customer Archives - Business Intelligence Info

Tag Archives: customer

5 Ways to Optimize B2B Customer Experiences

February 16, 2020 CRM News and Info

You just started your Software as a Service company. With hard work and dedication, you’ve created a solid product that solves the challenges your business-to-business customers face on a daily basis. With any new product, questions arise on how to get the most from it. Your customers want the best experience possible, and they turn to you to deliver that experience.

It’s easy enough for your first few customers. They all have your phone number — you’re a call or text message away to handle any and all problems. Then you get a few more customers — and more after that. Suddenly, you’re spending most of your day solving customer issues and less time building your company’s next great feature or product.

By now, it’s probably clear to you that you need some customer service experts. You’ll be building a SaaS customer service team and hiring agents to solve customer issues. As your team grows, with multiple support agents covering the same customer accounts, you’ll need a tool to streamline communications and keep agents updated on all customer data.

With the right technology and training, you can enable your support agents to tackle the biggest product challenges and provide consistent and excellent service to your customers.

Following are five ways you can empower your B2B customer service teams to deliver exceptional customer support experiences.

1. Solve Problems With Screen Sharing

To offer great customer support, you need to go where the customer lives. Both you and your B2B customers live in software, so it makes sense to use software to solve problems. Customer support teams equipped with the right software can make quick work of a long support queue.

The customer support software your teams use should back up your agents and offer ways to better resolve your customers’ issues. For B2B customers, visual support is especially useful. Pictures and video let your customer support agents show exactly where the problem lies and makes it easy to follow steps to resolve it.

Imagine your customer is having trouble using a back-end feature of your product. If your team had to explain it over the phone, think of how many steps that would takes: Click here, scroll there, look in the upper left corner. Wouldn’t it be much easier — and less time-consuming — to show your customer where to go and what to do?

B2B customer support software with screen sharing as a native feature solves plenty of pain points in real time for your customers. It simplifies their journeys from problem to solution. Your support teams complete tickets faster and with less frustration. Relying on the clarity that video and screen sharing can provide is a win-win.

2. Keep It Simple

Founders love to try to help every part of the business. They’re passionate about the products they’re building, and they want to explain as much as possible about how it works. That goes over well in new customer meetings and conference talks. It’s less helpful when customers are frustrated and need support.

Customer support presents an excellent opportunity for a founder to step back and let the team go to work. While a founder is well-versed in the tech speak relevant to the company’s product, that high-detail form of communication doesn’t translate well into closing customer tickets. Tech can get complicated, and your customers are looking for simple answers.

Empower your customer support teams to keep it simple. You’ve trained your agents well — now let them use their intellect to deliver great service for your product. The best hires on support teams can take the complex and boil it down to terms and steps that customers easily can follow.

Let’s say you have a customer who’s asking about how to activate the most recently debuted product feature. A founder excitedly might share the valuable technology operating in the back end to enable the feature and highlight its use cases.

A trained customer service agent would break down the issue itself and walk the customer through the activation process. By enabling support agents to keep it simple, founders can focus their time on building the next product feature. Customers get the specific answers they want while having a positive experience with the company.

3. Support Takes a Team

When you’re first building your product, it can feel like you’re a team of one. While sometimes that is the case, you can achieve greater results through collaborative team efforts. This is as true in customer support as it is in any other business function.

B2B customer support thrives on collaboration. Even if the answers your customers get are simple, arriving at those answers could take several complex steps. Having access to the right minds at the right times can create effective and memorable support experiences.

Perhaps a customer has a question about a highly technical part of your product. While your support agents are well-trained, they’re not equipped to answer a question with that level of detail. A great customer support software product can connect the agent to one of your engineers without needing to switch between technologies. Together, they can work out a solution and send it back to the customer in a matter of minutes.

To be successful, you need to create an environment of trust with your customer service agents. They should feel comfortable when they seek advice from specialists who can provide better answers to customer questions. A team-of-one mentality would have the agent trying to field every single answer. A collaborative environment instead encourages the agent to connect with fellow agents and other teams to lean on their expertise to solve problems.

Your support software should encourage collaboration. That kind of software includes resources that allow agents to share information quickly. If you can create channels for easy collaboration, then agents can jump right into them and solve even the most difficult customer challenges through teamwork.

4. Take an Omnichannel Approach

Your customers live everywhere online, and they expect you to be the same way. When they have questions for your support team, they’ll use all sorts of channels to make contact. It’s easy for agents to feel bombarded in short order without a system to maintain order.

Customers will come from everywhere with their questions: email, phone,live chat and more. Even in the digital age, phone calls are one of the most popular ways customers contact teams for help. Software built to manage omnichannel customer support approaches will enable your agents to answer customers quickly and decisively, no matter where they started.

An omnichannel approach lets your agents easily switch between channels and reply to customers where they are, not missing a beat or needing to ask them to repeat information. Solutions will need to be presented in different ways depending on the channel. Agents who can share solutions over the phone and through email with equal clarity will propel your success.

Customers won’t be waiting as long if they get the answers through their preferred channels. In addition, your agents will resolve issues faster and maximize their agility. When there’s slow traffic in the chat program but plenty of phone calls pouring in, agents can focus on the most active source and resolve issues effectively.

If you want to lessen the burden on your channels even more, then help the customer help themselves with self-service solutions. Oftentimes, customers can solve the problem on their own, given the right resources.

Developing an online database of guides to common problems can remove a lot of stress from service agents who must answer the same questions repeatedly. Video content is especially helpful, as customers can walk themselves through the solution before they ever reach out to customer support.

5. Always Follow Up

The job isn’t finished even after the customer service agent solves a customer’s issue. One benefit of working at a SaaS company is that with the right technology in place, customer service agents can see when and how customers interact with your software. Your teams are given insights into how your customers use your product, which creates opportunities to provide additional value through education and continued support.

For example, let’s say a customer service agent resolves a customer’s issue with a simple solution. The agent checks in after a while to find that the customer hasn’t logged back into the software to try out the solution. What can an agent do about that?

This is a great time for agents to follow up with the customer. If the customer still isn’t sure how to use the solution, the agent can share additional guidance or educational pieces, like a webinar about the topic. These additional touches can improve the customer relationship by showing your customers that you care about their success in using your product.

Use your customer support software to track and manage procedures to follow up. Ensure that your agents feel they can make that outreach to customers. Build and update a healthy database of support content that agents can plug into messages. Following up is a powerful method of demonstrating the value each customer brings to your company.

Reap the Rewards

When you’re starting out, SaaS customer support can seem difficult. It’s certainly a lot of information and traffic to manage. However, it doesn’t need to be a tough process.

Give your support agents the best software and keep solutions simple. Let them collaborate with other teams on solutions and talk to customers across all channels. Always check in after the support ticket is closed.

The right technology and training let your company’s customer service agents offer your customers easy and practical solutions to even the most complex issues. You can save customers valuable time and build meaningful relationships, winning loyal B2B customers in the long run.

Robert C. Johnson is the cofounder and CEO of
TeamSupport, a cloud-based, B2B software application built to help customer-facing support teams serve clients better through stronger collaboration, superior teamwork, and faster issue resolution. A seasoned executive and entrepreneur who has founded and invested in numerous software and high-tech companies, Robert’s industry experience as a business leader and a customer inspired him to create TeamSupport to give support teams the tools and best practices to enhance customer loyalty and positively impact product sales.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

Customer Retention Blooms Again

February 13, 2020 CRM News and Info

Brightback, a San Francisco-based company focused on customer retention for subscription businesses, recently published a report on customer churn and what more than 400 subscription companies say they’re doing about it.

