Forrester, Oracle, and others predict plenty of customer experience challenges for the near future. Anxiety is ramping up for senior leaders focused on customer experience, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Image credit: Forrester According to Forrester’s 2020 Predictions, 1

How do you make your Voice of the Customer plan more meaningful? Four words: More customer, more voice. Quick Voice of the Customer Overview You are probably familiar with the term Voice of the Customer, often referred to with the shorthand “VoC.” The idea behind a true Voice

Do you know how your learners feel about their learning experiences? The more we learn about emotions, the more we realize they influence everything we think and do. 1.Emotions drive decisions for learners and customers alike. Emotions are driving our decisions, and usually more than we

Charging into the new year, it’s easy to want to name what’s ahead of us. I am seeing a few enthusiastic sorts claiming 2020 will be “The Year of Experience,” “When Experience Finally Wins” or “The Year of the Customer.” I ask you to greet these

When Santa delivers stress… As December furiously barrels on toward the holidays, your customers will become more and more hurried and stressed as they try to find the perfect gifts. How well will your retail experience handle it? Do you have a working customer journey map? If you

The goal of learning in any workplace is to be, well, better. Better at serving customers. Better at increasing efficiency. Better at employee development. Better at staying ahead of the competition. All of that is achievable with the options in learning today, but how often are

Customer Experience Leaders Have a Global Customer Focus Even after over a decade of helping small and large businesses alike, I still meet leaders who believe that Customer Experience is just about so much call-center scripts or proper protocol around customer complaints. As you and I both

Do you consider yourself a life-long learner? Most successful people are. Bill Gates famously reads more than 50 books per year and has stated that you don’t get old until you stop learning. Better yet, lifelong learning leads to a healthier life, more financial success and even better

Leaders want to deliver exceptional experiences. We all want to deliver for our customers, starting with a sales experience that builds trust between our organization and our buyers. After all, sales sets the stage for the entire customer journey. Sales is where current

Customer journey mapping can be a powerful tool to help you truly understand your customers, innovate around new ways to serve them, and identify gaps in their journey. But, that’s only if the map is used as a tool and not an artifact. Many CX teams spend months on a journey map only to

What Does the Future of CX Look Like? It’s crystal ball time! If you know how critical Customer Experience is to the happiness of your customers and your team (and if you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you are,) you’re probably already trying to anticipate the next

The C-Suite Leader was asking a seemingly straightforward question: What is customer experience, really? Now, this person was no slouch. This was a high-achieving, take-no-prisoners, BOSS of a person who I respect. And I was struggling to answer. I didn’t want to insult this person. I

Happy CX Day 2019! Customer experience professionals, enthusiasts and change agents around the world are celebrating today. CX Day is all about celebrating our success, learning from our amazing community, and looking to the future of customer experience. If you haven’t already, get your

Let’s talk about the future of customer experience. I’m often asked about it, and I’ll tell you this universal truth: Customers will expect more than we can give them. You heard that right. We are reaching a point when expectations will become so high that it will be

What is CX Day? We celebrate with learning, professional development opportunities, awards, and celebrations of all kinds. CX Day is a day all about learning, sharing, and celebrating with the Customer Experience community. Free events include webinars, panel discussions, and all kinds

The employee experience can feel hard to manage. As leaders, we ask our employees to care about a lot of things, even those that are only tangentially related to their job descriptions. As an industry, we’re overwhelming employees with messages about the next big thing they need to

Success Relies Upon Customer Trust When I ask you a question like “what brand are you loyal to?” you are actually answering the question “what brands have earned your trust?” What brand has proven, time and again, they can live up to their promises? Which brand

It’s easy to underestimate the efforts it requires to become a truly customer-centric organization. Brave leaders do their best to lead customer experience initiatives that make an impact. But there are processes, protocols and even people who are obstacles to seeing results.   What

Let’s Talk CX Strategy   Do you know your customer experience strategy? Do you know how this strategy is being translated into the everyday actions and behaviors of your employees? The thing about strategy is that it’s not just about strategy…it’s actually all

As a whole, we don’t really enjoy talking about customer experience basics. Instead, the conversation around CX often centers around the pull-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat, OHMYGOD moments that amaze customers and offer those oft-discussed but hard-to-achieve moments of surprise and delight.

What does co-creation with customers really mean? Co-creation means letting your customers in on the ground floor of innovation and creating new products, services, and customer journeys in sometimes real time with them. Customers become partners and advisors, not just end users. And it

Recapping SAP CX Live’s Top Themes & Insights   Photo credit: @SAPCX on Instagram SAP CX Live and SAP SAPPHIRE NOW allowed me and some 30,000 friends to get a sneak peek into the way this global organization and their many partners view the world of the future.  Enterprise

Customer experience solutions are readily available these days. There are robust platforms that promise a seamless journey for your customers. There are feedback tools to help you gather JUST the perfect, most meaningful insights. And there are data sets and analytics and pivot tables, oh my!

