Sign in
Business
Shep Hyken & C-Suite Radio
Amazing Business Radio features customer service expert and New York Times bestselling author Shep Hyken who interviews leading business professionals and other customer experience experts. Each guest shares tips and insights on how to succeed in business. The bright business minds featured on Amazing Business Radio come from all over the world and include viral video stars, corporate CEOs, bestselling authors, thought leaders, and many other inspiring personalities. The show covers a variety of topics related to customer service and customer experience and will provide answers that listeners need to know in order to take their success to the next level. Amazing Business Radio airs every week on, itunes, Soundcloud, and other platforms and channels.
How Any Business Can Adopt a Hospitality Mentality Featuring Josh Liebman
Create Customer Loyalty With a Personalized Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Josh Liebman, a guest experience expert and the author of The Hospitality Mentality: Create Raving Fans Through Your Guest Experience. He talks about how organizations, whether in B2B or B2C, can adopt the hospitality mindset to create exceptional guest experiences and drive loyalty.
Top Takeaways:
The hospitality mentality is a mindset that focuses on treating every customer as a valued guest, going beyond their expectations, and providing exceptional service. This mindset can be applied to every organization in any industry.
A hyper-personalized experience is making the customer or guest feel like they are the only one that matters, even if it is only for a brief period of time. It's about delivering an experience that exceeds their expectations and is tailored to their unique preferences and needs.
A “wow moment” is a surprise and delight moment. It goes beyond what an employee, a team member, or the organization typically needs to do, but it shouldn't negatively impact any other guest's experience.
“Wow moments” don’t have to be complicated or costly. There are many ways to create memorable and personalized experiences for guests that have high value but little to no cost to your organization. It's about going the extra mile, finding moments to surprise and delight your guests, and creating a lasting impression that sets your business apart.
Consistency and predictability are crucial in delivering amazing customer service. While “wow moments” are memorable and can create a lasting impact, the foundation of great service lies in consistently delivering positive experiences (that are expected). The word "always" followed by something positive is how every customer should describe your business. Customers value businesses that are always friendly, always helpful, and always reliable.
Plus, Josh shares what it means to “get rid of your customers” and more nuggets from his latest book, The Hospitality Mentality: Create Raving Fans Through Your Guest Experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"The idea behind having a hospitality mindset is to look beyond the dollar amount customers bring into the business. Provide an experience that extends beyond the transaction and allows you to build a framework for a service culture that treats everyone like a guest."
About:
Josh Liebman specializes in guest experience within attractions, hospitality, and tourism. He is the co-host of the AttractionPros Podcast and the author of The Hospitality Mentality: Create Raving Fans Through Your Guest Experience.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:4505/12/2023
How a Simple Search Bar Creates a Better Customer Experience Featuring Chris Blaisure
The Power of Google Comes to Your Website
Shep Hyken interviews Chris Blaisure, senior director of innovation and engineering at Elastic. He talks about using a Google type of search engine on your company’s website to help deliver a better customer experience and help customer support agents get the best answers for their customers.
Top Takeaways:
Businesses use advanced technology like search and generative AI to create better customer experiences. When customers visit a company's website and use the search bar to find information, the technology behind it can provide relevant and helpful results, making it easier to get the answers they need.
Searching on the internet used to be about using keywords, but now it's smarter! It understands what you really want and gives you better answers. This shift allows customers to ask broader questions and receive accurate responses, improving the effectiveness of search platforms and thereby improving customer service.
Customers can now use everyday language to get better results that accurately match what they are looking for. For example, instead of searching "discount iPhone," customers can ask, "I want the best family plan for an iPhone in California." The answer or response suits what the customer needs better.
While digital self-service solutions continue to evolve and enhance the customer experience, phone support remains essential for customers to interact with companies. The goal is not to eliminate phone support but to augment agents with AI-driven tools. This allows support agents to focus on more personalized and complex issues.
Generative AI and advanced search technologies can help build unique customer experiences. Creating meaningful and personalized customer interactions with the help of AI-powered technology can help brands set themselves apart from the competition.
Plus, Chris shares how Elastic started and evolved from searching kitchen recipes to delivering AI-powered CX. Tune in!
Quote:
"Self-service unblocks customer support… and enables a better customer experience.”
About:
Chris Blaisure is the senior director of innovation and engineering at Elastic. He is a technology leader focused on customer satisfaction and driving exceptional user experiences in software and processes.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:5228/11/2023
Balancing Automation and Personalization Featuring Nicole Kyle
The Benefits of Self-Directed Customer Experiences (CX) for Customers and Agents
Shep Hyken interviews Nicole Kyle, Managing Director and co-founder of CMP Research. She discusses the evolution of self-service and digital customer service and the importance of personalization and customer control in self-service interactions.
Top Takeaways:
Self-service is becoming more than just enabling customers to attempt to resolve their own issues. Customers want a self-directed experience where they have control over how they are served and can resolve their issues in the way they want.
The pandemic has accelerated the normalization of digital experiences and digital tools. The lockdown has changed our customers' perspective on how they want to spend their time. Customers want to be more self-sufficient and spend less time interacting with customer support if they can get answers faster on their own.
Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is expected to grow in customer contact organizations to support agents. AI will remove low-value, repeatable tasks and help with employee burnout.
Generative AI will improve agent experience by making them more self-sufficient. For example, for whatever reason, they can't reach their manager or peers, they can interact with the AI-enabled knowledge base and get the answers they need.
Organizations need to focus on personalization and customer control in self-service experiences. Customers want a personalized experience that makes them feel valued and have the ability to resolve their issues in a way that suits them.
Plus, Nicole share stats from Self-Service CX: Executive Priorities & Technology Adoptions. Tune in!
Quote:
"Generative AI might reduce frontline workers in the future, but the good news is it will create jobs internally for people to monitor those tools and extract and analyze data."
About:
Nicole Kyle is the Managing Director and co-founder of CMP Research. Nicole joined CMP in November 2021 from Gartner, where she spent eight years leading research and advisory.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:3321/11/2023
How Generative AI is Disrupting the Call Center World Featuring Richard Smullen
Using Generative AI to Provide a Personalized Customer Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Richard Smullen, CEO of Pypestream, an AI-powered self-service automation platform. He talks about how automation and generative AI can enhance the customer experience and the potential for self-service interactions.
Top Takeaways:
The future of customer service is being transformed by AI-powered technologies that can automate and enhance customer interactions. Technologies, such as ChatGPT and generative AI, are revolutionizing how businesses interact with their customers.
AI is redefining customer support. While there will still be a need for human agents in certain high-touch situations, the majority of customer interactions will be handled by AI-powered systems.
The future of customer service is heading toward self-service and personalized experiences. By providing intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces, businesses can guide customers toward the desired outcome without human intervention.
Companies that embrace AI in their customer service operations are not necessarily reducing their workforce. Instead, they are using AI to augment human agents and improve customer service experiences.
According to Martec's Law, technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically. The longer organizations delay their adoption and experimentation with technology, the greater the gap will be, and ultimately, they'll never catch up.
Plus, Shep and Richard share their predictions on how generative AI will transform customer service and what happens to businesses that fail to adapt. Tune in!
Quote:
"The customer is not going to believe that they are building a relationship with the AI. They are going to believe that they are building a relationship with the business that happens to be using AI. That level of connectivity and personalization that AI can help a business provide is what is going to drive loyalty."
About:
Richard Smullen is the founder and CEO of Pypestream, an AI-powered automation platform. Pypestream connects businesses to customers through self-service automation and smart messaging.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:5514/11/2023
Are Your Customers Happy Or Not? Featuring Miika Mäkitalo
How to Use Positive and Negative Feedback as Opportunities to Improve the Customer Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Miika Mäkitalo, CEO of HappyOrNot, a simple, non-intrusive customer feedback platform. He talks about the value of customer feedback and how businesses can benefit from actionable insights.
Top Takeaways:
Customer feedback is crucial for businesses of all industries. By actively seeking and analyzing feedback, businesses can identify areas of improvement, make informed decisions, and ultimately enhance their overall customer experience.
Technology, such as feedback kiosks and tablets, provides a simple and non-intrusive way for customers to provide feedback. These devices allow businesses to gather real-time insights and track customer satisfaction on a regular basis. Customers appreciate the convenience of these devices, as it takes just a few seconds to indicate their level of satisfaction. This encourages more customers to participate, providing a representative sample of feedback.
The value of customer feedback lies not just in data collection but in taking action. By identifying trends and patterns in feedback, businesses can make the necessary adjustments to enhance their operations, increase revenue, and improve customer loyalty.
Feedback devices with open-ended feedback options can provide even more valuable information for businesses. By allowing customers to provide specific comments or suggestions, businesses gain deeper insights into the reasons behind their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, enabling them to address specific issues and make targeted improvements.
Feedback devices can be especially beneficial for retail, healthcare, and industries where customer experience directly impacts revenue. Implementing customer feedback strategies can increase sales and profits as businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize operations and meet customer expectations.
Real-time feedback enables businesses to address issues immediately, whether a dirty restroom in an airport or a staffing gap in a retail store. Monitoring feedback in real-time allows businesses to promptly rectify any problems, ensuring a positive customer experience.
Businesses can benefit from comparing feedback across different locations or time periods. By identifying differences in customer satisfaction levels, businesses can assess the impact of various factors, such as staffing or operational changes, and make effective adjustments accordingly.
Plus, Mikka shares how much revenue a business can gain from investing in easy-to-use, real-time feedback devices. Tune in!
Quote:
"In today's world, the customer is king, and retaining them is so important. It is vital for every organization, whether it is a business or a nonprofit, to measure their customer experience and think about what they could do better."
About:
Miika Mäkitalo is the CEO of HappyOrNot. He is an entrepreneurial business strategist who has a deep understanding of data analytics and its application in various industries, especially customer service and CX.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:3407/11/2023
The “More Than Perfect” Business Model Featuring Paul Rutter
How to Apply the Hospitality Mentality to All Industries
Shep Hyken interviews Paul Rutter, global cruise director, speaker, trainer, and the author of You Can't Make This Ship Up: Business Strategies, Life Lessons, and True Stories from Forty Years at Sea. He talks about the hospitality mentality in the cruise industry and how it can be applied to other businesses.
Top Takeaways:
The hospitality mentality is key to creating a great customer experience in any type of business. Industries like hotels, restaurants, and cruise lines excel in this area because they live with their customers 24/7, which creates a unique dynamic for delivering outstanding service. We can all learn from their methods.
Living with customers means managing their experience from the moment they start considering a purchase to the time they return for another one. It involves addressing any issues they may encounter, no matter how small, and ensuring their overall satisfaction throughout the entire journey.
Employee engagement is crucial for maintaining a high level of service for any company or brand. In industries like cruising, where employees live and work together, fostering a positive work environment is essential to ensuring that employees wake up each day ready to deliver exceptional customer service.
“More than Perfect Service” is all about where you are, where you would like to be, how you will get there, and making sure that your customers and employees sing your praises.
You're not just competing with other businesses in the same industry. You're competing against every business in the world. Take other companies that deliver great service and design your training and education to emulate them.
Plus, Paul shares how he managed a recent moment of misery of a cruise getting canceled and turned it into an opportunity to keep and impress customers. Tune in!
Quote:
"Forming relationships with people is what business is all about. It's the little things that make you stand out, like learning somebody's name or writing a thank you note. It's what makes them want to come back."
