Decoding the Customer

This CX Mini Masterclass explores practical ideas for how to measure customer experience impact beyond the usual-suspect CX measure like NPS and CSAT. From efficiency gains to market share growth, there are many options for CX professional to demonstrate their value to the business. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares tips for how to measure and quantify the impact of your CX efforts. If you’re tired of being shackled to your CSAT or Net Promoter Score and want some inspiration on how to demonstrate the business impact of CX, then this episode is for you. Don't lose sight of the bigger picture CX professionals are constantly looking for ways to demonstrate their value and worth to the business. Sometimes it seems like all roads lead to metrics and measures. Often, this results in score chasing. CX thought leaders, such a Jeanne Bliss, have famously raised the flag about the dangers of score chasing, as it's a surefire way to have everyone take their eye off the prize. When CX professionals become obsessed with Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction or other metrics, they can easily lose sight of the bigger picture: how customer experience helps brands thrive and grow. Of course the classic CX metrics serve an important function. There is plenty of research showing that happy customers are good for business, but when it comes time to have conversations about things like business budget allocation, “happy customers are good for business” has an uphill fight against “we’re going to save the business $2 million dollars next year”. Executives are, after all, beholden to their own performance metrics, and most of these are related to classic business indicators like market share, profit and loss. It's up to CX leaders and their teams to share stores about the business impact of CX, in a way that will resonate with decision-makers.  Look for efficiency What’s good for the customer experience is often good for the business. When a customer experience involves a lot of hurdles or extra steps, it probably means there are the same hurdles and extra steps going on from a process perspective. If a CX initiative simplifies or cleans up the customer journey, there is an opportunity to look at how that translates into business efficiency. If a simplified journey means less behind-the-scenes processing time, that's an efficiency gain. If experience changes proactively address an issue that is linked to a high volume of customer calls, that's also an efficiency gain. In the business world, time is money. If journey improvements result in time saved, that can be quantified as a cost savings or as time that can be diverted into a more productive activity. For example, if a journey improvement results in a reduction of 10 calls per day at an average of 5 minutes per call, that means 50 minutes per day of time saved. This could translate into money saved through more efficient resource planning or revenue gained by diverting those 50 minutes of agent time to some outbound revenue-generating customer interaction. Customer understanding improves business accuracy The more that organizations know about their customers, the more precisely they can interpret customer needs and tailor interactions. Often these insights emanate from a CX team, so CX leaders should not be shy with highlighting the results. So how do we measure customer experience impact? One way is to look for how improved accuracy of understanding customers might drive efficiency. For example, if a sales team is armed with more accurate information about their customers, it might reduce the initial back-and-forth with customers, enabling them to save time when providing recommendations. It could also streamline the process of making a sale. In these examples, improved accuracy of information about customers translates into an efficiency gain for the sales team, much as a reduction of calls meant an efficiency gain for the call ce...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the concept of a customer advisory board (aka customer advisory council) as a Voice of Customer methodology that can yield incredibly rich insights and strengthen relationships with influential customers. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares insights on where customer advisory boards are best suited as a VOC approach, and some practical tips to consider if starting one. If you’re looking for a quick yet comprehensive overview of the concept of a customer advisory board and some practical ideas that you can take back to the office, then this episode is for you. A robust Voice of Customer approach Episode 39 explored the concept of Voice of Customer, how this differs from CX metrics and measures, and why understanding customers is key to business success. The thing about Voice of Customer is that there are many different approaches. Some of the most popular include surveys, focus groups and interviews, but there are many others, including the customer advisory board (or customer advisory council). A customer advisory board is organized by a product or service provider and usually consists of a group of customers who convene with the service provider on a regular basis to discuss their experiences, provide feedback, and even participate in innovation or co-creation. Most traditional VOC efforts like surveys or interviews rely on once-off interactions with customers to garner their feedback, but a customer advisory board is an ongoing thing. With the benefit of time and follow-up, one can have deeper conversations with customers. Customers who participate may also gain an appreciation for the service provider's business and therefore be able to be collaborative partners in things like troubleshooting and innovation. Customers who contribute their time and energy to participating are also likely to develop a vested interest in the success of the service provider’s