the goings-on throughout your organization, and can also easily communicate vital information from their department to other teams as necessary.

To reiterate, the goal of this initial step toward customer experience enablement is to get your team members on board with your initiative—and to begin putting structures in place that allow all of your team members to pursue this initiative both individually and as a company.

Bluntly speaking, without this piece of the puzzle in place, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish what we’ll be discussing next.

2. Focus on Customer Intelligence and Other Valuable Data

The second key component of customer experience enablement revolves around the collection, assessment, and analysis of audience-related data.

To be sure, most modern organizations already know that big data plays a huge role in their CX-related initiatives and efforts. According to data collected by MarketingProfs, 40% of marketers say data is “critical to improved decision making,” while 36% say data “drives the ability to provide personalized experiences.”

importance of big data to executing customer centric programs

(Source)

The problem, though, is that most organizations don’t feel fully equipped to actually put the data they collect to good use. Case in point, 61% of CMOs admit to shortcomings when it comes to using big data to make improvements to CX.

While Adobe’s data shows companies are adept at data hygiene-related processes (i.e., ensuring data is accurate and reliable), this is only a part of the equation. It’s in understanding the contextual meaning behind the data that causes issues for most companies. And, when it comes to data relating to the customer experience, context is key.

Collecting Customer Data that Matters

With the above in mind, your first order of business is to focus on uncovering the data that provides the most valuable and accurate insight into your customers’ expectations. This is where Voice of the Customer is huge: it’s all about digging into the specifics of what your customers want from your brand—and minimizing the potential for your customer-facing data to be taken completely out of context in the future.

It’s important to note, here, that customer experience—and, by extension, CXE—refers to all engagements that occur between your organization and your customers, whether pre-, post-, or during a given purchase.

By looking at a specific data point, metric, or piece of customer feedback with the customer’s journey in mind, you’ll add an extra layer of context to the data you collect and analyze. In turn, you’ll be able to tailor their experience with your company even further—making them more likely to stay loyal to your brand for some time to come.

(Again, we’ll get to that momentarily.)

Collecting Internal Data that Matters

Another data-related part of CXE is prioritizing customer-facing info that provides the most value to your company.

Essentially, this means focusing on data that refers to your most valuable and loyal customers, as well as your highest potential prospects. This will enable your team to start making CX-related improvements to get your high-value customers even more engaged with your brand. Needless to say, this will lead to nothing but good things for your business moving forward.

Speaking of making improvements to your customer experience…

3. Improvements to CX that Matter—and Last

Before we get too far into this last section, let’s quickly go over the aspects of CXE we’ve discussed thus far:

Now, to be clear, all of these initiatives are done for one main reason:

To be able to make impactful and lasting improvements to your brand’s processes—in turn enhancing your brand’s overall customer experience.

As we said earlier, these improvements can manifest in any number of ways, such as:

  • Streamlining transactional processes, making it easier for customers to receive the product or service they require quicker and with less downtime
  • Improving onboarding processes, allowing customers to “hit the ground running” with your product or service—and maximizing the value they get out of it, as well
  • Making iterative changes to your product or service based on customer feedback, ensuring your customers continue to receive more and more value from your brand over time

Notice that each hypothetical improvement listed above is tied to a specific target outcome focusing directly on the customer’s experience. At the risk of being redundant, that’s literally the point of customer experience enablement: to enable your team to provide a better experience to your customers.

CXE is also about making sustainable and long-lasting improvements to your processes, ensuring that you’ll be able to provide an enhanced experience to your customers not just once or twice, but from here on out.

This is why it’s essential for CXE to start at the foundational and systemic level of your organization: Skipping this crucial step could cause your team to revert back to the “old way” of doing things—rendering any gains you may have experienced in the meantime moot.

But, with a deep-seeded, evidence-backed understanding of all that goes into enhancing CX, your organization will understand the importance of adopting and integrating new CX-related processes into their daily operations.

While any temporary or superficial improvements made will likely not lead to any long-lasting benefits for your organization, those more systemic and strategic improvements can only lead to great things for your business.

First of all, the more enjoyable and valuable your CX in the eyes of your customer, the higher your customer satisfaction rate will climb. Of course, with this increase in customer satisfaction, you’ll also likely experience a boost in retention, advocacy, and acquisition, as well.

Additionally, as your organization becomes more acclimated with your CXE-related initiatives, your teams will become more proficient and efficient in completing their individual duties. More efficiency means less wasted resources—which, in turn, means more resources on-hand to reinvest into improving your CX even further.

