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DECEMBER 2023 | VOL. 17

"If you make customers unhappy in the physical world,

they might each tell six friends.

If you make customers unhappy on the Internet,

they can each tell 6,000 friends."


~ Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon

ELEVATING THE HOLIDAYS:

CRAFTING UNFORGETTABLE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

The holiday season is a magical time that brings joy, warmth, and a sense of togetherness. Beyond the festivities and decorations, businesses have a unique opportunity to make a lasting impression on their customers through exceptional holiday customer experiences.


Understanding the Power of the Holidays

The holidays are more than just a time for gift-giving; they're an emotional journey for individuals and families. Businesses that recognize and tap into the sentimental value of this season can create a deeper connection with their customers. Understanding the emotional context allows companies to tailor their customer experiences to resonate with the spirit of the holidays. However, companies that create friction for their customers during this season can create undo harm to their brand that will carry on well beyond this season of giving.

Remove the Friction: The Key to Heartfelt Connections

One of the most effective ways to enhance the customer experience during the holidays is by reducing the frequency of interactions that create friction in the customer journey. Whether it's product search, recommendations based on past purchases, or holiday offers, customers appreciate the effort to make their experience friction-free. Utilizing insights that pinpoint those interactions most economically damaging to a brand can be a gift that keeps on giving to corporations and front-line staff.


Empathy in Customer Service

The holiday season can be stressful for many individuals, and a little empathy goes a long way. Whether a customer is facing shipping delays, product issues, or other concerns, businesses should approach problem resolution with a genuine understanding of the customer's situation. Clear communication, proactive solutions, and a compassionate approach can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one. As we see time and time again, great service recovery can repair lost loyalty and even enhance the relationship between customer and brand.


The holidays present a unique opportunity for businesses to create memorable customer experiences that extend beyond the transaction. By embracing customer insights that pinpoint the moments of truth most damaging to an organization, companies can foster stronger connections with their customers. As the holiday season unfolds, let's not only celebrate the joy of the season but also the power of exceptional customer experiences that leave a lasting impact.


At the Verde Group, understanding the specific problems that create market damage is what we do. To learn more, visit our approach page or contact us to learn more about how we can help you take action and drive revenues and profits.

December 2023 Poll

What Customer Experience Gift Would You Like to Give Your Leadership Team?

Please choose just one answer.
The Gift of Meaningful CX Actions and Change
The Gift of Financially-Grounded CX Insights
The Gift of an Aligned Executive Leadership Team
The Gift of a Higher ROI on our CX Investments

IN THE NEWS

“80% of CEOs think their company is customer-centric,

but only 8% of customers agree.”


~ Steven Van Belleghem, CX Expert and Author

Is your company a diamond in the rough?

Many companies want to be customer-centric and create a great CX. They decide to do so and introduce the idea to the employees, but even with the best intentions, a year later, nothing has changed. This is what CX expert Steven Van Belleghem refers to as “diamonds in the rough.” They have the potential to be shiny diamonds but just haven’t gone through the process and made the changes needed to do so.


In this article from Forbes.com, Van Belleghem discusses the concept of a diamond in the rough and provides 5 lessons for companies to become shiny diamonds without the rough:

VIEW ARTICLE

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE RISK

The Customer Experience Risk — It’s What You Don’t Know That Should Keep You Up at Night

You may be like many executives who’ve had more than a few sleepless nights worrying about your customers. Particularly the customers with problems — on average that’s 3 out of 4 of your customers — the ones who light up the phones and fill your inbox with concerns, complaints, and helpful suggestions. Surely if you don’t act and fix their issues, they’ll take their business elsewhere, right?


It’s a common hypothesis that you should prioritize your initiatives around those known problems or the “squeaky wheel” issues. The known issues are causing friction in your customers’ experience and should be addressed; however, they may not deserve the resources or priority that you think. In fact, it’s often the best, most loyal customers who bother to take the time to contact you and complain. They are often not a flight risk because these customers are passionate about your product or service, and they want to make it work.