business and may become vocal promoters. For these reasons, some companies specifically select industry influencers to be part of their customer advisory bodies. Customer advisory bodies are more common in the B2B context where the customer journeys are often complex, needs are ongoing and the product in question may be an integral part of the customer’s business operations. That’s not to say that you can’t apply this concept to the B2C space as well. Kraft Food's Velveeta cheese brand very effectively engaged with a council of its "super users" to reinvent how it engages with customers and positions its product in the marketplace. Read more about their approach here. Customer advisory council ≠ customer experience council A customer advisory council is not to be confused with a customer council or a customer experience council, which is something else. A customer experience council is usually an internal governance body or cross-functional steerco that meets to discuss customer experience management, journey improvement, etc. Even though the names are similar, the concepts are totally different. To keep the two straight, one can remember that a customer advisory board advises the business based on the external customer perspective. Tips for starting a customer advisory board Customer advisory boards or councils can be useful for nearly any type of product or service provider, whether that’s B2B or B2C. There are a couple of key ingredients that make a customer advisory board successful. A clear purpose - an advisory body can provide insights that will be useful for business strategy, product development, service improvement, marketing, account management, and many other things. Customer participants need to know the objectives of the council, and the engagements should work towards these. The purpose will also inform who should participate. Selecting the right customers to participate - B2B customers are actually a village of stakeholders. A customer’s CEO,

VP of Marketing and Customer Engagement at HUGHES, Sue Brady, shares insights about her team's CXNow! program, an innovative approach to unearthing ideas to improve customer experience. Sue and show host, Julia, discuss the genesis for the program, the resulting impact on the customer journey and what had put CXNow! in a different stratosphere from your run-of-the-mill employee suggestion box. If you’re interested in a real life example of how CX professionals are realizing change and making CX relevant in their organization, then this episode is for you. A CX leader in action Sue Brady is the the Vice President of Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES Networks Systems. Sue is a strategic and results-driven marketing executive with a proven ability to grow revenue and profits through online and direct marketing channels. In addition to her marketing duties, in the last two years she has been co-leading a newly created Customer Experience Team. The goal of the team has been to spread the practice of always putting the customer first. Hughes Network Systems, LLC (we’ll refer to it as HUGHES from here on out) is the global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its flagship high-speed satellite Internet service is HughesNet®, the world’s largest satellite network with over 1.4 million residential and business customers across the Americas. Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland, Hughes operates sales and support offices worldwide, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation Like many CX professionals, Sue comes from a marketing background, though she has been involved with customer experience for many years. HUGHES' parent company EchoStar has always emphasized customer experience, and when the leadership team decided to formalize a CX function, Sue was a natural fit for the role. Her skills have been complemented by those of her CX co-lead who hails from a customer service support background. They both had CX-related responsibilities already as a part of their ‘regular’ jobs, but this shift put more focus on CX. It sounds like HUGHES has found a way to bring together the best of both worlds to great a CX powerhouse in their organization. Sue Brady Vice President Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES To learn more about Sue, be sure to check out her LinkedIn profile or follow her on Twitter, where she often posts nuggets of insight about CX And digital marketing. If you'd like to learn more about HUGHES, they've got a great website with details about their products and services.  CXNow! in the spotlight Customer journeys are works in progress. As customer wants and needs or the technology underpinning the experience evolves, so should the journey. But how do CX teams gather ideas to improve customer experience? One approach is to go straight to the horse's mouth and ask customers what they want. Most organizations with a CX program do this, and it yields tons of insights, but it can also be difficult or time-consuming to manage customer listening on an ongoing basis. That’s why many organizations also turn to their employees as an additional source of ideas for journey improvement. Since employees have a unique perspective about what goes on behind the scenes, they are well-positioned to combine this with things they have had to troubleshoot in the past.  HUGHES CXNow! program does just that. The program was designed to encourage employees, service center contractors and installers to start thinking about ways that the company could improve customer experience. Ideas are submitted through a centralized email inbox, where they are reviewed, vetted and actioned by a cross-functional team on a weekly basis. Team members who submit ideas are recognized through posters, video reels and badge pins. This campaign aspect of the program helps create a sense of ownership and sustain organization-wide energy around the program.  CXNow!