About:
Paul Rutter is a seasoned professional in the cruise industry who understands the unique challenges and dynamics of living and working with customers 24/7. He is the author of Repeat Business Inc.: The Business of Staying in Business and his latest book, You Can't Make This Ship Up: Business Strategies, Life Lessons, and True Stories from Forty Years at Sea.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:5031/10/2023
The Transformational Economy Featuring Aransas Savas
Creating Meaningful Motivation through Understanding Customer Needs
Shep Hyken interviews Aransas Savas, the experience designer at Stone Mantel, and the co-host of the Experience Strategy Podcast. She talks about the transformational experience and creating a more meaningful and valuable relationship between customers and companies.
Top Takeaways:
Transformational experiences involve understanding what truly motivates and inspires customers. This goes beyond mere metrics and focuses on the holistic changes people experience.
Meaningful motivation is key to creating a valuable relationship between a company and its customers. It involves understanding customers' needs and building experiences that cater to those needs, leading to a more lasting and meaningful connection.
Manipulative motivation, where companies use data to manipulate customers for their own needs, is not the ideal approach. Meaningful motivation focuses on creating experiences that genuinely respond to customers' needs and desires.
The power of transformation lies in unlocking and understanding the transformational aspects of a program or service. By shifting focus from just one metric (e.g., weight loss) to a holistic approach, companies can create more meaningful and impactful experiences.
The power of transformation lies in unlocking and understanding the transformational aspects of a program or service. By shifting focus from just one metric to a holistic approach, companies can create more meaningful and impactful experiences.
Understanding what matters to customers and aligning business strategies and experiences to those needs is crucial. Companies can build strong, lasting relationships with their target audience by putting customers at the center and designing experiences around their motivations.
Plus, Shep and Aransas discuss which industries transformational experiences apply to. Tune in!
Quote:
"The transformation economy is about understanding what truly motivates and inspires customers to create lasting change in their lives."
About:
Shep Hyken interviews Aransas Savas, the experience designer at Stone Mantel and the co-host of the Experience Strategy Podcast. She has worked with leading brands such as Weight Watchers, Best Buy, Truist Bank, and Clayton Homes.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:1424/10/2023
Cisco's Four Key Steps to Enhancing Customer Experience Featuring Andrew Carothers
How to Get Your CX House in Order
Shep Hyken interviews Andrew Carothers, CCXP, Digital Customer Experience Leader at Cisco. He talks about delivering seamless experiences that lead to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue growth.
Top Takeaways:
Building a solid customer experience foundation is essential for all businesses, regardless of their industry or target audience.
Andrew shares the four key steps to deliver experiences that lead to customer satisfaction, repeat business, and retention.
Get your CX house in order. Break down internal barriers, whether they are human or digital, that hinder the success of customer experience initiatives.
Embrace AI. To handle customer experience (CX) on a large scale, go beyond manual, human-driven processes. Instead, focus on meeting customer expectations for instant responses, relevant content, and smart, seamless experiences across multiple channels.
Scale digitally in lockstep with selling partners. Create a comprehensive digital experience encompassing partners, customers, and internal teams. This enables everyone to access a unified, real-time view of the entire customer journey.
Measure what matters. The metric that matters the most is the success and thriving of the customer's business.
To create a successful digital customer experience, businesses must focus on reaching customers directly and through different channels, tailoring their approach based on customer preferences and needs. Utilizing digital tools and technology allows companies to effectively reach millions of customers in different countries and engage with them in a personalized manner.
Plus, Shep and Andrew share more customer experience tips applicable to businesses, whether in B2B, B2C, or in government. Tune in!
Quote:
"We are now in the age of the customer where customers can quickly and easily switch vendors if they want to. Every company must develop a customer experience that brings customers to the value they're looking for quickly, without a lot of hurdles."
About:
Andrew Carothers, CCXP, is a senior customer experience leader, author and speaker. He was a founding member of Cisco's CX function, contributing to the development of the company's digital customer experience strategy.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:1617/10/2023
What is Conversational AI and How is It Changing Customer Support? Featuring Peter Mullen
Enhancing Customer Support Efficiency with AI and Human Collaboration
Shep Hyken interviews Peter Mullen, Chief Marketing Officer of Interactions. He talks about the power of AI in customer service and the benefits of integrating human support when necessary.
Top Takeaways:
Conversational AI technology, powered by artificial intelligence, has revolutionized customer support by providing efficient and personalized assistance to customers. This technology can understand customers' queries, provide relevant answers, and guide them toward a resolution.
Combining AI and human agents can create a seamless and effective customer experience. When AI detects that a customer is not getting the desired answer or experiencing difficulties, it can seamlessly transfer the conversation to a human agent who can provide further assistance. This collaboration between AI and humans can reduce customer frustration and lead to quicker problem resolution.
Conversational AI solutions can be beneficial in voice-led customer interactions. By recognizing ambient noise, heavy accents, or other challenges, AI can identify when a customer's intentions may not be fully understood. In such cases, the conversation can be seamlessly transferred to a human agent, minimizing any disruption in the customer experience.
By automating routine inquiries and tasks, AI allows human agents to focus on more complex or specialized customer needs. This allows contact centers to handle more inquiries while maintaining service quality.
Conversational AI technology has the potential to improve customer satisfaction by reducing the number of interactions required to solve a problem. Studies show that customers often become frustrated after a few unsuccessful attempts to resolve an issue. Therefore, companies that can address customer concerns with fewer engagements will likely see higher customer satisfaction rates.
Plus, Shep and Peter answer the question: Will AI take away jobs? Tune in!
Quote:
“Generative AI has brought about a mix of excitement, fear, and confusion since the beginning. When we emphasize the importance of involving humans, it helps us anchor ourselves as we move forward.”
About:
Peter Mullen is the Chief Marketing Officer of Interactions, a company specializing intelligent virtual assistants and conversational AI. He is a seasoned marketing executive with 20 years of experience. Before his role at Interactions, he also held prominent marketing and communications roles at VXI Global Solutions, Comcast, and Netflix.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:2110/10/2023
Turning Customer Support from a Cost Center into a Revenue Generator Featuring Alex Ross
The Importance of Employee Experience to Customer Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Alex Ross, co-founder and chief operating officer of Hire Horatio. He talks about leveraging customer experience as a competitive advantage and creating a work environment that employees love (beyond the paycheck).
Top Takeaways:
Outsourcing customer service and support functions can be an effective strategy for businesses, especially startups, to offload non-core tasks and focus on their core competencies. It can be beneficial as it allows companies to provide 24/7 support and access to properly trained professionals, even if they are not direct employees of the company.
Customer service should not be viewed solely as a cost center but as an opportunity to enhance customer experience, generate revenue, and improve customer retention.
Customer service can contribute to revenue growth by resolving customer issues and upselling, cross-selling, and retaining customers who may have been on the verge of leaving.
In today's competitive landscape, smart companies focus on designing differentiated customer experiences and leveraging customer support and CX as a competitive advantage.
Creating a positive and supportive work environment for customer service employees is crucial for employee retention in an industry known for high turnover rates.
Plus, Alex shares what they are doing at Hire Horatio to attract, nurture, and keep the best people and create the best customer service and experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"Around 2019 and 2020, everybody just wanted to see top-line growth. It was all about numbers and revenue. Now, investors are looking at retention and customer lifetime value, which all start with customer experience."
About:
Alex Ross is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Hire Horatio. He works with startups, providing them with invaluable customer support and back-office functions.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:4903/10/2023
The Impact of Tipping and "Tipflation" on Customer Satisfaction Featuring Forrest Morgeson
How Increased Tipping Influences Value Perception and Customer Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Forrest Morgeson, Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index and Associate Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University. He talks about how tipping and "tipflation" impacts customer satisfaction scores and the need for businesses to improve customer service and experience.
Top Takeaways:
The frequency of tipping, or "tipflation," has increased across industries. Businesses should consider tipping practices' impact on customer satisfaction and carefully evaluate when and how tipping should be implemented.
Rising prices and increased pressure to tip can create a sense of guilt for consumers. This may lead some individuals to avoid experiences where they feel obligated to over-tip. Businesses should be mindful of these factors and strive to find a balance that doesn't cause customer discomfort.
High customer satisfaction ratings contribute to the success of brands and can be indicators of financial performance. Companies that excel in simplicity, convenience, and NPS scores tend to outperform the market collectively.
Positive experiences in one industry can shape customer expectations in others. For example, exceptional customer service at an Apple store can set the bar for expectations in restaurants and other industries. Brands should aim to provide consistent and engaging experiences across all touchpoints to meet customer expectations.
While technology can enhance service delivery, it should be working well and dependable before implementation. Reliability is crucial to maintaining positive customer experiences and satisfaction.
Plus, Shep and Forrest discuss ways to increase your customer satisfaction scores. Tune in!
Quote:
"When tipping becomes a common expectation in service interactions, consumers will mentally factor it into the price and value perceptions."
About:
Forrest Morgeson is the Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index. He is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University, where he teaches marketing management, marketing strategy, and marketing research courses to EMBA and MSMR students.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
33:1026/09/2023
Boosting Customer Satisfaction with Quick and Consistent Responses Featuring Howard Moodycliffe
The Impact of Speed in Winning and Retaining Clients
Shep Hyken interviews Howard Moodycliffe, Chief Executive Officer of Timetoreply. He talks about how prompt communication can help companies build trust, enhance credibility, and increase customer satisfaction.
Top Takeaways:
In today's fast-paced world, customers expect timely responses across various communication channels. Whether it's email, phone calls, or social media, consistent and efficient interaction is essential to meet customer expectations.
Speaking of customers expecting quick and timely responses, if they wanted to wait, they would have waited to make ask their question or make their request in the first place. Businesses should value their customers' time and demonstrate respect by delivering quick and consistent responses. This not only helps in acquiring new clients but also strengthens customer loyalty and fosters long-term relationships.
Email remains a dominant channel for B2B communication. Companies across different industries should customize their response speed based on the preferences of their customers. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and understanding industry-specific expectations is essential to succeed.
Consistency is crucial in providing an outstanding customer experience. It is not enough to respond quickly at the beginning of the customer relationship. You must always respond quickly. Maintaining consistent response times builds trust and sets proper expectations.
Finding the right balance between speed and quality is essential. While quick response times are important, businesses should also ensure that their responses are accurate, helpful, and provide value to the customer.
Timetoreply has a special offer for Amazing Business Radio listeners! Get one month of their email analytics and performance optimization software for free.
Plus, Shep and Howard discuss how to create a positive experience even when delivering less-than-ideal news to your customers. Tune in!
Quote:
"Speed makes one of the highest impacts in increasing customer satisfaction whether you're looking to win clients or retain the ones you already have."
About:
Howard Moodycliffe is the CEO of Timetoreply, an email response management and analytics software that helps companies empower teams, delight customers, and boost revenue.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:0119/09/2023
Understanding the "Why" Behind Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) Featuring Jason Barro
Leveraging Data to Improve Your Customer Experience Strategy
Shep Hyken interviews Jason Barro, Partner at Bain & Co. and Founder of NPS Prism®. He talks about the importance of measuring and understanding Net Promoter Score (NPS) in improving customer experiences (CX) and driving business growth.
Top Takeaways:
Net Promoter Score (NPS) evaluates customer sentiment and allows companies to compare their data with competitors. It helps identify areas where organizations may be falling short and prompts them to revise their current strategies for improvement.
To improve customer experience, companies need to break down the customer journey into smaller episodes or touchpoints. By identifying which episodes create promoters (satisfied customers) or detractors (unsatisfied customers), companies can focus on improving specific aspects of the customer experience.
