Total CX

Approach to Customer Experience Management Remains Current

Looking through the body of work that we have published over the years, Patty and I were taken with how much of our research is still current after a number of years. In her article on Customer Experience Management, originally written in 2005, Patty explains that your customer experience mission is to delight individual customers by designing ideal experiences for particular audiences, segments, or groups of customers—people who care about the same things and who have the same needs and desired outcomes. You want to optimize the quality of the experience you offer to each group of customers so that they perceive and appreciate the value of your brand. At the same time, you want to deliver the most appropriate level of service, based on the customer’s context, to please him or her, without overspending on the things that don’t matter to the customer. By understanding, anticipating and meeting customers’ needs, you increase customer loyalty while lowering your costs to serve. Truer words were never spoken—not then, not now.

How to Approach Customer Experience Management
An Overview of Patricia Seybold Group’s Recommended Game Plan
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, May 27, 2010

When Communities Converge (or Collide)

For years, we’ve always advocated—nay, evangelized—that customers and employees/stakeholders should be on the same page, with access to the same information, so that everyone has a 360-degree view of what’s going on. Part of our advocacy was promoting the convergence of customer and employee communities. But, as Matthew Lees, our community and social media mastermind points out in his article, Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?, creating a comprehensive community to address customer issues and employee issues doesn’t really make sense.

Although employees have (or should have) the goal of providing a great experience and easy access to relevant information to customers, the information they need in a community is about stuff that customers, frankly, don’t care about—HR stuff like payroll, expense reimbursement, insurance issues, and the like. And, while specific employees—especially customer-facing employees—should know what’s going on in customer blogs, this is typically a small portion of the entire staff. Not everyone on your payroll needs to be involved in a customer support community, or an innovation community, or…whatever it is that customers want to “commune” about. Their jobs, while always in support of making customers happy, albeit often indirectly (good HR policies make employees happy; happy employees stick around longer and can provide better customer support, for example), are not intended to solve all customer problems. Most employees will not become more productive by knowing about a workaround for an absent feature in the product. Nor will customers become more loyal to your brand because you offer a dental plan.

The key to effective communities is to understand the goals of the community and decide who should participate. So, based on Matthew’s insights, we will get off the “everyone should know and participate in everything” soapbox and concede that instead of converging, disparate communities may just collide.

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Can a Single Social Technology Support Both Internal and External Communities?
By Matthew D. Lees, Senior Contributing Editor, May 13, 2010

The Wrath of Customers

Are We Blaming Providers for Things Beyond Their Control?

By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, May 6, 2010

NETTING IT OUT

Customers sometimes—or often—get unreasonably angry at their providers, even when the provider is not to blame. Although the customer might well be overreacting, I recommend some actions that can help smooth the waters:

• Be empathetic

• Treat them as individuals

• Understand the scenario

• Assume the responsibility

• Come up with creative alternative

• Apologize…and mean it!

Customers, you also need to understand that most customer support people are just trying to help—once the anger passes, be gracious.

UNREASONABLE CUSTOMER REACTIONS

Betrayed by an Online App!

I had a very critical meeting with a key client. The meeting was to examine the results of an extensive customer co-design initiative to determine the immediate next steps and make sure the project would move forward optimally. I was completely prepared; had all my information; the results were impressive; my recommendations were (I think) brilliant. But I hit a very hard wall five minutes before the online meeting was due to begin: I couldn’t access my Google Calendar!