Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of February 14, 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.

Are You Asking the Right Customer Experience Questions? by Janelle Estes

(CMSWire) Today’s top companies rely heavily on human insight to guide their strategies and offerings. It’s these meaningful, actionable, high-quality customer perspectives that fuel unforgettable experiences and create brand loyalty. One of the most important parts of this process is making sure that you’re asking customers the right questions.

My Comment: I’m often asked about the best survey questions. I believe quantitative survey questions, such as NPS, CSAT, etc., can give you numbers but the verbatim answers that come with qualitative feedback questions (open-ended questions) can give you some incredible insights. But, are you asking the questions the right way? This article will give you a good start to understanding what makes for a good question that will get you the insights you need.

74 Percent of Consumers Believe Brand Loyalty is About Feeling Understood and Valued – Not Discounts and Loyalty Perks by Business Wire

(MarTech Series) Redpoint Global, a leading software provider that helps brands deliver revenue-generating, personalized customer experiences, today announced new research revealing trends in brand loyalty and implications around customer experience management.

My Comment: This short article has statistic in the title that should be reason enough to make you want to read it. The point is simple and well made: Chasing customers with low prices and discounts, is as the article points out, “… ultimately a race to the bottom in terms of cost.”

Winning Customer Loyalty With Real-time Refunds by Yael Barack

(The Paypers) In today’s fiercely competitive ecommerce landscape, successful merchants must also consider how they pay money out to customers. Returns are an unwelcome reality of selling online, with between 10% to 40% of purchases returned. But that doesn’t mean merchants can’t turn a negative into a positive.

My Comment: Our customer service research indicates that US consumers consider an easy return policy a reason to come back. Don’t miss the opportunity to create customer loyalty through an easy and hassle-free return policy. This article covers several important ways to deliver that return policy experience that fosters goodwill and gets customers to return again and again.

7 Customer Service Training Tips Every Manager Needs to Know by Justin Herrick

(Stella Connect) As a result of a high-performing customer service team, your brand will establish a reputation for quality service that keeps customers coming back. But if agents routinely fail to deliver satisfactory service interactions, customers will never return.

My Comment: Customer service training is one of the most important types of training you can provide your employees – all of them! (Not just the front line!) That said, our friends at Stella Connect recently posted an article with seven tips on how to run a successful customer service training program. Even though the article focuses on customer support agents, some – and arguably all – of these tips apply to any employee.

Customer Experiences Beset With Bows – How to Celebrate and Delight Every Time by Joseph Michelli

(The Michelli Experience) Let’s assume you deliver a service instead of a product (e.g., accounting, legal services). How do you put a bow on those deliverables? For me, the box’s content is your core offering, and the box or bow is how you build excitement, nurture, and engage the sensory elements across critical moments in your client journey.

My Comment: Today is Valentine’s Day. I thought this would be a perfect addition to our Top Five Roundup. Joseph Michelli is one of my favorite customer experience experts and authors. In this article, he talks about the right to use “boxes and bows” in gifting your customers and employees. By the way, gifting is a power CX and marketing strategy, but that’s for another discussion. As mentioned in the article, Michelli was reminded of the “power of bows” when he wrote his excellent book about Mercedes-Benz titled Driven to Delight.

BONUSES

Top 10 CX Podcasts: Hit Play by Chandni U

(Martechvibe) Martechvibe looks at some customer experience (CX) podcasts that have been helping leaders strengthen their brand-customer relationship. Business growth and customer experience (CX) have become synonymous today, wouldn’t you agree? The year 2022 is all about value-driven CX, and companies are continuously eyeing new technologies that can boost their customer strategies and business decisions.

My Comment: Do you listen to podcasts – specifically business podcasts focused on Customer Experience (CX)? If so, you’ll love this article that lists the top ten customer experience podcasts, and I’m honored that my show hit the number one spot. (Thank you MartechVibe!)

102 Customer Experience Experts Reveal Their CX Challenges and Actions by Clootrack

(Clootrack) We interviewed 102 CX experts from high-performing brands. They shared key customer experience challenges & ways to overcome them. Get the insights in this free CX Report!

My Comment: Our friends at Clootrack interviewed 102 customer experience experts to put together a very robust 65-page report that answers the question: What are the biggest challenges that brands face when they want to implement an exceptional customer experience? Experts from around the world weighed in. Note: The report is “gated,” so you’ll have to share your email address.