At the Verde Group, we’ve learned that unhappy customers don’t complain. Over 67% of customers who experience a problem never tell the company about it. Customers cite “it’s not worth my time” and “they don’t believe that complaining will do any good because no one cares.” These are the customers who spread negativity by word of mouth and then vote with their wallets by taking their future purchases elsewhere.


How do you determine what the real customer issues are that may be financially impacting your business?


1. Build a data-driven baseline

In working with a major national brand, we were able to evolve their voice-of-customer program to help them pinpoint the specific issues most damaging to transaction frequency. This was done not by asking customers about how they felt about their experience but by deriving the impact CX friction points have on dependent variables such as likelihood to repurchase the product/service to determine what we describe as “Most Damaging Problems (MDPs)”.


We then reviewed 24 months of transactional data to explore the correlation between an increase in MDP frequency and the impact they had on transaction frequency. The relationship was very clear. More MDPS = fewer transactions regardless of customer segment.


By examining the data we were able to extrapolate the annual impact of specific issues to economically quantify their impact to the business and Executives took note, using the data to inform annual strategic plans.


2. Share your learnings for buy-in

At this point, you have detailed customer feedback in one hand, and objective, measurable data in the other. The customers’ experience with your product or service is end-to-end and holistic. What you learn through this process will not fit nicely into just one area of the business or function.


To put plans in place to address the top drivers of churn, you will need cross-functional support and leadership buy-in. This is a critical and often overlooked step in the process but having economically quantified experiential data helps to cut through organizational silos and break-down cultural barriers. Two key points that should not be overlooked. Don’t forget that the insights you uncover may be completely new to an audience. It may take some time to help colleagues understand these threats to business performance and why they haven’t heard about them before.


3. Build your action plan

Once you have organizational alignment, you’re ready to prioritize the issues you’ve uncovered and start building a plan to address those specific issues. Start with what you consider to be the easiest fixes that will have the most substantial revenue impact. Don’t overcomplicate the solution but rather stay laser-focused and have clear metrics in place to measure the impact. Be mindful of scope creep or before you know it, you will be attempting to build a plan that is unattainable.


Clarity of ownership is critical in getting plans off the ground. Make sure everyone involved knows their role and expectation in solving the issue at hand. With established roles and tasks, move to evaluate the more complex and resource-intensive solutions.


4. Don’t rest on your laurels

Once you’ve moved from reactive mode to proactively addressing customer issues, don’t make the mistake of stopping, or even slowing down. You will need to repeat the data review/customer conversation cycle on an ongoing basis to stay in tune with your customers’ experience and keep raising the bar on your performance.


Ultimately, it’s not the customers who complain the loudest or most frequently that should keep you up at night. It’s worrying whether you really understand your customers’ experience and if you are truly addressing the issues that put your business at financial risk. If you leverage your data, have genuine conversations with your customers (and ex-customers), build organizational support, and create a measurable action plan, you might just sleep like a baby.


Paula Courtney, Chief Executive Officer of The Verde Group


This article was originally published on September 9, 2018 by the Verde Group. It was updated on November 30, 2023.


"The customer's perception is your reality."


Kate Zabriskie, Author and Business Consultant

ASK US ANYTHING

December 2023's Question:


What does The Verde Group have

on its holiday “wish list”?


Answer: An appropriate question this time of year! We would have to say that on our wish list would be more awareness of how Verde Group can help you, our reader! As you’ve likely heard a few times in our monthly newsletter, Verde Group has been in business for over 20 years and our work spans over 50 countries around the world. Yet many people simply have not heard of us. Or if they have, they don’t completely understand the value of our work and how it can help companies achieve their strategic and financial goals.


Our wish is simple: More time spent with CX practitioners, having conversations about what’s working and not working with their CX investments, and through those discussions, opportunities to learn, share, and most importantly, connect more closely with great folks like you!

Send us your questions and stay tuned for the January 2024 newsletter to see your questions answered by one of our CX specialists.


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