This document discusses the importance of improving customer service experiences for retailers to increase profits. It emphasizes that resolving customer issues quickly across all communication channels, providing a "one face of the brand" experience, can reduce resolution costs by up to 170% compared to slower resolution. Faster resolution, within 24 hours on the first contact, creates a better experience for customers and positively impacts loyalty, word-of-mouth, and future revenue. The proliferation of communication channels poses a challenge but can also break down silos if companies provide seamless support across all channels.
On Customer Experience - Best Practicesjudythornell
This document provides an overview of customer experience and its benefits from Mike Wittenstein, an expert in the field. It discusses how (1) companies that focus on customer experience enjoy benefits like reduced costs and more referrals, (2) industries like retail and hospitality benefit most from customer experience design, and (3) best practices include listening to customers and employees and designing for adoption, not just implementation. The document concludes that enhancing customer experiences at every touchpoint creates loyal customers and competitive advantage.
White paper - Reinventing the customer lifecyclePaul Kennedy
This paper by Paul Kennedy at Callcredit explores how adopting a defined programme of ongoing customer communications - rather than taking a product-led, campaign-by-campaign approach - can drive better customer engagement, improve retention rates and increase revenue flows
Customer experience is made up of the sum of interactions and touch points with all the people, products and services a company provides to or for them. Customer service experience is a subset of the overall customer experience. Specifically, a customer service experience is the sum of the interactions between you and your customers when they are trying to communicate with or to you, often regarding something that has gone awry. Customers of all types (not just social customers) are emotional and tend to rate experiences based upon the expectations set (either specifically, or ones we set in our mind) – yes, they are often shared. The simple question is: “Is your business organized in such a way to accelerate your company’s ability to deliver a service experience, which meets or better, exceeds customer expectations?”
Customer Experience Self-assessment: Belgian Benchmark 2010Geert Martens
What is customer experience? Why have most market leaders been investing in customer experience? How have they aligned their organization to consistently deliver a deliberate customer experience? The "Naïve-to-Natural" model is a maturity assessment that shows organizations to what extent they are capable of delivering a customer experience. This presentation includes a Belgian benchmark study.
The counterintuitive nature of customer experience managementGeert Martens
Beyond Philosophy is a consulting firm that helps companies improve their customer experience management. They address tough questions about defining the customer experience, understanding customer expectations, measuring the experience gaps, and ensuring employees are engaged in delivering the desired experience. Improving the customer experience can result in increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and higher revenues and profits for companies. The customer experience is both a rational interaction and emotional experience for customers.
The document discusses strategies for building customer loyalty. It covers segmenting customers, delivering quality service, creating loyalty programs with rewards, deepening relationships through bundling services, customizing service, and developing social and structural bonds between customers and the business. The goal is to make customers less likely to switch to competitors by increasing their switching costs and satisfaction with the current service provider.
SQ Lecture Nine -Building Relationships & Service Recovery (Chapters 12 and 13)SQAdvisor
This document provides an overview and summary of key topics from Chapter 12 of the marketing textbook, including managing customer relationships and building loyalty. It discusses the importance of customer loyalty for a firm's profitability, strategies for developing loyalty bonds like deepening relationships, implementing reward programs, fostering social bonds, and offering customization. Graphs and figures are referenced to explain concepts such as the customer satisfaction-loyalty relationship, measuring customer lifetime value, and effective customer tiering. Case studies from companies like Harrah's and British Airways are also mentioned.
The customer-centric theory may, at first blush, seem a backwards approach to profitability. The focus is not on the customer's wallet, but the customer himself. Learn how successful businesses have increased share of wallet and generated fiscal growth by putting the individual customer's needs before the company's.
More CRM and Loyalty Marketing Resources
Loyalty Blog: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/loyaltyblog/
eBooks: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/white-papers
Loyalty Workshops: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/custom-loyalty-workshops
Systematic New Loyalty Program Development: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/systematic-new-loyalty-program
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/engagekeepgrow/
Who is Customer Insight Group?
Customer Insight Group, Inc. leads the way in the evolution of how companies engage their customers, positively motivate them and earn their long-term loyalty. Our extensive client work is testimony to our depth of knowledge and ability to apply strategic insight and solutions to a wide variety of business objectives. Our team’s client experience includes: NHFA, Thomasville Furniture, The Maxim Group Carpet Franchise, Ashro, A&P, The Bon Ton, Crate & Barrel, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Edwin Watts Golf, GE Consumer Finance, Monroe and Main, Swiss Colony, Midnight Velvet, MySwingle.com, The Great Indoors, G.H. Bass, Golf Galaxy, Helzberg Diamonds, HSBC, Kohl’s, La-z-boy Furniture Franchise, MCI, Payless ShoeSource, Pier 1 Imports, Petco, Proflowers.com, Regis University, Ruby Tuesday, S&K Menswear, Sierra Trading Post, Stein Mart, Tommy Hilfiger, Ulta, as well as various other leading companies.
On Customer Experience - Best Practicesjudythornell
This document provides an overview of customer experience and its benefits from Mike Wittenstein, an expert in the field. It discusses how (1) companies that focus on customer experience enjoy benefits like reduced costs and more referrals, (2) industries like retail and hospitality benefit most from customer experience design, and (3) best practices include listening to customers and employees and designing for adoption, not just implementation. The document concludes that enhancing customer experiences at every touchpoint creates loyal customers and competitive advantage.