Customers don't just compare you to other companies within your industry. They compare you to the best experience they have ever had. It is crucial to examine why certain companies perform better than others. By analyzing what makes them successful, businesses can identify areas where they can improve and work towards closing the gap.
Having a great product is important, but it can be overshadowed and rejected if accompanied by poor customer service. Likewise, even the best service may only temporarily excite a customer if the product fails to meet their expectations. Companies need to achieve a balance between product quality and customer experience.
Plus, Shep and Jason talk about the NPS leaders in various industries, including automotive, groceries, airlines, and more. Tune in!
Quote:
"Happier customers are more valuable to the business. They buy more, stay longer, and bring their friends into your business."
About:
Jason Barro is a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing practice. He is the lead partner and founder of NPS Prism ®, a customer experience and benchmarking service that provides businesses with actionable insights to build loyalty and grow sales.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
32:4212/09/2023
How to Redefine Leadership and Empower Employees Featuring Chris Mefford
Why Leadership is Overrated and The Power of an Ego-Free Workplace
Shep Hyken interviews Chris Mefford, CEO of Culture Force and co-author of Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win. He discusses creating a safe space for teams to feel engaged and empowered to work at their best.
Top Takeaways:
There is a gap between how leaders perceive employee engagement and how employees actually feel. According to Gallup research, 70% of employees are disengaged at work. However, only 30% of leaders feel that way. In the same way, a significant gap often exists between what executives believe about their customer service and what customers actually experience.
Despite the high investment of $300 billion annually worldwide on leadership development, surveys consistently show that employees still feel disengaged. Most of the time, people don't leave because of the company. They leave their managers.
Leaders should give authority to their teams, not just responsibility. Often, leaders think they are empowering their team by giving them more work. Empower teams by listening to their ideas and enabling them to make decisions based on what they believe is best.
In special forces like the Navy SEALs, the leader of a mission is not necessarily the highest-ranking officer but someone with the most relevant experience. The Navy SEALs practice "killing the leader," where they train by removing a leader or two to help the team understand that they are empowered to make decisions.
Acknowledgment is the top motivator for workers, even more than pay. Giving credit and acknowledging the team's efforts along the way, not just when a project is completed, boosts engagement. Boston Consulting surveyed 200,000 workers across the globe to find what motivates them the most. An attractive fixed salary is number eight, while the number one factor is "Appreciation for your work."
When leaders let their egos get in the way, it hinders collaboration and prevents teams from coming together to create amazing results. Great leadership requires humility and putting the team's needs above personal ego.
Plus, Shep and Chris discuss what happens when egos are removed from the leadership with examples from Aretha Franklin to book retailers. Tune in!
Quote:
"Empathy is a billion-dollar industry. When companies are not intentional about making their employees feel engaged and empowered, the financial cost is tremendous."
About:
Chris Mefford is the CEO of Culture Force and co-author of Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win. He helped the Dave Ramsey Organization win the “Best Place to Work” award for eight straight years.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:5805/09/2023
Hallmark Explains How Personalization Enhances Business Relationships and the Customer Experience
Building Authenticity and Trust in Business through Impactful Communication
Shep Hyken interviews Patrick McCullough, president of Hallmark Business Connections. He talks about how businesses can use the power of personalization at scale to strengthen relationships, create emotional connections, and enhance the customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
Authenticity and personalization can strengthen business relationships, build trust, and create emotional connections that lead to repeat business and loyalty.
Personalized notes are a powerful tool in business. They break through the clutter of digital communication and create a meaningful connection with customers and clients. Greeting cards can be used strategically to strengthen business relationships. Sending cards for special occasions, milestones, or even reminders for appointments can show thoughtfulness and attention to detail.
A well-thought-out client journey map can ensure that personalized notes are sent at the right moments. By mapping out the timeline of each client's relationship, businesses can create a systematic approach to sending cards and notes.
Building trust and authenticity is crucial in business. Sending personalized notes creates emotional connections and reinforces the credibility and reliability of the brand or company.
The physical and digital worlds can work together to enhance customer experience. By combining the magic of the "old school touch" with digital tools, businesses can create a seamless and impactful communication strategy.
Businesses can use life touch points such as birthdays, holidays, Mother's Day, and Father's Day to connect with customers. But, what customers find surprising are business touch points that also create connections. For example, a customer signing up for a new health insurance plan may be expecting onboarding materials and contracts. So, sending a personalized note that says, "Thank you so much for choosing us, and we're going to do everything we can to stand by you." makes for a more wonderful start to the experience.
The impact of personalized gifts goes beyond the moment it is received. It leaves a lasting impression and can be a catalyst for repeat business, increased customer loyalty, and referrals.
Plus, Shep and Patrick talk about companies that have mastered personalization at scale. Tune in!
Quote:
"Greeting cards provide a tangible and unique way to break through the digital noise and make a lasting impression on customers and clients."
About:
Patrick McCullough is the president of Hallmark Business Connections, which helps businesses strengthen customer and employee relationships by deepening emotional connections with them through life event marketing.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:3529/08/2023
Delivering a Customer Obsessed Service Experience Featuring Mark Ang
Meeting Consumer Demand through Amazing Customer Support and Innovation
Shep Hyken interviews Mark Ang, CEO and Co-Founder of GoBolt. He talks about taking a proactive approach to customer service and embracing technology to enhance the customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
· Customer obsession is a crucial aspect of every business, regardless of its size or industry. It should be embraced by everyone in the organization, from senior leaders to frontline employees.
· To provide exceptional customer service, it is essential to have a dedicated customer support team that is well-trained and equipped with the right tools and technology. Utilizing cutting-edge solutions like chatbots and AI can improve efficiency and reduce ticket volume, allowing the team to focus on handling complex support issues.
· Respond quickly and be available through your customers' preferred channels, such as phone, email, text, and social media. Customers have high expectations when it comes to responsiveness, and meeting those expectations can significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.
· Being proactive and using data to anticipate customer needs is a game-changer. By analyzing customer behavior and trends, companies can address potential issues before they arise, providing a personalized and proactive approach to customer support.
· While technology plays a significant role in improving customer service, human interaction remains essential. It's about finding the right balance between AI-powered solutions and human touch to provide a seamless and personalized customer experience.
· Plus, Mark shares how he founded GoBolt in college and how being customer-obsessed built it to become the award-winning company it is today. Tune in!
Quote:
"The goal is not to eliminate humans. The goal is to create more time for our people to deal with higher-level support requirements, manage more complex processes, and oversee different areas of the business."
About:
Mark Ang serves as the CEO and Co-Founder at GoBolt, an organization offering simple, customer-centric, and sustainable logistics solutions.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:5922/08/2023
Aligning Marketing and Training for a Consistent Customer Experience Featuring Barry LaBov
Why Marketing and Training Go Hand in Hand in Shaping Customer Perceptions
Shep Hyken interviews Barry LaBov, the founder of LABOV Marketing Communications and Training and author of The Power of Differentiation. He discusses the importance of aligning marketing messages with employee training to create a unique and consistent customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
Giving employees a sense of meaning and purpose creates excitement and engagement. When employees feel connected to the brand and enjoy the experience they deliver, it translates into a better connection with customers.
Training is crucial in aligning employees with the brand's unique experience. If new hires don't receive the same training as the rest of the team, the result is inconsistency, which can create a disconnect with customers. Onboarding processes that quickly integrate new employees into the company culture are essential.
Brands should aim to bridge the gap between their brand image and customer experience. If customers become excited about the product or brand, their expectations should be met or exceeded from the moment they interact with the business. Aligning the messaging and experience is crucial in maintaining customers' enthusiasm.
Differentiating a product or brand starts from within. Before promoting to the world, it's important to share and celebrate what makes the product unique with employees. Ensuring employees are knowledgeable promotes consistency and helps avoid miscommunication or confusion.
The right customer experience creates brand loyalty. Your brand's reputation is created by every individual representing the brand. It's important for employees throughout the organization to understand their role in shaping how customers perceive the brand. Regardless of location or demographic, customers expect a consistent and predictable experience.
Plus, Shep and Barry discuss how engaging one employee at a time can be more effective than mass engagement. Tune in!
Quote:
"Marry the message to the experience. The marketing and promotion should be congruent with the actual experience the customer receives."
About:
Barry LaBov is the founder of LABOV Marketing and Training in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He empowers brands to impress their customers and capture the hearts of their employees. He is the author of The Power of Differentiation, a book that helps leaders discover and share what makes their brands unique.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25:5315/08/2023
Creating a Destination Employment Experience with Avaya's CEO
Investing in Customer Experience and Employee Engagement
Shep Hyken interviews Alan Masarek, CEO and Board Director of Avaya. He discusses prioritizing customer satisfaction and creating a positive workplace culture.
Top Takeaways:
Being a destination workplace requires deliberately building a culture that attracts talented individuals. Organizations should strive to create an environment where employees are proud to work, find meaning in their careers, and have growth opportunities.
In today's job market, loyalty to a single company is less common. Employees often see their first job as a stepping stone to their next employment opportunity. Companies need to create a work environment that employees never want to leave and would want to recommend to others.
Providing innovation without disrupting existing systems is a strategic approach for companies with large installations. The gradual integration of new channels and capabilities can help customers evolve and expand in the journey they have chosen.
Creating a clear and transparent roadmap is key to building trust with customers and employees. Companies can foster stronger relationships and restore confidence in their offerings by demonstrating reliability and actively involving customers in the decision-making process. This can be achieved through open communication, sharing long-term plans, and consistently delivering on commitments.
Balancing financial results with customer and employee objectives is essential for long-term success. Companies should prioritize customer delight and creating value for shareholders. Organizations can create a clear roadmap for success by aligning these objectives and holding themselves accountable for achieving results.
Plus, Shep and Alan talk about Avaya's North Star and how it can be applied to businesses of any size, in any industry. Tune in!
Quote:
"The megatrend in business today is towards CX. Brands have to differentiate themselves based on customer experience.”
About:
Alan Masarek, CEO and Board Director of Avaya. He is the former CEO of Vonage. and brings over 30 years of software and cloud-based business experience.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:4008/08/2023
The Role of Human Interaction in a Digital-First World Featuring Tom Martin
Balancing Technology, the Human Touch, and Customer Experience (CX)
Shep Hyken interviews Tom Martin, CEO at Glance, a software company focused on helping businesses connect with their customers. He discusses combining technology with human-to-human interactions to create a seamless and personalized customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
In the age of advanced technology, it's crucial for businesses to prioritize the overall customer experience. While chatbots and digital solutions are valuable, human-to-human interactions still plays a vital role, especially when technology falls short.
Understanding and predicting customer needs are key to effective customer engagement. By analyzing their data and journey, businesses can provide tailored assistance "in the moment". This not only solves customers' problems efficiently but also strengthens the relationship.
Provide seamless connections between various communication channels, including chatbots, apps, phone calls, and emails. The goal is to create an effortless customer experience, removing friction and allowing them to interact with the company through their preferred channels.
Customer interaction often spans multiple departments or silos within a company. It is important for leadership and management to know that the customer doesn't care about silos and what is happening in the background. The only thing that they care about is that they have a great experience with you – and when they do, they reward you with more business.
Repetition is unnecessary friction in delivering a seamless customer support. Customers dislike having to repeat themselves or go through verification processes multiple times. Companies should strive to streamline their support systems so that customers can connect easily and quickly without unnecessary steps or frustrations.
