Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for the Week of November 8, 2021

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.

The Great CX Debate: Should Customer Experiences Be Effortless or Exceptional? by Jon Picoult

(destinationCRM) In a provocative Harvard Business Review article, researchers from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) argued in 2010 that companies should Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers, because “wowing” customers was a losing strategy. The key to building customer loyalty, they claimed, was to simply make it effortless for people to do business with you.

My Comment: This article opens with a reference to a Harvard Business Review article titled Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers. Who wouldn’t like to delight customers!? The key is defining “delight.” It’s 11 years later, and the debate continues. Sure, you want to create an experience that is memorable and gets the customer to come back. This article has a few ideas and a perspective from the author of From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans. By the way, who wouldn’t like to turn their customers into lifelong fans!?

100 Totally Wacky & Weird Questions People Ask Retailers That Catch Them Off Guard—And Probably Make You Giggle, Too! by Bob Phibbs

(Bob Phibbs The Retail Doctor) While much has been made of the Great Resignation in retail, hospitality, and other service jobs – and it is serious – retail frontline workers often get some of the oddest and funniest requests. Here are 100 of the strangest things retailers have been asked by customers.

My Comment: Time for a little humor. While the focus is on the “wacky and weird” questions people ask retailers, I bet if you talked to your employees on the front line, they would have similar types of questions. People ask some crazy questions. Here’s one of the many that made me smile. Can you give me a discount on this hat as I’m going to wear it very rarely?

4 Customer Experience Strategies Inspired By Vincent Van Gogh by Chip Bell

(Forbes) Pretend your organization has an okay, not great, customer experience. You rarely get customer complaints, but you never get accolades either. Impressed by the genius of Van Gogh, pretend you could hire him as your customer experience consultant. What would Van Gogh recommend? Here are his poignant words as powerful principles reflecting his probable perspective.

My Comment: It’s time for a little culture mixed in with some customer experience education, and these lessons come from the master painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Chip Bell, author and a customer experience expert, has taken Van Gogh’s life story and found four valuable lessons that we can all use in our CX strategy. The four lessons come under the topics of innovation, managing detail, creating memorable experiences, and creating a unique sensory experience.

7 Best Practices to Handle (and Ace) Customer Interactions by Aayushi Sanghavi

(G2) Effective customer conversations help meet customer expectations while building trust and loyalty toward your brand and products. While there are several ways to improve your customer interaction practices, it’s important to remember that communication is an ongoing process and requires consistent time and effort.

My Comment: A customer interaction, as defined by the author, is “any communication between a business and its customers.” And, even though the title reads “Seven Best Practices to Handle Customer Interactions,” there is much more than just that. You’ll learn about the five stages of a customer interaction cycle, seven types of customer interactions, how to build a customer interaction strategy, and much more. This is an excellent article that deserves your attention.

5 Ways to Improve Customer Experience as Online Competition Heats Up by Steve Olenski

(CMSWire) Improving customer satisfaction and experience with your brand and online store is only possible when you find out how the target customers interact online, what product they like, what pages they visit when they come to your site and more. Customer feedback can also help you know exactly what you should do to improve your brand and conversion rate. Here are some tips to improve the digital customer experience for your target audience.

My Comment: We close out this week’s Top Five list with an article about online CX. More and more, businesses are going online to sell their products and services. Creating the right online experience is more important than ever. As more businesses move online, you must capture your audiences’ (customers’) attention and deliver an experience that gets them to say, “I’ll be back!” Here are five ways that can help make that happen.