“Keeping customers is about the experience, and the employees control the culture and temperature of the business. Never forget that.”
Steve Wynn

customer experience value

Determining the Value of Better Customer Experience

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It’s difficult for leaders to show that customer experience changes create value. Does a satisfied customer really make a big difference at the end of the day? How much revenue to loyalty actually bring in? Are phone calls from dissatisfied customers a burden on my business, or is it just a part of how things work?

It’s not a simple equation to figure out. But there are some important rules customer experience teams and company executives to realize:

Rules of Changing Customer Experience:

  1. The right changes to customer experience are self funding
  2. It is possible to define the value of better customer experience

Steps to Defining Value of Improved Customer Experience

  1. Define the customer behavior that creates value for your business, and define the value.
  2. Create hypotheses about customer outcomes that matter
  3. Follow customer satisfaction over time
  4. Apply changes to areas where customer satisfaction changes (positive or negative)
  5. Track results

How to use the customer data.

Link customer feedback to their actions. This is easier in an online retail space than other industries, but surveys, reviews, recommendations, etc. should be linked to specific customer actions. This is valuable data moving forward with new customer service initiatives.

Divide the customer data into segments. For example, you might divide them into happy, neutral, or dissatisfied customers. Organize your data so that you can see the outcomes over a long period of time. Learn how much each group spends, and how much of a financial burden each group is.

Determine the different costs associated with each customer segment.

Dissatisfied customers consume resources. Returns, phone calls, complaints and more demand employee time and lead to loss of revenue. If your business depends on repeat customers, unhappy customers are especially costly, because your loss of future revenues. Furthermore, you need to define what value a happy customer has over a neutral one. This can require following customer actions for an extended period of time.

What’s Your Goal?

Set a goal to change your percentages of happy, neutral, and dissatisfied customers. For example, set a goal to move 5 percent of dissatisfied customers to the neutral category, and 5 percent of neutral customers to the happy category.

Focus on the most valuable areas of change. In most industries, helping dissatisfied customers feel neutral is the most valuable change to make. Some companies spend too much time and effort trying to get more customers to be evangelists, instead of changing the feeling of dissatisfied customers. That said, in some industries, making one customer so happy about a product or service that they are willing to recommend it is very economically valuable.

Achieving Your Goal

Define what a successful customer experience is. Maybe it is a maximum of two phone calls, zero callbacks and purchase within a week. Maybe it is zero phone calls, and payment within a day. Maybe it is defined by how long someone is actively on your website. Start gathering data based on these categories.

Focus on end-to-end customer experience. Onboarding is one thing, but make sure you’re defining effective fulfillment processes as well. Track where customers change from neutral to a different state (positive or negative).

As you discover the points where people are changing from neutral into happy or sad customers, that is where you place budget and customer service initiatives. Maybe the improvement will be in UX/UI, maybe it will be within how customers are billed. Maybe it’s simply the cost of the service. Maybe it occurs at the point of sale in store. This is where you may need to innovate to find new sources of customer data. Emotion recognition is a hot new source of customer experience data.

Establishing Budget For Customer Experience Changes

Since you’ve established previously the value of different customer experience states, it should be easy to define how much budget you can push into your customer experience goals.

Each initiative should be built to achieve one of these goals:

  • reducing the cost to serve
  • capturing long-term revenues through loyalty
  • improving overall customer satisfaction

It is important to establish a time frame for expecting visible results to a customer service change. For example, if the goal of the changes is to capture long-term revenues and build customer loyalty, that may take a year to bear fruit. Other changes may result in immediate results, however, such as a revamped point of sale system, or updated user interface.

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faial recognition

Analyzing and Detecting Employee’s Emotion for Amelioration of Organizations

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bognewpic3x2These days employees well- being is the most growingly pertinent and mandatory consideration in the modern workplace of any organization. Until recently, emotions were considered a forbidden topic in the working place. They were no person’s concern, and they had no place in business. They were not allowed to discuss it and those issues must always be left at home. Today, research on how emotions affect inventiveness, production, and profession success has put a jaunt on the subject. They are realizing that how well they elicit and sustain positive emotional states in their employees plays a major role in their organization’s victory or defeat. This is because emotions directly influence the five major sources of competitive advantage in today’s marketplace: Intellectual Capital, Customer Service, Organizational Reactivity, Production, Employee appeal and retentivity. By becoming more knowledgeable about how emotions affect the primary sources of competitive advantage, organizations can help their management team recognize the critical connection of employee’s emotions and then try to make it right before it affects the productivity. In this paper, the proposed approach to the problem of employee’s emotions are resolved by detecting their emotions using C#. At the time of entering into the organization, face of the employees are captured to analyze their emotions and stored in the database.

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How VIBEcx Improves The Customer Experience

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Emotion Recognition Like VIBEcx in Retail – the Next Big Thing?

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Is Emotion Recognition Like VIBEcx in Retail the Next Big Thing?

