Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of January 16, 2023

Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

10 Ways to Boost Customer Satisfaction by G. Tomas M. Hult and Forrest Morgeson

(Harvard Business Publishing) Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in the past two decades. Companies must focus on 10 areas of the customer experience to improve satisfaction without sacrificing revenue. The authors base their findings on research at the ACSI — analyzing millions of customer data points — and research that we conducted for The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction. For three decades, the ACSI has been a leading satisfaction index (cause-and-effect metric) connected to the quality of brands sold by companies with significant market share in the United States.

My Comment: According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), customer satisfaction is at its lowest level in the last 20 years. The authors are closely involved with the ACSI research and share ten strategies and ideas that answer this question: What customer satisfaction areas should companies tackle strategically to create great profit at lower risk?

9 Effective Ways To Be Proactive About Customer Service by Forbes

(Forbes) It only takes one unhappy customer leaving a negative review to damage a company’s reputation and drive away future business. That makes it imperative that customer service teams immediately resolve any customer complaints before they can snowball and turn into bigger problems for a company.

My Comment: If you want to create trust and confidence with your customers, practice “proactive customer service.” That means you take care of the customer’s problem – sometimes even before the customer even knows about it. Another angle is to be proactive about finding the problem, which means you’re reaching out to a customer for feedback and commentary before they make the complaint. You’ll get nine ideas from nine different members of the Forbes AllBusiness Contributor Group.

Top Customer Experience Trends You Should Watch in 2023 by Scott Clark

(CMSWire) Customer-facing brands have placed a renewed interest in customer experience as a top priority over the past two years. Customers today have higher expectations that the brands they do business with will provide an exceptional, personalized experience across all of the brand’s channels, that they lead with an omnichannel philosophy and that the customer service they provide will be available 24/7. Customers are also demanding that brands enable them to control their own narrative throughout the customer journey. Here’s a look at the top CX trends that brands should be aware of in 2023.

My Comment: We’re still in January, which means people are still publishing their predictions and trends for 2023. Here’s a good list that predicts personalization will continue to drive customer loyalty. Customers love it when you know and understand them. The other trend I pulled from this makes me very happy: Customer service becomes a top priority. (I thought it already was!)

The ‘Shocking’ Shift in Brand Loyalty Drivers, Per New Brand Keys Report by Webb Wright

(The Drum) Brand Keys’ latest Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, which assessed nearly 1,000 brands, highlights the primacy of emotion-based purchases in the post-pandemic marketplace.

My Comment: This is an interesting report that lists the brands companies are most loyal to. If you had to guess, you’d get a few right, but you would be surprised at others that are on this list. What brings customers back? If you meet their expectations and create an emotional attachment. Customers want to feel good about the brands they do business with. They also expect (as in expectations) to be treated the right way.

Putting the Human at the Center of Digital Experience by Shridhar Iyengar Raman

(Retail Customer Experience) While digital interaction is preferred by both consumers and providers, they have very different takes on it. In its 2021 edition, an annual global customer experience benchmarking study reported that only 35% of consumers are satisfied with digital experience, versus 75% of the companies offering those experiences. A leading analyst firm reported that for most customers (58%), their digital experiences do not necessarily influence the buying decision; this is something to think about for businesses, 90% of whom prioritized digital customer experiences last year.

My Comment: Even digital customer support can create a human experience. Consider that a “human-centric” digital experience includes elements that are typical in human-to-human [in person experiences. That’s what the best companies and brands do – and you can, too. You just need to put some thought into the process.