The world feels like an increasingly unstable and dangerous place. Ever since the GFC knocked the wind out of the global economy in 2008, it’s been one thing after another.
It’s hard to believe it was only a year earlier that Apple had released its first iPhone. Back then, there was a real feeling of optimism around online technology. Aside from being a great way to keep in touch, we thought social media was a force for good. That’s hardly the case now. Instead of the enlightened era we anticipated, we ended up with online echo chambers, rigged elections and a cult of narcissism.
Adding to the feeling that things are getting progressively weirder is the rise of populism. Who would have thought a clown who once entertained us on reality tv would become leader of the free world?
To top it all off, we’re now on the brink of a global pandemic and associated economic collapse. What on earth will be next?
Here in South Africa we’re already in recession. Times are tough. Shopping malls are empty and retail is suffering.
So it came as a surprise when I stepped out to do some shopping last Sunday, only to to be confronted by appalling customer service.
It was 9:30 am. I was after a new pair of shoes. I was the only customer in the first store I entered. Despite this, the sales assistant barely acknowledged me, seemingly more interested in her phone. When I finally asked for help, all I got was a dirty look and a bad attitude. Naturally, I left.
I tried two more shops, but my experiences were much the same. Arriving home shoeless and irritated, I worried for the future of my local businesses.
According to SuperOffice, the number one reason customers leave a brand is poor service. A whopping 68% of people report this as their main reason for switching brands. This compares with 14% who leave due to dissatisfaction with a product.
Think about it and it makes perfect sense. When you feel like a brand doesn’t care about you, chances are you’ll leave, just like I did on Sunday.
The ramifications for businesses are serious. According to KPMG, the biggest predictor of a company’s future revenue is its ability to retain customers. In part, this is explained by the fact that companies are on average 4 to 5 times more successful selling to existing customers than new customers.
As economic conditions deteriorate, it’s worth considering the implications of losing customers through poor service.
For all the pain, one of the benefits of recession is to sort the wheat from the chaff. It’s like natural selection for businesses. Only the most competitive survive, leading to improved productivity when good times return.
In a modern economy, customer experience is everything. To remain competitive requires that you give great customer service at every interaction. If you’re not doing this, you should question not only your prospects for future growth, but whether you’ll even be around in a few years time.
Avoid these mistakes and more by seeking out expert help!
nlighten are the go-to experts to enhance your customer experiences. We offer an array of services to develop effective customer journeys and improve your CX strategy. To hear more about how we can help highlight your value to customers and enhance their experiences, contact us today!
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Articulating your value proposition
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Your value proposition is the reason why your customers and clients choose to do business with you or buy from you rather than your competitors. It is the value that your brand and services offer that other businesses cannot match.
Exposing your value is crucial in saturated markets and in your online spaces. Website visitors will decide within 15 seconds if they are going to hang around, and it is your value proposition that can keep them hooked. With that in mind, what does an effective value proposition look like?
Value propositions need to be clear for people to understand within the first moments of looking at your website or your customer touchpoints. Overall, they should answer the customer’s core question: why should I pick you? Here are some characteristics of the best value propositions:
Marketing departments can become frustrated when the company they are working for has not established their own value proposition. A missing value proposition, an unclear one or a lack of research can cause marketers to turn their attention to etching another mark in their desks as they get closer to the weekend. Here are three common mistakes that result in poor value propositions:
Just because you need to make customers aware of your value, you should not lie or stretch the truth. Propositions that state you are the best in the industry at what you do without
sufficient evidence will fall flat. Remember, just because you need to outshine your competitors doesn’t require you to be number one in the field. Innovation and value come in various ways.
Arguably the biggest issue with value propositions is they do not clearly communicate the additional value you offer over competitors. Set out the core differences without getting bogged
down in the details and making your proposition overly complex. These smaller details can be clearly communicated elsewhere.
You’ve sat around the boardroom table, enjoyed a buttery croissant and nodded and smiled to the new value proposition put forward – but did anyone bother testing it? Using A/B testing
and discovering what type of language makes conversions is just as important when coming up with a value proposition as when you test PPC ads.
Avoid these mistakes and more by seeking out expert help!
nlighten are the go-to experts to enhance your customer experiences. We offer an array of services to develop effective customer journeys and improve your CX strategy. To hear more about how we can help highlight your value to customers and enhance their experiences, contact us today!
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Setting Customer Expectations Correctly
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Around 80% of consumers rely on reviews to make a decision but will read fewer than ten reviews to make that decision. This means businesses can lose out based on a couple of negative comments, despite having an agglomeration of glowing endorsements. So, how can you make sure you are receiving only stellar reviews that win sales?