White paper - Reinventing the customer lifecyclePaul Kennedy
This paper by Paul Kennedy at Callcredit explores how adopting a defined programme of ongoing customer communications - rather than taking a product-led, campaign-by-campaign approach - can drive better customer engagement, improve retention rates and increase revenue flows
Customer experience is made up of the sum of interactions and touch points with all the people, products and services a company provides to or for them. Customer service experience is a subset of the overall customer experience. Specifically, a customer service experience is the sum of the interactions between you and your customers when they are trying to communicate with or to you, often regarding something that has gone awry. Customers of all types (not just social customers) are emotional and tend to rate experiences based upon the expectations set (either specifically, or ones we set in our mind) – yes, they are often shared. The simple question is: “Is your business organized in such a way to accelerate your company’s ability to deliver a service experience, which meets or better, exceeds customer expectations?”
Customer Experience Self-assessment: Belgian Benchmark 2010Geert Martens
What is customer experience? Why have most market leaders been investing in customer experience? How have they aligned their organization to consistently deliver a deliberate customer experience? The "Naïve-to-Natural" model is a maturity assessment that shows organizations to what extent they are capable of delivering a customer experience. This presentation includes a Belgian benchmark study.
The counterintuitive nature of customer experience managementGeert Martens
Beyond Philosophy is a consulting firm that helps companies improve their customer experience management. They address tough questions about defining the customer experience, understanding customer expectations, measuring the experience gaps, and ensuring employees are engaged in delivering the desired experience. Improving the customer experience can result in increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and higher revenues and profits for companies. The customer experience is both a rational interaction and emotional experience for customers.
The document discusses strategies for building customer loyalty. It covers segmenting customers, delivering quality service, creating loyalty programs with rewards, deepening relationships through bundling services, customizing service, and developing social and structural bonds between customers and the business. The goal is to make customers less likely to switch to competitors by increasing their switching costs and satisfaction with the current service provider.
SQ Lecture Nine -Building Relationships & Service Recovery (Chapters 12 and 13)SQAdvisor
This document provides an overview and summary of key topics from Chapter 12 of the marketing textbook, including managing customer relationships and building loyalty. It discusses the importance of customer loyalty for a firm's profitability, strategies for developing loyalty bonds like deepening relationships, implementing reward programs, fostering social bonds, and offering customization. Graphs and figures are referenced to explain concepts such as the customer satisfaction-loyalty relationship, measuring customer lifetime value, and effective customer tiering. Case studies from companies like Harrah's and British Airways are also mentioned.
The customer-centric theory may, at first blush, seem a backwards approach to profitability. The focus is not on the customer's wallet, but the customer himself. Learn how successful businesses have increased share of wallet and generated fiscal growth by putting the individual customer's needs before the company's.
More CRM and Loyalty Marketing Resources
Loyalty Blog: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/loyaltyblog/
eBooks: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/white-papers
Loyalty Workshops: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/custom-loyalty-workshops
Systematic New Loyalty Program Development: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/systematic-new-loyalty-program
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/engagekeepgrow/
Who is Customer Insight Group?
Customer Insight Group, Inc. leads the way in the evolution of how companies engage their customers, positively motivate them and earn their long-term loyalty. Our extensive client work is testimony to our depth of knowledge and ability to apply strategic insight and solutions to a wide variety of business objectives. Our team’s client experience includes: NHFA, Thomasville Furniture, The Maxim Group Carpet Franchise, Ashro, A&P, The Bon Ton, Crate & Barrel, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Edwin Watts Golf, GE Consumer Finance, Monroe and Main, Swiss Colony, Midnight Velvet, MySwingle.com, The Great Indoors, G.H. Bass, Golf Galaxy, Helzberg Diamonds, HSBC, Kohl’s, La-z-boy Furniture Franchise, MCI, Payless ShoeSource, Pier 1 Imports, Petco, Proflowers.com, Regis University, Ruby Tuesday, S&K Menswear, Sierra Trading Post, Stein Mart, Tommy Hilfiger, Ulta, as well as various other leading companies.
Utsav Mahendra : Managing Relationships and Building Loyalty Utsav Mahendra
The document discusses managing customer relationships and loyalty. It describes the four stages of brand loyalty as cognitive, affective, conative, and action loyalty. Loyal customers are more profitable over time as they spend more, cost less to serve, and recommend new customers. The document also discusses measuring customer lifetime value, developing relationships through database marketing and interaction marketing, segmenting and targeting customers, and strategies for building and maintaining customer loyalty.
An exploration into service design strategy within automotive retailing.Ayman Sarhan
This document discusses service design within the automotive retailing industry. It describes how service design can be viewed as a system of thoughtful customer interactions. The document then discusses a case study of OpenRoad Auto Group, where service design was used to shift power to customers and create a more comfortable dealership experience. This included innovative merchandising displays, internet kiosks, a lounge area, and relocating customers during service. The service design strategies contributed to a 28% increase in OpenRoad's sales within one year.
Accenture 2009 Global Consumer Satisfaction ReportTRG
This document summarizes key findings from Accenture's 2009 global consumer satisfaction survey. The survey found that customer expectations and demands are higher than ever, while many companies are not keeping pace, resulting in increased switching between providers. Younger consumers have even higher expectations and are more likely to switch providers due to poor service. The document recommends that companies differentiate their customer service experiences based on individual customer segments and value to improve satisfaction and performance.
Retaining & nurturing customers (Igniter breakfast seminar, 2008)Paul Roberts
The summary notes from a breakfast seminar I presented in 2008, on how to identify, engage and delight customers.
Presenting my '3 lens' model for retaining and growing the value of your existing customers, it includes case study examples for successful companies and clients.
The seminar was attended by people from several industries, including sport and banking.