Finally, we’d be remiss if we ignored the fact that effective customer experience enablement leads to massive profits for companies of all sizes.

The more value your customers receive from your brand, and the easier it is for your company to provide this value to them, the more money your company will make as time goes on.

It’s that simple.

Learn how Wootric can help you measure and improve customer experience. Book a consultative demo today.

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

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Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

The One Report You Don't Want to MIss: The way customers interact with brands is evolving faster than ever. Our free 2025 Consumer Trends Report highlights the key shifts transforming customer experience (CX) and what your business needs to stay competitive.

Why CX Leaders Need to Rethink Using Incentives for Employees

Incentivizing employees is commonplace for organizations aiming to increase performance within their workforce. However, tying compensation and incentives to customer experience might provide a short-term bump in employee performance, but it may do more harm than good in the long run.

From meeting sales quotas to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, incentivizing employees is commonplace for organizations aiming to increase performance within their workforce.

Customer experience leaders are no different. According to Forrester, 85% of companies tie CX to compensation. But the same report also details why linking customer experience performance to financial rewards (and other incentives) actually results in less-than-favorable employee behaviors that can negatively impact employers.  

The Downside of Tying CX to Incentives for Employees

Tying compensation and incentives to customer experience might provide a short-term bump in employee performance, but it may do more harm than good in the long run. InMoment’s “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” resource highlights the pitfalls associated with CX incentives for employees, including:

  • Bad Employee Behaviors – Most companies that offer incentives use a pay-for-performance or “variable” pay structure, directly tying incentives to individual employee performance. But according to Forrester, this model encourages more troublesome employee behavior, like submitting fraudulent customer reviews and questioning the authenticity of CX data.
  • Bad Customer Experiences – When employees feel the weight of incentives – especially relating to their pay – you run the risk of shifting their focus from top-quality customer service to worrying only about achieving rewards. As a result, employees might start pestering customers to submit positive reviews or high survey scores, leaving customers feeling under pressure and uncomfortable.

3 Things Brands Can Do Instead of Offering Incentives

Delivering exceptional customer experiences shouldn’t be contingent on whether there are incentives on the table. And CX leaders should regularly encourage employees to deliver their best work, without solely offering rewards.

Here’s how you can support employees while enabling them to provide memorable experiences that keep customers coming back for more:

  • Share Positive Customer Feedback with Employees. Customer feedback typically circulates at a high level, with most employees completely unaware of how customers rate their experiences. When your company receives positive customer comments, share it across the organization. Highlighting great feedback helps to keep employees motivated and excited about their work.
  • Identify More Opportunities to Coach Employees. Customer feedback presents an excellent opportunity to improve employee performance. Instead of reprimanding employees if they receive less-than-favorable feedback, use the comments as an opportunity to coach future performance. This turns an initially negative scenario into a positive career-growth moment.
  • Focus on Impactful Metrics Employees Understand. Tracking metrics is the cornerstone of successful customer experience programs. Use data and information that’s meaningful to employees, and that they have a chance at impacting. It’s beneficial for your organization as a whole if employees have a better grasp on how their performance attributes to overall company success.

Bottom line: Incentives for CX don’t work. They can encourage bad behaviors and competitiveness in organizations, which may negatively impact your business. Instead of using monetary rewards, CX leaders should focus on supporting employees through coaching, metric sharing and more so they can continue to provide top-tier customer experiences.

To learn more about incentives and CX, check out “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” today!

Watch the Video – See InMoment in Action

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How to Select Customer Experience Metrics That Put Your Program on the Path to Success

The volume of CX data and metrics made available to brands is seemingly limitless. From NPS to OSAT and Customer Effort Score, effectively measuring customer experience boils down to focusing on the metrics that matter most to your business.
Selecting CX Metrics

Customer Experience (CX) intelligence is a necessity for brands competing for customer attention and loyalty. After all, how can you make sure your efforts to exceed customer expectations are successful if you can’t listen to or understand them?

This is why CX professionals rely on in-depth data to gain a more detailed, real-time look at their customers and their needs. They know that once you understand customers’ behaviors and preferences, you can craft business strategies that truly create positive, memorable experiences.

Three Ways to Find the Right Customer Experience Metrics for Your Business

The volume of CX data and metrics made available to brands is seemingly limitless. From NPS to OSAT and Customer Effort Score, effectively measuring customer experience boils down to focusing on the metrics that matter most to your business.