Of course, you could improve products and services by implementing previous clients’ feedback. But you can also set customer expectations correctly from the start.
Too many businesses apply effort, time and money into marketing campaigns without considering the customer experience. They overly focus on driving home brand messages, low prices, discounts and quality, without considering how these benefits play out in the bigger picture.
You can tell a potential customer that they are buying a product that does A, B and C, but when it only does A and B effectively, the customer has a negative experience and may leave a damaging review. This can develop into angry exchanges with employees and result in employee disengagement, a lack of productivity and even costly staff turnover.
By making sure what you offer is in line with what you provide, you can build trust with your consumers. This loyalty helps promote your brand and retain customers. Not to forget that fishing for new customers costs more and offers fewer financial rewards than keeping your current buyers happy.
With the importance of setting customer expectations apparent, here are three of the best customer experience strategies for you to embrace:
Customer journey mapping is working out what your customers experience when inquiring and buying from you. By mapping out their journey through your sales funnel, you can pinpoint weak areas, inconveniences and inefficient steps. Enhancing their experience early will allow you to set their expectations from the outset.
Stories of customers being led down the garden path are on every corner of the internet. Eye-watering service fees of R1300 for spaghetti is just one example and many businesses try to squeeze more from their customers without their knowledge. It is more beneficial to inform all customers about extra fees and what is not included in services from the start. Setting expectations with hidden information will only result in poor customer experiences.
Not only should your marketing be honest to inform clients and customers exactly what they are (and not) receiving from you, but you should go the extra mile to educate them about your offerings. This can be achieved by creating blogs, video content and infographics to complement your marketing material.
If you need help setting your customer expectations or to develop a CX strategy, speak to our friendly team at nlighten. We are a group of doers and thinkers, providing turnkey customer experience solutions to small and large businesses.
See what our own customers had to say about our work and get in touch with us soon!
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Data Rich, Insight Poor?
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Once upon a time, a young girl asked her mother why she cuts off the end of the chicken before cooking it. The mother replies, “because that’s what my mother used to do”. So, the young girl asked her grandmother why she cut off the end of the chicken before cooking it and her grandmother replies, “because my pot was too small”.
The moral of the story? What we do today does not always offer us value or meaning, and the same can be said when using data to analyse customer experiences.
Big data and analytics have enabled businesses to monitor their customers’ experiences and behaviours, which can then be used to inform decisions. Although businesses adopt these strategies, they are often implemented ineffectively with outdated methods, a lacking CX strategy or take second priority to hitting annual targets.
Just because big data allows us to analyse a wealth of stats and metrics, does not mean that we have to, or we should. Much of the data collected does not provide answers to pressing questions, offer business solutions, and it does not tell us what customers really experience when at your store or on your website.
For example, if you want to understand why customers are leaving your site after adding a product to their basket, you may wish to investigate shipping costs and your customer expectations prior to the online checkout. Maybe you didn’t articulate the cost of shipping early and set the customers’ expectations correctly? Thus, losing their trust and leaving you for a competitor site.
If this is the case, analysing data of shipping costs between your competitors may be more insightful than pouring efforts and data into generic questions, surveys and tests that you have always done. Just as marketing changes with the times, i.e. with social media, so does using data to your advantage.
Finding a starting question and trying to answer that question with data can often lead to another question – and another. Eventually you have obtained data that answers your pressing questions about customer thoughts and feelings, but how do you know which questions to start with?
One way that businesses are using data to understand customer experiences is by starting with customer journey mapping. This is the process of creating a visual representation of how customers use your website. When paired with data regarding website bounce rates, it can yield interesting questions about why customers do something at any stage of your site. Therefore, customer journey mapping can be used as a starting point to develop your initial questions.
nlighten are leaders in providing solutions to your CX strategy. Aside from offering customer journey mapping services, we are also on hand to train staff so they understand the framework and principles of being customer smart.
For information on any of our stellar services, get in touch with our professionals, soon!
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Empathy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
The First Industrial Revolution was all about steam trains and manufacturing, complemented by a second revolution made up of mass production, steel and electric. This was followed up with the self-explanatory digital revolution. And although we don’t have our hoverboards parked up outside just yet, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is on our doorstep.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has stemmed from the digital revolution, but they are not the same. Whereas the digital revolution developed technologies and IT products, the latest wave of change uses new technologies at a faster pace to disrupt the status quo.