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the concept of organizational rituals and the role they play in reinforcing culture and strengthening customer experience as a competitive advantage. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some findings from her recent research on team rituals in the business context. If you are keen to learn about this cutting edge topic and hear some tips for shaping customer-centric rituals in your organization, then this episode is for you. An emerging topic Episode 66 covered the link between HR strategy and CX culture. HR strategy is the foundation of team culture, whether that's a customer-centric culture or not. But there are many other things that influence attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. Rituals come from the culture, but also reinforce the culture, and for this reason, rituals are an emerging topic in CX management. It's a particularly important area of focus in terms of how leaders can ensure that team culture supports business objectives, like the customer promise (see episode 69 for a detailed explanation of the customer promise). Rituals haven't been a major area of focus of CX professionals, so there is limited coverage and thought leadership on the topic. Business management academics have been pondering the role of rituals in the business context and, not surprisingly, this research sheds light on how this aspect of business management might be applicable to CX management. Defining "rites" and "rituals" Intuitively, we all probably understand what business rituals are: ongoing actions or interactions that reinforce norms. This interpretation is correct, but a duo of academics from the US and Brazil have come up with a definition that really puts things in perspective.  Ritual action, it is proposed, is a form of social action in which a group’s values and identity are publicly demonstrated or enacted in a stylized manner, within the context of a specific occasion or event. - Gazi Islamro and Michael J. Zyphur Examples of this might include a dinner for employees, a speech welcoming a new hire or a manager’s weekly team huddle. It’s important to note that many scholars use the words “rite” and “ritual” interchangeably. In practice, people often refer to specific types or examples of ritual action as “rites”, and the term "rituals" as a broad generic descriptor (Islamro and Zyphur's research goes into more detail on the background of this definition, should you wish to jump down the rabbit hole on this topic). Different types of rituals Not all rituals serve the same purpose, and understanding the difference between the types of rituals clarified how these might be applied in a business context. Rites of passage serve to “socialize” participants as an accepted member within the broader community. Rites of passage would include things like new hire onboarding. Rites of enhancement are public celebration of commendable behavior, intended to showcase model behavior and recognize individuals. An example of this would be a CEO shout-out in a monthly team newsletter. Rites of renewal are a stabilizing function within an organization. These rituals rejuvenate and reinforce values over time. A Manager’s weekly huddle is a great example of a rite of renewal. Rites of conflict resolution are just what the sound like, how an organization deals with a dispute between stakeholders within the community. Rites of integration work to establish an emotional unity or community bond. An example of this might be an annual team building offsite or even something less formal like a greeting ritual or how team members vents their frustrations at the water cooler. Rites of degradation are less common, but serve an important role and they may be a consideration during change management. Rites of degradation happen when an organization is going through a major change or possibly shutting down. These rites often involve reflection on what went ...

This CX Mini Masterclass defines the concept of the Customer Promise and explores why it's important for organizations to define "What is Great Experience" in the context of their brand. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, dissects an example customer promise and shares tips on how to develop your own. If you’ve been looking for clarity on yet another popular CX buzzword and would like to learn about why it’s so important to create a customer promise in the first place, then this episode is for you. Customer promise Episode 67 covered how and why organizations should internally and externally market CX. This, of course, hinges upon having a clear definition of what experiences customers can expect and how teams should deliver these experiences. Most brands don't cover this in the company vision, mission or values. All of those brand statements are important, and they should support customer-centricity, but they're not the same as a customer promise. A customer promise is a single statement outlining the experience that a brand intends to provide to its customers and prospective customers. It should be clear, simple and actionable, ideally no longer than one sentence. You could almost think of the customer promise as a vision or mission statement focused exclusively on the experience and how this is delivered. Exploring an example The car brand Hyundai has a great example of a customer promise statement for their service team. At Hyundai, we put all our efforts to provide customers with the best after sales service. This statement lets us know that Hyundai takes after sales service seriously, that they’re willing to put some muscle behind providing a great experience, and that customers can expect a best in class WOW experience, one that possibly competes with service experiences from different consumer categories all together. This statement indicates to teams that the service experience is a major strategic priority. When they say “we put all our efforts”, this signals to Hyundai’s teams that everything they do should contribute to a journey-defining after sales service experience. It should be noted that it's not best practice to create a customer promise that is so specific to one aspect of the journey (in this case, after sales service). Hyundai could (and should) have just as easily made a customer promise that was applicable to the entire customer journey. Supporting the promise with principles If Hyundai's example promise statement still feels a little vague to you, that’s OK. Remember it's tough to be overly specific with a single sentence. A customer promise should be backed up by customer experience principles, which unpack the next layer of detail. Experience principles are the “how-to” details behind the customer promise, linking the vision to behaviors or outcomes. Hyundai has defined 8 of these: Listen carefully and actively follow up on your request Maintain a clean, safe and friendly environment Schedule an appointment that is convenient to you Attend to you promptly on arrival in a friendly and professional manner Provide you with an accurate time and cost estimate Obtain your authorization before commencing any additional work Thoroughly explain all repairs performed and review all costs Ensure the vehicle is returned at the time agreed in a clean and tidy condition As you can see, the experience principles are where things can get a little bit more prescriptive, while still supporting the overarching customer promise. If you're curious about how experience principles are put to use, guest expert Ben Motteram spoke about the role of experience principles in CX strategy during episode 29. I’d highly suggest that you check out that episode if you haven’t already. The importance of defining "What is great customer experience"  So why do we care about a customer promise? We could ask the same about a company purpose, vision or mission.

