10/15/18
I really like avocado. Whenever I am trying to decide between two sandwiches at a restaurant, the one with avocado will almost always win. The other day, I was at the Stacked Pickle. I ordered their Turkey, bacon sandwich because I thought it came with avocado. When the sandwich was delivered, I asked the server about the missing avocado. He politely explained I had read the description incorrectly. The sandwich actually came with avocado-mayo. I didn’t have time to be disappointed, because he immediately asked if I would like a slice of avocado for my sandwich. I was impressed with...
08/09/18
Nowadays, when you call someone, you’re more likely to get their voicemail than a cheery voice saying “Hello.” Phone calls used to be the primary way of communicating with everyone from your best friend to your doctor. In recent years, they’ve become less and less common. Not only are people not talking on the phone, they’re not answering calls at all. Here are some of the reasons why. Disruptive and Time Consuming A phone call interrupts what you are doing, and whether you’re at work or at home, it’s distracting. A call can also be time consuming. You don’t know...
07/31/18
Online reviews have gained considerable popularity in the past decade. Sites like Yelp have built their entire business around consumer reviews. Reviews are also shown on Facebook business pages, Google reviews and Amazon product reviews among countless others. And the research shows that reviews are incredibly important for a business’s success. For businesses that sell products to consumers, a product with five reviews has a 270% greater purchase likelihood than a product with no reviews. For service-based businesses, increasing their Yelp rating by one star can lead to a 5-9% increase in revenue. But reviews aren’t just important for businesses,...
07/11/18
In recent years, the usage of chatbots has drastically increased. Bots now account for more internet traffic than humans do. By 2025, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion, an annual growth rate of 24.3%. Chatbots behave as little digital website assistants and can be used for a number of tasks. They are frequently used as a customer service tool, popping up in the corner of a website asking if you need assistance. They are also used as sales and marketing tools, personal assistants on a website, or as digital voice assistants (e.g. Alexa, Siri) Part of...
07/02/18
It has been 9 years since the release of the now-infamous song “United Breaks Guitars.” The protest song detailed the customer experience nightmare singer-songwriter Dave Carrol experienced after United Airlines broke his guitar during a flight and refused to compensate him for it. The accompanying music video, uploaded onto YouTube in July 2009, amassed more than 150,000 views in one day and resulted in a public relations nightmare for the airline. In an increasingly digital age, poor customer service experiences are often posted online, on review sites such as Yelp or on social media sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes,...
06/26/18
In 2010, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published a now-famous article titled “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.” In that article, HBR conducted a study on customer satisfaction and introduced us to the concept of customer effort. Customer Effort Score (CES) measures customer perceptions on how difficult (or easy) it is to do business with a company. How can companies use CES? Companies can measure CES in a few different ways. The most common way is a simple survey question asking customers to rate the ease of solving their issue on a scale of very difficult to very easy, like...
06/19/18
The need for businesses to provide personalized customer experiences is growing, with customer experience professionals citing it as the number one changing customer expectation. Emarsys defines personalization as the implementation of a strategy by which companies deliver individualized content to recipients through data collection, analysis, and the use of automation technology. In simpler terms, it is a marketing strategy that focuses on making content suited for an individual customer based on what they know about the customer through data collection. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used more and more to personalize customer experiences. AI is able to perform human-like tasks...
06/05/18
We know that it is six to seven times more costly to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. In addition, 40 percent of consumers stated that they would spend more money with a company that made improvements to the overall customer service experience. The key to retaining customers and your business is to create a culture of exceptional customer service. Think about customer service in two dimensions: procedural and personal. The procedural dimension relates to a company’s established processes used to deliver their products and/or services. The personal dimension relates to how employees interact with customers,...
05/25/18
My pharmacy sent me a text message to tell me I had a prescription ready for pick up. I was directed to respond with “YES” to complete the interaction. But, I had another question for the pharmacist and couldn’t use that SMS text to ask it. I still had to make a phone call. While the basic SMS messaging my pharmacy uses is helpful for them, it falls short of how I, as a customer, want to interact. I want an easy messaging channel I can use to interact with my pharmacist, or any other business, instead of calling...
05/01/18
I’ve flown several different airlines in the past few months. Most recently, I flew Southwest and was reminded how much I enjoy the flying with Southwest compared to other airlines. Southwest Company Culture Southwest has created a culture that is positive, fun and engaging for employees. Employees are happy and interact positively with customers. They are encouraged to be creative in the way they complete otherwise boring, repetitive tasks required by Federal regulations. One of my favorites was the flight attendant who asked, “Did anyone lose this?” Of course, we all looked up. The attendant was smiling and said, “Now...