WRITTEN BY TERRY LAWLOR

Remember the memory-erasing Neuralyzer in “Men in Black”? Or more recently, “Ex Machina,” the Oscar-winning story of a humanoid robot that uses emotional persuasion to outsmart humans and escape from the secluded home of its creator? While movies have been envisioning crazy, new technology for decades, some of those inventions are starting to become reality. From virtual reality and wearable devices to facial and emotional recognition technologies, these products and systems are changing the way we communicate, interact and conduct market research (MR) in several industries, most notably, retail.

One of the hottest areas of technology development in retail research is facial and emotion recognition. Understanding emotions is powerful in areas of research such as ad testing, but difficult to achieve. Facial expressions are linked to emotions, and research organizations have used human observation of recorded videos in retail settings to try to assess emotional response for years. Human assessment has many limitations, and facial expression recognition technology offers an opportunity to overcome some of these limitations, delivering a much greater level of insight about personal sentiment and reactions.

Organizations managing research programs and companies like VIBEcx in the retail customer experience space are using emotion detection technology to analyze people’s emotional reactions at the point of experience. This knowledge not only gives researchers a greater understanding of behavior patterns, but also helps predict likely future purchasing actions of that consumer.

The result? Remarkable insight into what impacts customer emotions, as well as valuable information that can drive better business decisions, resulting in improved product and service offerings and experiences.

Emotion detection software simply adds to the toolkit available to retailers who are looking to improve their customer experiences and create more effective advertising campaigns. It may further reduce the need for focus groups, but beyond that, it’s an addition, not a replacement. Such videos will, in most cases, be embedded into a survey, and additional information will be required to understand more about the shoppers themselves.

No doubt new applications of the software will emerge in both MR and customer experience disciplines – some of which will fly and some of which won’t. As with most advances of the last decade, emotion detection will find its place and help forward-thinking retailers add additional value to the services they provide to their customers. In turn, this will ideally help progress the retail space, helping retailers take their abili

Excerpt from his article on ChainStorage.com – READ THE FULL ARTICLE
what-is-customer-experience

What is Customer Experience?

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“Keeping customers is about the experience,
and the employees control the culture and
temperature of the business.
Never forget that.” ~Steve Wynn

How Phaceology Improves The Customer Experience

SEE OUR FORMULA HERE

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) is defined by interactions between a customer and an organization throughout their business relationship. An interaction can include awareness, discovery, cultivation, advocacy, purchases and service.  Customer experience is an integral part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the reason why it’s important is because a customer who has a positive experience with a business is more likely to become a repeat and loyal customer.

In fact, a study by Oracle found that 74% of senior executives believe that customer experience impacts the willingness of a customer to be a loyal advocate. And the customer experience statistics don’t stop there. If you want your customers to stay loyal, you have to invest in their experience!

Simply put, happy customers remain loyal. It makes sense, right? The happier you are with a brand, the longer you stay with them. And so if you treat your customers poorly and ignore their customer service emails, then they are more likely to leave. This is why companies that deliver a superior customer service and experience outperform their competition.

How important is customer experience?

A business cannot exist without its customers, and this is why companies are focusing on how to win new customers and perhaps more importantly, retain existing customers.

A survey by Bloomberg Businessweek found that “delivering a great customer experience” has become a top strategic objective. And a recent Customer Management IQ survey found that 75% of customer management executives and leaders rated customer experience a ‘5’ on a scale of 1-5 (5 being of the highest importance).

The importance of customer experience to organizations

The challenge here is that even though it’s a high priority, many companies are failing.

When Bain & Company asked organizations to rate their quality of customer experience, 80% believe they are delivering a superior experience. This is compared to only 8% of customers who believe they are receiving a great customer experience.

So how many brands are truly delivering an excellent customer experience?

Surprisingly, not too many.

The Temkin Group’s recent 2016 Customer Experience Rating study showed a severe decline in customer experience. The biggest cause for concern is that the percentage of good and excellent companies dropped from 37% in 2015 to only 18% in 2016 – it’s lowest rating since 2011.

Customer experience ratings from 2011 to 2016

Customer expectations are rising, and faster than the speed that companies can improve their customer experience. Customers expect every interaction as the best experience they have with any company, so the question is remains, how can your organization create a great customer experience?

The Bottom Line

Customer expectations are higher than ever and word of mouth travels fast! And as the customer becomes even more empowered, it increases the importance of the customer experience. Customer experience is an area that needs constant nurturing and care and with a greater focus on customer experience strategy, companies will realize a positive impact on customer loyalty, higher retention and increased revenues.

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More About Customer Experience

The Truth About Customer Experience

Companies have long emphasized touchpoints—the many critical moments when customers interact with the organization and its offerings on their way to purchase and after. But the narrow focus on maximizing satisfaction at those moments can create a distorted picture, suggesting that customers are happier with the company than they actually are. It also diverts attention from the bigger—and more important—picture: the customer’s end-to-end journey.

Think about a routine service event—say, a product query—from the point of view of both the company and the customer. The company may receive millions of phone calls about the product and must handle each one well. But if asked about the experience months after the fact, a customer would never describe such a call as simply a “product question.” Understanding the context of a call is key. A customer might have been trying to ensure uninterrupted service after moving, make sense of the renewal options at the end of a contract, or fix a nagging technical problem. A company that manages complete journeys would not only do its best with the individual transaction but also seek to understand the broader reasons for the call, address the root causes, and create feedback loops to continuously improve interactions upstream and downstream from the call.

In our research and consulting on customer journeys, we’ve found that organizations able to skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more-effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.

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article-VIBEcx-angry-customer

Calming An Angry Customer

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article-phaceology-angry-customerCalming An Angry Customer

Quick tips to help you diffuse anger and create calm with unhappy customers.  Here is how to diffuse an angry or irate customer…

Top 6 Ways to Get An Angry Customer To Back Down

1. Apologize. An apology makes the angry customer feel heard and understood. It diffuses and anger and allows you to begin to re-establish trust. Not only that, but pilot studies have found that the mere act of apologizing has reduced lawsuits, settlement, and defense costs. You need to apologize to customers regardless of fault. Certainly, the apology needs to be carefully worded. Here’s an example of a sincere, yet careful apology:

“Please accept my sincere and unreserved apology for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

 

2. Kill Them Softly With Diplomacy. This simple phrase has never failed me: “Clearly, we’ve upset you and I want you to know that getting to the bottom of this is just as important to me as it is to you.” When you say this, anger begins to dissipate. You’ve addressed the anger directly and non defensively and you haven’t been pulled into the drama of the attack.

 

3. Go into Computer Mode. Take on the formalities of a computer.  Speak generally, without emotion, and don’t take the bait your angry or difficult customer is throwing you. Keep your words, tone, and attitude completely impersonal and neutral.  This “computer mode” response deflects, diffuses, and disarms angry customers because you don’t add fuel to the fire by giving your difficult customer what they want -an emotional reaction. No matter how uncomfortable the verbal abuse is or how ridiculous it becomes, continue to respond without emotion. This tactic works because it is neutral and unexpected. The difficult customer wants to throw you off, make you lose control, and to get you to respond emotionally. When you fail to do each of these things, you actually regain control.

 

4. Give this question a shot: “Have I done something personally to upset you?… I’d like to be a part of the solution.” Of course, you know you haven’t done anything to upset the customer. You ask this question to force the angry customer to think about his behavior. Often, the mere asking of this question is enough to get the ballistic customer to begin to shift from the right brain to the left brain, where he can begin to listen and rationalize.

 

5. Show empathy – Empathy can be a powerful tool used to disarm an angry customer and show that you genuinely care about the inconvenience the customer has experienced. Expressing empathy is also good for YOU, as it helps you truly begin to see the problem from the customer’s perspective/and this perspective will help keep you from losing your cool when your customer gets hot. By letting customers know that you understand why they are upset, you build a bridge of rapport between you and them.

Here are some phrases that express empathy:

  • “That must have been very frustrating for you.”
  • “I realize the wait you encountered was an inconvenience.”
  • “If I were in your shoes, I’m sure I’d feel just as you do.”
  • “It must have been very frustrating for you have waited five days for your order and for that I am sorry.”

 

6. And finally, here’s a tip that works like magic. …. Show appreciation for the difficult person’s feedback. After your difficult customer has ranted and raved, you can regain control of the conversation by interjecting—not interrupting, but interjecting to thank them for taking the time to give you feedback. You can say something like:

  • Thanks for being so honest.
  • Thanks for taking the time to let us know how you feel.
  • We appreciate customers who let us know when things aren’t right.
  • Thanks for caring so much.

The reason this tip works so effectively is because the last thing your irate or unreasonable customer expects is for you to respond with kindness and gratitude. It’s a shock factor and many times you’ll find that your customer is stunned silent and this is exactly what you want.

 

When you do these things you’ll find that being on the receiving end of verbal abuse doesn’t have to be threatening or intimidating. You can come across as confident, composed and strong…and most importantly, you’ll regain control of the conversation.

Read the full article here>
Written by Myra Golden, who is an award-winning professional speaker and principal of Myra Golden Seminars, LLC, a customer service training firm [http://www.totalcustomerservicetraining.com] serving clients in food and beverage, banking, healthcare, hospitality, and other industries. Her client list includes McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Frito-Lay, Michelin Tires, Pirelli, and Procter & Gamble, among many others.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Myra_Golden/34090
emotion recognition

How Good Manners Made This Restaurant the Best-Selling Fast-Food Chain in America

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emotion recognitionYesterday, fast-food industry magazine QSR published the 2016 Drive-Thru Study, which rated the country’s various fast-food chains on their customer service. Chick-fil-A employees ranked first in the following three categories:

-Smiling
-Saying “please”
-Saying “thank you”

Chick-fil-A workers also ranked second in the category “pleasant demeanor,” fourth for making eye contact, and second for order accuracy, getting orders right 95% of the time.

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