Blockchains are changing the way we deal with finances, virtual reality will reform entertainment, smart cars may make driving licenses redundant and IoT devices are creating new ways of living. All of these developments in technology are disruptive – but should we be worried?
When those first steam trains were developed in the First Industrial Revolution, they made it easier for workers and products to move around. This helped many in the economy, but towns and villages were bypassed along train routes and their own smaller economies were destroyed.
Today, the Fourth Industrial Revolution appears to have the same lack of empathy for the wider community. Although disruptive technology presents an opportunity for a better world, there is also the chance that driverless cars could cause avoidable deaths, data hacks could be widespread, and low-skilled workers will be replaced by AI and tech.
The solution? Empathy.
Empathy is not a buzzword bashed around over cappuccinos in boardrooms at fintech startups and Silicon Valley headquarters. But it should be. Empathy is what is required to safeguard disruptive technologies from harming society, culture, and individuals.
If engineers and those in charge of creating these new technologies were to engage with people who have issues and fears from them, it is possible that disrupting the status quo can able done to create a better, healthier world – without disrupting peoples’ lives in the process.
Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. A classic moral argument that addresses this question in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is genetic modification. Medical experts are trying to work out the moral cut-off point themselves, so should they be empathetic and allow the general population to have the final say?
Lurking in the background of this subject like a smartphone app sucking your battery is the question: is all this realistic? After all, when corporate companies are racing to be the first to come up with new technology, their motivation revolves around profits and not society.
The truth is it should be customer experiences that matter. You may create a self-driving vehicle, but it is only empathy that will lead people to get inside the car and be comfortable in it. This is why businesses need to be aware of customer experiences and understand how empathy plays a role.
To learn more about this key subject at a crucial time, contact South Africa’s leading customer experience (CX) specialists.
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Thomas Cook’s Failure to Diversify
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
It can’t have escaped your notice that Thomas Cook – the UK’s oldest holiday company of 178 years trading – went into administration last weekend. Aside from the tens of thousands of passengers stranded on holiday in countries from Cuba to Croatia, thousands of jobs lost around the world, and the huge repatriation mission ahead, what has Thomas Cook’s demise left for us? As business analysts would tell us, there are certainly a few lessons for business owners – large and small – about business strategy and customer engagement within the tale of Thomas Cook’s collapse.
Although events seem to have progressed rapidly over the last few weeks, in reality the seeds of the crisis that brought down Thomas Cook were sown some 20 years ago. In fact, the company flirted with bankruptcy right back in 2011, which should have sounded a heavy warning bell for what was to come. A rescue package that was put into place at the time was so badly negotiated that it was thought that almost a quarter of the price of every holiday the ailing firm sold was directly routed to interest servicing. Whilst the package was enough to keep the company plodding along, add in a volatile industry and low margins and it proved too much of a burden for the business to bear.
Like many big brands, especially those who consider themselves as being originators of their industry, Thomas Cook largely traded on their legacy. However, seeing themselves as an immovable pillar of the industry could be taken in this case as arrogance, and this short-sightedness could prevent any business from thriving in a constantly changing market, with the failure to react to consumer-driven market changes playing a pivotal role in their business fortunes.
In Thomas Cook’s case, the consumer change that had the most effect on their customer retention was the movement from retail bookings to those made online. Online consumers could be considered savvier when it comes to getting a good deal, and could be more willing to abandon the first or the biggest in the market when there is a similar offer that comes in a fraction of the price from a lesser known business. The message is simple – consumers no longer care about what a business was. They care about what the business is right now – at the point where they make a decision to purchase.
Any business model that involves significant physical assets must make those assets pay, whether as brand enhancement or by providing an ROI that helps keep the business afloat. Thomas Cook’s investments into high street retail outlets, fleets of aircraft and hotels was a significant drain on their finances. These assets could far more easily have been subcontracted or replaced. Physical presence is usually only highly effective if a consumer needs to physically connect to the product on offer – to see, feel, and experience it. Although the need for physical presence could remain in some markets in order to market the brand in high profile locations, if Thomas Cook had acted to move their sales presence largely online, and rid themselves of some of the physical assets, replacing them with subcontractors where possible, this could have made the business more agile and able to respond as the market shifted.
Essentially, no matter how well-established and seemingly untouchable in the market a business is, they could still fall foul of a changing market. If a business fails to listen closely to what their customers want and do not adapt the business to evolving consumer habits, all they may have left is a sorry tale of what they once were.
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: How to stay relevant to your customers
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
The majority of companies that measure customer feedback do exactly that – they measure . Data for data’s sake doesn’t help anyone. It’s incredibly rare that organisations really get into the real nitty gritty of listening to their customers. Why? Businesses don’t like receiving bad news any more than individuals do.