When offering digital support systems, enable customers to reach a real person whenever needed. Use AI to provide contextual information to the agent as the conversation is happening. When AI pulls information from the customer's history or a knowledge base, support agents are empowered to have better interactions and efficiently provide the best solution.
Plus, Shep and Tom talk about "wallet share" and how providing an amazing experience can help companies gain trust and become the go-to provider for all of their customers' needs. Tune in!
Quote:
"Different channels allow you to communicate with a business, and each one can serve a very specific purpose. All of these need to work together so that the customer experience isn't disrupted and there is no unnecessary friction to get from one channel to the next."
About:
Tom Martin is CEO at Glance, a software company focused on the enterprise space, helping businesses connect with their customers inside of a digital journey to bring in the human connection in moments of need. He is a CX contact center strategist, product lifecycle expert, and partnership builder.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:1001/08/2023
Intuitive AI and Customer Experience (CX) Featuring Anand Janefalkar
How AI is Transforming Customer Communication
Shep Hyken interviews Anand Janefalkar, CEO and founder of UJET. He talks about the power of AI enhancing CX and how businesses can leverage it to improve customer support and avoid churn.
Top Takeaways:
Customers have so many options and want to get the best out of the money they spend. Since there are many options for companies offering more or less the same services, customer support becomes the differentiator. It comes down to how easy it is to communicate with a business and how delightful the experience is.
In the 80s, the White House commissioned the Technical Assistant Research Program to conduct a study on customer experience. They found out that the number one reason customers leave is rudeness or apathy. Almost 40 years later, our customer service and experience research has the same findings - the number one reason customers leave to do business elsewhere is rudeness or apathy.
The evolution of customer communication has expanded beyond traditional phone and mail. Companies must embrace diverse channels like chatbots, social media, and visual communication to meet customer expectations and deliver a seamless experience.
Customer service professionals and support agents now mostly consist of young professionals who are digitally acquainted. They are "obsessed" with their phones, and the internet has become a seamless extension of their day-to-day lives. Training them on a stack designed 20-30 years ago, which they have never used in their lives, then asking them to solve a problem for the customer without using their senses of visual and contextual information gathering is a recipe for disaster. The result can be rudeness that comes from frustration from the inability to solve that issue.
Technology must feel intuitive. Just like smartphones became popular because they are easy to use, customer service platforms must prioritize user-friendly interfaces that make interactions effortless. They should have a human-first mindset when designing communication between customers, support agents, and AI.
Organizations need to be responsible for using AI for customer interactions. Proper training, data, and empathy are crucial to ensure AI understands and responds appropriately to customers, providing a human-like experience while maintaining efficiency and accuracy.
Plus, Shep and Anand discuss how AI can empower agents and increase their efficiency. Tune in!
Quote:
"Natural language processing and AI play a crucial role in customer communication. When communicating with customers, it needs to feel like you're explaining something just like you would explain it to a family or a friend."
About:
Anand Janefalkar is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of UJET. Anand founded UJET to modernize the contact center by addressing long-standing design flaws and conventional thinking that have failed to evolve in parallel with changing human interaction landscape.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:4825/07/2023
Why Employee Experience (EX) is the New Customer Experience (CX) Featuring Philip Mandelbaum
Creating a Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Workplace That Drives a Better Employee Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Philip Mandelbaum, founder, and CEO of Mandelbaum Marketing and Head of Content of Customer Management Practice. He talks about how prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion creates a supportive work environment that drives revenue growth and customer loyalty.
Top Takeaways:
Employee experience is the new customer experience. It goes beyond a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workforce. It is also about company culture, training, work environment, and how an organization supports growth that plays into how people think about a brand.
Many people in diverse workforces report being discriminated against. According to Deloitte's State of Inclusion survey, nearly 2/3 of workers have experienced bias in the workplace, and 40% experience bias at least once a month.
Studies have shown that companies devoted to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) earn 140% more revenue. They are 70% more likely to capture a new market and 35% more likely to outperform their competitors.
There is a difference between equality and equity. Equality is about treating each person with respect regardless of their background. Equity is acknowledging that people show up to work under their own unique circumstances. It considers historical and present-day disadvantages and makes sure that each individual has the appropriate resources to succeed.
Customers buy and support companies that care about the same things that they do. According to our 2023 Achieving Customer Amazement Study, sponsored by Five9, 43% of consumers believe it's important that a company has a social cause that's important to them. 41% are willing to pay more if the cause is important to them, making the price less relevant. 60% of Gen Z said they are willing to tolerate a poor service experience from a company that cares about the same things they do.
Plus, Shep and Philip discuss who they think is the most important person in an organization - the CEO, the customers, the employees, or the shareholders. Tune in!
Quote:
"Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important to a business's internal success with the employees, which translates to customer success."
About:
Philip Mandelbaum is a 20-year industry veteran and thought leader in digital marketing, customer experience, and employee experience. He is the founder and CEO of Mandelbaum Marketing and Head of Content of Customer Management Practice.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:3018/07/2023
The CX Impact of A Subscription Model: Switching From Ownership to Usership Featuring Yann Toutant
The Benefits of the As-A-Service Model
Shep Hyken interviews Yann Toutant, founder of Black Winch and author of AS A SERVICE: Turn Your Product Based Business Into a Subscription Model. He talks about what an As-A-Service model is and how it impacts the customers, the business, and the environment.
Top Takeaways:
Usership means using – not buying – what you need for the experience you want at a specific moment and location. For example, customers who enjoy windsurfing do not need to purchase, store, and maintain a windsurfing board. They can go to a good windsurfing shop and rent, lease, or subscribe to the “use” of the equipment for as long as they want.
Customers often have many possessions that require their time and money to manage. In an As-A-Service model, customers become users instead of owners. Through usership, products will fulfill a need without the burden of maintenance, storage, and the added cost of owning.
The benefit of usership in the As-A-Service model is that when the product or solution a customer subscribes to is no longer needed, they can easily opt out of it without being left with something they can't use.
The As-A-Service model creates a circular relationship with customers. The interaction does not end when the sale is closed. Instead, companies provide an experience where customers have a much stronger connection to the brand through regular (daily, weekly, monthly) contact.
There is a positive environmental impact with the As-A-Service model for physical products. When a user no longer needs a product, another user can use it, or the manufacturer can refurbish or remanufacture it into new equipment.
Plus, Shep challenges Yann to think of a product that cannot be transformed into an As-A-Service or subscription model. Tune in!
Quote:
"Do you own your belongings, or do your belongings own you? I decided to rid myself of many belongings anchoring me down and go for usage instead of ownership. You don’t need to own something to get the best experience.”
About:
Yann Toutant is the founder of Black Winch, where he helps organizations focus on the customer experience by implementing a successful and scalable As-A-Service Model. His book, AS A SERVICE: Turn Your Product Based Business Into a Subscription Model, is now available on Amazon.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25:4611/07/2023
Simplicity Leads to Customer Loyalty Featuring Ricardo Saltz Gulko
Creating Simple and Convenient Customer Experiences
Shep Hyken interviews Ricardo Saltz Gulko, Managing Director of Eglobalis and Co-Founder of the European Customer Experience Organization (ECXO). He shares how brands prioritizing simple and convenient experiences can gain a competitive advantage.
Top Takeaways:
A simple and convenient customer experience can be a competitive advantage for brands and companies, whether it’s B2B or B2C. It starts with leadership, where decisions are made and trickle down to every department in the company.
Being nice and respectful is one thing, but there is more. There must also be a process behind delivering an amazing customer experience.
Adoption means loyalty. Make it easy for your customers to adopt your products and services. This will make the difference between them continuing to do business with you instead of going to your competitors.
There is a place for simplicity and complexity. Behind-the-scenes, your operation can be complex, allowing you to deliver everything your customers need and expect. However, on the surface, it needs to be simple. Most people have a limit on the number of decisions that they want to make in a day. A confused buyer will likely move on and find a place that’s easier to do business with. Make it simple for your customers without sacrificing quality.
Measure and get feedback on the different points of the interaction throughout the customer’s journey. Use the data and feedback to improve the experience.
Ricardo wrote a must-read article on why brands should simplify customer and employee experiences.
Plus, Shep and Ricardo share how much money companies leave on the table by making experiences too complicated for their customers. Tune in!
Quote:
"If you don't design customer experiences around simplicity, you are leaving money on the table. The easier you make the experience for your customers, the sooner they will adopt your products and services."
About:
Ricardo Samuel Saltz Gulko is a global strategist focused on customer experience, operations simplification, technology design, and culture transformation. He is the Managing Director of Eglobalis and the co-founder & initiator of the European Customer Experience Organization.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
30:2404/07/2023
How to Never Lose an Employee Again Featuring Joey Coleman
Empowering Employees From the First 100 Days and Beyond
Shep Hyken interviews Joey Coleman, an award-winning speaker and author of Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention. He shares why employees leave and how organizations can create a meaningful work culture that supports longevity.
Top Takeaways:
· You can only expect to deliver a remarkable customer experience if you have remarkable employees. People think that customer experience and employee experience are two different silos. The better way to look at it is that they are two sides of the same coin because we need to work on both.
· The first 100 days are the most important time in the entire relationship with an employee because this is where the foundation is laid. How we onboard employees and make them feel part of our organization’s community can differentiate whether they will be long-time employees or leave as fast as they came.
· When onboarding and acclimating your employees, the number of days you're willing to spend teaching them, showing them the ropes, and “holding their hand” is directly proportional to the number of months they will stay as an employee.
· Work Institute did a massive survey of exit interview investigations, and here's what they found - Top 5 reasons why employees leave:
· Reason #1 Career - 24% of the employees leave because they couldn't see a clear career path.
· Reason #2 Job - Stress, lack of resources, training, and empowerment.
· Reason #3 Health and Family - Their personal health or a responsibility to care for kids or aging parents.
· Reason #4 Work-Life Balance - Travel, commute, or scheduling.
· Reason #5 Rewards - Only 9% of employees leave for a bigger paycheck.
· Employers may care about their employees, but the employees themselves may not know it. Your employees probably have no idea of all the time and effort you're spending thinking about making payroll, advancing their careers, and making sure people don't suffer burnout. Share it with them, but when you do, spend a little less time telling and a little more time showing.
· Plus, Joey shares the two of the eight phases of the employee journey that every organization needs to ace. Tune in!
Quotes:
“If you're not painting a clear path for your people and expecting them to manage and figure out their careers on their own, then you deserve to lose them.”
About:
Joey Coleman is the creator of the First 100 Days® methodology for improving customer and employee retention. He is the author of Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days and Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
33:4027/06/2023
Customer-Centric Marketing Featuring Mich Hancock
Leveraging Content and Social Media to Provide Customer Care
Shep Hyken interviews Mich Hancock, CEO of 100th Monkey and the host of MichMash Podcast. She talks about how brands can use digital content and social media to communicate with customers, showcase their values, and enhance customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
Social media is called "social" for a reason. It's more than posting branded content. It is about communicating with your customers, getting feedback, responding to comments, and taking action based on what your customers tell you.
Respond thoughtfully to every comment, positive or negative. Instead of replying with a generic "thank you" each time someone leaves a comment, respond in a way that makes the customer feel heard as an individual.
Customers are watching you on social media. They are especially watching how you handle negative comments or complaints. When you handle negative comments effectively, it gives customers tremendous confidence to want to do business with you. Remember, you are not trying to win an argument, you are trying to win the customer – and in the world of social media, everyone can watch
Social media is a way for businesses to bring people into their community. It is a way for brands to tell a story about their business so customers can get to know them better and understand how they work.