This CX Mini Masterclass explores employee reward and recognition programs as an important driver of team culture. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the different types of recognition programs and how these can help rally teams around customer excellence. If you’ve been looking for some ideas about how to leverage rewards and recognition to encourage customer-centric attitudes and behavior in your organization, then this episode is for you. An important piece of the CX culture puzzle Episode 66 explored the foundations of HR strategy and how this in turn influences customer-centric culture. Reward and recognition programs are one of these foundations. Over time, how behaviors are recognized and celebrated will influence culture. Celebrated actions become the model behavior and what people aspire to. And over time, these behaviors and norms take hold and turn into what people expect from each other. Obviously, the foundations of culture are multifaceted, and based on more than just reward and recognition programs, but these are an important component (be sure to check out episode 66 for more about the key components of HR strategy). Different types of recognition programs Reward and recognition programs come in all shapes and sizes. These programs are defined by 2 key features: public vs. private recognition and peer-to-peer vs. senior recognition. Each organization is unique, so there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for recognition programs. It's probably a good idea to have a variety of different types of recognition structures, but it's not necessary to have a program for each of these categories. As always, it's important to think about the end user. When collaborating with HR teams to plan recognition structures, think about how teams interact. What interests the group of employees in question? A program that resonates with front time team members might differ from what's needed to impact the behavior of senior managers. The role of rewards in fostering customer excellence Rewards can be linked to any of these recognition programs. For example, a senior leader could give a gift card or some company swag to an employee they’re recognizing for customer excellence. Company award programs often include a prize for the winners. Team leaders could also have a discretionary budget to give customized rewards to their team. It's also popular to structure peer-to-peer "badge"-type programs with rewards attached. My advice on this is to take the approach of surprise and delight rather than gamification. Give people the latitude to recognize the desired attitudes and behaviors with appropriate rewards, but be wary of anything that encourages team members to chase the prize rather than live the mantra. If you're wondering where incentives like bonuses fit into things, don't worry, this hasn't been overlooked. Incentives linked to CX KPIs are important, but that's a big topic, possibly for a future CX Mini Masterclass. *Watch this space* Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX culture change) or get in touch via email. 

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the importance of marketing customer experience, both externally to customers, as well internally to employees. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some practical tips and ideas for how you can leverage your customer promise as a marketing draw card, and how to foster awareness of customer experience within your organization. If you’ve been looking for some ideas about internal and external marketing of customer experience in your organization, then this episode is for you. Spread the word about great customer experience Most major brands spend loads of time and resources marketing their products and services, so shouldn’t this be enough to draw in customers? The short answer is no. Most marketing emphasizes the CVP, products and promotions. Few brands dedicate much of their marketing budget to helping consumers understand what kind of experiences they can expect. And to be honest, I’m not sure why. Perhaps they think it’s a waste of marketing spend or they’re afraid of putting a promise out there that the business won’t be able to deliver on. I see it as a huge missed opportunity. If you don’t help consumers know what they can expect, it sets the stage for a mismatch between expectations and reality...something that often ends up with an unhappy customer. If your organization has established a customer promise or experience principles, these should be shared this with consumers. T Mobile in the US has focused quite a lot of external marketing on experiences, such as their unique Team of Experts support team. Focus on the touchpoints If your organization has already mapped the customer journey, you'll know that there are many, many touchpoints. Each of these channels of interaction can become an avenue for marketing customer experience and sharing the good word about what sets your brand apart from the others. Marketing teams are normally very organized with messaging via traditional above the line advertising, newsletters, etc., but remember to look for opportunities to weave the customer promise into less obvious touchpoints like statements, contracts, and sales/support support teams. If you are wanting to learn more about touchpoints and journeys, be sure to check out Episode 16. Internal marketing of customer experience can rally employees  If customers know what kind of experiences they can