It is no surprise that consumer behaviors have changed. Social channels have sparked the ability for consumers to broadcast their opinions. This has raised the bar for customer experience and changed the rules of engagement.
Those who successfully navigate this customer experience (CX) challenge will see repeat business climb, turning customers into brand advocates. On the other hand, those who don’t will see reputations tarnished and a likely drop in repeat customers.
With this challenge at hand, I am excited to announce that RightNow has joined as a founding member the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), an association created by CX experts Bruce Temkin and Jeanne Bliss.
CXPA is a fantastic opportunity to share RightNow’s years of CX insight and expertise to advance the practice of customer experience through leadership, innovation and best practices. We are excited to work with the community of organizations and individuals that are passionate and experienced with CX innovation via the CXPA. The collective contributions will undoubtedly deepen customer relationships to build brand loyalty and drive revenues through even better experience delivery.
Within the last year, I have also noticed more brands creating positions devoted solely to customer experience. It is critical that organizations—and these new executives devoted to CX—have a knowledgeable resource like the CXPA. This means they have a resource to guide them through interactions with customers who are more empowered than ever before. They can’t afford not to.
According to our latest Customer Experience Impact Report, 82 percent of consumers will stop doing business with a brand after one bad experience. Bruce Temkin’s research also demonstrates the importance of an organization like the CXPA. Temkin Group’s The Customer Experience-Loyalty Connection cites that even a “modest improvement in customer experience can drive between $179 million and $308 million of incremental revenue over three years for every $1 billion in annual sales.”
If there are pressing topics you feel the association should be taking up or particular standards that should be on the front burner, please post and share them. Also is your CX team involved at the CXPA? Should they be? With your input, together, we’ll make the CXPA as influential as it can possibly be to support one another in rising to the CX challenge.
I’m not sure this is a pressing topic, but one aspect of a customer experience program that I rarely see mentioned is that it can be a lot of fun making customers happy. Employees who are having fun are more efficient and more creative. They miss fewer hours due to illness or other excuses. They become better salespeople, creating additional revenue for their company, even if selling is not their official position. There is less job turnover for the company which then is able to maintain a highly experienced workforce. There are just so many advantages to both employees and company that result from dealing with happy customers.
On the other hand, when your customer service person dreads the sound of the telephone ringing and cringes when the person at the other end begins to raise his/her voice, everybody loses.