Customer experience management software has its own CX problem
Customer experience management software keeps getting bought and merged. What consolidation does to buyers and respondents, and how to protect your program.
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36 articles on customer experience and voice of the customer. Browse by topic:
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Declining survey response rates: why surveys still matter
Declining survey response rates are real and decades old. Why fewer customers answer, why surveys still matter, and smarter, shorter ways to ask them.
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Customer data quality: don't let inaccurate data stop you from acting
Customer data quality is never perfect. How to judge whether data is good enough for the decision at hand, triage the flaws, and act without fooling yourself.
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Customer retention rate: are you measuring it correctly?
Customer retention rate looks like simple arithmetic, yet two teams get two answers from one database. Five decisions hide in the definition; here is the fix.
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Customers are grown, not captured
Customer experience is grown, not captured. Why this blog is called what it is, what cultivation means on a Monday morning, and what you will find here.
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Is customer lifetime value a waste of time? Only when misused
Customer lifetime value is a forecast, not a measurement. When it wastes a CX team's time, when it earns its keep, and how to build a number you can defend.
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Listening to your best customers: do you hear what I hear?
Listening to your best customers takes a separate path from the survey program. How to find them, what to ask in twenty minutes, and how to close the loop.
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Measuring customer experience with control groups: how to hold out
Control groups in customer experience measurement are the honest way to show a change caused a result. How to hold out without A/B tools, and what breaks it.
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Qualitative and quantitative feedback: a soft focus on hard data
Qualitative and quantitative customer feedback answer different questions: scores say where, comments say why. How to pair them and read 500 verbatims fast.
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Are you standardizing your customer experience out of business?
Standardization in customer experience scales quality and hides the customer in front of you. A core-and-edge rule for deciding which steps stay identical.
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Are your products right for relationship marketing? A three-part test
Relationship marketing pays off for some products and annoys the customers of others. A three-part test (frequency, involvement, switching cost) sorts yours.
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Beating the fallacy of cheap marketing
Cheap marketing is nearly free to send and expensive per unsubscribe. Why counting only the outbound cost misleads, and a cost-per-annoyed-customer habit.
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Can't the IT department do my customer analysis? Who should own it
Customer analysis is a question-asking job, not a query. Why it belongs with whoever owns the decision, what IT should own instead, and how to split the work.
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Collecting customer email addresses: why can't we, and what works
Collecting customer email addresses fails for human reasons, not technical ones. What the frontline needs, what the customer gets, and how to measure capture.
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Content marketing measurement: what changed since 2012
Content marketing measurement has too many metrics and almost none describe the customer. What to ask readers instead, and a scorecard two teams can sign.
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Content marketing metrics: measuring impact beyond the sale
Content marketing metrics stop at the sale. A fifth bucket, experience and retention, covers help, onboarding and renewal content and how to measure it.
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Content that converts: answer the questions customers already ask
Content that converts answers the questions buyers already ask, in their words, before the sales call. Where those questions hide and how to publish answers.
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Customer data sharing and trust: who's afraid of sharing their data?
Customer data sharing and trust come down to whether customers can predict what happens next. Where the helpful-or-creepy line sits, and five rules to hold it.
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Customer decision process: the new way buyers evaluate purchases
The customer decision process now runs before the first call, on reviews, peers and communities. How to map it, feed it, and start the sale in the middle.
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Customer experience measurement: is your program worth the effort?
Customer experience measurement decides whether a program survives year two. Rule 7 of no-excuses CX: three questions, a comparison group, one page a month.
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Customer lifetime value strategy: grow your business, no excuses
A customer lifetime value strategy turns the seven no-excuses rules into arithmetic: estimate value by segment, build a value-at-risk table, act on it.
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Customer personas vs situations: designing for the many sides of me
Customer personas flatten a person into a type; the same person needs different things on Tuesday morning and Saturday night. How to rewrite them as situations.
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Customer retention during an acquisition: will you be fired?
Customer retention during a merger or acquisition fails because everything a customer relied on changes at once. A 30-day plan for the company and the CX lead.
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Does sales care about your customer program? Sales and CX alignment
Sales and customer experience alignment fails when nothing in the program helps close an account this quarter. Five things to hand sales monthly, two to avoid.
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Drive profit with customer experience: no-excuses rules 3 to 5
Customer experience and profit meet in three places: the right message, the moment of return, and the frontline. Rules 3, 4 and 5 of no-excuses CX explained.
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Health insurance customer experience: joining the consumer ranks
Health insurance customer experience now decides whether members stay, as people choose plans and ratings publish how membership feels. What to fix first.
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Lessons from the Starbucks turnaround for customer experience
The Starbucks turnaround, and its 2024 echo, shows what happens when growth outruns the experience: lessons on the core, visible listening, and the frontline.
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Pilot program buy-in: use internal marketing to sell it inside first
Pilot program buy-in is won before the steering group meets. How to use internal marketing (rule 6 of no-excuses CX) to get a sponsor, a story and a decision.
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Reduce customer attrition with the seven rules of no-excuses CX
How to reduce customer attrition with the seven no-excuses rules: the excuses they answer, the two rules that cut churn fastest, and a one-week inventory.
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Serving up a nourishing meal
Customer recognition, seen from a restaurant table: menus are for strangers, regulars want to be known, and scale quietly removes the difference. A field note.
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Should you fire your customers? A four-question decision path
Firing customers covers two cases with different answers, the unprofitable and the abusive, plus a loud one you must never fire. A four-question path decides.
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Tennis and the art of effective customer experience
Customer experience fundamentals from a tennis court: footwork before winners, fewer unforced errors, reading the other side of the net, a resetting scoreboard.
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Using lifetime value in a short-term environment: leading indicators
Customer lifetime value leading indicators show up inside a quarter. How to find them, validate them against old cohorts, and turn them into value at risk.
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When is your customer not your own? Listening to indirect customers
Indirect customers buy through marketplaces, resellers and franchisees that hold the checkout and the complaint. Four ways to listen, and a partner checklist.
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Why pilot programs fail: corporate attention deficit and the fix
Why pilot programs fail: rarely from bad results, usually because attention runs out before anyone decides. Five structures that make a pilot survive.
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You're fired: silent churn and the customers who never say so
Silent churn is the customer who leaves without saying so. Four signals that precede it, a monthly who-went-quiet review, and outreach that is not surveillance.