Its findings are in line with many other sources I’ve been writing about recently, and the data deserves an examination.

First of all, we’re way past the point where subscription companies can expect to sign all of the new customers they need to replace those that, for various reasons, decide to end their relationships. In fact, it’s possible that time never existed, for the simple reason that attracting new customers is expensive compared to keeping those you have.

There’s no doubt that customer retention now has a place of primacy in most subscription vendors’ planning, though it’s anything but clear what the best approaches are. After all, different companies have different needs driven by products, customer bases and the like.

Owning the Problem

The interesting thing about Brightback’s report, though, is that retention — not new customer acquisition — is expected to drive the lion’s share of growth this year. That makes sense, because existing customers represent a fertile field for upselling and cross-selling.

Moreover, they represent an audience with a low cost of sale, since by definition an existing customer already understands a company’s product offerings and way of doing business, as well as how to come up to speed. So a sale to an existing customer can be more profitable than a sale to a new customer, which can cost more for sales and onboarding.

The indication from such data is that in many markets we’ve entered a zero-sum condition in which new customers come not from the uninitiated but from competitors. So, a vendor’s first job is to keep churn and attrition low, while its second job is to do what it can to steal customers from competitors. In fact, 62 percent of those surveyed rated customer retention a higher priority than customer acquisition.

Even a casual look at the data reveals that subscription vendors could be doing more to retain customers. For example, 96 percent of respondents said that customers canceled for reasons that could be finessed.

Perhaps that isn’t happening enough because vendors haven’t figured out the whole zero-sum angle. Also, no single department owns the churn problem, though 80 percent of B2C companies and 69 percent of B2B companies said they published churn target. No news on how many achieved it.

The respondents said that up to four different departments had some responsibility for churn, including customer success 27 percent, sales 20 percent, operations 18 percent, and marketing 17 percent.

Creative Engagement

Unfortunately, there’s little outside-the-box thinking happening, in my opinion. Seventeen-percent of companies facing churn responded with loyalty programs, better tracking of why the customer canceled (14 percent), creating or improving automated workflows (14 percent), and creating new channels to engage customers (11 percent).

Those actions take place in the rearview mirror and have little effect on keeping a customer in the stable. That’s especially true for the second most popular tactic of better tracking why customers cancel. What’s needed is churn prediction — but that idea captured only10 percent of the survey’s responses — and shifting from reactive to proactive churn management, which got a dismal 9 percent.

What’s most disconcerting is the turn to loyalty programs and the like. I wrote a book about loyalty a few years ago, and not much has changed. For the most part we still do it wrong. Loyalty programs are a form of discount, and while they may save a customer from churn, they also teach the customer how to obtain a good discount.

Even if the churn rate is acceptable in such cases, the profitability isn’t. Too often a company ends up with two classes of customer. One customer is in good standing and happy to pay the going rate for products and services. The other customer is more of a zombie hanging around the customer base half dead and not contributing adequately to the bottom line.

If a vendor is going to overcome churn and boost retention, it’s not going to happen through discounts and loyalty programs. It has to happen with engagement — getting into the customer’s face in an unobtrusive way to get a better sense of why customers stay and who is dissatisfied enough to leave, and doing it in enough time to execute a plan.

Yet fully half of the survey respondents said that discounts and personalized offers based on the reason for cancellation were their top approaches to averting churn.

My Two Bits

It’s time to take the next step and become proactive about churn. Anticipating churn and monitoring KPIs isn’t hard. Most companies in the survey said they had meetings to discuss churn at least quarterly if not more frequently. That’s a good start since you can’t deal with a problem you don’t know about.

Hanging onto customers ought to be easy, given the data we collect and the available tools. It would help to give the assignment to one department and for that department to take the job aggressively, but that also enters into another challenge.

Too often the sales group will see churn as a sales problem, and likewise all the others. It’s the story of the man with a hammer who sees the world’s problems as a nail to be pounded.

Customer success might be a good fit for the job, as by definition a customer that’s not successful will be first to cut losses come renewal time. This probably means giving a bigger budget to customer success, and there’s no telling if companies are on board with the idea.

Having a 90-day window is important for customer retention. Metrics that can spot a potential churn 90 days out used to be a tall order, but today it’s very doable. The great challenge is organizing and motivating the organization to deal with this very real threat. Although not enough has been done yet, according to the data, that appears to be changing.

Denis%20Pombriant Customer Retention Blooms Again
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

How to Quickly Grow Your Customer Base

February 3, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: < 1 minute

When you have a dated, inflexible system, it’s hard to quickly adapt to change and engage customers in the way that they prefer. This couldn’t be truer for Skipton Building Society, a member-owned mutual lending and savings organization in the U.K.

With customers asking for more digital interactions and because Skipton invests in itself for the long-term benefit of its members, it chose to work towards satisfying those changing needs. To help the company increase agility, adapt to market changes, and build unique new products to boost its customer base, Skipton implemented an API and integration platform with TIBCO.

For Skipton, this implementation resulted in 10 percent customer growth in less than six months, which was two years ahead of schedule. Now, the company has the infrastructure in place to provide the first retirement fund of its kind in the U.K.

The company also saw a number of benefits rooted in their newfound connectivity. Innovating to meet customer needs, Skipton uses APIs to create flexible standardized integrations to its banking services, which improved the company’s agility and ability to adapt. Skipton was also able to develop innovative new products, such as a mobile app, allowing customers to view their LISAs (similar to an IRA) from their phones.

Thanks to a robust API-led integration strategy, Skipton Building Society was able to develop its digital platform and respond to market opportunities, creating closer customer intimacy to gain new ones and retain current ones. By giving them the tools they need, like Skipton, your company can make happier, more devoted customers.

To learn more about how Skipton used integration and APIs to meet its customers’ growing digital needs, read the full story.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The TIBCO Blog

High Customer Satisfaction Led to Teradata’s Leadership Distinction in Q4 Big Data Warehouse Landscape Report by The Information Difference

January 30, 2020 BI News and Info

Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the industry’s only Pervasive Data Intelligence company, today announced it has been recognized with the highest technology score in the Big Data Warehouse Landscape Q4 2019 report by The Information Difference, issued Jan. 21, 2020. This year’s report marks the 9th time that Teradata has been included.

Five major vendors were evaluated in the report, which represents the market in multiple dimensions based on customer set, customer satisfaction, maturity of the technology, data warehouse revenue, size of partner ecosystem, geographic coverage and more. Teradata ranked highest in the technology dimension, compared to IBM, Magnitude, Microsoft and Oracle.

“A significant part of the ‘technology’ dimension scoring is assigned to customer satisfaction, as determined by a survey of vendor customers,” said Andy Hayler, Analyst at The Information Difference. “In this annual research cycle the vendor with the happiest customers was Teradata. Our congratulations to them. This certainly confirms what we regularly hear from Teradata customers about the Vantage platform, which is clearly leading the data warehouse market.”

“Customer satisfaction is the ultimate measure of a company’s success and we are delighted that our customers have once again put Teradata at the top of this ranking,” said Chris Twogood, SVP of Global Marketing at Teradata. “We built Vantage to help our customers move from analytics to answers with a cloud-forward platform that unifies analytics, data lakes and data warehouses. This report confirms that we are delivering on that promise.”

Teradata Vantage, the company’s flagship product, delivers a modern cloud architecture that enables companies to start small and elastically scale compute or storage as business needs increase. With support for low-cost object stores and seamless integration of analytic workloads, customers can deploy Vantage across public, multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments, paying only for what they use while leveraging 100% of their available data for analytic answers.

To learn more about this report visit: www.informationdifference.com

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Teradata United States

Customer Experience: How Data Empowers Exceptional CX

January 29, 2020 SAP

Tech Unknown | Episode 2 | Season 2

Featuring guests Stephanie Thum, Jeannie Walters, and Mortiz Zimmerman and host Tamara McCleary

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts|Stitcher|Google Play

Customer experience (CX) has always played a part in gaining and retaining customers. But businesses used to have other differentiators as well, from physical location to price of the product. Now, CX is the last best hope for businesses to build ongoing relationships with customers.

But what does customer experience really mean, both for customers who demand it and businesses who are trying to meet that demand? And how can businesses use their existing data to consistently exceed customer expectations?

That’s not an idle question. Eighty percent of CEOs believe they’re delivering great customer experience. But only 8% of consumers agree. That’s a sizable gap that we have to first acknowledge, then work to close.

In this episode, our customer experience journey goes from the howling void of the experience gap, to a high-octane race track, all the way to a bustling international airport. Tamara McCleary interviews CX experts Jeannie Walters, Stephanie Thum, and SAP’s Moritz Zimmerman to get at the heart of how businesses can improve their customer experience.

Listen to learn:

How data analysis can identify CX issues and opportunities throughout an organization
How businesses can make CX part of their philosophy of operation
How to turn a data-driven insight into a human-to-human customer experience

Interested in learning more? Found out how to Make Every Moment Matter.

About Our Guests:

Stephanie 150x150 Customer Experience: How Data Empowers Exceptional CX

Stephanie Thum, CCXP, is the founding principal at Practical CX. She is a consultant, public speaker, blogger, and panel presenter.

“You need cross-disciplinary teams of people, like a CX executive committee, to set up the strategy, to review data, to assign resources and make decisions…You need project teams to actually do things, not just look at the data, but actually do things.” Stephanie Thum

Jeannie Walters 150x150 Customer Experience: How Data Empowers Exceptional CX

Jeannie Walters, CCXP, is a global customer experience and patient experience keynote speaker, trainer, and workshop leader with over a decade of experience. She regularly publishes on the Experience Investigators blog.

“When we think about customer experience, we think of how human everybody is and how when we have a bad customer experience, we relate to that on such a core emotional level. And data actually helps us find those moments of emotion and react to them.” Jeannie Walters

Moritz Zimmermann 150x150 Customer Experience: How Data Empowers Exceptional CX

Moritz Zimmerman is the CTO of SAP Customer Experience, a thought leader, and blogger.

Did you miss our last episode?

Check out our previous episode with Ronald Van Loon and Richard Howells: The Secret Weapon For CX And More. Click here to listen.

Transcript:

Tamara: Welcome to Tech Unknown, a podcast to prepare your organization for the tech-centered future of business. I’m Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium.

Our big umbrella topic this season is data: Operational data from the inner workings of your business, plus experience data from the customer-facing side. When you can share this data across your organization — collect, process and analyze it — you can make operations more efficient, reduce costs, improve your customer service, and much, much more.

This time around we’re taking on a massive topic, one that affects every single business in any industry: Customer experience.

It’s hard to overstate just how powerful customer experience can be. It’s almost magic, the way a great experience can create value and… you know wait. speaking of experiences, allow me to show you instead of tell you. Come with me to my favorite restaurant… Sorry, Francoise. We’ll keep it down. This is a very swanky place, I just love it. The waiters are in tuxedos, and they treat you like royalty. The chandeliers are crystal, the tablecloths are linen, the plates fine china. There is even a live string quartet in the corner to set the perfect mood.

All of this ambiance does something magical: It adds value for the customer. The lighting, the music, the crisp white tablecloths and beautiful plating… these things don’t change the way the food tastes, but they all contribute to an unforgettable meal.

Of course, the quality of the food is part of the experience. The chef works a brilliant kind of magic in the kitchen. I, no amount of ambiance would keep customers coming if the food wasn’t deliciously satisfying to the pallet.

But at the heart of it, people pay a premium to dine at Le Canard because of how eating there makes them feel. And what’s more? They’re happy to do it. They leave satisfied, and not just because their bellies are full.

If that’s not enough to convince you, here’s Moritz Zimmerman, CTO of SAP Customer Experience, on why every modern business should be obsessed with CX.

Moritz: Experience is really the differentiator out there. We live in a world where, literally, anybody can get any kind of goods and services anywhere these days with the click of a button. So, that’s not a differentiator anymore. It used to be if you had a store in town, you could sell to this audience. But now, everybody can buy online, even if there’s no stores there.

So, it tends to be that there’s a dividing line between those companies that are doing well, that are on the winner side, and those that don’t, which is really, they deliver a fantastic experience. And you can see this in stock market performance. You can see this in customer satisfaction. You could see this like in all those kind of cases. And it’s really, that is becoming really the dividing line and the thing that matters. That’s what we call the experience economy, where really delivering a fantastic experience is the most important thing, actually, for companies now.

Tamara: Well, I’m convinced. Let’s go get some of that exceptional customer experience for OUR business! We can just pull into the drive-through of Customer Experience Mart, here….

[Static voice: Welcome to Customer Experience Mart, can I help you?]

Yes, I’ll take the ultra-grande CX combo, please, with extra positive reviews and super-sized customer loyalty. Does that come with a drink?

[Static voice: Uh, sorry, no, that’s extra.]

Well, THAT isn’t a great customer experience, is it?

[Static voice: Ummm… let me get my manager.]

Never mind. It’s clear there’s more to providing a great customer experience than just placing an order. But, like every business buzzword, CX seems to mean a lot of different things to different people, depending on who’s buying… and what’s being sold. Let’s start by breaking it down from the customer perspective and the business perspective. Here’s Jeannie Walters.

Jeannie: Hi, it’s Jeannie Walters. And I am the CEO of Experience Investigators. I’m also a keynote speaker, trainer, and workshop leader and a LinkedIn learning instructor for many customer experience courses.

CRM, customer relationship management, customer experience management tools, those are great. That is not customer experience. Customer experience is actually what the customer experiences. And so the only way to really understand that is to look at it from that customer perspective. So saying that you have a robust CRM program is not enough to say that you have a robust and really powerful customer experience for your customers.

Tamara: That makes sense for the customer side – but how do businesses go about driving great customer experience? Stephanie Thum says you can’t do it a la carte.

Stephanie: This is Stephanie Thum, I’m a certified customer experience professional. I’m the founder of a company called Practical CX. And I have about 15 years of experience as a practitioner and a consultant in the field and practice of customer experience.

Customer experience is a business discipline or it’s a way of doing things. It’s really a mindset. And it’s an approach that you interweave into the fabric of your company culture. And customer experience actually carries with it a range of competencies and skills that you need to operationalize into every corner of your business. That is to say, CX is not an add-on to your business.

