I rarely have time for random conversations while traveling as I’m either too focused on catching my flight or my head is buried in a report—except on my last trip. I had quite an interesting conversation on a flight to San Diego which started as a simple question, “How does product management fit into customer experience?” After all, isn’t customer experience championed by marketing and customer service departments?
Posts Tagged ‘customer experience’
Understanding the Product Management Customer Experience Puzzle
Monday, May 7th, 2012People Skills in Customer Experience
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012Memorable customer experiences are hinged on great customer-facing professionals (CFPs). People buy from people. Thus, the CFPs that bring true empathy and personality to interactions win. Research shows that seventy percent (70%) of customers left because of a lack of attention from front-line employees. The number one trait for CFPs is empathy. True empathy happens when CFPs are empowered with knowledge.
Journey of a CFO to Customer Experience Expert
Friday, March 30th, 2012At first glance many would assume that with a CFO background I wouldn’t have the right traits to be responsible for a customer experience management program. After all, customer experience is about people while finance is about numbers. Customer experience deals with emotions while finance involves facts. However, here I am today doing just that. I sit in front of customers and prospects weekly helping them answer the question, “I know it is right to invest in our customer experience, but how do I justify the economic value to my stakeholders?”
Field Notes
Thursday, March 29th, 2012As a product manager one of my favorite parts of the job is visiting customers and prospects. These past weeks I was doing just that—visiting several of our clients and prospects getting a firsthand look at how they’re beginning to leverage our solutions within their businesses environments, their challenges and some of their victories. I thought I’d share two of these with you as some of these challenges may very well be within the walls of your company.
Customer Experience as a Branding Strategy
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012With more emphasis on customer experience, many companies are asking how we leverage customer experience as the foundation for creating an effective brand strategy. Apple and Steve Jobs have proven that this is indeed possible and a viable tactic. To humanize our brands we must take a closer look at how we interact with customers and identify the necessary steps to truly connect with our customers.
Five Questions Every CEO Needs to Ask About Their Customer Experience
Monday, March 26th, 2012According to a 2011 Temkin report, “Only 3% of companies have reached the highest level of customer experience maturity, which Temkin calls a Customer-Centric Organization.” Despite this, many CEO’s across the globe are claiming that there companies are indeed customer-centric. This reminds me of the warning posted on my rearview mirror: “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are.” Perhaps as CEO’s we’re looking at the wrong metrics and the blind spot that’s apparent to our customers, eludes us.
Operationalize Insights to Drive Business
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012According to Annette Franz [@Annettefranz], “A key component of a VOC Initiative is getting the right feedback at the right time from the right customers. Then glean insights, create action plans, and drive it all back to the right departments and the right employees who take action at the right touch points at the right time.” This was the basis of a recent #CXO chat as we discussed, “Operationalize Insights to Drive Business” with guest Annette Franz, Seasoned Client Services (CX, VOC, SaaS) executive.
Customer Experience Motto for 2012
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Recently, I came across a great quote by Kerry Bodine of Forrester Research, Inc. where she said, “Companies need to start treating customer experience as a business discipline—not a bumper sticker.” It made me wonder if companies, as they start planning their strategy for 2012, are truly embracing what it means to build a customer-centric culture.
Working in the customer experience industry, weekly I meet with numerous Fortune 500 organizations. I am always surprised to hear comments like, “this year we are focusing on our customers first and foremost” or “we have just hired a new senior director to really lead our customer experience initiative.” For many of these companies, they are just starting to embark on the customer experience improvement journey. A 2011 study from the Temkin Group shows only 7% of companies think they are customer experience leaders while 61% of them want to be at the top in their industry in three years. The question I ask then is, “Why now?” Haven’t you always been concerned about your customers?
Leveraging Information Assets to Optimize Customer Value
Monday, November 21st, 2011When asked to identify the greatest barriers to improving multichannel customer experience, “Thirty-four percent of respondents identified difficulty unifying different sources of customer data.” This would indeed be a barrier as understanding your customers’ needs is intrinsic to delivering an exceptional customer experience. To understand the customer, organizations must take each morsel of information left at touch-points across the organization and weave them together to create the customer’s story. The need for information optimization and big data applications then becomes vital. I had the honor of being in the hot seat as we explored this topic at one of our tweet chats. Here is a glimpse into our discussion:
