Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of April 4, 2022

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.

Customer Service Is DEAD: Now What? by Mitche Graf

(CEOWorld Magazine) Traditional customer service (CS) in the business world is officially DEAD! We are now in a world that demands things faster, more conveniently and cheaper- and we have given up much our demand for exceptional service.

My Comment: I read the title and thought, “Uh oh, that’s the end of my career!” Then I read the article and realized my job/career is safe. I don’t agree with everything in this article, but I like the angle the author is coming from. Customer service, as we have come to know it, is changing, not necessarily dead.

4 Trends for Personalizing the Consumer Experience by Stewart Barrett

(destinationCRM.com) Consumers expect more and trust even less. Entering the third year of the pandemic, many have turned their sights on consumerism as an escape route. The pandemic has given fuel to a changing customer experience and brought about key tactics that can enhance digital marketing and reach target audiences.

My Comment: This is a very forward-thinking article that brings some interesting ideas into the customer/consumer experience. QR Codes are a great opportunity that many companies have not exploited. Using video to create amazing content has been around for years but still isn’t used as often as it could be. AI keeps getting better. And then there is number four, which is about the Metaverse. Here is where the future meets the present day. (If you don’t understand the Metaverse, do a quick Google search and learn the basics.)

Why You Need a Total Experience Strategy to Drive CX and EX by Beth Stackpole

(TechTarget) With the pace of digital transformation accelerating, in part due to changes brought on by the ongoing pandemic, companies’ primary objectives are to enhance customer experiences (58%) and improve employee productivity (57%), according to Gartner’s “2021 Digital Business Acceleration Survey.” Yet, rather than pursue one or the other as siloed initiatives, companies are beginning to recognize that a holistic experience strategy has far greater potential for advancing better business outcomes.

My Comment: The “total experience” combines the power of a CX (customer experience) and an EX (employee experience.” If you’ve followed me, you know I believe that what happens inside an organization with employees (EX) is felt by the customer. Today an EX is more important than ever in delivering the CX you want your customers to enjoy. This robust article has plenty of insights from many experts for you to consider as you initiate a “total experience” strategy.

Three Tips For Staffing Your CX Team by Judy Weader

(Forrester) There’s no one way to build a customer experience (CX) team, no single structure that is the perfect model for every organization. Despite that, I get a lot of inquiry and guidance session requests from CX leaders who are trying to baseline their ambitions against their peers as they establish, fund, and scale the CX function at their firm. Forrester’s Q2 2019 Global State Of Customer Experience Programs Online Survey found that, among other things, a majority of respondents were part of small teams (anywhere from one to 10 people), had CX vision, strategy, and measurement in their purview, and planned to boost their team’s analytics capabilities in the coming year.

My Comment: This is a short but powerful article from Judy Weader, senior analyst at Forrester, who shares three tips for building your CX team. The one that really grabbed my attention was the first tip, which is to choose whether to “build” or “buy” your talent. In other words, build and promote from within or bring in new employees from the outside.

Total-experience Is the New Cx: Twelve Trends Transforming Customer Service by Abhishek Malhotra

(MarketingMag) The customer service landscape is rapidly changing as an AI-driven revolution redefines how brands do business with customers. It’s a new world where customer experience trumps everything. VERSA CX transformation technical director Abhishek Malhotra explains the trends redefining customer experience – and why ‘total experience’ is the new CX.

My Comment: We close this weeks’ roundup with an excellent list that will help you transform your customer experience. Interesting how the author uses “total experience” to define the concepts in this article. While the author’s definition is very different than the third article in this roundup, numbers five and six on this list are focused on employees.