When you offer customer care through social media, educate your customers to go to that channel, and make sure you are monitoring those channels and engaging with your customers promptly.
Plus, Mich shares how companies can share their values, message, and authenticity with their customers. Tune in!
Quotes:
"Customers like to do business with companies that care about the same things that they do. If you support an amazing cause, you should talk about it because it says a lot about you."
About:
Mich Hancock is the CEO of 100th Monkey. She is the Co-Founder and License Holder of TEDxStLouis and the host of Michmash Podcast, where she helps individuals and organizations raise their voices and be heard.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:2320/06/2023
Creating Confidence Building Communication Featuring Justine Tavares
Delighting Customers Through Effective Communication
Shep Hyken interviews Justine Tavares, Director of Customer Success at TextExpander, a productivity tool that automates repetitive tasks and improves communication efficiency. She talks about improving customer relationships through customer-centric, up-to-date, and consistent messaging.
Top Takeaways:
TextExpander allows you to access all of the things your team needs at their fingertips. It empowers teams to access the information they need to do their day-to-day, such as support responses, e-mail replies, sales pitches, and many more. It also enhances communication internally and externally, making it easy for your team to delight your customers with less effort in less time.
Up-to-date and consistent messaging ensures customer delight. Whenever an update is implemented within your organization, ensure it is communicated from the frontline to the back office so that everyone can access the same information.
You don't always make decisions that are going to make the customers happy, but always keep them in mind when making them.
Proactively communicate changes that could impact customer experience. Provide transparent and open communication with your customers. When there's a change that a customer may not be excited about or happy about, it is received better.
Over-communication is better than no communication. Having information gives customers a sense of control and confidence even when they are facing problems or delays.
When you want to create loyalty and an amazing experience, the word you want to hear the customer use is "always" in front of something good. For example, "They always take care of me even when there's a problem."
Plus, Justine shares how TextExpander uses "white glove onboarding" to meet customers where they are.
Quotes:
"The customer should be at the core of everything that we do. We think about the customer first in every decision we make and every product we release."
About:
Justine Tavares is the Director of Customer Success at TextExpander. She empowers her team to create customer-centric strategies to help individuals and teams achieve productivity goals.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:0613/06/2023
Shifting to the Employee Experience (EX) Mindset Featuring Tiffani Bova
Happy Employees, Happy Customers
Shep Hyken interviews Tiffani Bova, bestselling author and global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. She discusses the link between employee experience, customer experience, and company growth.
Top Takeaways:
Spending time with your customers is a great opportunity to understand their challenges, share best practices, and learn from them.
Employee experience (EX) has a significant impact not only on customer experience but on overall business growth. In a blind study conducted on a US retailer with more than 1,000 storefronts, Salesforce research found that if the company got the EX right, there was a 50% increase in revenue per hour per store associate.
If you are going to do something for your customers to enhance their experience, make sure you recognize its intended or unintended impact on your employees. When you implement changes to improve CX, make sure you are not increasing the difficulty for your employees to do their jobs.
Companies have over-pivoted the customer experience at the expense of all else. You need to be flexible because when you pivot, you turn your back on something.
54% of the C-Suite believe that the technology their employees use is effective for them to do their job. Only 32% of employees agree with that statement, and only 20-ish% of customer-facing employees agree.
To bridge the disconnect between the C-suite and the frontlines, executives need to spend more time understanding the experiences of both their customers and their employees.
Do an inventory of the top five KPIs you are currently tracking for customer experience and see if you have a correlating one for employee experience. For example, if you are measuring Net Promoter Score (NPS), pay attention to Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).
Tiffani shares highlights from her latest book, The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth, including an intentional approach to happy employees for every team in your organization.
Plus, Shep and Tiffani share what happens when executives actually spend time with customers (with examples from Starbucks and Microsoft). Tune in!
Quote:
"Many executives don't use the tech their employees use. They do not experience inefficiency, yet they are very focused on productivity. They focus on the customers, but they are not aware of what systems, tools, and training are in place that allow or inhibit their employees to be the best that they could be."
About:
Tiffani Bova is the global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. She is the Wall Street Journal, bestselling author of Growth IQ. Her latest book, The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth, is now available on Amazon.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:5306/06/2023
Transactional VS Emotional Customer Loyalty Featuring Mark Ross-Smith
How Brands Can Find a Balance Between Incentives and Emotional Connection
Shep Hyken interviews Mark Ross-Smith a.k.a Mr. Loyalty and the CEO and Co-Founder of Loyalty Data Co, the parent company of StatusMatch.com. He talks about the roles of transactional and emotional incentives and how brands must learn to balance the two to build long-term customer loyalty.
Top Takeaways:
Loyalty programs are used in different industries to attract new customers and retain existing ones. They typically involve incentives for spending money on a brand through points, perks, upgrades, or free products. Loyalty programs have now evolved to include enhancing the customer experience.
In the recent Achieving Customer Amazement study, 69% of customers say loyalty programs are important to them. That’s almost seven out of ten customers who appreciate a good loyalty program.
True loyalty programs are not just about points and perks; that is more about marketing. True loyalty is when a customer chooses to do business with you even when they have other options, regardless of the rewards.
A successful loyalty program is not designed for everyone. It should work really well for a certain group of customers and reasonably well for a slightly larger one.
There are two ways to get people more invested in a brand. First is the transactional way, such as getting customers to subscribe to a product. Then there is the emotional way which is getting people to connect with your brand through personalized engagement and positive experiences.
Transactional incentives and emotional engagement have their roles in creating loyalty. Brands must learn to find a balance between the two to build long-term customer loyalty.
Some brands use the five love languages to tap into the emotional side of their customers - Words of affirmation ("You're one of our most important customers."), Quality time (Spending time to ask them about their day or their experience), gifts, acts of service, and physical touch (a handshake or a gentle tap on the shoulder when appropriate).
Plus, Mark shares the interesting ways airlines and customers benefit from loyalty programs. Tune in!
Quote:
"Be a customer of your own product. Learn the challenging situations that your customers face throughout their experience. Being a customer of your business is fantastic training for learning how to improve the customer experience and the loyalty experience."
About:
Mark Ross-Smith, a.k.a Mr. Loyalty and the CEO and Co-Founder of Loyalty Data Co, the parent company of StatusMatch.com, a loyalty platform that helps individual consumers and corporate clients get equivalent value status with a competing airline and hotel.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
31:1230/05/2023
AI is the Future of Customer Service and CX Featuring Mario Matulich
How Leveraging Artificial Intelligence Can Be a Win-Win Contact Center Agents and Customers
Shep Hyken interviews Mario Matulich, President and Managing Director of Customer Management Practice. He talks about how organizations can use artificial intelligence and self-service options to empower support agents and elevate the customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
There has been significant progress in artificial intelligence (AI), like chatbots and ChatGPT capabilities. This has always been seen as high-potential technology, but in the last few months, it has been used in a more demonstrative way to address challenges faced by contact centers, especially in the post-pandemic environment.
Generative AI and other forms of self-service provide a win-win solution for organizations and customers. It gives companies solution to create a better agent experience, and it allows the customers to resolve issues quickly without having to put up with long wait times.
To address the challenges of hiring and retaining the best people, organizations need to focus on operationalizing flexibility in remote and hybrid setups and personalizing career development.
Artificial Intelligence will not eliminate the need for customer support professionals. Instead, it will assist agents with knowledge management, eliminate mundane work, and allow agents to focus on what they do best: serve customers.
Predictive analytics powered by AI can accurately assess Net Promoter Score and other measurements of customer satisfaction.
The employees in the frontline do more than answer phones. They retain customers, generate revenue, and serve as an extension of the research and development department. They have information and insights from interacting with customers that managers and C-suite may not have access to.
Plus, Shep and Mario discuss what to expect in Customer Contact Week Las Vegas on June 19-20, 2023, featuring a keynote speech from Grammy® Award-winning Musician & Entrepreneur, Pitbull. Tune in!
Quote:
"Customer preferences have shifted dramatically in the last couple of years. Many customers want to self-serve. They want to effectively find a quick resolution to their challenges without the assistance of another human being, and AI can make that possible."
About:
Mario Matulich is the President and Managing Director of Customer Management Practice, a leader in market research, events, and customer-centricity. He played professional baseball for the Cleveland Guardians.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:4823/05/2023
Savannah Bananas Says Putting Customers First is a Game Changer
How The Savannah Bananas is Changing Baseball through Fan Focus, Creativity, and CX
Shep Hyken interviews Jesse Cole, founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas. He talks about how he redefined baseball and customer and employee experience by creating a culture that puts them first.
Top Takeaways:
The Savannah Bananas sells out every game, with a waitlist of 550,000 for tickets. There are 3,000 people joining the waitlist every day. They have 4,000,000 more followers on social media than any Major League Baseball team.
The best inspiration happens from what people are doing wrong. Ask what the biggest friction points in your customers’ experiences are. Then, do the opposite. The Savannah Bananas took the biggest friction points in a baseball game and changed the rules. For example, a typical baseball game can run for over 3 hours. In Banana Ball, each game lasts no more than 2 hours.
Learn from outside your industry and bring that into your organization. Look at the companies you love and why you love them. Identify what you love about those companies that you can start doing with your team.
If everyone in your business makes the customers the stars and gives them the red carpet treatment, you make those customers feel like a million bucks. It changes everything for the customer, and your employees will have more purpose and pride in their work.
Ideas are the future. Work your idea muscle like you work out your regular muscles. Write down a few ideas every day, get together with your team, and share them. You'll get more energy, inspiration, and purpose out of ideas.
Jesse Cole’s latest book, Bannana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bannanas, just came out May 18, 2005. Get it at Amazon.
Plus, Jesse shares some incredible fan-first moments from their tour. Tune in!
Quote:
"Imagine what the best possible customer experience is and do that. Don't settle for the way things have been done before."
About:
Jesse Cole is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He is the author of Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience, Find Your Yellow Tux: How to Be Successful by Standing Out, and Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:3116/05/2023
Voice of the Customer-Driven Service Featuring Evan Klein
How to Leverage Customer Feedback to Enhance Every Stage of the Customer Journey
Shep Hyken interviews Evan Klein, Founder and President of Satrix Solutions, a customer experience and employee engagement consulting firm. He talks about how businesses can encourage customer feedback and how to leverage that to improve the overall experience.
Top Takeaways:
· The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the question that lets your customer rate the likelihood of them recommending your business on a scale of 0 to 10. A rating of 9 or 10 is a promoter. Customers are more likely to recommend you after a great experience.
· A successful NPS program in your business ensures that all of your employees are aligned and understand their role in delivering an exceptional service experience.
· The frontline is important, but we need all employees to act based on the feedback of the customers. Every employee should leverage customer feedback to think about their role in enhancing the customer experience.
· Be open to really listening to the customer. NPS is a good way to start understanding your customer’s experience with your brand. Adding open-ended questions like “What can make your experience even better?” can give you so much more context and rich feedback.
· Survey and ask for feedback from different audiences. Decision makers, influencers, subject matter experts, and users experience your brand in different ways. Tailor your surveys with each customer's experience in mind.
· Leverage your promoters. Use their feedback for marketing purposes, testimonials, and case studies. Find feedback patterns that will influence your product roadmap, service delivery model, support channels, and future investments.
· Plus, Shep and Evan discuss how to maximize customer participation in the age of survey fatigue. Tune in!