Touchpoints aren’t what they used to be. There was a time in our history when touchpoints were…finite. We could list them easily and agree easily to what they were. The list might have 5-6 things on it for a sophisticated organization. When asked, ‘how does a prospect or

It’s that time of year. We’re all making predictions and tracking trends in customer experience. What will happen in 2019? Which trends will matter? Which will fade away? One thing we predict will not change for a long time is the need to reduce customer effort. CCW’s latest

Thanks to a fun report from CCW, Customer Contact Week, and some clever customer experience pros (and prose – ha ha,) there is a discussion around leadership buzzwords we should have. According to the report, the list of buzzwords is growing. And I agree. Leaders toss around terms like

The job descriptions for a customer experience leader vary between tactical analyst and strategic overlord. Defining just what a customer experience leader does can be tricky. But what’s even trickier is when you may not have customer experience or customer insights in your title.

Have you had enough of the term omnichannel? It blasted into our vocabulary a few years ago, shoving out multichannel as the preferred ubiquitous business speak of our time. Omnichannel paints a picture of an all-knowing customer journey. It’s agnostic about your specific channel sins,

Ever have a sneaking suspicion something just isn’t right, but you don’t know how to fix it? Is that happening with your organization’s customer experience design for service delivery? Lately, I’m seeing a lot of good intentions gone awry with customer experience. And a

What is the backbone of CX success? They say in every relationship, it’s important to have more positive interactions than negative ones. In the healthiest of relationships, the ratio of positive to negative is 2:1 or greater. The same holds true for the relationship you have with your

If you’ve never thought about how you engage customers, then what’s to stop them from becoming actively disengaged? Sometimes we set ourselves up for this! It even echoes back to us in the way we engage within our own organizations. Consider this real-life scenario: I used to have a

Humans disappoint one another. We do it all the time. We disappoint when we don’t show up for someone’s big event. Or maybe we disappoint when we do show up at an intimate dinner party without an invitation. We disappoint each other by saying what we think or by not speaking up when

If you’re creating learning paths in any workplace, the goal is ultimately to be, well, better. To be better at serving customers, better at increasing efficiency, better at employee development, and hopefully, better at staying ahead of the competition. All of that is achievable

The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) 2018 Insight Exchange offered CX experts and professionals of all kinds, various titles and comfort levels a few days to learn, connect and get inspired. I was there among them, wearing my CXPA volunteer hat and announcing some exciting

There are probably a million ways to improve customer experience in your organization, so where should you start? Before you do anything, think about this: Humans have a way of turning a nice idea into a complicated nightmare. Think of insurance – the idea of it is lovely. If we all chip

The world is fast. Technology invades every part of our lives, both in good and possibly not-so-good ways. As we rely ever-more heavily on the communication tools of any trade today, like email and texting, we crave more emotional and human connections to break through the clutter. In customer

Once upon a time, there was a leader. Maybe she looked like you and had your role. Or maybe he was the CEO. That leader had an epiphany about customer-centric culture. If we focus on customers, we will be a better organization. We will create happier employees who care deeply about those we

Jeannie Walters, speaker, writer and CEO of 360Connext, recently visited us at Hallmark and we had the opportunity to discuss the intricate weaving of the disciplines between marketing and customer experience. Jeannie and I share something in common:  a passion for human evaluation of the

Are you treating customer experience like a sport? Are people in your organization who deliver the experience expected to start “winning at CX” in some way? If customer experience becomes a competition, either amongst your internal teams or worse, then the customer is the guaranteed

What if the customer experience you had to deliver was all about YOU? What if the customer experience you delivered was a 20-minute speech? The National Speakers Association Winter Conference sought to be an experience, and to ask professional speakers how they can be an experience. Here are

Research on everyone from millennials to senior citizens shows how learning is tied to happiness. So those who prioritize picking up new skills (shout out to those learning CX right now!) or just enjoy learning in general, tend to be happier, more satisfied people. Those who continue to focus

Customer experience repair and improvement can be completely overwhelming! There are so many areas to tackle. Those surveys don’t develop and send themselves. Then you simply must understand the journey by undertaking a robust customer journey mapping process. And of course, don’t

Disruption is a word that can inspire fear. After all, disruption is what led to the fall of many companies who considered themselves “too big to fail.” Disruption is what led to the doors closing at chain bookstores across the nation and left the taxi industry wondering what

For those of us who’ve studied CX for decades, seeing it featured as a “new topic” is a little jarring. It seems every business article now mentions the customer’s journey as if that’s a new revelation. “The journey is just as important as the product!”