Tamara: And there’s the problem. If we think of customer experience as this thing we can just graft onto the top of the business, we’re likely not delivering it as well as we think we are. That leaves businesses and customers on opposite sides of… The customer experience gap!

Moritz: I think 93% of company CEO’s, when you ask them, “Do you think your business is delivering a great experience?” they would say, “Hell yeah, of course.” Now, if you ask the customers on the other side, then only 8% would agree. So that’s this gap between self-perception and then all the perception from a customer’s perspective. And hence, that’s the experience gap where there’s a lot to improve, and listening to what your customers really want, and acting on that.

Tamara: So how do we get across the experience gap? If only we had… oh, I don’t know…. wings? Or at least an energy drink that makes you FEEL like you have wings?

Moritz: So, a great example is our customer, Red Bull. Most customers might know them from the energy drinks. But they’re also, now, a pretty big media company. They sponsor a lot of action sports, from all kinds of crazy things. You know, there was this one athlete that jumped from space down to the Earth that was filmed. They do crazy airline races, where airplanes fly under bridges. They do Formula 1, and many other extreme action sports as well. But they also have, for example, a lot of web properties, for example, online stores and so on. So, they use personalization to really get to an understanding of what I’m interested in as a consumer.

So I might be interested in airplanes flying under bridges, I might like Formula 1, but the guy jumping out of space, really not what I’m into. And then they use that to really understand my interest by my behavior of what I watch on their website, for example. And then they optimize the following experience, how they engage with me when it comes to invitations to events, when it comes to going to their merchandising store.

Which is important because nowadays, the screen we all use the most is the smallest screen we have, which is our phone. You don’t have that much real estate there and I don’t want to see 40 different things. I don’t have the time to click through all that. So if they can, like, literally optimize the experience to what I’m interested in right now, that can be really a good service to me and then make my experience more enjoyable.

Tamara: At the heart of it, then, it takes smart use of data to drive a great customer experience. It’s that combination of experience data and operational data, consolidated on a platform, to generate insight.

Moritz: Yeah. So, the O data, the operational data, has been around for a long, long time already. And then if you try to analyze that through this is intelligence and so on, and it’s always been about the “what.” You know, what was going on.

Tamara: For example, let’s say you have a fashion company and you’re seeing a spike in return rates for a specific product. That’s the operation side – you’re noticing a trend going above normal levels. But the big question, the WHY? That’s the experience.

Moritz: That’s the experience, that, “How was the experience?” And then maybe, this case, it turns out that customers didn’t like the fit. Maybe the product turned out to be a little bit smaller than you think with the regular sizing.

And if you correlate these two things, then you realize, “Okay, first of all, was this a one-off or did you see a pattern? Did it happen multiple times?” And then you can draw a conclusion from that, which is, you can then, for example, optimize your product description in your web store, and say, “Look, this product actually ends up on the smaller side in the fit. So that’s one example. And of course, it involves a lot of technology underneath. Like, for example, key learning to analyze the customer’s response, that, you know, there’s a fit issue, you know, correlating the data, is this an abnormal thing or is it just an exception? And then giving business users the tools to visualize that reaction on whether they’ve discovered something that’s worthwhile.

So building out a place like a customer data platform to collect that data and make sense of it, harmonize it, and then use it to drive a better experience, I think is a key strategy that we’re seeing, that enterprises are adopting these days.

Tamara: Of course, the final piece here is not just identifying a problem or opportunity. Technology is incredibly good at helping you spot these intervention points, like Moritz says. But the data isn’t going to create the experience all by itself. That’s why we have to talk about the process and the people involved, too. Here’s Stephanie again:

Stephanie: To really win in the experience economy, specifically, I recommend customer experience governance. Governance is not sexy. It’s really hard work. It demands a rhythm and cadence to be successful. You need cross-disciplinary teams of people, like a CX executive committee, to set up the strategy, to review data, to assign resources, and make decisions. And you need an operations review committee, for example, as part of your governance structure to review data and ensure that you’re doing what you need to do to identify the root causes of some of the problems that the data may be showing you that you’re having. You need project teams to actually do things, not just look at the data, but actually do things.

Tamara: Actually doing the things! What a concept, right? But actually getting it done takes strong leadership. Jeannie, who do you think should be in charge of customer experience? Where are they on the org chart?

Jeannie: I like to think of a fictional creature, like a wizard.

No. Really, it has to come from the top, and I know that’s such a cliché answer, but it’s so true. The CEO and the C-level has to believe in this as just a way of doing business. Because if you basically give somebody a crown and say, “You’re the king of CX in this organization,” but you give them no power, you give them no accountability, you don’t empower them to tell other groups what to do, then there’s no way they can actually lead CX. CX is not separate. It’s not finite. It’s something that should be woven through the entire organization DNA. And so the only way to do that is if you’re really living it at the top by both example and accountability.

Tamara: Okay, let’s bring it all together, then. When you have an organizational commitment to customer experience, AND the technology to collect and activate data, AND you’re ready to act on the insights you’re getting out of the data… what does it all look like when it really takes flight?

Here we are in the Philadelphia International Airport to talk about how one airline is driving better customer experience… yawn… woof, I could use a cup of coffee.

[Voice: Here you go!]

Thanks, what do I owe you?

[Voice: Free of charge, courtesy of JetBlue]

Well, thank you. Wait a minute…Moritz, what was that about?

Moritz: There’s this company called JetBlue Airlines in the U.S. And they measured customer feedback through qualitative surveys, but also through things like the promoter score. And they found that in the Philadelphia metro area, in their airports there, there was dissatisfaction on the passengers’ side … for early morning flights, that there were no offers around coffee or drinks. And that’s kinda like… when I want an early morning flight, the most important thing, other than making it on time to the plane, is where do I get a coffee? Yeah? It wakes me up. And so then, there was nothing open. Flights were just too early for shops to be open. So then they reacted on that.

Tamara: Okay, but how did they figure out that was the problem? I mean, besides coming down to the airport and seeing people yawning…

Moritz: They use Qualtrics for reaching out to their customers. Like getting sort of like their opinion on, and then basically localizing that with their operator. That’s the experience data, the X data, and then they correlate that with their operational data they have. Let’s say, the flight departure times, for example in this case, to make it very simple. And then realizing that, “We have an issue around early morning flights in that area.” And then you double-click on that, and figure out, “What can we do?”

They basically put out a small fence and, you know, handed out juice and coffee, and really drove a significant increase in customer satisfaction. It’s those little things, if you do it right, that really create loyalty on your customer base. And then no wonder that JetBlue is probably one of the airlines that U.S. travelers love the most.

Tamara: See that, to me, is a perfect example of a customer experience story. It started with collecting and observing data, but it ends with someone handing me a hot cup of coffee. All stories should end that way, by the way. But it’s a worthwhile reminder that customer experience can be data-driven without being robotic and impersonal. Do you not agree, Jeannie?