This document discusses how companies are struggling to provide consistent, positive customer experiences due to increasingly complex customer journeys across multiple channels. It uses Archstone, a real estate company, as an example of a company that improved its customer experience by developing a "Commitment to GREAT" promise and training employees to consistently deliver on this promise. The document advocates that companies should focus on understanding customer expectations, developing people's capabilities to meet those expectations, and engaging leaders to champion the customer experience vision.
This document discusses multichannel customer journeys and engagement. It begins with an agenda that covers why customer engagement is important, the results of a survey on customer journeys, and real world examples. The survey found that social media recommendations influence younger consumers' purchasing decisions. It also found that responses to emails, good websites, phone calls, and recommendations on social media can influence customers to complete or abandon purchases. Customers prefer different channels for help, with younger consumers more likely to use online channels like chat.
Customer Insight Findand Keepthe Customers You WantAnil Kumar
This document discusses how companies can improve customer acquisition and retention by developing stronger insights into their customers. While many companies have invested in CRM systems, capabilities for generating and acting on customer insights are still lacking. The document examines how a single customer view can provide a more complete understanding of customers. It also provides examples of companies that have improved marketing, sales, service and operational effectiveness by developing robust customer insight capabilities, including a country's postal service. Overall, the key message is that deep customer understanding is needed to build loyal, profitable customer relationships.
Many companies have determined that identifying perceptual gaps between customers\' evaluations of products and services and what employees think customers will say enables: targeted training and communication, employee involvement, incentive opportunities. Leading companies have made \'mirroring\' part of their DNA.
Ralph Paglia has extensive experience in automotive digital marketing and internet sales, having generated over 144,000 leads and 4,000 vehicle sales in previous roles; the document discusses best practices for recruiting, screening, hiring and training internet sales professionals, including using skills assessments and establishing organizational processes and structures; it also provides recommendations for growing an internet sales team organically through defined roles and compensation plans.
Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Embracing the new customer experience paradigmRupa Shankar
The document discusses the shift from traditional customer service models focused on efficiency to a new paradigm focused on effectiveness and meaningful customer engagement. It notes that social media requires a different approach where agents take time to understand customers rather than just closing issues. The new model requires core competencies like empathy, autonomy and human-centric engagement over traditional scalability and productivity metrics. Organizations must realign processes and roles to focus on conversations and understanding customers in the social world.
So if the bank of the future is really the “bank of now”, what does that mean? It means that you have to take action now, today, to create a banking environment that’s capable of taking on the challenges of a rapidly changing marketplace.
The document discusses managing relationships and building loyalty in service firms. It defines loyalty as a customer's willingness to continue patronizing a firm over the long term and recommend the firm to others. The document outlines four stages of brand loyalty and discusses what makes loyal customers more profitable through increased spending, lower costs to serve, and word-of-mouth referrals. It also discusses strategies for developing loyalty bonds with customers through deepening relationships, rewards programs, personal relationships, customization, and aligning customer processes with the firm.
The document discusses the importance of understanding customer behavior for marketing success. It notes that only 56% of 11,000 new products launched by 77 companies remained on the market after 5 years, and only 8% of concepts tested by 112 companies actually made it to market with 83% failing to meet objectives. Understanding factors like customer preferences regarding quality, cost, comfort, safety, reliability, maintenance costs, spare parts availability, fuel efficiency and brand image is essential. Measuring customer lifetime value and categorizing customers as highly profitable, profitable, mixed-bag, or losing is also discussed. The document advocates designing products to meet consumer needs rather than just management expectations.
UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE: Increasing Profitability Through Improved Customer ServiceInteractiveNEC
Developing and maintaining profitable customer relationships is at the core of every healthy business operation. Keeping your customers happy has significant benefits, affecting your top and bottom line. Learn the top 5 business benefits of a great #customerexperience how UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Contact Center #CCaaS can help #customerretention rates and make your company more profitable year after year. #CloudCommunications #CloudContactCenter #CX
An introduction to Customer Experience ManagementOnno Romijn
Customer experience management (CEM) is a strategic process that manages a customer's entire experience with a company across all touchpoints. CEM focuses on consistently meeting both functional and emotional customer needs and expectations. While related concepts like customer relationship management and customer satisfaction are important, CEM takes a more holistic view. Implementing CEM can help companies differentiate their offerings, improve reputation, reduce costs, drive employee satisfaction, and increase customer retention and acquisition rates. However, many companies only make superficial changes and fail to fully implement CEM. Successful CEM requires identifying key experience drivers, considering the customer experience in all decisions, and coordinating efforts across departments.
26.customer satisfaction loyalty relationshipPankaj Soni
This document discusses customer satisfaction and loyalty levels. It describes three zones: the defection zone with low satisfaction levels where customers will easily switch, the affection zone with intermediate satisfaction where customers may switch for a better option, and the indifference zone with very high satisfaction where customers are fiercely loyal. It also discusses the importance of integrated marketing communications and delivering consistent messaging across all channels to avoid confusing customers. Positioning strategies are discussed as distinguishing a brand from competitors through clear messaging about the company's value proposition.
Intelligent retail business transformationKelvin Tai
This document discusses challenges facing retailers and how a stored value solution from Ceridian can help address them. It outlines increasing operating costs, a lack of measurable marketing tools, and decreasing customer loyalty as common retailer challenges. Ceridian's solution leverages prepaid cards to boost sales, enable accurate targeted marketing, and improve the payment experience. Case studies show the solution increasing sales by over $30 million for one retailer and driving over 30,000 return visits for another. Ceridian has over 20 years of experience in prepaid solutions, serving over 650 clients across 45 countries.