Quote:
"Be open for context and find patterns across all the feedback you receive from your customers. Probe and understand customer frustrations. Mobilize your promoters and leverage their feedback to operationalize creating excellent customer service."
About:
Evan Klein is the Founder and President of Satrix Solutions. He helps companies increase revenue growth by enhancing customer experience and improving employee engagement.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:5209/05/2023
Building a People-First, Product-Second Culture Featuring Bob Phibbs
How to Keep Employees and Customers Loyal to Your Brand
Shep Hyken interviews Bob Phibbs, widely known as The Retail Doctor, host of the Tell Me Something Good About Retail podcast, and founder of SalesRX. He talks about how retail stores (and all types of organizations) can transform their business from a place where people merely buy products to a destination brand known for amazing customer experiences.
Top Takeaways:
· Brands sometimes invest more in products and in how their retail stores look without focusing on the experience. No matter how nice the brick-and-mortar store is, if your employees are not trained to properly welcome and pay attention to your customers, they will leave and buy from your competitors, go or online, where it is faster and more accessible.
· What's happening on the inside is felt on the outside by the customers. Be mindful of the environment that your employees are going to work in. Empower them with the right tools and training to do their job well. If you fix the people side of your business first, you will create a better customer service experience.
· Create awareness of what great customer service looks like in your company. Ensure that your employees align with how you want them to treat customers. Teach them to recognize when they are providing a good customer experience and continuously train them to be better and better.
· Employees are looking for more than just a paycheck when taking on or staying at a job. They are putting employers to the task of providing a work environment that provides growth and satisfaction.
· Training is not something you did. It's something you do over and over again. Invest in your employees' training and onboarding. Then, constantly reinforce it throughout the time that they are with you, whether in weekly meetings, daily huddles, or sharing customer feedback and make sure what they have learned translates into their day-to-day engagement with your customers.
· Plus, learn how not to (in Bob's words) piss off your employees. Tune in!
Quote:
"Focus on the people, not the products. You will get higher conversion rates when employees are happy, stay longer, and know how to engage with customers in a way that builds trust."
About:
Bob Phibbs is a customer service expert, author, sales coach, and founder of SalesRX. He works with retailers and brands to increase conversion rates by providing amazing experiences. He shares his expertise on The Retail Doctor.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
30:2402/05/2023
The Positive Influence of Scarcity on Customer Experience Featuring Mindy Weinstein
How to Use Scarcity to Influence Customer Decisions
Shep Hyken interviews Mindy Weinstein, author of The Power of Scarcity: Leveraging Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions. She talks about the four types of scarcity and how businesses can use them to create community, loyalty, and excitement around their brand.
Top Takeaways:
· When an organization makes customers feel special by getting something that appears to be hard to get, they endear customers to the company and make them feel connected to the brand.
· Our brains are wired in a certain way to react to scarcity. Businesses can use this in a positive way to emphasize value and communicate how working with them through their products or services is in their customers' best interest.
· Most people think of scarcity as FOMO(fear of missing out), but it is so much more than that. There are four types of scarcity:
1. Time-related scarcity - when products or services are available for only a set amount of time.
2. Supply-related scarcity - when a limited number of products are available or when companies want to create a feeling of exclusivity or uniqueness.
3. Demand-related scarcity - when customers are excited and want to make sure they can purchase a product before it is gone.
4. Limited edition – when there is a special or rare version of a product that customers love to collect.
· When companies create a scarcity mindset and communicate it well to their customers, it creates a sense of control where the customer feels they have the power to decide when and why they want to buy.
· When companies create a mindset of scarcity with products that customers enjoy (for example, limited edition sports or movie memorabilia), they show that they truly know their customers and how to engage with them.
· Plus, Shep and Mindy talk about how successful companies use the scarcity mindset to create amazing customer experiences. Tune in!
Quote:
"Scarcity creates community. When done right, incorporating scarcity can help brands create loyalty, excitement, and bond with their customers."
About:
Mindy Weinstein is the author of The Power of Scarcity: Leveraging Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions. She is a marketing instructor at Grand Canyon University and a program leader for The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Business School.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:2625/04/2023
Customer Service Lessons From the Healthcare Industry Any Business Can Use Featuring Jennifer FitzPatrick
Patient Experience Best Practices That Every Business Must Do
Shep Hyken interviews Jennifer FitzPatrick, founder of Jenerations Health Education and author of Reimagining Customer Service in Healthcare: Boost Loyalty, Profits, and Outcomes. She talks about how organizations can de-escalate complaints, reduce malpractice claims, and promote better healthcare outcomes by improving patient experience.
Top Takeaways:
We go to healthcare providers to address a big problem; our health. Some healthcare practitioners know how to treat symptoms and illnesses; however, they are falling short of making the patients feel like they are human beings with respect and dignity.
When patients receive great customer service from their healthcare providers, not only do they provide better reviews, fewer complaints, and malpractice claims, but they also have better clinical outcomes.
Patients are not just comparing their healthcare providers with other healthcare providers. They compare their experiences in the healthcare world with the best customer service they received from anyone in other industries.
Healthcare must recognize younger generations of employees (GenZ and Millennials) are expressing themselves differently than GenX or Boomers. Instead of focusing on external factors like the color of someone's hair or whether they have tattoos or piercings, identify the top qualities that truly matter to your patient's care. Are they compassionate, intelligent, kind, and reliable?
Nobody wants to engage with the healthcare system. On a pain scale of zero to 10, most patients come in because they are at a seven or higher. Find ways to make the experience less painful for them, like setting the right expectations, providing updates, and not making them repeat the same information over and over again when it is not necessary.
Plus, Shep and Jennifer discuss what is more important in choosing a healthcare provider, expertise or bedside manner. Tune in!
Quote:
"Train your people to do the right thing for your patients or customers, don't assume they know. Make sure that anybody who comes into contact with the patient and the patient's family members, from doctors to billing and housekeeping, are properly trained on customer service."
About:
Jennifer L. FitzPatrick is the author of Reimagining Customer Service in Healthcare. As the founder of Jenerations Health Education, Jennifer helps organizations develop happier healthcare customers.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:0218/04/2023
CX: Balancing Functionality and the Human Experience Featuring John Sills
How Organizations Can Reconnect with the Human Side of Their Business
Shep Hyken interviews John Sills, Managing Partner at The Foundation, a customer-led growth consultancy. He is the author of The Human Experience: How to Make Life Better for Your Customers and Create a More Successful Organization. He talks about the three myths hindering organizations from connecting with their customers and providing an emotional, human experience.
Top Takeaways:
Over the last 20 years, organizations have been busy improving the functional experience (doing more things, faster, and cheaper than ever before) at the expense of the emotional, human experience.
In his book, The Human Experience, John Sills shares the three myths that create poor customer service.
Myth #1. The Myth of Customer Feedback. There's never been more data coming into organizations through surveys. The danger of this myth is that the amount of feedback convinces leaders that they are doing what matters to customers, but what they actually have is their customers' opinions about their business. Leaders need reconnect with customers and learn about what matters in their lives. This is how businesses can truly be useful to customers.
Myth #2. The Myth of Customer Loyalty. Customers are only loyal to companies as long as they stay useful. If a more useful alternative comes along, customers are going to leave. This myth is a problem because once organizations believe that customers are loyal, they stop trying. They start taking their customers for granted.
Myth #3. The Myth of Return on Investment. You have to change the mindset that good customer service is going to make you money. The mindset should be that a good customer experience is more efficient and cheaper to execute while a bad customer experience is really expensive to provide.
There are two types of efficiency in customer support/contact center. The first one is about taking the maximum number of calls per hour. The second one is getting it right the first time, regardless of how long it takes.
Plus, John shares how a Swiss Rail train breaking down has led to one of the best customer experiences he has ever received. Tune in!
Quote:
"The world is a better place when organizations are making things better for customers."
About:
John Sills is Managing Partner at the customer-led growth company, The Foundation, where he works with organizations across the world. His first book, The Human Experience: How to make life better for your customers and create a more successful organization, is now available.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:5111/04/2023
Boosting Profits with Personalization Featuring Eric Melchor
Delivering an Amazing Customer Experience through Seamless Self-Service and Human Interactions
Shep Hyken interviews Eric Melchor, Partnerships & Personalization Ambassador at OptiMonk, a company that helps brands improve their customers' shopping experience through personalization. He talks about how personalization can help businesses increase sales and nurture loyal customers.
Top Takeaways:
Personalization is the new CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization). When done right, it is a game changer for businesses to get customers to perform a desired action, whether it is clicking a link, filling out a form, or buying a product.
A study by Epsilon indicates that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.
How does personalization impact the bottom line?
Better return on ad spend. Personalization can help you get a better return on investment if you are doing paid ads.
Personalization can decrease cart abandonment.
Personalization helps you grow your email list faster.
A personalized experience increases your average order value.
When a customer adds something to their cart but doesn't make a purchase, provide a quick survey to find out what prevented them from buying. You will get so many insights about the obstacles your customers face in their journey that will help you create a personalized experience for them.
Plus, Eric shares his easiest, simplest, and most cost-effective suggestion for getting a website to become more personalized. Tune in!
Quote:
"Personalization used to cost a lot. But now, businesses have access to tools and applications to create personalized messages for each customer segment that does not require coding or a big IT team."
About:
Eric Melchor is the Partnerships & Personalization Ambassador at OptiMonk. He is the host of Innovators Can Laugh, a podcast where he interviews European startups.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:5404/04/2023
The Human-AI CX Partnership Featuring Declan Ivory
Delivering Amazing Customer Experiences through Seamless Self-Service and Human Interactions
Shep Hyken interviews Declan Ivory, Vice President of Customer Support at Intercom, dedicated to applying digital technologies to empower customer support teams. He discusses the technology available to drive meaningful change and innovation for customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) bring significant innovations that can truly transform customer service and experience. We now have technology that companies can apply quickly and cost-effectively to deliver the transformational experience customers have expected from the support industry for a long time.
Technology can now deliver a conversational feel to the customer’s interaction with a chatbot. Customer information is now integrated, so chatbots have the same access as human support agents. And often, they can better understand the context of what the customer is contacting them about.
Transitioning from automated to human support needs to be seamless. The customer should have to repeat everything they just said. This personalization and convenience make the customer feel valued throughout the interaction.
Most customer support experiences are reactive. Support agents usually respond to the customer’s issues or questions. However, customer expectations have evolved so that a compelling experience is one where customer support doesn't wait for something to go wrong; they can predict an issue before it happens and proactively start the conversation with the customer to solve the problem before the customer ever knows about it.
An omnichannel experience is about enabling the customer to engage with you on any channel that makes sense to them. The important thing about this experience is meeting them where they are and demonstrating that you value and understand the customer in every channel they use.
Plus, Shep and Declan discuss how technology has evolved in the customer support world- from clumsy and clunky to a seamless experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"The future is automation and human support. You need the knowledge and understanding that a human support agent brings to handle complex issues. And, you want self-service to be available to quickly handle the more simple transactions.”
About:
Declan Ivory is Intercom’s Vice President of Customer Support. He is an experienced senior leader with a passion for building and developing high-performing teams and applying digital technologies to support organizations.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:0428/03/2023
Building Trust and Loyalty through Active Listening Featuring Heather Younger
Cultivating Customer Relationships through the Art of Active Listening
Shep Hyken interviews Heather Younger, Founder & CEO of Employee Fanatix and author of The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood. She talks about creating a culture of listening to ensure customers feel heard, valued, and understood.