Jeannie: I think that when we talk about data, we often think about it as this hard, cold math-driven thing, and people kind of shy away from that. And when we think about customer experience, we think of how human everybody is, and how, when we have a bad customer experience, we relate to that on such a core emotional level. And data actually helps us find those moments of emotion and react to them. However, we have to actually know what we’re looking for. We have to understand our customers enough so that we can really apply what we learn from the data in the right moments on their journey. That’s where you can see the magic happen. That’s where, when you walk into a restaurant and they recognize you – even though you haven’t been there a while – but they know that on your reservation you said it was your anniversary, and they treat you really well. Those little moments, yes, that’s driven by data, but it’s fulfilled by humans, and we have to remember that.

Tamara:And that, to me, is the number one takeaway. If I made a movie trailer for customer experience, it might go something like this…

Driven by technology. Fueled by data. Powered by people. Coming soon to a leading business near you: Customer experience. By humans. For humans.

Modern businesses can’t rely on their geographical location, or a totally unique product, or even the lowest price to get customers to choose them. It all comes down to which business can provide the best experience.

Let’s go back to Le Canard Affame to bring it all home.

Le Canard doesn’t have happy hour specials and they don’t have the best prices. They don’t even try to compete on price. In fact, there are no prices on the menu! They don’t specialize in exotic or unusual food, either. No, what really sets Le Canard Affame above its competitors is good food paired with exceptional experiences

In fact, a recent survey from asked 15,000 people about customer experience. Over half said they would PAY MORE for a better experience. And 3/4ths said a good experience is key to developing brand loyalty.

In other words, when you use your X and O data to power consistently exceptional customer experience, you can make people feel respected, understood, seen and valued, and they’ll keep coming back. And more likely than not, they’ll bring some friends along.

Thanks for listening to Tech Unknown. You can find transcripts and more at The Digitalist, that’s digitalistmag.com. And make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Tamara McCleary, and until next time: Stay sharp, stay curious, and keep exploring the unknown.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Digitalist Magazine

6 Simple Steps to Improve Your B2B Customer Retention

January 23, 2020 CRM News and Info

By Robert C. Johnson

Jan 21, 2020 12:05 PM PT

The business-to-business buyer’s journey is often difficult and long. The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers, according to Gartner, each of them bringing information they independently gathered to share with the group before making a decision.

This information often opens the door for new suggestions, creating an even longer buying process. With sales teams putting in significant effort and work into securing each customer, companies should find ways to ensure they’re able to retain those customers after they sign.

One path is through a company’s customer support team. While improving your B2B customer support team can seem like a long-term process, it doesn’t need to be. No matter what stage your company is in, there are steps, both big and small, you can take that will have a measurable impact on the business.

Following are six changes companies can make to improve B2B customer support and help increase retention in a matter of weeks.

1. Schedule Recurring Follow-Ups With Your Customers

Not all of your customer interactions should revolve around solving a problem. Many businesses don’t think to check in with their customers on a regular basis, especially when things are going well.

Customers likely won’t have a positive impression of your company or product if they talk with you only when something is broken. To become a trusted partner, regular conversations are a must. Talk to customers about your business relationship, as well as your own goals and plans as a company, and how you can be a good partner to them as they try to navigate and grow within their own industry.

Regular checks-in with customers can be a good opportunity for customer support and customer success to work together. Because both teams are responsible for managing the customer relationship post-sale, they often need much of the same information about a customer to maintain the relationship.

For example, a regular call creates a natural opportunity to bring up and discuss potential problems before they cause major issues, both on your end and for the customer. Both customer support and success teams benefit from these conversations, because it gives both the opportunity to proactively adjust their approaches to the customer.

They can make adjustments based on regular feedback rather than relying on developing a relationship based on navigating specific, potentially urgent problems. By caring for the customer beyond reacting to their issues, you can strengthen the relationship, turning your customer into a partner willing to stand by and advocate for your product and your team.

2. Add ‘Contact Us’ to Every Site Page and Outbound Email

Your support team needs to be accessible in as many places as possible. Many companies include a “contact us” link on their main homepage and a few other major pages, but they don’t include information on landing pages or other content, meaning a user who may be on deeper pages has to navigate around the site just to find contact information.

Now imagine this user is one of your customers. A person who can’t find out quickly and easily how to contact your team will be less likely to reach out, and your support team will be left completely unaware that your customer may have a problem.

You don’t want a customer thinking you can’t or won’t solve their issues, so your contact information must be accessible in as many places as possible. Every page must have a “contact us” link, and every email should have a signature with the same option.

Even non-support professionals should have this information, allowing your customers (and maybe even a few future customers) easy access to your support team. With just a few clicks, your team will be available to customers needing answers, giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and capability to solve their problems.

3. Customize Responses to Ticket Submissions

It may seem hard to believe, but some businesses still don’t send confirmation emails when they receive a ticket from a customer. Ticket confirmation should include information that lets your customer know what to expect from your customer support team.

These automated responses can be built to include a wide variety of custom information, allowing you to include your company’s logo and even details about your agent. By sharing the name of your agent and a brief message, the response will have a noticeable impact on your customer, who then will know an agent has been assigned to take ownership of their problem.

The message can be as simple as, “Hi John, my name is Jane and I’ve seen your ticket. I’m reviewing it and will follow up with you soon.”

A ticket confirmation message is a must-have for any customer support team, as it lets your customer know at the very least that you’ve received their message. Even if you don’t have the time or expertise to set up a detailed and customized automated response, a simple response acknowledging that your team has received a request will ensure your customer doesn’t feel ignored.

4. Examine Customer Indicators to Better Address Inquiries

Support interactions with a customer who is satisfied with your product and customer support overall should be managed differently than for a customer who may be frustrated with the overall experience.

To ensure that it does what it can to retain existing customers, your customer support team needs software that can help identify which customers are happy and which may be in danger of switching to a competitor.

The right software should be able to analyze the sentiment of your customers’ messages, measuring overall customer distress and aiding your support team in crafting personalized communication with customers tailored to improve the customer relationship.

By understanding your customers’ level of happiness, you can leave them feeling better about each interaction with customer support and confident you care about issues they may have.

Beyond sentiment, your support team should monitor how often your customers use your product. A customer who isn’t using your product as often as other customers could be about to move on to another solution.

This can be a good indicator. You can alert your success team of low product usage, informing them they need to reach out and ask if there’s anything the customer expects from the product or team but isn’t getting. Equipped with this information, you can reduce customer churn and improve your customer’s overall happiness with your product.

5. Provide Customers With Immediate, Self-Service Content

More than ever, customers will try to solve an issue themselves before reaching out to the customer support team. You should offer self-service resources to your customers, giving them access to common fixes and tutorials so they can save their own time and your team’s time by quickly troubleshooting on their own.

This content needs to be updated regularly so customers trust it and it provides them with updates on new solutions and fixes. If the information is stagnant, it will reflect poorly on your support team.

A simple tactic is to develop self-service updates alongside regular product updates, and allow customers to sign up for alerts when the self-service portal is updated. There are resources that can assist in notifying customers when new content goes live.

Your portal should include contact information on every page. A customer who can’t find information should always be one click away from contacting your support team. If a customer reaches out from the portal trying to address a problem for which there’s already an answer, it could be a sign the solution either no longer works or isn’t easy to find, and your team might need to update the process for locating or utilizing the information.

6. Include a Personal Touch

Not all interactions with customers should be via email or over the phone. A thank you note or small gift such as a swag bag with branded items can indicate to your customer you value their business and care about maintaining a positive relationship.

