Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and create world class Customer Experience DesignThe only way to know how customers see your business is to look at it through their eyes.
– Daniel Scroggin
Take away for CX Professionals
Isn’t that very easy?
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and create world class Customer Experience DesignAt the end of the day is how the user remembers the experience. Focus on key experiences.
– Shawn Borsky
Take away for CX Professionals
Design for excellent customer experience.
Author is an expert in Customer Experience Design. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and create world class Customer Experience DesignMake everyone think about things from the customer’s perspective… …design how things work jointly with your customers.
– Mike Grafham
Take away for CX Professionals
Co-creation can be a powerful way to design customer’s journey.
Author is an expert in Customer Experience Design. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and create world class Customer Experience DesignMake customer the hero of your story.
– Ann Handley
Take away for CX Professionals
Customer is the center point of your business.
Author is an expert in Customer Experience Design. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and create world class Customer Experience DesignAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C Clarke
Take away for CX ProfessionalsTechnology wows your customer initially.
Author is an expert in Customer Experience Design. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Every Customer Interaction creates a Personal Reaction. From the customer’s perspective, if the reaction is positive, she not only desires to have more such interactions, but shares her experience with her trusted ones. If the reaction is negative, it is bad news for both the customer and the company, but it costs the company a ton because:
- 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back
- 85% of customer attrition is because of poor customer experience, not pricing or competition!
- 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated
- It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience
- Acquiring a new customer costs more than 5 times the cost to retain an existing customer!
The real fault lines between different processes, departments, divisions and channels are exposed in each Customer Interaction.
The secret of good customer experience is seamless & consistent customer interaction, and a good measure of customer experience is customer churn rate!
IT products and services sector is in the forefront of B2B CX revolution. We conducted an interview with Mr. Anand Prakash, VP – Quality, HCL Infosystems about evolving role of CX in IT sector and to share some of the industry best practices.
Mr. Prakash has over 3 decades of industry experience in HCL, Wipro, and Ericsson. He is an engineer from IIT Roorkee.
Neil:Why do you think in a country like India, very price conscious base, Customer Experience (CX) matters?
Anand: CX is about having a better understanding of your clients and delivering a good experience. In IT sector, clients want you to be faster, cheaper and deliver the right quality. One attribute cannot be replaced the other. For example, price cannot replace quality. So delivering at the right price is also part of good CX. That’s how I see the role of CX.
So I wish to reiterate that even in a country like India with a price conscious base, CX is mandatory and cannot be taken for granted.
Neil: Is CX tangible? How does IT sector measure CX?
Anand: Usually “experience”, “satisfaction”, “loyalty”, etc. is assumed to be intangibles though we can assess them through customer surveys. That’s why today many organizations are looking at metrics such as Customer Effort, Customer Productivity, etc. These metrics are also like NPS and C-SAT, they measure the goodness or quality of the experience of the customers; still not tangible to business.
That’s why what we are doing is to link these metrics to business metrics such as Net Add(new orders from existing client that increases our share of wallet), Customer Attrition and Referencibility Index (% of existing customers willing to be our references). All these are metrics make CX very tangible and a pure business driver. Many leading IT organizations are also following similar practice.
Neil: What do you think are the biggest bottlenecks companies in IT sector face when it comes to CX?
Anand: Right from the beginning, IT sector is obsessed with technology. For example, when I started my career we used to worry about whether the computer had 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386, or 80486 microprocessor. We never thought if customer needs the power of higher processor. Similarly today we talk about open source technology, .Net, Java, etc. This kind of over obsession with technology is the biggest bottleneck for CX.
IT is fundamentally an enabler, say like electricity. Electricity is not directly consumed by consumer, but instead it is used to heat water or to cool the room. This is true for IT as well.
Knowledge of the domain which IT is enabling is weak among IT professionals. I see this as this as the next biggest bottleneck. For example, in a healthcare scenario, IT professionals should have good understanding of how a hospital works, what are the challenges faced of the doctors, para-medical professionals, etc.
Without understanding of customer’s environment and appreciation of user’s situation, IT professionals can never improve CX.
IT professionals should feel the real experience of the customer! And this happens only by understanding the Customer Journey. Take for example Redbus story. During Diwali, one of the co-founders wanted to celebrate the festival in his home town. Since he didn’t know his travel schedule in advance, travelling by bus was the only choice. He ran around town hunting for a ticket, but they were all sold out minutes before he reached the travel agents. Bengaluru traffic is notorious during festive season and can grip you at the wrong time. That’s exactly what happened that day. That’s when he thought of the possibility of providing bus travelers the convenience of booking a bus ticket over the internet. And Redbus was born!
Neil: What does an IT company need to do to foster a culture of CX?