Top Takeaways:
· Failing to listen to the customer communicates apathy and rudeness. It tells the customer that you do not care enough to engage.
· Heather Younger shares her 5-step framework on how to listen better:
1. Recognize the unsaid. Look at the nonverbal cues. Listen for pauses and voice inflections. Sense what is happening in the environment. If you don't recognize what your customers are not telling you, you leave blind spots that hinder you from fruitful listening.
2. Seek to understand. The main focus should be service. Give your customers the undivided attention required to be on the same page. Use techniques like paraphrasing so that the customers know that their verbal and nonverbal message is received properly.
3. Decode. Pause and reflect. If we respond too quickly, we often don't solve the problem that needs solving. Responding too quickly often creates a bigger issue than before because we didn't take the time to investigate, research, or involve a bigger team.
4. Act. Figure out what solutions the customer is looking for, act quickly, and keep your promises if you cannot deliver the solution right away.
5. Close the loop. Thank the customer for their feedback, then let them know what actions you took or are going to take. This lets the customer know that they are more than just a number. It also builds trust.
· Plus, Heather shares the biggest barriers to listening that customer service employees are experiencing. Tune in!
Quote:
"When you keep your promises to your customers, they feel valued, heard, and understood."
About:
Heather Younger is a keynote speaker, a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategist, Founder & CEO of Employee Fanatix, and a bestselling author. Learn more about her new book, The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:0221/03/2023
A Five-Star Experience Featuring Katie Mares
Five Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Service
Shep Hyken interviews Katie Mares, a brand experience expert and the author of CustomHer Experience: The Importance of Tailoring Your Brand Experience to the Female Consumer. She talks about how each touchpoint in a customer's journey impacts their perception of your business and how you can create moments that elevate their experience.
Top Takeaways:
· In this episode of Amazing Business Radio, Katie Mares shares the five steps to executing a 5-star experience.
1. Understand that what you say and how you say it matters. Choose words that elevate the experience. Speak to your customers in a way that is engaging and sincere.
2. Use your customer's name. Dale Carnegie said, “A person's name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Saying their name is a simple first step in connecting with your customers.
3. Show your genuine interest. The customer keeps your business going and helps you live the life that you have by paying for your goods and services. Show up and show genuine interest to every customer.
4. Be anticipatory and deliver the “plus one.” Use the nuggets of information that you have about your customers to elevate their experience. It does not have to be something big or expensive. It can be a little extra effort that levels up the experience.
5. Be a hero. Service recovery should be part of the experience. We're human, and we’re going to drop the ball. Consider a complaint or problem an opportunity to create an even better experience.
· Plus, Katie combines science and her business knowledge to explain how men and women differ when it comes to how they perceive their experiences as well as how they communicate and want to be communicated with. Tune in!
Quote:
“A transactional experience is very utilitarian. It is focused on the facts and the practical aspects of the customer relationship. An interactional experience goes beyond that. It is focused on emotional shift that creates trust that leads to the purchase and the loyalty after that.”
About:
Katie Mares is a brand experience expert and the author of CustomHer Experience: The Importance of Tailoring Your Brand Experience to the Female Consumer. She is the Chief Inspiration Officer at Katie Mares, where she helps brands design experiences for their customers.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:2414/03/2023
Using Customer Feedback to Drive Company Growth Featuring Michelle MacCarthy
Including the Customer in Design, Decision Making, and Expansion
Shep Hyken interviews Michelle MacCarthy, Global Head of Customer Success at Unit4. She talks about utilizing feedback to improve customer satisfaction and lead company success.
Top Takeaways:
· Human-centric CX design is all about communicating with customers, and this goes beyond a one-off survey. It is about regularly speaking with customers directly to deeply understand the customer. It is uncovering where they're benefiting from your product and identifying barriers or pain points that they are experiencing.
· Bringing engaged customers who are utilizing your products and services into the design process can help shape great outcomes for your company.
· New technology will not replace the human-to-human relationship. Companies must shift the contact center agents’ responsibilities to allow them to be more productive and continue to elevate CX.
· Anytime you digitize an experience or introduce new technology, ensure you have the basic tools your customers need to easily find what they need, like a good knowledge base on your website, FAQs, or video tutorials.
· Customer-led growth is about inspiring loyalty, building trust, and raising the game around customer satisfaction.
· Plus, Michelle weighs in on ChatGPT and how it will impact customer experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"Customer experience is something that's owned by everyone in the organization. Regardless of role, having a truly customer-centric culture will help fuel better employee retention."
About:
Michelle MacCarthy is the Global Head of Customer Success at Unit4. She leads the company's customer experience strategy transformation and customer success evolution.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25:2907/03/2023
Telling Your Brand Story Through the Customer Experience Featuring Christoph Trappe
The Intersection Between Marketing and CX
Shep Hyken interviews Christoph Trappe, a digital and content marketer and the author of Is Marketing A Good Career? He talks about how marketing can support customer experience and success teams to ensure the brand story resonates with customers throughout their journey.
Top Takeaways:
· Customer experience, including customer service, is marketing. Create an experience that gests people to say, "I’ll be back," and makes them want to share it with others.
· Understand what your customers want and deliver consistently. Customers usually have many options. When your product is available in other places, customer experience becomes the differentiator that determines if your customers continue to do business with you or move on to your competitors.
· Every company has a story - what they are about, how they work, and what kind of experience their customers can expect of them. Marketing must tell that story to the customer support team so everybody in the company can embody that story.
· The frontline customer service and sales reps dealing directly with your customers are part of your marketing department.
· Your best marketing campaign comes from customers who have had an experience with your business and tell people about it.
· Social media managers are more involved in customer service now than they used to be in years past. Make sure your brand's story is shared with your social media team – and everyone else in the company.
· Plus, Christophe (content marketer) and Shep (customer service and experience expert) each share their definition of what a brand is. Tune in!
Quote:
"Marketing is not just about getting people in the door. Marketing is about supporting customer experience and success."
About:
Christoph Trappe is the Director of Content Strategy at Voxpopme. He is a digital and content marketer and author. His latest book, Is Marketing A Good Career?, is now available on Amazon.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27:0128/02/2023
How to Provide a Personalized Customer Experience that Builds Trust Featuring Bill Bruno
Striking the Balance Between Personalization and Privacy to Best Serve Your Customers
Shep Hyken interviews Bill Bruno, CEO of D4t4 Solutions, a company that helps brands provide the most value for their customers using their data. He talks about responsibly utilizing customer data to provide a personalized customer experience without compromising trust.
Top Takeaways:
· Customers have different levels of tolerance when sharing their information with brands. Some customers are willing to share everything with a brand, some refuse to share anything at all, and there are those that fall in between. This range makes up the different data personas.
· Using customer data is an opportunity for brands to create an excellent customer experience, whether it is for preventing fraud, marketing, or enhancing personalization.
· Because customers have different levels of willingness to share their data, there is no all-in-one solution when it comes to marketing or providing personalized service. It is up to the brands to invest in and design experiences based on what they know about each segment of their customers.
· Customer trust is important. Customers need to know that when they share their data, it will be kept safe and used to create a better experience for them.
· The challenge for companies, in B2B or B2C, is to use data in such a way that endears the brand to the customers. You must create trust and let your customers understand the value of sharing their data with you.
· Some customers are unwilling to share their personal data with brands, but there is still an opportunity to create a personalized experience. You can personalize the journey based on context. Pay attention to what the customer is viewing, downloading, or purchasing at the moment.
· Plus, Bill discusses the technologies used to capture data and what it means to brands and customers. Tune in!
Quote:
"If brands use data to protect their customers and give them value, they will be more willing to share their data because they can see how it helps them."
About:
Bill Bruno is the CEO of D4t4 Solutions. He has over 19 years of experience in the media, data, and analytics sectors and has a passion for fostering a culture of innovation while working with brands to drive transformational change.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:5121/02/2023
The Customer Journey is Like a Romantic Relationship Featuring Anita Toth
How to Know What Your Customers Feel and What to Do With It
Shep Hyken interviews Anita Toth, Chief Churn Crusher at Anita Toth Inc, a Voice of the Customer Strategy, Education, and Research firm. She talks about creating an amazing experience at every stage of the customer's journey.
Top Takeaways:
· The customer journey is like a romantic relationship. The marketing and sales phase is like dating. It is tactical and fun. When your prospect becomes a customer, you move them into the "marriage" stage, which is non-tactical and requires a different set of skills to maintain.
· Customer service must be built into every aspect of the journey. The customer relationship is not a "one-and-done" thing. It continues even after the sale is made. The relationship needs to be maintained to keep the trust going.
· After the sale, the customer goes into a "honeymoon" period with your business. This is where the customer finds out if their expectations meet reality or exceed them, or the stage where they find out that they are not getting what they thought they paid for. This is why a great onboarding experience is critical to customer retention.
· Customers know the difference. They can feel that they are just a number to a company. They can also feel when a company truly values their business and is committed to ensuring their success.
· When you want to learn more about your customers, start with, "Tell me more..." It is a non-threatening way to start a conversation, and it pushes them to give a clearer, more definitive response.
· Plus, Anita shares how she helps businesses crush their churn (in three sentences!). Tune in!
Quote:
"When customers start to feel like they made the wrong decision to do business with you, changing their mind is like turning a massive ship in the ocean. It takes a lot of effort to make it happen."
About:
Anita Toth is the Chief Churn Crusher at Anita Toth Inc. She helps companies increase customer retention by helping them better understand what their customers think, need, and feel.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:3414/02/2023
Fender Guitar Uses Consumer Feedback to Eliminate Friction & Improve Service
Utilizing Consumer Feedback to Eliminate Friction and Improve Service
Shep Hyken interviews Scot Pickerill, Vice President for Inside Sales, Service, and Sales Operations in the Americas at Fender. He discusses using customer and employee feedback to evaluate and improve customer experience.
Top Takeaways:
· Continuous improvement means identifying friction points and reaching out to every department involved in the process to develop a plan to correct the issue and keep it from happening in the future.
· Look at the entire customer journey to determine the possible friction points and proactively make it better behind the scenes to create a seamless customer experience.
· Make a note of the issues that happen often. Document them, and determine if they are an anomaly or brewing bigger issues. Proactively share what you have learned with everyone in the company.
· Treat your customers as partners. If you partner with them by helping them, you are not just selling them a product. You are helping them succeed.
· Reach out to customers who leave a negative comment, ask them about what happened, and let them know what you can do for them. You will often end up with a happy customer that will potentially come back and do more business with you.
· Plus, Scot shares how buying behaviors have changed in the last couple of years and how businesses can design their strategy to meet customer expectations. Tune in!
Quote:
"It's one thing to listen to customers. It's another thing to take action. We're all about doing both."
About:
Scot Pickerill is the Vice President of Americas Inside Sales, Service, and Sales Operations for Fender. He previously worked with Fortune 500 companies, including Allstate Insurance Co., Bank of America, and American Express.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:4807/02/2023
What Customer Experience Looks Like in 2023 Featuring Josh Wheeler
Why Investment in CX is Even More Important This Year
Shep Hyken interviews Josh Wheeler, Strategic Director for Reuters Events Customer Service & Experience. He shares findings from the 2023 State of Experience & Service Report and what businesses should prioritize in CX and EX to remain competitive.
Top Takeaways:
· Learn from outside of your industry. You will commoditize what you offer if you only learn the best practices and strategies within your industry. If you learn from the best across all industries, you can go from being the best in the industry to becoming world-class.
