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

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?

“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

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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

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.


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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
-improve-customer-experience

7 ways to create a customer experience strategy

Get closer than ever to your customers.
So close that you tell them what they need
well before they realize it themselves.

~Steve Jobs

How VIBEcx Improves The Customer Experience

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Let’s take a look at seven ways to create a great customer experience strategy to help you improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn and increase revenues.

 

1. Create a clear customer experience vision

The first step in your customer experience strategy is to have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate with your organization. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of statements that act as guiding principles.

For example, Zappos use their Zappos core family values and these values are embedded into their culture; which includes delivering wow through service, be humble and embracing change.

Once these principles are in place, they will drive the behavior of your organization. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart and they should be embedded into all areas of training and development.

2. Understand who your customers are

The next step in building upon these customer experience principles is to bring to life the different type of customers who deal with your customer support teams. If your organization is going to really understand customer needs and wants, then they need to be able to connect and empathize with the situations that your customers face.

One way to do this is to create customer personas and give each persona a name and personality. For example, Anne is 35 years old; she likes new technology and is tech savvy enough to follow a video tutorial on her own, whereas John (42 years old) needs to be able to follow clear instructions on a web page.

By creating personas, your customer support team can recognize who they are and understand them better. It’s also an important step in becoming truly customer centric.

3. Create an emotional connection with your customers

You’ve heard the phrase “it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”?

Well, the best customer experiences are achieved when a member of your team creates an emotional connection with a customer.

One of the best examples of creating an emotional connection comes from Zappos, when a customer was late on returning a pair of shoes due to her mother passing away. When Zappos found out what happened, they took care of the return shipping and had a courier pick up the shoes without cost. But, Zappos didn’t stop there. The next day, the customer arrived home to a bouquet of flowers with a note from the Zappos customer service team who sent their condolences.

Research by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that more than 50% of an experience is based on an emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions.

Customers become loyal because they are emotionally attached and they remember how they feel when they use a product or service. A business that optimizes for an emotional connection outperforms competitors by 85% in sales growth.

And, according to a recent Harvard Business Review study titled “The New Science of Customer Emotions“, emotionally engaged customers are:

  • At least three times more likely to recommend your product or service
  • Three times more likely to re-purchase
  • Less likely to shop around (44% said they rarely or never shop around)
  • Much less price sensitive (33% said they would need a discount of over 20% before they would defect).

4. Capture customer feedback in real time

How can you tell if you are delivering a wow customer experience?

You need to ask – And ideally you do this by capturing feedback in real time. Post-interaction surveys can be delivered using a variety of automated tools through email and calls.

And of course, it’s even possible to make outbound calls to customers in order to gain more insightful feedback.

It’s important to tie customer feedback to a specific customer support agent, which shows every team member the difference they are making to the business.

5. Use a quality framework for development of your team

By following the steps above, you now know what customers think about the quality of your service compared to the customer experience principles you have defined. The next step is to identify the training needs for each individual member of your customer support team.

Many organizations assess the quality of phone and email communication, however, a quality framework takes this assessment one step further by scheduling and tracking your teams development through coaching, eLearning and group training.

6. Act upon regular employee feedback

Most organizations have an annual survey process where they capture the overall feedback of your team; how engaged they are and the businesses ability to deliver an exceptional service.

But, what happens in the 11 months between these survey periods?

Usually, nothing happens. And this is where continuous employee feedback can play a role using tools that allow staff to share ideas on how to improve the customer experience and for managers to see how staff is feeling towards the business.

For example, using project management software or social media tools, you can create a closed environment where your organization can leave continuous feedback.

7. Measure the ROI from delivering great customer experience

And finally, how do you know if all this investment in your teams, process and technology are working and paying off?

The answer is in the business results.

Measuring customer experience is one of the biggest challenges faced by organizations, which is why many companies use the “Net Promoter Score” or NPS, which collects valuable information by asking a single straightforward question:

“Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?”

NPS is a highly suitable benchmark for a customer experience metric because a lot of companies use it as the standard customer experience measurement. And the fact that it’s simple to implement and measure makes the NPS a favorite with company boards and executive committees.

Conclusion

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.

Read the Entire Article>

 

Disneyland

How Disney Improves The Customer Experience

Detail Is Important, but the Big Picture Is What Counts

When employees understand one simple concept, customer satisfaction explodes.

The goal of wanting to provide excellent service is nearly universal–that is, most organizations want to provide excellent service to their customers. However, as we have seen at Disney Institute, through our work training business leaders and organizations around the world, realizing this goal and consistently delivering such service levels over time remains challenging. There are many reasons and situations that might factor into creating the discrepancy. Often, organizations may not provide employees with all of the resources and training necessary to help them meet these expectations. As we explore in our Disney’s Approach to Quality Service professional development course, one of the most important things company leaders can do is to help employees gain an understanding of their organization’s common purpose. For example, when employees can see clearly how their particular roles fit into the big picture, they are more able to not just meet, but exceed customer expectation.

Excellent service does not simply come from a friendly transaction or helpful technology—it is the result of truly understanding your customer’s expectations and putting the right guidelines and service standards in place to exceed them. When an organizational framework properly unites its people, place and processes by putting the customer at its core, exceptional service becomes possible across customer touch points. This creates greater intent to return and recommend, as well as a stronger competitive edge. With more than 90 years of world-renowned customer service, no one understands this better than Disney. With a common purpose and quality standards, employees at the front line are empowered to perform because they are equipped with the right tools and clear service expectations. When team members’ behaviors are reinforced through positive feedback, they feel valued and appreciated and will make sure their customers do as well.

Think about it…how can you empower your employees to perform the small acts that can have a big impact on your customer experience?

How Phaceology Improves The Customer Experience

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