Satisfaction is a subscription-based customer service tool that allows open conversations between companies and their customers, addressing problems with traditional closed systems like email support. By bringing customer expertise and conversations into the open, Satisfaction reduces repetitive support issues while improving customer loyalty. It leverages trends of customers helping each other online and companies benefiting from engaged customers. Pricing is tiered for small businesses, starting at $29/month, addressing a market that previously lacked the right tools.
Greg Gianforte argues that proactive customer service can significantly improve customer satisfaction, cut costs, and provide a competitive advantage over non-proactive competitors. Proactive customer service involves addressing customer issues before customers are aware of them through techniques like proactive messaging to provide information to customers, implementing processes to answer customer questions online, and monitoring service quality. It requires technologies like a knowledge base, email tools, chat, and surveys to track metrics. Making the shift to proactive customer service can enhance business performance even in challenging economic times.
Customer service has become one of the most important components for businesses today. The document discusses how customer service needs to be elevated to a strategic priority due to the rise of social media and word-of-mouth. It introduces 10 new rules for customer service, such as having customer service available 24/7, empowering all employees to communicate with customers, and treating influential customers with extra care. Customer service is now critical for competitive advantage and can even generate revenue when done effectively.
Eight Steps to Great Customer Experiences for Government AgenciesRightNow Technologies
This document outlines eight steps that government agencies can take to improve customer experiences despite constrained budgets. The steps are: 1) Establish a knowledge foundation to effectively manage and deliver knowledge; 2) Empower customers with self-service options via web and phone; 3) Empower frontline employees with access to extensive knowledge; 4) Offer service through multiple channels; 5) Listen to customer feedback; 6) Design seamless experiences across channels; 7) Proactively engage customers; 8) Continuously measure and improve experiences. Implementing these steps will allow agencies to fulfill rising expectations, comply with mandates, and increase productivity while reducing costs.
Utsav Mahendra : Managing Relationships and Building Loyalty Utsav Mahendra
The document discusses managing customer relationships and loyalty. It describes the four stages of brand loyalty as cognitive, affective, conative, and action loyalty. Loyal customers are more profitable over time as they spend more, cost less to serve, and recommend new customers. The document also discusses measuring customer lifetime value, developing relationships through database marketing and interaction marketing, segmenting and targeting customers, and strategies for building and maintaining customer loyalty.
An exploration into service design strategy within automotive retailing.Ayman Sarhan
This document discusses service design within the automotive retailing industry. It describes how service design can be viewed as a system of thoughtful customer interactions. The document then discusses a case study of OpenRoad Auto Group, where service design was used to shift power to customers and create a more comfortable dealership experience. This included innovative merchandising displays, internet kiosks, a lounge area, and relocating customers during service. The service design strategies contributed to a 28% increase in OpenRoad's sales within one year.
Accenture 2009 Global Consumer Satisfaction ReportTRG
This document summarizes key findings from Accenture's 2009 global consumer satisfaction survey. The survey found that customer expectations and demands are higher than ever, while many companies are not keeping pace, resulting in increased switching between providers. Younger consumers have even higher expectations and are more likely to switch providers due to poor service. The document recommends that companies differentiate their customer service experiences based on individual customer segments and value to improve satisfaction and performance.
Retaining & nurturing customers (Igniter breakfast seminar, 2008)Paul Roberts
The summary notes from a breakfast seminar I presented in 2008, on how to identify, engage and delight customers.
Presenting my '3 lens' model for retaining and growing the value of your existing customers, it includes case study examples for successful companies and clients.
The seminar was attended by people from several industries, including sport and banking.
This document discusses how companies are struggling to provide consistent, positive customer experiences due to increasingly complex customer journeys across multiple channels. It uses Archstone, a real estate company, as an example of a company that improved its customer experience by developing a "Commitment to GREAT" promise and training employees to consistently deliver on this promise. The document advocates that companies should focus on understanding customer expectations, developing people's capabilities to meet those expectations, and engaging leaders to champion the customer experience vision.
This document discusses multichannel customer journeys and engagement. It begins with an agenda that covers why customer engagement is important, the results of a survey on customer journeys, and real world examples. The survey found that social media recommendations influence younger consumers' purchasing decisions. It also found that responses to emails, good websites, phone calls, and recommendations on social media can influence customers to complete or abandon purchases. Customers prefer different channels for help, with younger consumers more likely to use online channels like chat.
Customer Insight Findand Keepthe Customers You WantAnil Kumar
This document discusses how companies can improve customer acquisition and retention by developing stronger insights into their customers. While many companies have invested in CRM systems, capabilities for generating and acting on customer insights are still lacking. The document examines how a single customer view can provide a more complete understanding of customers. It also provides examples of companies that have improved marketing, sales, service and operational effectiveness by developing robust customer insight capabilities, including a country's postal service. Overall, the key message is that deep customer understanding is needed to build loyal, profitable customer relationships.
Many companies have determined that identifying perceptual gaps between customers\' evaluations of products and services and what employees think customers will say enables: targeted training and communication, employee involvement, incentive opportunities. Leading companies have made \'mirroring\' part of their DNA.
Ralph Paglia has extensive experience in automotive digital marketing and internet sales, having generated over 144,000 leads and 4,000 vehicle sales in previous roles; the document discusses best practices for recruiting, screening, hiring and training internet sales professionals, including using skills assessments and establishing organizational processes and structures; it also provides recommendations for growing an internet sales team organically through defined roles and compensation plans.
Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Embracing the new customer experience paradigmRupa Shankar
The document discusses the shift from traditional customer service models focused on efficiency to a new paradigm focused on effectiveness and meaningful customer engagement. It notes that social media requires a different approach where agents take time to understand customers rather than just closing issues. The new model requires core competencies like empathy, autonomy and human-centric engagement over traditional scalability and productivity metrics. Organizations must realign processes and roles to focus on conversations and understanding customers in the social world.
