Category Archives: Customers

Starting a customer experience project

This morning, my eight year old daughter had a bit of a meltdown.  This isn’t our usual family experience in the morning before school.  It started with my husband waking her up and went downhill from there.  One of her favorite things in the morning is getting into my side of the bed (after I get out) to curl up for a couple of minutes before getting in the shower.  But every time she tried to do this today, one of us called her to do something else.  By round three, she broke down (not enough sleep is definitely a factor) and cried. 

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How far will you go?

I was at Disneyland this weekend with my husband and daughter to help a dear friend celebrate her birthday.  I’m always fascinated by the customer experience they put together and the level of detail they go through.  Three things struck me this weekend:

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Metrics Part 2 – Customer Retention

I was at a conference earlier this year when the discussion came up around improving customer churn and a couple of points I am always curious about came up – (1) Why do you measure customer churn?  and (2) Who does the measuring and analyzing of that metric in your organization?

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Part 1 – Metrics: Customer Satisfaction and/or Customer Loyalty

I thought I would begin this discussion with the same place most people start thinking about a customer experience based program – what do I measure?  Some version of this question is the most frequent one that I get from people and companies starting out on their journey.  And I’d like to offer a straight forward, easy answer but really the answer is… it depends. 

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The core of a customer experience program

With so many customer experience programs beginning, many people are asking, “Where do I start?”  It’s a question that I have heard often enough that I thought I might do a blog series on what you want to focus on in the first year of your customer experience program.  And it might be interesting for those of you who are already well under way in your program. 

Posted in Change, Communication, Customer Experience, Customers, Goals, KPI, Leadership, Listening, Loyalty, Retention | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Power of Listening

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a summit meeting for a SaaS firm in the area called Appfolio  One of the great questions that came up during the Q&A was this (forgive the paraphrasing): “What is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your customer experience?”  My answer:  active listening

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Customer based executive compensation

Before you say anything, I recognize I’ve been somewhat absent.  My fault completely, no excuses, just an attempt to do better and be more present.  To kick things off – I was fortunate to be at the Engage Summit http://engagesummit.com/ last week (as a speaker no less).  It was quite interesting, some fascinating speakers and topics, lots of good grist for blogging as well, so you should see me back here more often as a result.

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Rhythm of Business

I’ve been thinking a lot about timing lately – so much of success can hang on that.  But timing, the right timing, doesn’t have to be left up to luck.  You can plan for it.  We’ve been talking about developing a clear understanding of the rhythm the business uses to make decisions.  The better that rhythm is understood and mapped out, the better functions like mine (customer insights) can adapt to it and deliver what analysis is needed to help support and drive business decisions. 

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Measuring customer retention or you get what you measure

Most companies measure the number of customers who leave them in some form or fashion.  Most call it churn.  This is not a bad thing, not as such.  But think of it like this, if you get what you measure, why do you want to measure the number of customers leaving?  Wouldn’t you prefer a measure that tells you about the number of customers you’re keeping?  Can you see how the focus shifts?  How the goals are different?  I like keeping the attention on how to keep your customers.  I like seeing how well we do at that and studying and listening about how to do it even better. 

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The Deliberate Customer Experience

So tell me, is your customer experience deliberate?  That was one of the questions posed last week at the NPS conference and it made me think – what do you mean by deliberate?  Does that mean written down?  Does that mean everyone in the company knows it?  I think that you have to be both – every employee should know it, feel it really, and it should be written down.  Because if no one writes it down, everyone believes we all have the same idea… and I would bet that isn’t the case.  It may be shades of grey close but still, is that deliberate enough?  This is beyond mission statements and core values – this is what you want your customers to see, think and feel when they interact with you and your products/services.  Right?  What do you think?

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