Annette Franz (Gleneicki)

“Hiring for culture fit” is always a hot topic. I love it. I think it’s so important that you get the right people on the bus to ensure you (a) have the culture you desire, (b) deliver the experience customers desire, and (c) see the business results you desire.

I’ve been know to say, “You can’t transform something you don’t understand.” You don’t want to change things that are working well or that create value for your customers. So know the current state and what to fix and what to maintain before designing the future state. Know the current state so that you can make near-term fixes and improvements while you’re re-imagining and redesigning the future state, which can take some time.

There are so many different customer experience roles these days that I wrote a post a few months ago called “Customer [Insert Term Here]: What Do They All Mean?” In the past, I’ve written a few times about the difference between customer experience and customer service.

Back in 2019, I shared an excerpt from my book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business, that outlines the various types of maps that you may encounter or use in your work to understand and redesign the customer experience.

I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on February 27, 2020.

As a follow on to the post, Four Actions to Take on Customer Effort Feedback, you’re likely going to need to prove the ROI of reducing customer effort. In this post, I’ll talk about five steps to prove the ROI.

I’ve had a lot of conversations in recent weeks about how the employee experience drives the customer experience, but the part that stands out from these conversations is the common thread: that the customer experience only happens via, or is only shaped by, the frontline employees.

That is just not true.

When I’ve addressed this latter point, I’m always asked, “Well, then how do I connect the dots for the backoffice folks?” I love to answer this question.

Change is hard. We know that. But it’s even harder when we hear nothing but excuses for why something can’t be done or why it shouldn’t change.

In last week’s post, I wrote about some findings in Salesforce’s latest State of the Connected Customer report. One of the graphics for the first finding, “customer connections are essential,” stood out to me. The title of the chart is, “Amid Crises, Experience Remains a Key Differentiator.” I agree with that. It’s the sub-title that struck me: “The Experience a Company Provides Is as Important as Its Products or Services.”

I had to pause a moment. Aren’t products and services part of the experience?

Yes!

I recently got my hands on a copy of Salesforce’s latest State of the Connected Customer report, which captures customers’ thoughts from midway through 2020 and, ultimately, the pandemic and other societal crises during the year. At this point, the key findings are probably not a surprise to read, but the details and stats behind them are interesting, nonetheless.

Key findings include:

I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on July 25, 2020.