So if the bank of the future is really the “bank of now”, what does that mean? It means that you have to take action now, today, to create a banking environment that’s capable of taking on the challenges of a rapidly changing marketplace.
The document discusses managing relationships and building loyalty in service firms. It defines loyalty as a customer's willingness to continue patronizing a firm over the long term and recommend the firm to others. The document outlines four stages of brand loyalty and discusses what makes loyal customers more profitable through increased spending, lower costs to serve, and word-of-mouth referrals. It also discusses strategies for developing loyalty bonds with customers through deepening relationships, rewards programs, personal relationships, customization, and aligning customer processes with the firm.
The document discusses the importance of understanding customer behavior for marketing success. It notes that only 56% of 11,000 new products launched by 77 companies remained on the market after 5 years, and only 8% of concepts tested by 112 companies actually made it to market with 83% failing to meet objectives. Understanding factors like customer preferences regarding quality, cost, comfort, safety, reliability, maintenance costs, spare parts availability, fuel efficiency and brand image is essential. Measuring customer lifetime value and categorizing customers as highly profitable, profitable, mixed-bag, or losing is also discussed. The document advocates designing products to meet consumer needs rather than just management expectations.
UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE: Increasing Profitability Through Improved Customer ServiceInteractiveNEC
Developing and maintaining profitable customer relationships is at the core of every healthy business operation. Keeping your customers happy has significant benefits, affecting your top and bottom line. Learn the top 5 business benefits of a great #customerexperience how UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Contact Center #CCaaS can help #customerretention rates and make your company more profitable year after year. #CloudCommunications #CloudContactCenter #CX
An introduction to Customer Experience ManagementOnno Romijn
Customer experience management (CEM) is a strategic process that manages a customer's entire experience with a company across all touchpoints. CEM focuses on consistently meeting both functional and emotional customer needs and expectations. While related concepts like customer relationship management and customer satisfaction are important, CEM takes a more holistic view. Implementing CEM can help companies differentiate their offerings, improve reputation, reduce costs, drive employee satisfaction, and increase customer retention and acquisition rates. However, many companies only make superficial changes and fail to fully implement CEM. Successful CEM requires identifying key experience drivers, considering the customer experience in all decisions, and coordinating efforts across departments.
26.customer satisfaction loyalty relationshipPankaj Soni
This document discusses customer satisfaction and loyalty levels. It describes three zones: the defection zone with low satisfaction levels where customers will easily switch, the affection zone with intermediate satisfaction where customers may switch for a better option, and the indifference zone with very high satisfaction where customers are fiercely loyal. It also discusses the importance of integrated marketing communications and delivering consistent messaging across all channels to avoid confusing customers. Positioning strategies are discussed as distinguishing a brand from competitors through clear messaging about the company's value proposition.
Intelligent retail business transformationKelvin Tai
This document discusses challenges facing retailers and how a stored value solution from Ceridian can help address them. It outlines increasing operating costs, a lack of measurable marketing tools, and decreasing customer loyalty as common retailer challenges. Ceridian's solution leverages prepaid cards to boost sales, enable accurate targeted marketing, and improve the payment experience. Case studies show the solution increasing sales by over $30 million for one retailer and driving over 30,000 return visits for another. Ceridian has over 20 years of experience in prepaid solutions, serving over 650 clients across 45 countries.
Satisfaction is a subscription-based customer service tool that allows open conversations between companies and their customers, addressing problems with traditional closed systems like email support. By bringing customer expertise and conversations into the open, Satisfaction reduces repetitive support issues while improving customer loyalty. It leverages trends of customers helping each other online and companies benefiting from engaged customers. Pricing is tiered for small businesses, starting at $29/month, addressing a market that previously lacked the right tools.
Greg Gianforte argues that proactive customer service can significantly improve customer satisfaction, cut costs, and provide a competitive advantage over non-proactive competitors. Proactive customer service involves addressing customer issues before customers are aware of them through techniques like proactive messaging to provide information to customers, implementing processes to answer customer questions online, and monitoring service quality. It requires technologies like a knowledge base, email tools, chat, and surveys to track metrics. Making the shift to proactive customer service can enhance business performance even in challenging economic times.
Customer service has become one of the most important components for businesses today. The document discusses how customer service needs to be elevated to a strategic priority due to the rise of social media and word-of-mouth. It introduces 10 new rules for customer service, such as having customer service available 24/7, empowering all employees to communicate with customers, and treating influential customers with extra care. Customer service is now critical for competitive advantage and can even generate revenue when done effectively.
Eight Steps to Great Customer Experiences for Government AgenciesRightNow Technologies
This document outlines eight steps that government agencies can take to improve customer experiences despite constrained budgets. The steps are: 1) Establish a knowledge foundation to effectively manage and deliver knowledge; 2) Empower customers with self-service options via web and phone; 3) Empower frontline employees with access to extensive knowledge; 4) Offer service through multiple channels; 5) Listen to customer feedback; 6) Design seamless experiences across channels; 7) Proactively engage customers; 8) Continuously measure and improve experiences. Implementing these steps will allow agencies to fulfill rising expectations, comply with mandates, and increase productivity while reducing costs.
The document discusses strategies for recruiting, screening, hiring and training internet sales professionals. It emphasizes the importance of organizational development for dealerships and outlines tools and processes for building a successful internet sales team, including hiring assessments, defined roles and responsibilities, training, compensation structures, and lead management processes. Specifically, it examines how Courtesy Chevrolet grew its internet sales team from 10 to 300 cars per month through strategic human resources development.