Anand: IT professionals are much more vocal and demanding. Hence having a well articulated and defined process or policy to link CX improvement to the reward and recognition of individuals & team who have contributed is very important. WIIFM(What’s In It For Me) has to clear & transparent. For example, some projects have “Project Bonus” which is directly linked to the success of the project rather than the bundling it with year-end bonus.
To sum up I would say that instant gratification is the key in today’s scenario. Delayed appreciation is denied appreciation!
Neil: Can you share one example of good CX in IT sector that is worth sharing?
Anand: We are serving Medanta Hospital in Delhi. In order to deliver superior CX to our clients, we focus on understanding the patient and care takers journey, not just the doctors’ journey. Our IT delivery team has spent time to understand the hospital well. We have worked very closely with the hospital management. We designed the whole IT system around this understanding. So if IT organizations focus on end user experience, the overall experience will automatically improve. In this case it benefited doctors, management and patients. We designed IT systems that frees up time for doctors, which resulted in doctors spending more time with the patients!
Neil: Do you think any ‘One’ big idea can transform CX in IT sector? And if so what is it?
Anand: At the end of the day, an ‘experience’ is delivered by an individual and consumed by an Individual. There is a lot of human aspect to it. So how do we personalize the experience? How do we transform the experience?
Experience personalization can be achieved only through VOC and Digital Body Language. Digital body language is digital imprint/usage behavior of customers. By non-intrusive and passive methods this data can be captured and with the help of analytics personalization in CX can be created. You will see this more often in future.
Neil: What is the future for CX in IT sector?
Anand: In today’s world, technology is getting commoditized. Business outcomes are deeply linked to IT. Business leaders are now involved purchasing decisions with respective to IT products and services rather than just the CIOs.
Business leaders are inclined to use a lens of business success measures to evaluate IT. As a result, CX is emerging as a strategic differentiator as it will lift revenue growth, repurchase and referrals. Thus CX is moving from ‘good to have’ to ‘mandatory to have’ for IT sector.
IT organizations that recognize this shift and adapt will have a big strategic advantage over their competitors.
To more about where to start CX in your organization, you can discuss with me at neil@collaborat.com.
I even don’t know if there is any such tool that is considered best!
I also need to quality the question first before answering it. What do you mean by “Tool”? Is it a software tool or a technique such as a ‘process mapping technique’. I’m going to answer this question by considering the latter perspective.
From my experience, I would consider Customer Journey Mapping to be the single most effective tool to design and improve your CX.
Consider the following points to appreciate why I believe so:
- Every service or product involves your customer going through a series of steps before he/she makes the purchase and then few more steps to start using it
- We as owners of the product or service, design it from our perspective, which revolves around efficiency, risk reduction, etc. Customers go through the process from a completely different perspective. Customer Journey Map is a tool to visual that journey from customer’s perspective and tweak it enough so that the customer’s life is simpler, which just means the CX is getting better!
- Customer Journey Mapping enables you to visualize how you want it to be rather than how it is.
- It brings out the Levers and Barriers in the journey for a customer and how that can be improved
- Its simple and enables you to demonstrate creativity
- You can involve the customer and co-create!
To sum up, I would say with confidence that Customer Journey Mapping is the best CX Tool that I think every organization should consider!
B2B companies are still in honeymoon when it comes to CX (Customer Experience). Whether or not you agree with me on this, it is certainly an equivocal ‘yes’ when it comes to B2B companies making CX a competition advantage.
B2B companies are lucky in a way that they deal with a reasonably finite set of customers unlike B2C companies. They don’t deal with the diversity of channel partners as in B2C, variety of customer profiles & temperaments, frequent changes to customer service policies, shorter shelf life products, high attrition of customer facing associates, etc.
But the odds against B2B companies are complex customer journeys, multiple stakeholders, outcome dependent on relationships, impacted by their customers’ processes, etc.
Today technology enables everything. But you will be surprised to know that the Single Biggest Bottleneck for B2B companies to deliver superior CX isn’t the availability of real time information, technology enablement, analytics capabilities, market intelligence, etc.
I’m associated with many companies in IT, ITES, OEMs, commercial financial services, infra, pharma, industrial products, etc. One thing that comes out clearly when we talk about improving CX is “Lack of Ownership”
Here are the top 5 issues that come in no specific order:
- No ownership of outcomes for end-to-end process
- Lack of coordinated effort
- Passing on responsibilities rather than being accountable to clients
- Silo mentality (more focused on self-KRIs)
- Cohesiveness & coordination issues
So it is something internal and well within the reach of any organization to accomplish. If there is one thing that B2B companies need to do to improvement CX, then it is to find out ways to build what I call as ‘Individual Ownership and Joint Accountability” (IOJA).