It may not seem like much, but to your customer it can serve as a memorable moment in the long run when assessing whether to continue a relationship with your company. However, it’s important to know what’s appropriate for your customer’s industry. Some industries and companies aren’t able to accept gifts, so doing a little bit of research before sending anything can help you decide between writing a note or sending a gift.

Your customers will be happier when you take small steps to check in with them and make your customer support department more accessible. When you prove to them the value of your solution and service together, they will be more likely to renew their contracts because they see you as an indispensable partner rather than a plug-and-play vendor.

While the above tips can’t replace the need for properly equipping your support team with the right B2B support solution, they can help your team take the next step with customers.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

How One Airline Won Customer Loyalty with an API-First Strategy

January 22, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Maintaining customer loyalty in the travel industry is no easy feat. There are so many factors and variables on the customer journey, many of which are out of an airline’s control. So how is Air France-KLM working toward accomplishing its goal of becoming the most customer-centric airline group in Europe?

Air France-KLM knew it had to find a way to address those variables, making every step of the journey less stressful. To do this, the airline implemented an API-led strategy that enabled agile change in order to move faster than their competition, and their customer’s expectations. The airline group connected every step of a customer’s travel journey using APIs, making any and all relevant information available in one central app, and in real-time.

Air France-KLM is now able to deliver new digital services such as flight change recommendations, seat upgrades, and partner inventory more quickly, with one update reaching the entire ecosystem of connected channels. Customers, partners, and the airline group all have benefitted from the API-first strategy. For example, the group relies on its loyalty programs to retain customers, and APIs make it easier for Air France-KLM as well as its SkyTeam partners, such as hotels and transportation services, to provide the personalized experiences loyal customers expect.

This API-led strategy has proved successful, with Air France-KLM’s Net Promoter Score increasing by 20% since they partnered with TIBCO. To learn more about Air France-KLM’s journey to becoming the most customer-centric airline in Europe, read the full case study.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The TIBCO Blog

CRM and customer-centricity are code words for customer engagement and customer experience

January 22, 2020 CRM News and Info

While I labor mightily over the Watchlist submissions (with a few surprises so far — more than last year), I am continuing to keep you informed with weekly guest posts from prominent thinkers in multiple venues. This week, another really insightful one from one of my favorite world-class analysts, thought leaders, and friends: Brian Solis.

Brian dropped a piece on us a couple weeks ago on voice in general and Einstein Voice in particular. This week, he addresses a fundamental transformation that is going on in the world of business and customers — engagement and experience dominating and how to address it with Salesforce 360 Truth as a lynchpin of his discussion.

So, Mr. Solis, take it away!

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, we’re really not customer centric, we just say it because everyone else does,” said no credible executive ever.

What does customer-centricity even mean today? Is it a state? Is it an intention? Is it plain old marketing? Putting the customer at the center of any business has been aspirational to date, an evolving pursuit of IT, sales/commerce, marketing, and service. But along the way, existing organizational models, lines of business, and systems struggled to collaborate. Add to that, the continuous clash between legacy and emerging technologies made the physical acts of placing the customer at the center of the business onerous and even elusive.

Heading into a new decade, however, businesses are now gaining access to incredible arrays of innovative technologies to accelerate growth and transformation. CRM is still one of the most important keys to customer-centricity. And still, even with strides in innovation, CRM faces some of its most relentless hurdles. It’s incredibly difficult to be customer-centric if you’re not actually centered around the customer. Business and data silos, incomplete or duplicate customer data records, incongruent touchpoints, disconnected apps, and incompatible systems and services — and, to be honest, a lack of unified leadership driving toward strategic integration — remain as common issues that require prioritization and escalation.

The Quest for a 360 View of Customers

Let’s remember that CRM stands for customer relationship management. This is about optimizing relationships and using advancing technology to get closer to customers. The question is, what kind of relationship do you want to have with your customers? The answer starts with knowing the customer, defining the experience you wish to deliver and then building an architecture for meaningful engagement.

Organizations need a 360 view of customers to get to their truth. And this “360 view,” too, has been a long sought after “Holy Grail” in its own right. But to get there requires more than technology and data.

Enterprise vendors, which help business customers modernize operational models, as well as infrastructure, and executive mindsets to organize around integrated customer data and insights, will ultimately create a new blueprint for customer-centricity.

In my research over the years, I’ve learned that the pursuit of customer-centricity was a leading driver for digital transformation. And at the heart of all this is customer experience (CX). In fact, year over year, I found that a majority of digital transformation initiatives were focused on CX. Companies that prioritized customer experience investments evolved much faster across what I defined as “The Six Stages of Digital Transformation.”

The New Blueprint for 360 Customer Views and Unified Customer Experiences

As a digital analyst, I try to keep up with all of the technology advancements from leading vendors pushing forward cloud, AI, voice, real-time and predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, data integration, 5G, cloud migration, et al. Every day, it seems that CRM, BPM, and ERP platforms are only becoming more and more awesome. But also, as someone who interviews business executives as part of ongoing research efforts, I also hear the very human struggles trying to also keep up with everything while leading difficult modernization and change management initiatives within.

This is why vendors need to apply customer-centricity to their go-to-market initiatives. Perhaps it’s a shift in enterprise sales and marketing from B2B to B2B2C or maybe just P2P (people to people.) We need to complement conversations about innovation and capabilities and platforms with empathy that takes into account very real challenges within the enterprise and also the very real challenges their customers face traversing today’s customer journeys.

Maybe it’s time we humanize the CRM and CX lexicon. (Paul note: Sorry to interrupt. I am behind this 1,000%.)

When we talk about CRM, what we’re really talking about is technology that allows enterprise customers to facilitate more meaningful, productive, and loyalty-building customer engagement. When we talk about customer-centricity, we really need to emphasize efforts around unified customer experience. Actually, we need to call attention more directly to the “customer’s experience.” Adding that “‘s” changes the dynamic of planning and strategy toward customer-centric systems thinking, holistic systems of engagement, and operational innovation.

This is important because customer experience is defined by the sum of all engagements a customer has with your business. Every touchpoint counts. Anything that isn’t helping customers toward their standard of experience may, in fact, be taking away from the experience you’re aiming to deliver.

When it comes to CRM or any enterprise technology for that matter, engagement and experiences must be humanized for executive decision-makers as well as how platforms help them deliver the integrated experiences customers seek.

Rapid Advancements in CRM Technology and User-Centered Narratives Will Help Enterprise Customers Adapt and Innovate

Leading enterprise vendors such as Zoho, Pega, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, and more, are starting to make strides on this front. In my work with each vendor, I’ll start to explore this topic of CRM to CX evolution in more detail over time.

One vendor that recently caught my attention was Salesforce through its recent announcement of Customer 360 Truth. Originally announced at Dreamforce 19, I didn’t get a chance to really process the news and its approach until now. It was this Salesforce hosted Q&A with Patrick Stokes, executive vice president of platform shared services at Salesforce, that really impressed me. In it, he explains how Salesforce views the integration of sales, service, marketing, commerce, and communities as well as third-party and legacy systems as a single source of “truth.” But it was his transparency in explaining the opportunity and the challenges facing the harnessing of customer truth, that hit home.

Stokes explained, “Seeking a single source of truth for each customer isn’t a new idea, but it’s been difficult to achieve. Buying a car, or even selling a CRM solution as we do, can involve hundreds of touchpoints across a variety of systems that need to be tracked and managed. Ultimately, you want to have a holistic graph of past and present customer engagement so you can better serve the customer and predict future needs.”