Social: Session 7: Turbocharging Customer Service Through Social TechnologiesSugarCRM
Social media is becoming an important channel for customer service. To succeed, companies need to get their traditional customer service foundations in order by understanding how customers want to interact, providing universal customer histories, and taming their knowledge problems. They then need to extend customer service to social channels like Facebook and Twitter while still preserving a consistent customer experience. Social media should be integrated with existing customer service systems and knowledge bases to ensure an excellent customer experience across all channels.
1. The document discusses how virtual assistant technology can help contact centers increase agent performance and maximize cost advantages. It notes that contact centers must absorb increases in volume from organizational growth efforts, which can strain resources unless properly planned for.
2. Next, it explains how virtual assistants can help in two key ways: by increasing agent efficiency through improving access to accurate information, reducing escalations; and by maximizing cost advantages through achieving both operational efficiencies and economies of scale by reducing contact volume in addition to costs.
3. It argues that while operational efficiencies reduce costs, economies of scale require also reducing contact volume, as efficiency alone does not ensure costs won't rise again with customer base growth if contact rates remain
Contact centers. avoid the waste but not the valueStephen Parry
CORE Profile: A Customer Purpose Framework for Contact Centers
The customer purpose defines value, and value defines meaningful work, everything else is waste. The organisation and its leaders need to know what to optimise, what to remove, what types of demand to increase, and what types of demand may present opportunities to create new products or services. Our research indicates that most operational managers and leaders think they know what waste is, but in reality what they consider to be value is in fact intuitional waste, habitualized by calling it value.
Most companies genuinely want to create value for their customers and sincerely believe that their customer-service operations are indeed doing that, but often they are simply restoring lost value caused by a failure to do something right the first time.
Attensity Customer Conversation White Paper Wp0509MaryBryan
This document discusses how companies can manage customer conversations in the digital age. The rise of social media has empowered consumers to share their opinions online, taking control of brands away from companies. To protect their brand equity, companies must understand both internal customer feedback and external conversations online. They can do this through tools that analyze customer data from various sources and enable action in response.
Blinded By Delight Executive Guidance 2015Erica Hayman
This document discusses how organizations should focus on providing effortless customer service experiences rather than exceptional ones. It argues that exceeding customer expectations does not increase loyalty and is costly, while high customer effort interactions strongly drive disloyalty. The key is making the customer service experience require low effort for the customer. Organizations should track customer effort, provide guided resolutions, solve customers' next problems, engineer low-effort experiences, and empower frontline staff to deliver tailored service.
Automotive boot camp 2012 objective data performance plansRalph Paglia
This document discusses using objective data to create effective performance plans and compensation models for dealership staff. It emphasizes the importance of aligning team objectives with business strategy and reflecting them in evaluations and pay plans. The document recommends organizational development strategies for attracting, hiring, and training top internet sales professionals. Specific tools and processes used by highly successful dealers are presented, including defining roles and pay structures. The role of phone contact in closing sales is highlighted. Process mapping, tracking performance metrics, and staffing appropriately to handle lead volumes are also covered.
Automotive Boot Camp 2012 Objective Data Performance PlansRalph Paglia
This document discusses using objective data to create effective performance plans and compensation models for dealership staff. It emphasizes the importance of aligning team objectives with business strategy and reflecting them in evaluations and pay plans. The document recommends organizational development strategies for attracting, hiring, and training top internet sales professionals. Specific tools and processes used by highly successful dealers are presented, including defining roles and pay structures. The role of phone contact in closing sales is highlighted. Process mapping, tracking performance metrics, and staffing appropriately to handle lead volumes are also covered.
This document discusses how companies can capitalize on opportunities presented by existing customers during economic downturns. It emphasizes that maintaining customer loyalty and effectively serving current customers is crucial for survival and a source of savings and growth. Analyzing customer feedback through tools like Attensity Voice of the Customer allows companies to understand customer sentiment, identify issues, and take actions like preventing churn to preserve revenue and uncover opportunities to increase revenue through customer satisfaction.
Ralph Paglia is an expert in organizational development and human resource management in the automotive industry. He has over 20 years of experience helping dealerships improve their internet sales processes, including developing best practices for screening, selecting, and training dealership employees. The document discusses strategies for defining roles and responsibilities, documenting processes, and using tools like video assessments to improve hiring and prepare employees for success.
Increase revenue using feedback whitepaper QB Ireland
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1. RETAILERS
FALL 2012 CUSTOMER SERVICE IMPERATIVES
INCREASE RETAIL PROFITS BY IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE
INCREASES PROFITS
TRANSFORMING CUSTOMER SERVICE
Time to resolution has been a key benchmark for retail
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
customer service and, as we will see, the explosion of
Streamlining and improving the customer service expe- social media and online communication vehicles has com-
rience has been proven to increase profits for retailers.1 plicated the delivery of fast time to resolution. This matters,
Simply reducing first response time, however, is not because there is evidence that “best in class” resolution
enough to gain competitive advantage towards increas- time across a variety of customer communication vehicles
ing profits. Customer service must be seamless across all (phone, email, online forums, Twitter, Facebook, and simi-
communication vehicles where customer interactions and lar) and at store sites can increase retail profits.3
feedback occur. This meets the customer wherever they
are and provides “one face of the brand” to customers
APPROXIMATE
needing support. TIME TO RESOLUTION RESOLUTION COST
This “one face of the brand” approach to support enables
IMMEDIATELY $4.70
retailers to further increase their profitability. For exam-
ple, an issue that is resolved within 24 hours, at the first
WITHIN 24 HOURS $4.70
point of contact—something more likely to occur when all
customer communication vehicles are in-sync—can be up
2-3 DAYS $7.80
to 170% less costly than an issue that takes 48 hours to
resolve.2
4-7 DAYS $7.80
This, then, is the new customer service imperative for retailers:
• Create a seamless customer service experience 1-2 WEEKS $15.70
• Meet the customer wherever they are and when they choose
• Resolve customer service issues quickly 3-4 WEEKS $15.70
In doing so, retailers not only can increase profits and OVER 1 MONTH $23.50
margins, they will positively impact customer loyalty,
word-of-mouth, and referral business. This “one face of STILL UNRESOLVED $23.50
the brand” approach to customer service thus increases,
protects, and grows the future revenue stream. Fig. 1 Based on findings from the UK Institute of Customer Service
UK Customer Satisfaction Index 2011.
