User research has become much more vital. Organizations now realize how valuable research is to understanding behaviors and needs of users and taking those insights and making informed decisions to drive customer value and corporate growth. Research must be organized and managed in such a way that it can be used to its fullest potential. [...]
When CX teams conduct customer and user research, they use everything in their tool kit to understand customers and this understanding informs on the decisions they make to improve customer experiences. Qualitative and quantitative research make up this understanding. There are two components to this research - desk, or secondary, research and primary research. Desk [...]
Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Drive Value in 2023. Before we dive into this year's trends, let's review the state of Customer Experience from last year. EPSON scanner image State of CX in 2022 2022 was all about deterioration of customer trust. There was a stat a few years ago that [...]
Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2022. As we normally do before we dive into this year's trends, we take a look at the state of Customer Experience last year. EPSON scanner image State of CX in 2021 2021 was about issues in the supply chain. The only thing [...]
Prior to social media and digital tools, it was a challenge to understand who the customer was and what they wanted to satisfy their needs. Even with all the social and digital tools to help us get close to customers, learn from and listen to them, and engage with them, we still are behind to [...]
Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2021. Before we dive into what's in store for this year, let's take a look at the state of Customer Experience. If we were at the beginning of 2020, no one could have predicted how upside-down, sideways, diagonal our lives would become at [...]
Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends for 2020 To Watch. This has become an annual event here at M4. But before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are with Customer Experience. The Current State of Customer Experience So, where are we with Customer Experience (CX)? The answer to the [...]
The 7th annual CX Day is on Tuesday, October 1, 2019. It's always an exciting time for me because it's when we celebrate customers, the customer experience (CX) profession, and each other. Last week, I was a guest on a twitter chat and I said just that, and we should treat every day as CX Day. [...]
I love this time of year. It's the time of year we reflect on the journey we've taken and the journey we've yet to take. It's also when we hear many prognostications on predictions and trends. So before I provide you with the key customer experience trends for 2019 - which has become an annual [...]
I had a wonderful time in October participating as ICMI's first guest on it's new show, First Friday Fireside Chat. You guessed it - the show is on the first Friday of each month on Facebook. The show covers all things customer service and beyond. We talked about customer experience (CX). I was asked about [...]
I had a boss years ago who had a fetish for change. He wanted to change things that in his mind weren't working. There's no problem with change. Change is good. It's good to clear out the old to make way for the new. In fact, this is an idiom that Steve Jobs used on [...]
Recently, my husband and I went to Amsterdam. We visit one new country every year. This year was the Netherlands. We immersed ourselves in the culture for three days. It was a delightful trip. We also visited the original Heineken brewery. While brewing operations are no longer at this plant, the tour was amazing. It [...]
The 6th annual CX Day is on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. CX Day, a Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) initiative, is celebrated across the world on the first Tuesday of October. The day is an opportunity to recognize the professionals and companies that make great CX happen. There are online events like webinars, twitter chats, and [...]
Until recently, getting a prospect’s attention was kind of a crapshoot. We had to depend on our own guesstimates of what the buyer wanted, buy analyst reports to get a general idea of the market and competition or rely on competitive and market intelligence from sales. Fast forward to today. We have a variety of [...]
Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been a hot topic ever since it was developed 15 years ago. Depending on what side of the fence you're on, you might or might not hold a lot of value in the metric. Recently I participated with some of my customer experience colleagues in a blog post discussion of [...]
While I write and speak about customer experience, I write and speak about diversity and inclusion, too. One thing is clear. Diversity and Inclusion is a business issue and it is linked to Employee Engagement. In fact, diversity and inclusion drive employee engagement. Let's look at some data points. The Numbers Have It Gender-diverse companies are [...]
I had a conversation with a colleague recently about customer trust and it got me to thinking about it. We are so focused on making the sale, reducing churn and growing the business that it seems customer trust is an after-thought. Yet, we must first develop relationships with customers and earn their trust for them [...]
Improving your customer experience (CX) requires more than just listening to your customers. You must understand your data and what is behind the numbers before you can take action to optimize the CX. The old management adage, you can't manage what you don't measure, applies very well here. In a 2016 study conducted by Forrester, [...]
2017 wasn't kind to Customer Experience. In a phrase, customer experience underachieved. In its Predictions 2018: A Year of Reckoning report, Forrester noted that based on data from its 2017 CX Index, customer experience had plateaued or declined for most industries and companies. It reasoned that while customer experience had some early wins, it wasn't [...]
I remember a host of a podcast I was the guest on late last year asking me how I could gauge what a great customer experience was. I said that the key to finding out how good your customer experience is is to ask your customers. We are now in an age where companies compete [...]