It’s not just Salesforce solving for this. The difficulties in achieving a 360 customer view explained earlier in this article is what every company faces and what every vendor, and also enterprise digital transformations, are striving to answer.

I also appreciated Stokes’ expanded perspective beyond technology and technical hurdles that made the conversation much more relatable.

“You can’t up-level customer experiences if you can’t overcome organizational barriers that prevent deeper integration.” he continued. “When you have a more customer-centric culture, those barriers tend to break down.”

Customer 360 Truth Aims to Unite Disparate Data for a 360 Customer View

Enterprise Software

We are finally arriving at the moment when CRM technology and data can power integrated and value-added customer engagement and experiences. According to Salesforce research, the demand is certainly there, “70 percent of customers say they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints.” That number will only go higher as customers start to realize the fruits of next-generation CRM solutions.

Customer 360 Truth introduces a new set of data and identity capabilities. It promises the ability for companies to connect, authenticate, and govern customer data and identity across the Salesforce platform to build “a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships.”

Customer 360 Truth as a service is divided into four parts (per Salesforce’s press release):

Customer 360 Data Manager: Delivers the ability to access, connect and resolve a customer’s data across Salesforce and other systems, using a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer.

Salesforce Identity for Customers: Removes friction from the login experience and enables a single, authenticated and secure relationship between a customer and all of a company’s websites, e-commerce stores, mobile apps, and connected products.

Customer 360 Audiences: Builds unified customer profiles across known data such as email addresses and first-party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs. It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn.

Privacy and Data Governance: Enables companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce.

Additionally, Customer 360 Truth is powered by the Cloud Information Model (CIM), enabled by Mulesoft’s open-source modeling technology. CIM is an open-source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud apps.

As Stokes described it, “…When you are connecting data sources to Customer 360, you are mapping data from the source to a canonical data model, CIM. The Customer 360 source of truth is not only the identity of who your customer is, but it is the corresponding keys for where that data lives within Salesforce.”

Salesforce admins can then establish connections between data sources to prepare, match, reconcile and update a customer profile.

“The reconciled profile across apps enable employees to pull up relevant data at the time of need from any connected system, such as when a service agent may need to pull a list of past purchases from an order system in order to better assist in solving a problem,” Stokes explained.

What’s important is that this approach connects data but leaves the information in the systems that manage it. Add to this, Salesforce’s recently upgraded Einstein platform (now with voice), businesses have access to AI-powered recommendations and insights to take immediate action.

Other approaches are still siloed and require incredible patchwork. And other promising solutions are creating separate AI-powered layers to process information from disparate systems (even sourcing from multiple vendors) in real-time and then feeding results back to business users across platforms.

With Salesforce, a map is created on top of the data in each cloud to know where it is, how to retrieve it in time of need and then use it to personalize a variety of experiences at the moment.

What I appreciate about Customer 360 Truth goes beyond its capabilities. It’s also how Salesforce is communicating to customers that it’s going after root problems to deliver what their customers ultimately want, more personalized, integrated experiences. In doing so, Salesforce is also walking the walk by delivering a more human, relatable customer experience for businesses, which helps them deliver better experiences to their customers.

The evolution of CRM, after all of these years, is finally making customer-centricity a reality. The ability to place the customer (and their data) at the center of “their experience” and empower businesses to deliver more personal engagement, integrated journeys, and better outcomes is what adds up to memorable and sought-after customer experiences. And this is just the beginning of a new genre of experience innovation (and market narratives). When human-centered innovation and market conversations win, the customer and the customer’s customer also win.

Artificial Intelligence

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

ZDNet | crm RSS

3 Ways a Digital Business Can Get Customer Experience Right

January 20, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: 3 mins 30 sec.

There is a secret to success shared by top digital businesses today, and it has to do with providing a positive customer experience. Happy customers are loyal customers, and loyal customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. But what about those companies that go above and beyond to provide an unmatched customer experience? What is their secret to success?

Read about three digital businesses that are thriving due to the customer experience they provide and to get a glimpse of their common secret to success.

Grupo Xcaret

Grupo Xcaret is a family and environmentally-friendly all-inclusive resort made up of theme parks, hotels, and restaurants. The company takes a holistic approach in providing great customer experiences by creating an integrated ecosystem behind the scenes.

With the all-inclusive approach, visitors can pay for their stay all at once, then move freely throughout the various parks and accommodations without having to stop to pay, weigh decisions on additional spending for food or entry fees, or be held up in unnecessary entrance lines. Their secret to success is….a data-sharing ecosystem makes this all possible; it connects Xcaret’s lodging, restaurant, and park application systems together, combining data to better serve its customers. By analyzing the data collected and predicting next steps, Grupo Xcaret provides its visitors timely, personalized offers that let them know their experience is important to the company.

Caesars Entertainment

Also in the business of entertaining, Caesars Entertainment knows how to provide a great customer experience. But what is their secret to success? Caesars has created advanced engagement models to give each customer a personalized experience, from check-in to restaurant and show deals, to suggestions for making the most of their time on the casino floor. This is possible because they store all of their data in a shared cloud, giving 360-degree access to customers on every Caesars property.

Aeroporti di Roma

Whether you’re heading to Mexico for an all-inclusive family vacation or jet-setting to Vegas or Dubai for a more adults-only adventure, those leaving from Rome’s Aeroporti di Roma will receive a premier customer experience as soon as they reach the airport.

Aeroporti di Roma found its secret to success by integrating its data ecosystem to improve the traveling experience for flyers. From flight reservations to shopping in the terminal to boarding the plane, data is captured and analyzed, giving the airport a holistic view of its passengers. Heat maps detect passenger flow and help the airport streamline the journey from check-in to boarding based on data patterns.

A Data Sharing Ecosystem: The Secret to Great Customer Experiences

Have you figured it out yet? The secret to customer experience success is through data sharing. It allows digital businesses to personalize each individual’s visit and unveils a more thorough understanding of customer preferences. It also increases cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

All three of the companies mentioned rely on TIBCO to integrate their systems. To learn more about each business’s strategy, check out their case studies on our Customers’ page.

Connecting an enterprise is easier said than done, however. Integrating previously siloed data, sometimes bringing in outside data from partners or even rivals, requires careful consideration and coordination. But the end result helps digital businesses deliver an experience that only looks effortless to the customer.

For more on the importance of customer experience, specifically around airport strategies, read this piece by TIBCO exec/SVP Erich Gerber. If you’re interested in seeing how TIBCO can help you build a connected customer journey, learn more here.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The TIBCO Blog

Designing a Winning E-Commerce Customer Experience

January 14, 2020 CRM News and Info

In 2020, an optimized digital customer experience can tip the balance toward gaining a purchase instead of losing a customer. Excellent CX has transitioned firmly from something nice to have to a business requirement.

No matter how good a product or service is, the e-commerce Web and mobile design surrounding it will play a key role in maintaining engagement and ensuring consumers complete their shopping journey. Even the slightest friction, such as poor load speeds, can drive users away from a site, resulting in an immediate lost sale.

In fact, research shows that “53 percent of mobile site visitors
leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.”

E-commerce businesses can optimize their CX by implementing effective design and technology tips and tricks.