FOOTNOTES
1 “Using data on the top performing Web retailers in the U.S. based on their online annual sales, we show that the extent of retailers’ efforts in online customer service…is
positively linked to customer satisfaction, which in turn is positively related to the retailers’ online sales performance. [Author’s emphasis.] In addition to directly increasing
the revenue, our results indicate that customer service…can also indirectly improve the retailers’ financial performance. Specifically, customer service management impacts
the sales performance via the average ticket amount…” “The Effect of Customer Service and Content Management on Online Retail Sales Performance: The Mediating Role
of Customer Satisfaction,” Ayanso, A., K. Lertwachara, and N. Thongpapanl (2011), AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (3) 3, pp. 156-169. 2 “If we make some
assumptions about the cost of handling complaints, we can start to see the financial impact that customer service failure has on organisations working in these sectors.
Organisations often estimate that a complaint which is handled at the first point of contact costs between £2.50 and £51. That cost rises as complaints take longer to resolve
and involve more points of contact. [Author’s emphasis.] As shown in the table [see research here for table details], we have worked on the basis of representative cost esti-
mates which we believe to be conservative.” UK Institute of Customer Service, UK Customer Satisfaction Index 2011, http://www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/1711-7752/
UK-Customer-Satisfaction-Index-July-2011-executive-summary.html. 3 Ibid.
1
2. Faster issue resolution reduces costs significantly. For “ONE FACE OF THE BRAND” SUPPORT ENABLES
example, an issue that is resolved within 24 hours, at the first COMPANIES TO ADAPT TO CHANGE
point of contact—something more likely to occur when all
The explosive proliferation of customer communication
customer communication vehicles are in-sync—can be up to
vehicles not only poses a challenge to retailers seeking
170% less costly than an issue that takes 48 hours to resolve.
to create a seamless customer service experience, this
proliferation represents potential silos within companies.
FASTER ISSUE RESOLUTION IMPACTS IMPORTANT
SOURCES OF FUTURE BUSINESS If your retail organization is like many others, there may
be one department responsible for monitoring Twitter
If your customers experience “best in class” issue resolution and Facebook interactions with the brand, another for
time no matter what their communication vehicle may be, front-line response to inbound (email and phone) support
they feel valued by the brand. However, if your customers requests, and a third that monitors online communities
experience slower issue resolution time when phoning your and forums for issues with products.5 This means that
company’s e-commerce support line compared to, say, direct each group is potentially unaware of recent support
messaging your company’s Twitter stream, this inconsisten- issues for that customer, creating a customer satisfaction
cy fractures the customer experience. risk for the retailer.
For example, even a single issue may cross multiple
vehicles:
• A customer sends an email requesting support on
an issue
• Retailer follow-up starts with email and continues
to phone
• When the customer is online later that day, they use
chat to check the progress of their issue, and tweet
to their social circle about their support experience.
Streamlining retail customer service to create “one face
of the brand” for customers drives collaboration across
departments and divisional silos. This collaboration puts
the customer at the center of shared efforts, speeding
time to resolution while increasing cross-silo agility
within an organization. That said, if the approaches to
collaboration are not easily deployed across multiple
Further, it may be hard to tell where this break occurs— communication vehicles, the customer experience suf-
aggregate resolution time data may look fine relative to fers. Enabling retailers to be able to rapidly adapt to an
retail benchmarks. If even one of your customer commu- unpredictable future is just one way in which “one face of
nication vehicles’ support response is noticeably slower the brand” support initiatives have positive impacts far
or inconsistent in resolution time compared to others, beyond customer service.
your brand may be damaged long before your data shows
there is an issue. Without a seamless “one face of the
brand” experience in support, you may be losing profit-
able customers now and in the future and not know it. 4
FOOTNOTES
4 “One common element among all countries: poor customer service has a major impact on enterprises worldwide, directly resulting in lost revenue. In virtually every
country, customers ended at least one relationship per year due to poor service. [Author’s emphasis.] Across all countries surveyed, about 7 in 10 consumers have ended a
relationship. The vast majority of lost revenue results in defections to a competitor.” Genysys (with Greenfield Online and DataMonitor/Ovum Analysts), “The Cost of Poor Cus-
tomer Service,” http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/122502/. 5 “[I]t has been projected that 45% of all contact companies have with their customers occur over
the telephone, 45% happen via online means (Web site, e-mail, etc.), just 5% occur face-to-face, and the remaining 5% via other means. This movement away from face-to-
face contact toward online and technology-mediated methods has implications both for selecting technologies and for managing personnel who provide customer service in
these high-tech environments. With the introduction of new communication media and expanded customer touch-points, the characteristics of an effective customer service
process/system are experiencing significant change. [Author’s emphasis.]” Froehle, Craig M., “Service Personnel, Technology, and Their Interaction in Influencing Customer
Satisfaction,” Decision Sciences, Vol. 37, No. 1, February 2006.