· Your customers don't compare you to your direct competitors. They are comparing you to the best experience they receive from anywhere, from any type of company, and bringing those insights back to what's happening with their relationship with your business. For example, they compare the convenience of online e-commerce companies with their healthcare provider and expect the same quality of experience.
· According to the State of Experience & Service Report, here are the most important customer-centric objectives for 2023:
1. Analyzing and using customer feedback. 42% of respondents see “translating insights into action” as their biggest concern when it comes to data management.
2. Improving the quality of customer support experiences.
3. Creating frictionless experiences, especially across different channels. Take every opportunity to remove friction. The easier company to do business with is going to win.
· Meet your customers where they are. Communicate with them using the channels that they prefer. For example, if your customers are from older generations who prefer to use the phone over other channels, going fully digital will have a negative impact on customer experience and loyalty. Companies need to teach their customers the easiest and most frictionless way to get the answers they're looking for.
· Plus, Josh shares more stats and insights from the 2023 State of Experience & Service Report, including how perks and compensation ranked in what makes employees happy. Tune in!
Quote:
"Your customers aren't confined to one industry. They interact with dozens of organizations and will compare their best experiences in any industry to their experiences with you."
About:
Josh Wheeler is the Strategic Director for Reuters Events Customer Service & Experience portfolio. He leads the end-to-end development and production of in-person conferences, virtual events, and thought leadership content for customer service & experience professionals across North America.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
38:3731/01/2023
Faster Service Without Sacrificing Satisfaction Featuring Paulo Almeida
Delivering Personalized Support with Technology
Shep Hyken interviews Paulo Almeida, CEO & Co-Founder of Clientscape, a company that helps support agents seamlessly manage customer interactions across multiple channels. He talks about how companies can adapt to changing customer expectations by leveraging data and analytics.
Top Takeaways:
· The optimal response time to a customer asking for support has more to do with the problem they are trying to solve than the channel they are using to reach out with.
· Some industries require a faster response time than others. For example, in the transportation industry, there is more urgency because the issues customers are trying to solve (such as changing a flight) may need to be resolved in minutes, not hours. These industries require larger, highly scalable teams to meet the customer's needs.
· Text-based communication is an efficient way to manage a large influx of customer support requests. An agent on the phone can only handle one customer at a time, while a text messaging operator can multitask between multiple customer requests. Messaging capabilities alongside a phone option are a cost-effective and convenient way to manage customer issues.
· When you have efficient digital channels such as text messaging, chatbots, and social media, you can teach customers to use these options whenever they need to get in touch with your company. When they realize they won’t have to wait through hold times or repeat their story every time they talk to a new agent, they will see these channels as value-added options, not as a deflection method.
· An excellent customer experience contributes to having the best product experience, which gives a company pricing power. When you take away from the quality of customer experience, you may no longer be perceived as having the best product. The result could mean lost customers.
· Personalized customer support is a mix of doing and listening. Empower support agents by giving them access to data and analytics that can help them better understand customer needs and deliver a personalized experience. Then, collect feedback to ensure that the information you hold is relevant and identify areas where you can do better.
· Plus, Paulo shares what cutting costs without affecting customer satisfaction or service delivery should look like. Tune in!
Quote:
“Don't cut down on the investments that give your customers the care they deserve."
About:
Paulo Almeida is the CEO & Co-Founder of Clientscape. He has an extensive background in IT, Marketing, and Advertising. He previously worked with multinational companies such as Vodafone, Siemens, and Google.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29:3924/01/2023
Tech-Powered Customer Service Insights from Assurant
How Customer Experience Drives Business Growth
Shep Hyken interviews Keith Meier, Chief Operating Officer at Assurant, Inc., an organization that works with companies that manufacture, sell, or finance their customers' major purchases. He shares how providing customers with a great experience in every support channel they use is crucial to business growth.
Top Takeaways:
· Customers want digital self-service options for transactional or routine issues and services. But for more challenging concerns, most customers still prefer to contact somebody through the phone.
· Some companies force customers to use digital options by creating a difficult and unpleasant experience on the phone, such as extremely long hold times. Instead of creating friction and forcing customers, teach them how to use the digital experience and prove it is a quicker, faster, and more efficient option.
· Create a good digital experience that customers love using. Make sure it is intuitive, easy to understand, and able to deliver solutions faster and easier than making a call, waiting on hold, going through the “authentication” process, and more.
· Most customers start with a digital experience. When they decide to call customer support, they often go to the website to get the company's phone number. That is a digital experience. That is also an opportunity to suggest an easy self-service option. If you lead the customer down the path of self-service and there are problems, make it easy for them to find a number and transition from the digital channel to the human channel.
· Get to know your company's customer experience through a journey mapping exercise. Fix friction points, understand what your customers want, and do it repeatedly.
· Plus, Keith shares the challenges companies are facing that prevent them from delivering an amazing experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"Digital experiences will not replace all customer service channels, but it will become a bigger percentage of how consumers get service."
About:
Keith Meier is the Chief Operating Officer at Assurant Inc. As COO, he leads Assurant's global operations focusing on digital technology and operations that deliver exceptional customer experience.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28:5517/01/2023
B2B or B2C…CX is CX Featuring Carla Guzzetti
Putting the Human Experience First as a Business Strategy
Shep Hyken interviews Carla Guzzetti, Senior Vice President for Experience and Product Messaging at Extreme Networks. She shares how companies can design a better experience, in B2B and B2C industries, by focusing on the individual needs of their customers and employees.
Top Takeaways:
· Diversity is key to delivering a quality customer experience. Your customers come from various backgrounds, cultures, and pain points. The companies' responsibility is to match the differences by building localization (understanding what their customers need) into their strategy, communication, and overall experience.
· Whether you are in the B2B or B2C space, think of the end consumer. The customers using the products must have an experience that feels customized, localized, and meaningful.
· When investing in new technology, the top consideration for businesses must be to make customers feel like they are being cared for. Innovation doesn't need to be sexy. It needs to address a need. Often, simple innovations such as making billing more scalable or the capability to understand your customers' needs based on their previous purchases and interactions can be more impactful to their overall experience.
· Employees and customers are the same people. A business can only be successful if their needs are addressed appropriately. Employees must be empowered, and customers should feel like they are being cared for.
· The product that you have should make your customers' lives better. But the experience you deliver should make doing business with you better than your competition.
· There is no B2B in CX. No matter what industry your company is in, in the end, you are still dealing with human beings and should have the human experience in mind. Your B2B clients will still compare you to the best experience they have had with their favorite brands from any industry.
· Plus, Shep and Carla talk about how innovation can sometimes cause difficulties for employees and how businesses can support them when taking on new technology. Tune in!
Quote:
"Are we innovating technology just for the sake of innovation? Or are we innovating technology to create a better human condition? Brands should focus on innovation that improves customer experience and enhances their ability to connect."
About:
Carla Guzzetti leads the in-product design, user research, user enablement, and product marketing for Extreme Networks as the Senior Vice President, Experience and Product Messaging. She believes in creating meaningful experiences for Extreme Networks' buyers and end users.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25:3310/01/2023
A Complaint is a Gift Featuring Janelle Barlow
Moving Customer Complaints from Frustration to Satisfaction
Shep Hyken interviews Janelle Barlow, award-winning customer service and experience speaker, consultant, and author of A Complaint Is a Gift: How to Learn from Critical Feedback and Recover Customer Loyalty. She shares how to empathetically transform a customer's complaint into a positive and memorable experience.
Top Takeaways:
· Janelle shares these findings from the 2020 National Customer Rage Study (followed by our commentary):
2/3 of people have a product or a service failure across their lifetime. Most customers who have had a negative experience do not tell the company directly. They either internalize it, affecting their decision to do more business with the brand, or they broadcast it to their friends across social media channels. You don't just want to resolve a complaint. You want to find out the reasons behind the complaint and operationalize around it, so it does not happen again.
58% of customers feel they were dissatisfied with how their complaint was handled. It's not just about fixing the problem. It is how you fixed the problem. You have to create that feeling of engagement and connection that nurtures customer loyalty.
65% of customers who are complaining left filled with rage. When customers have feelings of rage, they often express it by yelling, swearing, or saying, "I'm never going to come back to you again."
47% of customers with a negative experience with a company post reviews online. Negative reviews, posted out of anger, is a customer seeking revenge. They don't always post it on review sites. Most of the time, they post it on social media sites.
· Handling complaints is a mindset. Leaders and managers must understand that people do not naturally know how to handle complaints. Most of us learn how to handle complaints from our families (for example, fighting with our siblings or complaining to our parents) and develop "go-to responses" or defense mechanisms that we then use when dealing with customers.
· If you have the mindset that a complaint is a gift, you begin with a statement of gratitude. One of the most common communication chains is the "thank you - you're welcome" exchange. When you thank the customer for letting you know there is a problem, you can mitigate the anger and start the resolution from a better place.
· When employees feel supported by companies in terms of complaint resolution, they are happier and more effective. They don't have to feel defensive or argue with customers. They know that all they have to do is ensure that customers walk away feeling happy and satisfied.
· Plus, Janelle shares some guidelines to follow when responding to online feedback, both positive and negative. Tune in!
Quote:
"Handling a customer's emotional satisfaction is as important as resolving the complaint. You can handle the customer’s problem, but if they feel that they were treated poorly in the process, they still walk away feeling dissatisfied."
About:
Janelle Barlow is a customer service and experience expert, trainer, consultant, and best-selling author. The latest edition of her book, A Complaint Is a Gift: How to Learn from Critical Feedback and Recover Customer Loyalty, is available now.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
31:2303/01/2023
The Power of Listening to Your Customers Featuring Amy Brown
Using Conversational Data to Enhance the Customer Experience
Shep Hyken interviews Amy Brown, founder and CEO of Authenticx, a software that listens, analyzes, and activates customer voices at scale. She shares findings from Authenticx's Customer Voices Report and how organizations can use data to drive customer experience strategies.
Top Takeaways:
· Customers want to be empathized with and understood by the brands they interact and do business with.
· Customer centricity means taking intentional steps to listen to what your customer needs and having everyone, at all levels in the organization, committed to delivering on them.
· Typically, the customers who answer surveys are either very angry or very happy with your organization. However, this leaves out customers who are in the middle or think their experience is only satisfactory. When companies don't learn from this segment of their customers, they often lose them once a competitor that does it better comes along.
· The value of listening to customers is that it teaches organizations the points of friction in their processes and identifies their competitive differentiators. It shows them the problem spots they need to pay attention and what drives negative sentiment. And it helps brands determine their value propositions using the words of their customers.
· When you hear good feedback and read positive testimonials, put that data into your process so that all your customers can have the same amazing experience.
· Frontline workers are a great resource when it comes to what customers are saying about your company and their experience. Train them to listen for customer insights, take notes, and share with everyone in the organization.
· Listen to your employees, too, not just your customers. Leaders must be listening for employee engagement and burnout. Turn positive and negative conversational data into actionable strategies that support your employees.
· Plus, Amy shares what The Eddy Effect™ is and what it means to customer experience. Tune in!
Quote:
"Customer-centric organizations believe that listening to and understanding what their customers want is vital to their ability to thrive as a business."
About:
Amy Brown is the founder and CEO of Authenticx. As an executive with 20 years of experience in healthcare, she founded Authenticx to bring the authentic voice of the patient into the boardroom and increase positive healthcare outcomes.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
26:2727/12/2022