expect, then naturally employees need to be rallied around the same mantra. This is where internal marketing of your CX program comes into play. Internal marketing of CX is important because it helps establish a cohesive understanding of your company’s customer experience ambitions. Internal marketing of customer experience generally takes two forms: Consistent messaging about the long term vision of CX - Each organization needs to craft an enduring unified message about its customer-centric aspirations. Usually this takes the shape of customer experience principles or a customer promise. Like a vision, mission or purpose, this is something that should remain constant, with occasional refreshes as the business evolves. This message should feature in an organization’s cornerstone employee engagement and rituals like onboarding. Think of it as marketing for the long haul. Employees should know the customer promise like they know their favorite brand’s slogans. Short-term efforts to rally and energize teams - These are communications that are of the moment, often intended to encourage specific behaviors or change rather than act as a philosophical Northstar for CX. If an organization is looking to catalyze customer-centric change, they might investigate launching a branded campaign with an inspiring call to action. We can see a great example of this at Multichoice, the South African media company, where the CX team spearheaded a campaign called #99problems to engage all staff in helping resolve the top 99 customer pain points along the customer ...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains why HR strategy underpins culture and how CX professionals can engage HR to foster a unified customer experience culture. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the basics of HR strategy and shares some practical approaches for linking this - the bedrock of company culture - to CX objectives. If you’re looking for clarity on exactly how HR strategy underpins customer-centric culture, then this episode is for you. The power of unified customer experience culture When we think about the leading customer centric brands of our time. Companies like Disney, Netflix and Airbnb, it’s no coincidence that strong company culture is a common thread. These organizations’ cultures support their brands’ visions, missions and customer centric aspirations through the realization of their respective values. When those values include a brand's customer promise or experience principles, culture can become a powerful enabler of customer experience. But these unified force-of-nature organizational cultures don't happen by accident. Culture is the manifestation of “how we do things around here”. It’s what we can expect from each other and how people will act, even when no one is watching. While the concept of culture can feel “fluffy” and intangible, the drivers to culture are definitely not. HR/People  strategy sets the direction for all of the key areas of HR, including hiring, performance appraisal, development, and compensation. This is the bedrock on which culture flourishes. CX professionals need to understand HR strategy as a driver of culture and how to link this to the organization's customer-centric goals. If the linkage isn't clear, it's quite possible that an HR strategy can create the foundation for a high performance culture that is everything but customer-centric. The key components of HR strategy There isn't a singular template for HR strategy, but most cover at least 4 key areas. These components of the HR strategy should support business objectives, including customer experience, though it's often up to CX professionals to drive the alignment to CX. Hiring - Episode 37 includes a deep dive into how talent acquisition can support CX, but in essence, organizations must ensure that new hires walking in the door are aligned to the culture. We can train new skills, but it’s difficult to teach things like empathy and even more difficult to change deeply held beliefs. Make sure that your customer experience principles feature in your hiring process as both a draw card for candidates and as filtering criteria. Employee development - Training has long been featured as an important lever for customer-centric culture. Yes, training is important, but remember to assess how else your organization helps with the development of employees. Do things like on-boarding and skills development reflect the brand values and the customer experience principles? Are we treating employees as we would expect them to treat our customers? When it comes to employee development, don’t just get mired in the detail of service training, remember to ask the bigger picture questions about how development supports your organization’s delivery of its customer promise. Performance management and appraisal - “What’s measured is treasured”. It's true, people will modify their behavior based on what they believe they’ll be evaluated on, so make sure that your organization’s customer experience goals and principles feature here. Episode 53 explored the connection between KPIs and customer experience management, and yes, KPIs are definitely important, but you may also want to appraise people on behaviors that aren’t so easily quantified. It’s equally important that the link between performance appraisal and CX goals isn’t limited to customer-facing teams. Everyone in the business contributes to customer experience, so this should feature in the appraisal of all employees.

