Keeping up-to-date with all of the latest customer experience related ideas, strategies, technologies and tactics is challenging. We are in a period of rapid change for customer experience across all industries and these days every business decision needs to be informed by real customer data, including a deep understanding of customer expectations.
So we have compiled this list of recent, up-to-date customer experience blog posts and white papers which we have found informative and useful.
Customer Experience Is The New Brand
In this forbes.com article from well known customer experience expert Shep Hyken he succinctly points out:
“There’s a lot riding on delivering a positive customer experience.”
He says that without great customer service brand loyalty will evaporate. The article provides some great food-for-thought and excellent guidance for companies planning their own customer experience and satisfaction strategies.
What is customer experience? How can it be measured? And who should own it?
This comprehensive econsultancy.com article, written by Nikki Gilliland, gets back to the basics of customer experience, discussing what it means and how it can be effectively measured. The post provides some useful insight along with many links to educational and informative articles.
Help Your Team Measure Customer Experience Data More Accurately
This Harvard Business Review article from Luke Williams acknowledges that:
“Customer experience (CX) goes beyond measuring the relationship between customers and companies; it is also about quantifying the hundreds of regular interactions and residual memories that influence future behavior.”
The article examines ‘balanced scorecards’ and makes the case for ‘equitable scorecards’ or ‘weighted scorecards’. A worthwhile read for those interested in accounting for the multitude of variables that influence customer experience and satisfaction.
7 Ways to Create a Great Customer Experience Strategy
We like this highly readable article from Steven Macdonald because it clearly answers a number of common customer-experience related questions and goes on to provide a seven step approach toward creating a great customer experience strategy. The article provides a clear and realistic definition of customer experience, clarifies the difference between customer experience and customer service, and highlights how important customer experience is for businesses.
What’s the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience?
While the previous recommended article provides an excellent answer to this question, this article from Sarah Blackstock is dedicated to the topic. If you are trying to get your head around the differences and relationships between customer service and customer experience this is a worthwhile read – and it’s not very long.
Create Powerful Customer Experiences
This Gartner.com post from Chris Pemberton presents the customer experience pyramid and discusses how to move up the pyramid to increase loyalty, satisfaction and advocacy. It acknowledges that companies are increasingly competing on the basis of CX. If you are aiming to move up the pyramid in 2019, this article will provide some useful guidance.
Customer Experience Measurement: Back to Basics
This useful article from Phil Britt gets back to the basics of customer experience measurement. The article notes that:
“customer expectations for CX are rising faster than companies’ efforts to meet those expectations”
It is therefore vital for organisations to accurately measure the success of CX efforts and it goes on to provide the top five CX metrics that we should all be monitoring.
How Companies Transform Their Customer Experience with Zendesk
This highly interesting white paper is well worth downloading, even if you don’t use Zendesk. It presents a collection of case studies from various companies including Naturebox, Uber and Instacart, detailing the challenges faced by these organizations and how they were met using Zendesk. The results from each case study are particularly interesting. Worth checking out.
The Social Customer Experience
This white paper from Hootsuite is well worth downloading. Over 27 pages it describes how enterprise organizations are using social media in their customer experience strategies. If you are thinking this is too much to read, don’t worry. A concise executive summary along with key recommendations are provided right at the start and these take just a few minutes to read. If you are wondering how your organization can make more effective use of social media to deliver exceptional customer experiences then this white paper is essential reading.
Customer Experience Trends for 2019
While we provided some excellent 2019 customer experience trend links in another post this excellent white paper provides additional insight and forecasting.
In June 2018 Conversocial.com and Corinium interviewed 100 senior customer experience professionals across North America and Europe, the results from which are compiled in this white paper. There is a lot of deep insight packed into this document along with actionable recommendations which will help you formulate winning customer experience strategies.
Genesys State of Customer Experience Research
This extensive report, full of consumer and business findings, includes insights from 1,900 consumers and 1,300 business users across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Each chapter in this well-researched white paper is packed full of valuable takeaways. For example:
“Many consumers are willing to pay more for an improved experience.”
It’s well worth reading the whole of this valuable white paper and extracting the points which are relevant to your specific challenges.
7 Secrets of Customer Experience Success
This white paper acknowledges that, over recent years, CX programs have become an established route to delivering exceptional customer experiences. It then asks:
“Why then, is every business not running a slick and successful CX program?”
Which is a good question. It goes on to provide a 7 step approach that can be beneficially followed by all organizations in order to capture what your customers desire and act on this valuable data to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
White Paper: The Role of Customer Experiences in the Digital Marketplace
The ultra-connected digital world brings with it a constantly changing collection of customer experience challenges. These days, customers contact organisations via an ever-increasing number of communications channels, often hopping from one to another, and their expectations are increasingly hard to meet. This white paper talks about the importance of investing in customer service and how AI and automation can potentially be effectively employed.
How Context Drives Great Customer Experience
This paper notes that while we might know what the ideal customer experience would be, most of us don’t really know how to consistently achieve it. Context is recognised as an important consideration when designing a CX strategy. It notes that context can ensure customer experience continuity, improve response times, reduce customer effort, lead to more sales and increased loyalty. This paper is a relatively short but worthwhile read.
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