Not sure where to start? InMoment’s latest eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” guides you through selecting metrics that fit into your overall customer experience program:

#1: Focus on the metrics that will drive the most change in your business.

Successful customer experience programs are built around understanding how you want your business to grow. Instead of narrowing in on a single focal point (like improving one CX score), look at the bigger business picture. Where do you envision your brand in five years? What revenue goals would you like to achieve? Think more about the endgame and choose the CX metrics that will help you get there.

#2: Consider points of view from across your organization.

It’s tempting to track customer experience metrics based solely on executive input, but it’s important to remember that your organization is made up of more than the C-suite. While your CFO might be interested in metrics related to ROI, your employees might want data that helps them sell more effectively.

Brands should also consider their customers’ point of view. Today’s customers expect brands to fully understand their needs. The CX metrics you track should work to support your company’s ability to more clearly grasp – and meet – customer expectations.

#3: Learn from historical data, but don’t rely on it.

Historical customer experience intelligence can provide excellent insights into business performance. However, you don’t want to hold your brand to a specific benchmark or metric you used in the past. Historical metrics are often revisited without context, making them irrelevant for the current state of your company. As your business continues to evolve, so should the framework for how you measure and track success.

It can be overwhelming to define your CX metric framework. But if you remember to put your company and its goals at the center of your efforts, you’re more likely to rely on the data that will have a positive, game-changing impact on your business.

To learn about choosing metrics with meaning, download InMoment’s eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” today!

Watch the Video – See InMoment in Action

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4 Guest Experience Trends in the Restaurant Business: Engaged Employees, Third-Party Delivery and More!

It is more important than ever for brands to deliver a great experience to ensure that they keep (and hopefully grow) their share of the market and keep guests coming back visit after visit—even though they have countless dining options.

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

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

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

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

Trend #1: The Influence of Frontline Employees

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trend #2: The Importance of Engaged Employees

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

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

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

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

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

Trend #3: The Growth of Third Party Delivery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trend #4: Personalizing for Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How to Use Guest Experience to Create Loyal Guest Relationships in Food Service

By evolving your approach to guest experience, you can utilize your program to create what every brand dreams of: loyal guest relationships.
Guest Experience of Millennials

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

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

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

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

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

The Operational Approach

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

The Experiential Approach

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

The Relational Approach

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

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

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

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What InMoment’s Integration with Adobe Experience Cloud Means for Marketers

Marketers have traditionally relied on acquisition, audience, behavioral, and conversion metrics to create customer segments and inform their efforts. While this tried-and-true method works to a point, the data provided from these sources is limited.

Today InMoment announced its integration with the Adobe Experience Cloud, but what does it mean for marketers? The short answer is that integration presents an entirely new way to look at the customer experience (CX) and gain more intelligence than ever before.

Marketers have traditionally relied on acquisition, audience, behavioral, and conversion metrics to create customer segments and inform their efforts. While this tried-and-true method works to a point, the data provided from these sources is limited in what it can tell you.

The fact is that traditional marketing data can provide you with the “how,” “what,” and “where” customers are buying, but it can’t provide you with perhaps the most crucial piece of understanding: why your customers are—or aren’t—buying.

Our Chief Marketing Officer, Kristi Knight, elaborated on this point when she said, “What [traditional marketing] datasets don’t tell you is why your customers are acting the way they are—the golden thread for marketers—and you can only understand customer motivation through feedback from the customers themselves.”

The InMoment integration with Adobe Experience Cloud provides the missing piece of the puzzle; it helps marketers understand the stories behind the numbers and move from metrics-based marketing to meaningful marketing.

By allowing them to tap into the data derived from customer feedback in tandem with their traditional marketing metrics, this integration through the InMoment Experience Intelligence (XI) Platform enables marketers to create more targeted and personalized segments and online experiences.  

Want to know more about how do we do it? Check out the market release to get the specifics on this first-of-its-kind integration!

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The VMware Culture Journey to Inspire Customer Centricity

VMware Inspires a Customer-Centric Culture

Customer centricity is a hot topic in business these days, as more and more companies challenge themselves to foster a “customer-centric culture.” But that’s a tall order – not to mention an ambiguous one – and it raises a number of questions, such as:

  • What is a customer-centric culture anyway?
  • Why is it important?
  • Who is responsible?
  • How do you inspire a customer-centric culture?

We are actively leading a customer centricity transformation at VMware, and while every organization is unique, our answers to these questions may prove useful as you embark on your own journey. And the word “journey,” when it comes to a customer-centric culture, is key.

For us, it all started with an unwavering passion to do the right thing for our customers, and over time it became clear that we needed to develop a deliberate strategy around it. We’ll talk more about our strategy later, but for now let’s break down the basics.

What is a Customer-Centric Culture, Anyway?

Customer centricity is more than a concept – it’s a mission. At VMware, we believe that customer centricity goes beyond creating great customer experiences – we put the customer at the center of everything we do. Customer centricity is a core company value, a way of thinking, and an approach to doing business.

To achieve that state of being, I can’t overstate the importance of humanizing the customer for your employees. Real culture shift happens when your employees walk in your customer’s shoes and genuinely understand how their individual roles impact the customer experience (even if they aren’t customer-facing!). With understanding comes empathy, and with empathy comes motivation to make a difference.

Why is it Important?

Ah, the million-dollar question. Starting at the top with our CEO Pat Gelsinger, we firmly believe it is our responsibility to provide the best possible experience for our customers. After all, VMware wouldn’t exist without them. In short, it’s the right thing to do.

We also know that consumers and businesses today have more options than ever before, and if we don’t deliver the kind of experience our customers expect, they won’t continue doing business with us. VMware thrives when our customers successfully harness our solutions to meet their business needs – so it makes sense business-wise for us to listen and act on our customers’ needs.

Who is Responsible?

Every employee plays a role in the customer experience. Whether front-of-house or back-office, we all contribute to our customers’ perception of our company.

At VMware, our Customer Advocacy team drives the customer centricity strategy which helps every team, from Leadership on down, understand their role in creating an exceptional customer experience.

In my view, an effective culture strategy has two main components:

  1. Active participation from the entire Leadership team. Employees will prioritize what their leaders are focused on. We work with all functional leaders to ensure their customer obsession talk tracks are woven into every major communication, from all-hands meetings to newsletters; and that they convey a sense of importance and urgency, focusing directly on the customer experience elements that are in the wheelhouse of their audience.
  2. Individual employee customer-centric decision making. We strive to empower every employee with the insights, resources, and independence necessary to operate in the best interests of both VMware and its customers. To facilitate customer-centric decision making, we also strive to ensure that customers are top of mind for all employees, day in and day out. This is where customer-centric culture comes in, and it is why we’ve fully dedicated a member of our team to lead culture programs that create customers for life.

How Do You Inspire a Customer-Centric Culture?

Inspiring a customer-centric culture doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey, and my team has learned plenty of lessons along the way. Some of our efforts have been more effective than others, but this is to be expected.

One of our notable successes to date has been VMware’s annual celebration of Customer Experience (CX) Day, an industry holiday. We think that CX Day is akin to a wedding anniversary! While you work hard at your customer relationships every day of the year, as you do your marriage, CX Day is a great opportunity to pause, celebrate, and show gratitude for the relationship you have with your customers.  Our worldwide celebrations have engaged employees via interactive journey mapping, tours of a customer story “museum,” and other activities to acquire feedback on how to improve the customer experience. See how we celebrated CX Day in 2018!

While CX Day is impactful, we obviously want our employees to think about customer experience more than once a year! To that end, we created a global ‘CX Leaders’ program to cultivate a network of customer enthusiasts across VMware. The inaugural set of leaders were prior recipients of an internal award recognizing individuals who went above and beyond to deliver a great customer experience. The Leaders conceptualized a program known as Customer Appreciation Week, which focused on the power of an unexpected thank you. Over the course of the week, our sales teams reached out to nearly 4,000 customers to thank them for their commitment to doing business with VMware – and that was it. That’s right – no sales pitch, no upsell, no renewal prompt. The customers were surprised and delighted by the display of appreciation with no strings attached – and for us it was a simple way to maintain relationships and reinforce our commitment to our customers.

Our Closed Loop program is another area where we invest to engage employees and strengthen customer relationships. The program connects dissatisfied customers with VMware employees to dive deeper into feedback provided through various listening posts. In these conversations, the VMware employee seeks to understand the root cause of dissatisfaction and build a relationship with the customer, then follows up with the appropriate internal business unit(s) to develop improvement plans. The program mutually benefits VMware’s customers and employees, and it’s one of the best opportunities for an employee to walk in our customer’s shoes.

Closing Thoughts

I’d like to leave you with a final thought, which is that customer centricity isn’t binary – it’s a journey that begins with customer focus and extends to customer obsession. For us at VMware, it represents a fundamental business transformation that will extend far into our future. The best is yet to come!