In today’s competitive market, it goes without saying that high-level company leaders need to understand that meeting customer satisfaction needs is essential to the bottom line. Simple as it may seem, this is a complex issue – with many contributing elements – that has driven organisational psychologists to conduct extensive research on the various factors that impact on this goal.
Organisational psychology research makes use of scientific, statistics-based methods to identify what factors will lead to a company’s success. For nlighten’s clients, measuring customer satisfaction levels – and linking them to sales figures – becomes a primary point of focus.
A significant revelation linking employee behaviour to improved sales centres on customer satisfaction. Studies found that employees that go beyond what is expected of them – beyond company-defined performance expectations – tend to delight customers more, leading to marked increases in sales. It comes as no surprise that leadership behaviour (that of CEOs and Senior Management) had the strongest influence on an organisation’s “passion for service”.
Research findings show several common leadership behaviours that impact on proactive service performance. A participative leadership style encourages employee involvement in a company’s decision-making and emphasises the value of team contributions. Senior executives and line managers who micromanage less and empower their employees more by delegating responsibility to them – giving them more decision-making responsibility to complete their tasks – are more likely to nurture a passion for service excellence amongst their team.
A recent study within a major South African ITC organisation investigating line managers’ behaviours revealed that those who focussed on the need to attract and retain talented employees displayed an important set of behaviours that resulted in a profound mindset shift within the company.
In this case, the organisation’s CEO personally attended the Leadership Development Programme’s workshops and events – even participating in performance reviews. The message to all employees was that executive attitudes were focussed on excellence and employee development. By the same token, top management involvement in even the most menial of company activities, like service excellence programmes, can lead to improved levels of customer satisfaction.
Leader behaviours that focus on service quality include the ability to recognise and appreciate high-quality service, removing service delivery obstacles and setting clear customer satisfaction standards. When management support for customer experience excellence is abundant – employees are more likely to reflect that philosophy in their work – showing more customer-centric behaviours in the process.
In the end, leaders who rely too heavily on external service consultants or internal training departments to improve customer satisfaction levels without including themselves – are unlikely to develop teams with a proactive sense of service performance.
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Recording Voice of Customer (V0C) is Important, But Are You Listening?
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Customer Experience Masterclass: Get results by thinking like a customer experience pro – Invest a day in our value-packed interactive CX coaching. The quality of your customers’ experiences defines your success. | JHB – 9 October 2019
Before you can improve customer experience, it helps to understand what that experience actually is, and what your customer wants it to be. So, how do you find out? You need to be getting real feedback from your customers and translating what they say about you into needs. This is known as Voice of Customer research.
Voice of Customer (VoC) means exactly what it says – what your customer says about you. There are many VoC methodologies, and many ways to gather data, but very often these days businesses rely on technology to collect data in a standardised, easily comparable format. So, instead of meaning everything your customer thinks and feels about your brand and their experience of it, these days it often just means how they “rate” you.
After a customer service call, you will find you are often invited to take part in a survey. “Were you satisfied? Press 1 for yes and 2 for no. How do you rate your call today out of 5?”
After an online purchase or enquiry, you may find you are invited to take part in an online survey so we can improve our service to you. “How many stars do you give your experience?”
Do these standardised, contrived online or telephone surveys really give your business an accurate insight into what your customer thinks or what they have to say about you? Does your 3-star rating really give you any kind of actionable insights into how you could turn that 3 into a 5?
So often, large to medium businesses give themselves a pat on the back and think they’re at the cutting edge of customer service when they have a Voice of Customer programme. But so seldom does this programme achieve anything more than checking a box because they have to “do VoC”. It’s just data for data’s sake. Little to no substantive, valuable information is gleaned from your effort and expense.
The point of VoC is to listen to your customer, translate what they say into wants or needs, and then discover what the requirements are to meet those needs and turn those into business objectives. The aim of the game is to give your customer what they want, often before even they realise they want it.
At nlighten, we believe that to remain relevant you need to actually talk to and engage with your clients, not just record them.
Online or telephone surveys aren’t enough. Offering your customers a formulaic method to rate your business doesn’t give them a chance to share their voice with you. You need to invite welcome feedback at all stages of your customer journey, but often the richest sources of VoC data can be indirect.
The first source, though secondhand, is your frontline staff. We have said before that businesses so often neglect to gather feedback from the personnel who are customer-facing – remember my frustrating experience at the Lancome counter a few months ago?