Netflix recently made news with their amazingly funny and warm cease and desist letter to fans of the show Stranger Things. While the intent of the letter was still clear, and technically a request from the legal team, the tone of the letter is what got people talking. It’s the most

The first week of October is both Customer Service Week and the week of CX Day! This week of celebrating success through CX and better customer service is an important reminder that we all serve a role in this. But customer service has a special place in the way a customer feels about your

The way we create and deliver customer experiences is constantly evolving in this rapidly changing space. Keeping up with customer experience trends is now an essential part of running a successful business. It’s moving from a “nice to have” to a “must have”

I’m often asked how or where a company should start improving CX. While the answer may be a little different for everyone, it’s critical to start out right! However, very few leaders take a realistic approach. Consider this way-too-typical scenario: Marcus decides one day to stand

Have you ever lived through a major renovation project or lived through construction of a house or condo? I say “lived through” because it can be harrowing, on a #firstworldproblems level for sure, but harrowing nonetheless. First of all, selecting the right shade of gray or arguing

I’m getting calls from very well-meaning business leaders lately. They are well-versed in many areas of business. Perhaps they were in marketing, or technology or operations. Or maybe they were responsible for the learning and development of thousands of employees. They have credentials

Who doesn’t just adore a time-saving shortcut? One of my favorites is the convenience of typing the first two letters of a web address into my browser and being magically transported to the site! But can you, or should you, take shortcuts with your customer experience? The problem with

I hate to break this to you, but we’re more than half-way through the calendar year. Have you done a mid-year review yet? This is a critical time to review your goals for this year and check your progress. But if you’re only looking at profits and growth, you’re only part of

Seems obvious, right? It’s hard to have customers if you don’t have sales. True. But what happens after the sale? What happens when you are trying to establish relationships with prospects but don’t know what will  hurt the relationship later? Too often, organizations

In many ways, customer experience is still a new phenomenon. Ok that’s not really accurate, of course. Your customers have experiences with you, and judge their relationship with your brand based on how they feel about those experiences, whether you want them to or not. But the idea of

There’s a part of your customer journey that is most likely inconsistent. It’s those pesky people. Going from one hotel front desk to the next or calling different customer service reps can have very different outcomes. Sometimes calling the same customer service rep on a

It’s all about your people. And it’s also about…your people. Several customer experience case studies confirmed this idea at Medallia’s Experience 2017 conference. They are valuable reminders of how customers are people, and they respond best to people

I’ve been so fortunate to work with some really great people. Many of these were clients who were charged with leading customer experience change within large companies. There are so many challenges in these positions. In most cases, it’s new philosophy, limited staff and authority,

Have you ever had to deal with a customer who was really angry? While most days aren’t perfect, if generally takes a lot for us to get red-in-the-face angry.  Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and some people are just plain nasty. But most of us

Service culture is the holy grail for many organizations. It’s the secret sauce of those companies we hold up as the role models of customer-centricity. Companies like Rackspace or Safelite are well-known disruptors in their industries simply because they focus like crazy

Ever hear of a “stop doing” list? All the cool kids and productivity gurus have mentioned them. The idea is to create a not-to-do list so you are reminded of tasks you should delegate, ignore, or intentionally decide to cease. Thinking in these terms, here’s a quick list for 3

I’ll be honest. When we started recording episodes for our Crack the Customer Code podcast, I wasn’t sure if my co-host Adam Toporek and I would have enough to discuss. I mean, how much is there, really, to say about customer experience and customer service? And yet… Week

I get a lot of “what a cool job!” when I describe what I do. It sounds so glamorous. And everyone is a customer, so of course I hear about the worst customer service they ever had, or less frequently, the very best they’ve experienced. It is awesome. I love what I do. But as

This will be my tenth journey to Austin for the South By Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSW) in March. It’s a crazy few days of social media, digital marketing, internet rock stars and barbecue. Whether you’ve been many times like me or are just heading there

Consistently gathering customer feedback is a great way to see patterns around satisfaction, loyalty and other key performance indicators, but some of the most valuable information hides beyond typical survey results. There are important questions customers would love to answer for you, should

Customers hear from you regularly. Right? As you dwell on how often you actually connect with a customer (once a week? once every few months? never?) I want to remind you of one simple fact. Your customers, if they are truly customers, pay you regularly. They probably receive an invoice of some

Most organizations used to lump customers into 2 simple categories:  New customers and “the rest of them.” New customer acquisition is often used to gauge success – the more we gain, the better we’re doing! And what about “the rest of