E-commerce design best practices alter over time due to shifts in consumer behavior, such as the population increasingly choosing mobile devices over desktop to shop. It often doesn’t matter how good your product or service offering is. If your site looks outdated, or if it is confusing to use from a consumer’s perspective, you’ll lose a sale.

Following are the top features and functionalities for creating an exceptional CX for online shoppers.

1. Dark Mode

Dark mode switches the background of a mobile operating system to black, reducing eye strain in some environments, enabling mobile devices to adjust better to ambient lighting conditions, and (since black pixels on a mobile phone are turned off) extending battery life.

Recently several social media platforms, including Twitter, released dark mode versions of their apps. This practice is expected to extend to e-commerce sites and applications in 2020.

The increase in customers who choose to shop via social media has amplified the practical application of dark mode for e-commerce retailers. When customers are redirected to an external site, dark mode functionality will improve the consistency and reduce friction.

2. Accessibility for All

Designing for accessibility helps e-commerce companies better serve shoppers with disabilities, and avoids lawsuits alleging that sites are not accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

To avoid implementing features that are difficult to use or incompatible with devices required by users with disabilities, designers must ensure that sites are following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

3. Smooth Navigation

Where does your site’s navigation menu button appear when it’s accessed from a mobile device? Typically, buttons appear at the top left- or right-hand corners of screens, to replicate desktop versions. How useful is that on a mobile device?

Instead, e-cCommerce sites are starting to position navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen to help ease frustrations and facilitate thumb use, putting the end user first. This makes sense, as 94 percent of smartphone users hold devices vertically, research indicates.

4. Minimalism and Simplicity

The “less is more” principle applies to e-commerce Web design, and many sites are moving away from intrusive design features such as pop-ups and widgets.

Sites with minimal design and a simplified shopping journey allow more white space, opting for relatively larger fonts, and focusing on simple navigation.

Too much content and functionality in an industry that is, by nature, image-led is offputting for users and may lead to cart abandonment.

5. Content-Centric Designs

A content-centric design provides information that shoppers need to discover new products or make purchases.

Consumers are now “the experts,” because they’re able to research products and services independently. Content-centric design enables this and, in turn, improves the user experience.

It’s useful to remember that 83 percent of online shoppers intend to do something other than make a purchase when visiting a brand’s website for the first time, according to an Episerver report.

To give your visitors what they want, fill your website with relevant educational content and offer interactive experiences to build a rapport with your audience. This tactic will help position your brand not only as a vendor that people buy from, but also as a company that really cares about creating a positive connection with shoppers, which ultimately helps you build brand loyalty and more sales.

6. Powerful Microinteractions

If you’re fully up to speed with a user-centric design, you may already be aware of the power of “microinteractions.” This term refers to small, subtle features on a website that grab audience attention.

Microinteractions are the finishing touches that add to the overall experience visitors get at a website. The idea is to help businesses that operate in crowded marketplaces to stand out.

They include items such as scrolling visuals, sound effects, confirmation messages, hover animations and transition animations. Another example of a microinteraction is enhancing the view of products, as when informative text is displayed when users hover over an item image.
Another is the use of animation to track checkout progression.

Microinteractions add to the overall experience visitors get at an e-commerce site and can be used strategically to push consumers to completing a sale.

As technology progresses, more microinteraction capabilities will be available to integrate with any e-commerce site. These features are not brand new, but they became popular in 2019 and are likely to gain more prominence in 2020.

7. Well-Timed Chatbots

Chatbots have come a long way since they were introduced. They once were seen as clunky, automated, soulless systems, but artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed that perception, and they now add a lot of value to sites.

When powered by industry-leading technology, chatbots can help enhance a consumer’s online experience with a brand, provide shopping assistance and answer questions, at any time, which makes them a winner for international e-commerce sites that attract visitors from all around the world in different time zones.

One caveat about chatbots: Use them with precision timing. For example, there’s no point in activating a chatbot when a user has just landed onto a page, as it can cause distraction.

8. Voice Purchases

More online shoppers are beginning to turn to voice for their e-commerce needs. In 2018, 12 percent of online shoppers used voice devices to research multiple times a month or more frequently, Episerver research suggests, and this figure grew to 22 percent in 2019.

When it comes to buying products and services by voice, 17 percent of online shoppers made multiple voice purchases a month in 2019. up from 11 percent in 2018.

A voice-enabled checkout process represents a growing opportunity for e-commerce businesses in 2020, especially for mobile devices. Enabling voice input will distinguish your site from the pack.

9. Personalized Privacy

While it’s clear that personalization provides benefits when it comes to customer experience, privacy now plays a more dominant role in shoppers’ buying decisions.

Proactively offering personalized privacy as part of your CX will build trust and transparency between your brand and your customers.

For example, send communications and content that educates consumers on how their information is used and stored.

10. Frictionless Checkout

Create frictionless checkout by implementing data and technology integrations that increase speed and convenience for customers.

To make checkouts “frictionless,” you must begin with your data — and this is even more important for e-commerce sites that operate on an international scale.

By having access to accurate international address data and offering multiple payment and currency options, you can streamline the checkout process for your users, and optimize checkout flows.

In addition, functionalities such as enabling guest checkout, simplifying form fills, and using predictive type-ahead technology that autocompletes an address as it is being typed can help ease data input and reduce errors.

Watch Sales Soar

By introducing the above functions on your e-commerce site you’ll improve your customers’ online experience.

That in turn will help to boost brand loyalty and trust, and have a positive impact on your overall sales.

Athar%20Naqi Designing a Winning E Commerce Customer Experience
Athar Naqi is head of strategic alliances at
Loqate, a location intelligence specialist.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

Tag Archives: customer

1. Solve Problems With Screen Sharing

2. Keep It Simple

3. Support Takes a Team

4. Take an Omnichannel Approach

5. Always Follow Up

Reap the Rewards

Owning the Problem

Creative Engagement

My Two Bits

Tech Unknown | Episode 2 | Season 2

Featuring guests Stephanie Thum, Jeannie Walters, and Mortiz Zimmerman and host Tamara McCleary

Listen to learn:

About Our Guests:

Did you miss our last episode?

Transcript:

1. Schedule Recurring Follow-Ups With Your Customers

2. Add ‘Contact Us’ to Every Site Page and Outbound Email

3. Customize Responses to Ticket Submissions

4. Examine Customer Indicators to Better Address Inquiries

5. Provide Customers With Immediate, Self-Service Content

6. Include a Personal Touch

The Quest for a 360 View of Customers

The New Blueprint for 360 Customer Views and Unified Customer Experiences

Rapid Advancements in CRM Technology and User-Centered Narratives Will Help Enterprise Customers Adapt and Innovate

Customer 360 Truth Aims to Unite Disparate Data for a 360 Customer View

Enterprise Software

Artificial Intelligence

Grupo Xcaret

Caesars Entertainment

Aeroporti di Roma

A Data Sharing Ecosystem: The Secret to Great Customer Experiences

1. Dark Mode

2. Accessibility for All

3. Smooth Navigation

4. Minimalism and Simplicity

5. Content-Centric Designs

6. Powerful Microinteractions

7. Well-Timed Chatbots

8. Voice Purchases

9. Personalized Privacy

10. Frictionless Checkout

Watch Sales Soar

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives