Total CX

Designing a Successful “Outside In” CAB Program

Over the past decade, our Customer Co-Design consulting practice has expanded to creating and facilitating Customer Advisory Boards. Our clients are primarily large B2B organizations who embrace the customer-empowered approach to CABs in which customers’ issues and priorities are the focal point for the meetings, rather than inviting customers to be wined and dined and subjected to endless marketing hype.

Patty Seybold offers a blueprint for creating an effective CAB by highlighting what customers want from this type of group gathering:

1. Network with Peers
2. Get Insights from My Peers about Specific Issues that Are on My Radar
3. Solve a Thorny Problem
4. Validate Our Roadmap
5. Be Taken Seriously; Make a Difference
6. Get Best Practices and See How We Compare to Others
7. Build Strong Relationships with My Supplier’s Top Execs and Subject Matter Experts

How well does your CAB (or plans for a CAB) stack up?

Creating Customer Advisory Boards that Your Customers Will Love!
How to Design a Successful “Outside In” CAB Program for Your Customers and Top Executives
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, October 25, 2012

Let Me Choose My Help Channel!

I have a new customer experience pet peeve: being bullied into using online help.

How many of you have experienced the following: you have called a company’s 800 customer support line only to be on hold for…well, practically forever…and between the nondescript elevator music, you are told that you can get support on the company web site. The implication I get from this is, “you moron, there are answers there, and, besides, we don’t want to talk to you.” I admit, my strong negative reaction is probably because I’m in some sort of customer crisis and am feeling negatively about the company anyway.

This message is particularly annoying when you’re calling your ISP because your internet access isn’t working well, or your calling a merchant because its etailing site isn’t responding. Speaking with other customers, they have the same reaction. “How the heck can I go online to get help when my problem is I can’t get to your site?”

CX Audit: My Sears Community’s Facelift

By Patty Seybold

How do you evolve your customer-facing e-commerce and customer service site(s) and your online customer-community in synch with one another? That’s the question that must be facing Sears’ management as they brace themselves for another brutally competitive holiday retail season. We don’t know how Sears has organized its staffing and reporting structure to support its various web properties, but, based on Ronni Marshak’s customer experience audit of Sears’ newly updated online community site(s), Sears to have a fragmented, rather than a unified approach to content, commerce, and community.

MySears Community Gets a Facelift
Community and Commerce Are Still Too Separate!
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, October 18, 2012

Customers Are Customers and Roles Are Important

Regardless of what hat your customers are wearing when they do business with you—parent, employee, soccer coach—they all want a great customer experience. And the key things that any customer wants are:

• To trust their suppliers
• To achieve their outcomes with a minimum of fuss and obstacles
• To always get what they want in a timely (by their definition) fashion
• To always know what to do to get what they want and need (no confusion)
• To feel special and valued as a customer

This week, I look at what roles and challenges B2B and B2C customers have in common. My advice is to focus on providing a stellar experience for the individual customer without allowing your CX decisions to be based on arbitrary categorization—B2B versus B2C. But, DO take into account what ROLE each customer is playing as they move through the plan, explore, select, buy, use, manage/maintain, renew/replace phases of their engagement with each of your products and services. In this way, you are sure to provide the best customer experience for your individual customers, whether they are wearing a business or consumer hat.

How B2C Customers Are Similar to B2B Customers
The Roles Consumers Play as They Interact with Your Firm
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, October 4, 2012