Let’s examine the real reasons for this issue:
Too many priorities:
This is probably one of the most abused phrases. But the catch is in deselecting what is not important rather than selecting what is important. Of course, everything we do is certainly important, but is it urgent enough and that too right now. Our inability to deselect is an inhibitor for creating ownership.
Conflicting priorities:
Functions exists to help the clients. Unfortunately, they have become an object of power & strength. Stone walls built around functional boundaries prevent smooth flow of information and ownership. Conflicting functional strategies and disgraceful loyalty to their functions play spoilers.
Ownership for failures:
Let me be very open about this. A way to wade off failures is by keeping the ownership fairly broad and undefined; And all of us do it.
Missing sense of value:
When I have no idea how the data I’m entering in the bid management system will help the company gain deal, I rather fulfill what I have been instructed rather than go beyond the defined boundaries to win the bid. Think why this month’s shining entrepreneur was a dumb seat warmer last month when employed. It’s all about a sense of value from what we do.
Your process, your client’s process & their client’s process:
Working with clients means that B2B companies have to work through client’s processes too. This makes it doubly difficult to comply with your processes as well as client’s. On a separate note, processes both at our end and client’s end are created to help someone, may be ultimate user client or consumer. Two decades ago we were driving people to talk the language of process and live by it. But now we realize that the same process mindset is a culprit when it comes to delivering superior CX. People not only find excuses in the name of process but are genuinely bound to comply and thus knowingly create unhappy clients!
This list is bottomless, so I’m going to stop here and talk about what we can do to build “Individual Ownership and Joint Accountability”.
What is IOJA?
Here’s a simple example to define IOJA. Your 4 year old kid goes to a play school. One fine day she may injure herself. Who owns this failure? Is it you or the school? You handed over the kid to the school and so it’s the school’s problem and you don’t have to worry because this injury didn’t happen under your supervision! In fact, you will let the kid know that the school teacher is responsible for her injury and you could have done nothing to prevent it. Right:-)
As a parent we know that whether the kid is in our sight or not, we retain the Accountability for her well being, at all times. And the school should (ideally) know that they have to take the Ownership for the well being of the kid in their supervision. That’s what we mean by Individual Ownership and Joint Accountability.
Functional leaders in an organization should have joint accountability though individual ownership might reside with one function. It’s like a game of football or any other sport, where one player compensates for the pitfalls or misses of his/her team member rather than pointing fingers in the play ground. Of course they might huddle it out off the ground but in that moment they play by what is right for the team as a whole and how they can individually contribute and cope for the loss. Huddling is out off the ground is what we call as “Catch-Ball” technique. There are a variety of tools that can enable IOJA.
Building a culture of IOJA
Organizations can end up preaching this concept with no results. I’d rather work on systematic approach to build IOJA rather than work on just behaviors.
In designing an approach for IOJA, we have to appreciate that strategic processes, business processes and transactional processes are different and needs different treatments. At transactional level it might be clarification & empowerment that matters. At business processes level it will be transparency and orientation towards common objective but at the level of strategic processes, it’s more of relationship between leaders, attitude towards the vision, WIIFM and cost of failure.
If you plan well, ownership issue can be systematically addressed to build a culture of superior CX in B2B setting.
To more about how ownership issues can be addressed in your organization, you can contact me at neil@collaborat.com
What things could be done in a website (apart from UI & other obvious stuff) to improve CX & more conversions?
If you want to work on Conversions, then don’t worry about fancy stuff.
Identify what are the core experience aspects of your visitors such as device sensitive, quick, easy, effort required to complete the desired task (say a purchase), completeness of information, etc and address them first.
Delights such as amazon acoustics are icing on the cake. But Core Experience is like the sponge. Amazon has got the sponge right and is focusing on icing now. Many in e-commerce space are struggling with the sponge.
With large Customer base, Organizations don’t know what are the sentiments of customers. Hence gaging it through anonymous surveys will help to estimate loyalty. With smaller group of 100 or less, I assume your sales and service folks already know the reality. Using measures such as share of wallet, repurchase, intent to recommend will be a better way to estimate loyalty. What’s important is to gain insights about how to increase loyalty. That’s much easy with smaller base. An interview or ethnographic study will help.
How do companies decide on pay package for their customer service executives?
Customer Service is typically measured using Service Levels. Organizations establish the desired service levels that they wish to operate at and then capacitize for that. Compensation of Service Executives is dependent on several factors (external and internal) other than service levels. Some of the important Service Metrics for monitoring service levels are:- Response Time
- Wait Time
- Handling Time
- Complaints and Repeat Complaints
- Rework
- Customer Satisfaction on Service
- Channel wise effectiveness
- Service Costs
- etc.,
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