The people who are speaking with your customers every day, who receive firsthand soundbites from a spectrum of customers, whether it’s frustration, gratitude, praise, indifference or rage – your staff face the brunt of it all. They should be recording noteworthy interactions.
In the B2C world, an often overlooked source that can be mined for rich VoC data is social media. You learn a huge amount about what your customers really think about you by eavesdropping on what they say about you behind your back. People also turn to social media platforms for sounding boards these days, leveraging the power of the hashtag to promote public outrage or sympathy and get results, often before they have even picked up the phone to the customer service department. Businesses face trial by social media all the time. You can’t hide anywhere.
A truly valuable, actionable Voice of Customer programme involves mining VoC data from a variety of sources, but unless the outcome is a collection of authentic anecdotes that give you insights about where you are going wrong and right, then where’s the point? Remember, you need to be listening, not just recording.
How does your business approach gaining client or customer insights in order to remain relevant to their needs?
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: 5 Ways to Make Sure Consumers Choose You
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Customer Experience Masterclass: Get results by thinking like a customer experience pro – Invest a day in our value-packed interactive CX coaching. The quality of your customers’ experiences defines your success. | JHB – 9 October 2019
Consumer power continues to grow. There is a wider choice of goods and services available than there ever has been, and our access to information and ability to compare retailers and organisations is virtually limitless. This gives today’s consumer even more power to vote with their wallets and make demands from the brands they buy from. But consumer power transcends an individual’s own personal purchasing as consumers have the ability to influence other people’s buying behaviour.
Social media, comparison websites, review portals, and countless horizontal and vertical e-marketplaces mean that we deal with an overwhelming array of choice by relying on the opinions and experiences of our fellow consumers. No longer taken in by sales pitches and clever marketing, we want to get straight to the nitty gritty – consumers won’t take your word for it anymore.
A consumer’s journey is now more complex and consumer-driven than ever, with customers now preferring to source their own information about your brand and pull out what they want to know rather than have your marketing pushed on them.
It’s never been more important to be getting right. You just can’t get away with getting it wrong anymore.
So, to ensure you are keeping up with consumers and their ever-increasing power and expectations, here are our top 5 tips for ensuring you are delivering what your customers want, and keep them choosing you time after time.
Remember, a complaint is a gift. It’s an opportunity to improve a flaw you didn’t know existed, and it’s also an opportunity to enhance CX. Seriously, handling a complaint or a mishap with aplomb and an efficient, customer-focused attitude is an opportunity to exceed expectations and even turn a negative into a positive. See our previous blog about customer complaints for an example of getting this so right. You don’t need a crystal ball to solve your customer’s problems before they even happen, just a watertight customer complaints procedure and true accountability for customer satisfaction.
So many businesses are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to their growth targets. By hyper-focusing on growing your customer base, getting new business or upselling you are in danger of overlooking retaining your current business. New business only matters if old business isn’t falling off the other end of the conveyor belt as fast as you can bring in the new.
Understanding what drives your customer and what motivates them to buy will help you ensure they buy from you. These days for customers it comes down to less “what’s in it for me” and “what’s in it for the world”. People want to know what you stand for and if your values align with theirs. Often, your product or service isn’t the differentiator that clinches a deal – it’s who you are.
There are two main reasons why this should be a priority for your business in 2019. First, your company’s reputation as an employer intersects its reputation among your customers. Second, a strong employer brand can result in increased retention, lowered hiring costs and ensure you are attracting the top available talent. Just as people are researching your business before buying from you, they also research your business before considering working for you. The more satisfied, engaged and talented your workforce the better they are at being ambassadors for your brand and the better the customer experience.
People buy people. In a sea of faceless competitors, a personal touch can be a huge differentiator, particularly when it comes to retention of business. If your customers feel like you are connecting with them and that they are valued, they are more likely to be loyal.
Your reputation rests on more than just PR. It rests on how people perceive you. Reputation rests on what the world says about you, and the recipe for success is actually pretty simple:
Make good products, provide good service, listen to the people who engage with you, do good things, treat people and the planet well, deliver on your promises and make it right quickly and efficiently if you don’t. Consumers may be more demanding than ever, but when you break it down consumers are simply demanding that businesses care.
nlighten can help you reach your CX potential. Contact us to find out more about how you can strengthen your customer engagement and begin reaping the rewards.
View the previous nlighten article by Nathalie Schooling: Debunking 5 Myths Around CX
nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com
Customer Experience Masterclass: Get results by thinking like a customer experience pro – Invest a day in our value-packed interactive CX coaching. The quality of your customers’ experiences defines your success. | JHB – 9 October 2019
