Articles & Information
Creating a Successful CX program
Companies who are successful at having a lasting impact on their customer experience put into place a formal Customer Experience Management program. As with any vital business initiative, there are a several core components to a CEM program which must be executed across the organization.
What is the role of managers in today's Customer Experience Program?
When thinking about the various roles within a customer experience (CX) program, employees, especially those who interact with customers on frequent basis, come to mind. We also think about the role that executive leaders play, but often one key group that is left out of the plans for companies CX programs are managers!
Focusing on customer experience is no longer optional
Ready or not, the customer experience (CX) game is on. No matter what size or industry you may play in, you are now competing based on the experience you provide to your customers.
Mark Hurd on the modern connected customer experience
Long gone are the days in which cost was the sole driving factor for purchasing decisions. Oracle research shows that 86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience.
Customer Experience is the new brand
The race to own customer experience is on! Companies are recognizing the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out.
Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer
Empowered customers are disrupting every industry; competitive barriers like manufacturing strength, distribution power, and information mastery can’t save you. In this age of the customer, the only sustainable competitive advantage is knowledge of and engagement with customers. The successful companies will be customer-obsessed, like Best Buy, IBM, and Amazon.com.
Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers (Customer Effort Score)
How often do consumers cut companies loose because of terrible service? All the time. They exact revenge on airlines that lose their bags, cable providers whose technicians keep them waiting, cellular companies whose reps put them on permanent hold, and dry cleaners who don’t understand what “rush order” means.
Groups
CXPA
The Customer Experience Professional Association is an non-profit organization that supports the professional development of its members by sharing best practices and education, developing standards, offering networking opportunities, promoting the industry, and creating a better understanding of the discipline of Customer Experience.
CustomerThink
CustomerThink is a global online community of business leaders striving to create profitable customer-centric enterprises. Each month, the site serves 150,000 visitors from over 200 countries around the world.
Customer Experience Exchange
This is a LinkedIn group for senior level executives with a common interest in all things customer - customer experience, customer service, customer contact, customer insight and analytics, customer and client marketing, and sales.
Customer Experience Professionals
This LinkedIn group will allow professionals in the customer experience field to share best practices. Topics will include collecting customer feedback, measuring customer value, driving change at critical customer touchpoints, etc.
Net Promoter Community
This LinkedIn group members are united by the common conviction that delivering a great customer experience is the most profitable (and most ethical) way to grow.
Forbes
Customer Experience articles and postings on Forbes.
Harvard Business Review
Customer Experience articles and postings on Harvard Business Review.
Books
Answering the Ultimate Question
Fred Reichheld's 2006 book The Ultimate Question, that question being, "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?"-challenged the conventional wisdom of customer satisfaction programs. It coined the terms 'bad profits' and 'good profits' and pointed to a faster, much more accurate way of gauging customers' real loyalty to a company, introducing a quantitative measure (the Net Promoter Score) for establishing a baseline and effectively tracking changes going forward.
The Ultimate Question 2.0
In this updated and expanded edition, Reichheld, with Bain colleague Rob Markey, explains how practitioners have built Net Promoter into a full-fledged management system that drives extraordinary financial and competitive results.
I Love You More Than My Dog
Lots of businesses are respected, but only an elite few have passionate, loyal, vocal fans. The kind of customers who not only come back time and time again, but rave to friends, family, and even strangers. The kind who can drive explosive growth via e-mail, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Jeanne Bliss is an expert on what it takes to earn that kind of customer.
Flip the Funnel
If there's anything the recession of 2009 taught us, it was the importance of investing in our customers, but when was this any different? So says Joseph Jaffe, bestselling author of Life After the 30-Second Spot and Join the Conversation, and a leading expert and thought leader on new media and social media. In most businesses, it costs roughly five-to-ten times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and yet companies continue to disproportionately spend their budgets into the "wrong" end of the funnel – the mass media or awareness side.
Be Our Guest
Exceeding expectations rather than simply satisfying them is the cornerstone of the Disney approach to customer service. Disney Institute, which specializes in helping professionals see new possibilities through concepts not found in the typical workplace, is revealing even more of the business behind the magic of quality service. During the last twenty-five years, thousands of professionals from more than thirty-five countries and more than forty industries have attended business programs at Disney Institute and learned how to adapt the Disney approach for their own organizations.
Customer CEO
Customer CEO confronts the new market reality that customers choose which companies to do business with completely on their own terms. This effectively inverts the power, control, and direction of decision-making; to survive in this new landscape, organizations must quickly adapt. Customer CEO provides every size company with a roadmap of fresh ideas and easy to use tools, while exploring three-dozen companies that embrace the power of their customers. By reading this book, every leader can transform their business into a Customer CEO company.