Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of January 3, 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.

How to Train Your Customer Support Agents To Provide Better Service by Kimberly Zhang

(Entrepreneur) Customer service begins and ends with the way your employees treat browsers and buyers. Make sure everyone in your company has a toolkit and playbook to make a terrific impression.

My Comment: I’m always interested in reading articles on customer service training. (That’s a big part of what we do at Shepard Presentations.) This article includes four ideas around coaching, empowering employees, communicating the customer experience goals of the company, and starting the employee’s focus on customer service during their onboarding.

The Seven Types Of Neglected Customers (Two You Know And Five You Don’t) by Daniel Rodriguez

(Forbes) With continued shipping delays and staffing issues, the ability for companies to actually deliver exceptional experiences to their customers is proving more challenging than ever. This means that customer communications and handling customer inquiries with empathy and attentiveness have never been more important.

My Comment: Customer neglect is a hot topic today. The labor shortage and supply chain issues have caused some companies to unintentionally neglect their customers. Daniel Rodriguez, the CMO of Simplr, describes seven types of neglected customers and their behaviors. Five of these types of customers are, as Rodriguez says, “lurking beneath the surface and negatively impacting your brand’s and bottom line without you knowing it.”

When bad customer service becomes a business opportunity by Joe Williams

(Los Angeles Times) Customer support has become a crowded battlefield in enterprise technology as software vendors such as Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. rush to arm organizations with tools to create one-stop service centers.

My Comment: This article is more of an update on the customer service industry. It mentions the biggest companies in the industry that are focusing on solutions for the customer support industry. Those companies include Salesforce, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Genesys, Five9, Avaya, and others. Consider what Vasili Triant, COO of UJET says about customer support centers: “Instead of being a cost center, it’s a lifetime value driver.” Invest in customer support and you’ll see it doesn’t cost. It pays.

CX Trends That Will Shape Marketing in 2022 by Chad Harwood-Jones

(Business2Community) As we enter 2022, it’s the ideal time to set our marketing goals, KPIs and targets for the year ahead.

My Comment: CX and marketing are closely linked. It’s said that CX is the new marketing. I’ll agree that it’s at a minimum, a big part of marketing, especially if the focus is getting new customers to come back as repeat customers. The author of this article suggests four ideas that all companies should consider: personalization, predictive customer insights, creating trust (this one is BIG), and using video to transform customer engagement.

Biden Administration Made Major Customer Experience Moves in 2021 by Frank Konkel

(Nextgov) Major policy changes regarding how federal agencies serve citizens took pace over the past year.

My Comment: I realize people around the world read this roundup, but I’m going to go “local” and share that the US government is stepping up to provide “the people,” a better customer service experience. This has been bantered around by prior administrations, but the Executive Order that President Biden recently signed “puts some teeth into it.” Some of the initiatives are very forward thinking and worth reading about. Within the article is a link to the Executive Order. Some of what they plan to do might spark an idea or two for your organization.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.