2
3. “ONE FACE OF THE BRAND” EMPOWERS CUSTOMERS
WHILE REDUCING SUPPORT COSTS
If we map the path of a typical retail support ticket, we
see many points where “one face of the brand” support
can empower customers while reducing costs.
Customers are empowered first in ways that avoid
the need for a support ticket—through more access to
intuitive, self-service support. Self-service tools not only
empower customers, self-service tools typically reduce
support costs and resolution time.6 If the customer
doesn’t find what they need, 1:1 support through a pre-
ferred communication channel can then be provided.
Under the “one face of the brand” approach to support,
the development and management of customer forums,
FAQs, online help repositories, and online tutorials may
cross internal departments and divisions. As discussed
earlier, this increase in internal collaboration results in KEY PLATFORM CONSIDERATIONS FOR
a more agile retail organization, one where the customer CUSTOMER SERVICE
is the focal center of collaboration efforts.
The fifth action item above is key to ensuring your people
CREATING A RETAIL CUSTOMER SERVICE SCORECARD have the right technology as they begin the process of cre-
ating a seamless, “one face of the brand” support experi-
Your business has likely been measuring aspects of ence. To reduce the impact that constraints in IT resources
customer service. It may even have been scoring those may have on these initiatives, look for highly adaptable
measurements against industry standards and survey support platforms that can be rapidly implemented re-
data about your peers. Despite that, your current scoring
gardless of IT resource constraints.
processes are likely different across departments and
divisions. To start transforming disparate, disconnected Some attributes to consider are:
support silos into “one face of the brand” for seamless • SaaS and Cloud platforms, to enable rapid deployment
support and better outcomes, you need a new, compa- no matter what the legacy system environment may be.
ny-wide Retail Customer Cervice Scorecard. • Subscription-based licensing, to reduce up-front costs
THE FOLLOWING FIVE STEPS CAN HELP YOU DO EXACTLY THAT: and speed adoption throughout the business.
• Scalability that enables
“elastic customer service,”
Benchmark time to resolution across each current customer communication adapting to spikes in peak
vehicle, and set regular, future benchmarking efforts. demand seamlessly.
• Native connectivity across
Benchmark current support costs and project future pipeline from loyalty/referral all major customer commu-
business to identify the financial impact of “one face of the brand” improvements. nication vehicles.
• Ongoing research and
development to rapidly
Identify “communication vehicle gaps” where your customers gather but where
you don’t have a formal support mechanism; add these to your “one face of the adapt to future, unforesee-
brand” support plan. able changes to customer
communication vehicles.
Empower an internal “customer service excellence” team that owns cross-
department and cross-division collaboration on customer service.
FOOTNOTES
6 Andrews, Doreen C., and Karla N. Haworth, “Online
Assess current support platforms and tools and evaluate whether they are Customer Service Chat: Usability and Sociability
Issues,” Journal of Internet Marketing, March 2002,
flexible enough to adapt to rapid change. Vol. 2, No. 1. http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/
jim/0203-01.htm
3
4. CONCLUSION
The explosive proliferation of customer communication
vehicles, and their unforeseeable future transformations,
makes it ever more challenging to be wherever your
customers are, ready to support them while providing a
seamless brand experience. These unpredictable technolog-
ical changes, however, offer rare opportunities to increase
competitive advantage and profit from customer service.
By using technology to enable seamless cross-department
and cross-division collaboration on customer service,
retailers can transform a fragmented brand experience into
“one face of the brand” for customers. This will reduce first
response time, improve customer satisfaction, and increase
brand loyalty/referrals—all imperatives for retail brands
seeking a competitive advantage and increased revenue.
Is it important to reduce the risk that, due to support issues,
your best customers may switch to a competitor this year?
Is it imperative for future revenue to grow brand loyalty
and referrals? If so, it’s time to take action. Take steps now
to ensure seamless “one face of the brand” support; those
retailers who fail to act quickly will lose business to their
more agile competition.
4
5. ABOUT A
BEST-OF-BREED
SOLUTION
As we’ve seen, slow response and resolution times pose significant challenges for retail profits and
growth. In fact, they are the #1 leading indicators for poor customer satisfaction. To improve profits
through improved first response time, you need a cloud-based customer service platform, one that
invests in continuous innovation to enable “one face of the brand” support experiences no matter
what the future brings. One example of such a platform is Zendesk.
Zendesk not only provides the platform and connectivity needed to rapidly enable “one face of the
brand” experiences, it offers an easy-to-use, radically fast interface. This will improve your agents’
productivity, allowing them to better focus on your customers. Further, with robust reporting and
analytics, Zendesk enables key metrics to bridge the gaps between departmental silos, helping your
teams work together to make workflow improvements and increase efficiencies across the board.
Zendesk is a leader in cloud-based customer service software. It has a proven record of scalability
and 99.9% uptime, which means companies like Groupon, Gilt Groupe, and ModCloth can rely on
Zendesk as a partner through growth and change. If you’re ready to increase retail profits by impro-
ving your customer service experience, consider adding Zendesk to your short-list for evaluation.
ZENDESK AT A GLANCE
• 20,000+ customers
• 68 million consumers served
• 140 countries
• 275,000+ tickets per day
• 100+ plug-and-play integrations
“Zendesk gives our support team a lot of freedom to operate in a way that best
serves our customers. The real benefit has been the immeasurable benefits–the
improved agent experience, greater transparency of information, simpler workflow
operations, and improved sense of agent ownership over customer issues.”
—GILT GROUPE