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The No. 1 Enemy of Dealer Customer Retention!

I discovered a surprising truth after three years as Customer Retention Manager for a large volume dealer in Houston. There is a hidden enemy that must be addressed before any customer retention initiatives can be achieved. It is the no. 1 enemy of client retention, and yet most practitioners fail to recognize it, let alone address it.

It’s the reason why many dealers are left with small, gradual changes in their retention efforts that pale in contrast to the huge budgets and time spent acquiring new customers. But by keeping an existing customer, who is apt to buy again, dealers could be spending many times less to obtain the same amount new vehicle sales.  As proof of this, the 2018 Cox Automotive Service Study found that buyers who returned to the selling dealer for service in the past 12 months were 74% more likely to return to that selling dealer for their next vehicle purchase. Returning service customers were 74% more likely to buy their next vehicle from that same selling store! Those who didn’t return for service in the past 12 months were only 35% more likely to return for their next purchase.  That should gain the attention of most dealer GM’s, who generally come from the sales side of the business.

And speaking of sold customers returning for their next vehicle purchase, that same Cox study revealed a negative by-product of today’s obsession with “conquesting” sales from other dealers.  “Not a convenience location” (no. 5 reason in the 2015 survey) moved up to the second most given reason for new vehicle purchasers not returning to the dealer where they purchased.  So, there is a very good chance that many of today’s conquest vehicle sales will not return to that original dealer for service because they live out of the area where the selling dealer is located.

So, what is the number 1 enemy of retail auto customer retention?

No, the number 1 enemy isn’t a limited budget. Although a sufficient budget is necessary, it’s not the real enemy of a successful retention strategy.

Lack of buy-in from the dealer and management? It’s important, but the reason store leadership doesn’t get solidly behind a retention push is directly tied to the no. 1 enemy.

Silos are a real problem. You must address them, and it is not simple to do so, but they are not the real problem.

Competing initiatives are often cited as a reason for lack of meaningful progress in addressing customer retention. But these agendas usually directly support the number 1 enemy of retention. And that focus distracts management from seriously directing resources in the support of retention.

The lack of a robust technical infrastructure? Yes, retention can be aided with better technology, but it is not the true obstacle to retention.

Lack of training? It certainly helps to have trained employees, but if the average auto retailer really believed in retaining existing customers as a primary strategy, they would find the budget and time to train their workers. HINT: All the training, technology and “knowledge” in the world is not going to thoroughly address the number 1 enemy of retaining customers!

Lack of support from the OEM? No, automakers are offering more and more mega cash incentives for customer retention, as I covered in this post for the MaritzCX Cafe blog.

It’s transactionalism, an all-consuming focus by dealers on the “deal” or the “RO” is the number 1 enemy of a successful customer retention program. And that obsession consumes both the larger part of store budgets as well as the time spent by the staff.So, what is the number 1 enemy of a successful customer retention transformation?

Transactionalism describes the decades old, deeply ingrained tradition of placing the transaction front and center as the primary strategy for most auto retailers. And while the transaction has always been the primary focus of showroom sales, it’s just as prevalent these days in the service lane. Customer facing employees are paid to maximize and close “deals/ROs”, and because of that, retaining customers takes a back seat.

I’ve heard it said time and time again that there is little customer loyalty these days in retail auto. But how would we know? If the industry is so intoxicated with the transaction, and much less so with retaining the customer, it’s no wonder customer loyalty is perceived as dead. I spoke directly to this reality in a past MaritzCX Cafe post titled Retail Auto: Client Loyalty is not Dead, But Client Follow-Up is!

But there’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon.  Early last year, one of the largest automakers launched the first ever OEM customer rewards program and another major manufacturer followed soon thereafter.  And there is strong evidence that other OEMs are pivoting more and more towards implementing strategies that handsomely reward dealers and their associates for focusing on  retention.

That’s great, but the big question left is, how are the OEMs going to move the needle of retention forward, when most of the dealers are still consumed with “transaction?”  This is all about changing behavior at the dealership, which is the toughest challenge of all.

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Is Your Customer Experience as Good as You Think It Is?—CX Trends You Need To Know

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.

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!

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How to Use Storytelling to Drive a Winning Customer Experience Presentation

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

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

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

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

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

Understand Your Audience

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

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

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

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

Remember Your Central Question

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

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

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

Create a Checklist for Your Presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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