Closing the Customer Experience Gap with Jeff Rosenberg

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This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:   

1. What makes a successful customer experience strategy? 
2. What are the main reasons companies struggle to meet customer expectations in today’s marketplace? 
3. How can businesses identify and close the gap between perceived and actual customer experience? 
4. How can companies effectively gather deep, meaningful feedback from their customers? 
5. How does technology create distance between companies and their customers, and what can they do to overcome it? 

Top Takeaways

• Companies often make the mistake of thinking CX is only about handling complaints or questions. Every part of the journey matters and contributes to how a customer feels about a brand. It includes every interaction a customer has with a business, from the first time they hear about the brand to the buying process and all the way through to using the product or service. 

• Many companies believe they are delivering excellent customer service, but their customers may disagree. Recognizing and working towards closing that customer experience gap is an opportunity for companies to get it right with their customers and gain a competitive differentiator in their industry. 

• To truly understand your customers means seeing things from their perspective. It is important to learn about what your customers think about when they use your product, what problems they encounter, and what would make their experience better.  

• Customer service is not just a department. It’s a philosophy. Every employee, including those who do not have direct customer contact, needs to understand their role in shaping the overall customer experience.  

• Jeff also shares the five strategic practices that need to work together to ensure that a company becomes more customer-centric and can focus on customer experience. 

1. Insights: Gather deep, human-centered insights across the entire customer lifecycle that help you understand what customers are thinking, feeling, and experiencing at every stage. 
2. Strategy: Develop a clear and simple CX strategy that defines how you want customers to feel after interacting with your brand. 
3. Blueprints: Intentionally design and map out the end-to-end customer journey, so that resources and touchpoints align smoothly. 
4. Operating Model: Organizing teams, roles, and processes to consistently deliver on the customer experience across all departments. 
5. Culture: Changing the culture so employees have more inspiration and understanding of why they should care about the customer. 

• Plus, Shep and Jeff discuss the “great distancing” and why companies need to avoid it as they add more technology. Tune in! 

Quotes:

“There’s a (customer experience) gap between what companies think they deliver and what customers actually experience. That gap presents an opportunity for companies to get it right with their customers and to build competitive differentiation.”  

“Organizations need to create an experience that really comes from their culture and their brand versus just copying tactics from other companies.” 

“Companies win when they focus on customer experience. Think about creating experiences for customers as human beings, not just assets to be harvested.” 

About:

Jeff Rosenberg is the co-founder of WideOpen and author of The CX Imperative: Five Strategic Practices for Renewal of the Customer-Centered Enterprise. 

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.