CEO of Ivoclar Vivadent, Diego Gabathuler, shares his perspective on what it means to lead a customer-centric business. Diego and show host, Julia, discuss why he’s become such an ardent supporter of customer experience, how he’s moving the business from CX strategy to action and what CX professionals need to do to win over senior business leaders. If you’d like to know what drives an authentically customer-centric mindset at the highest levels of business leadership, then this episode is for you. Insights from a senior business leader Diego Gabathuler has been the CEO of the dental company Ivoclar Vivadent AG, headquartered in Schaan, Liechtenstein, since 1 July 2019. The Swiss native initially joined the company as a member of the Global Product Management in 2002. He then went on to work for Logitech and several other companies until he rejoined Ivoclar Vivadent in Schaan as Senior Director Europe West & South, Near & Middle East and Africa in 2016. Since October 2017, he has been a member of the Corporate Management. Ivoclar Vivadent is one of the world's leading manufacturers of innovative material systems for high-quality dental applications. The company has wholly owned subsidiaries in 29 countries, and it employs about 3,500 people worldwide. Diego views customer experience as a key strategic imperative for the success of any business today...and one that should be led by the CEO. It's in my title. For me CEO means Customer Experience Officer. - Diego Gabathuler CX as a differentiator Diego has taken on customer experience as one of his core strategic imperatives. He sees a customer marketplace that is increasingly complex, both for companies and for consumers. With more technology and a faster flow of information, products can also quickly become commoditized. Amid this landscape, customer experience becomes one of the few ways that businesses can stand out. These changes haven't happened overnight, and Diego highlights that as one of the challenges. Without a "big bang" push towards customer experience, it means that many companies have been too slow to respond.  Diego highlights that he sees customer experience and brand as one in the same. A brand, from his perspective, is the sum of the experiences provided by that brand. That's a progressive view on the concept of branding, and one that many CX professionals would like to be more widely used within the marketing community. Customer-centric thinking requires understanding the customer Early in our interview Diego pointed out the importance of understanding customers and integrating their perspectives into the customer journey, product innovation, and business planning. This is the foundation of customer-centric strategy. The dental industry has been largely product-led for many years, but Diego has pushed his team to actually listen to the customer, rather than relying soley on expert insights, which is often the default in his sector. That said, not all voice of customer (VOC) insights are created equal. Diego spoke about the need to unify customer experience data from 3 different sources in order to provide a robust picture of customer needs: Field research, observation and big data. Asking customers what they want might sound like the best approach, but CX teams need to pair this with user data to see what customers are actually doing. For example, the Ivoclar Vivadent team conducted research to find out where customers wanted to get their product information. Customers responded that they referenced print materials (e.g. catalogs, and brochures) but user data suggested that most were actually getting their information online. Diego chalks this up to people reflecting on their past experiences and longstanding habits, rather than recent behavior. Had the team only listened to customer feedback without pairing this with behavior observations, they might have made the wrong decisions about which touchpoints to focus on. ...

This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of artificial intelligence and its emerging role in CX management. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some of the highlights from her 2019 keynotes talks on the topic of AI and customer experience, including the history of this technology and the 3 main applications in CX. If you’re looking for a practical overview of a not-so practical topic and some food for thought about how AI can help your team's customer journey improvement efforts, then this episode is for you. A little background on AI Regular listeners of the show will know that I'm a huge fan of providing basic definitions. In the business world, we bat around a lot of buzz words, often people establish a basic intuitive knowledge of the meaning through context, but it never hurts to provide a clear, concise definition.   Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a machine to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. This includes things like the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. The field of AI research started at Dartmouth College in the US during the mid-1950s, as an intrepid group of researchers developed computer programs that could solve algebra word problems and learn to play checkers. AI technology has evolved leaps and bound since the 1950s, and when you add in the great sea of consumer data that most companies have - courtesy of digital touch points and eCommerce, you create an ideal environment for AI to augment customer experience.   The symbiosis of AI and customer experience AI has many applications in the field of CX. If we have the power to process lots of information about our customers, it’s not a huge leap to understand that there are many powerful applications for this technology when it comes to improving customer journeys and how experiences are managed. Within the current AI technology, I see 3 distinct categories of AI application for CX.   Personalized experiences - To provide a personalized experience, we have to understand the user. AI provides the opportunity for organizations to do this on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Ecommerce “recommended products” was one of the first ways that we saw AI applied to the mass customization of experiences, but personalization has evolved beyond this. Brands like Disney and Netflix are using customer data to create experiences that are tailored for the wants and needs of their customers. Not all personalized interactions are created equal, however. The goal with personalized experiences is for a brand to provide relevant information at the right time through the right channel...without becoming "creepy". Service support - Chatbots are an obvious application of AI in CX. As more and more consumers are adopting digital self-solution options, it makes perfect sense to offer an automated first line of defense that can quickly answer simple issues. When things become more complex and human intervention is required, internal chatbots can be used to support the humans who are delivering cusotmer experience. Organizations such as South Africa's media giant, Multichoice, are using in-house chatbots to help their agents help customers. When we think about AI, we should remember to think about applications that the customer sees, as well as those that happen beyond the line of customer visibility. And if you’d like to learn more about that, check out episode 59 in service blueprinting. Augment and virtual reality - Special guest, Jacques Oberholzer and I spoke about this in episode 61, but AR/VR is definitely an exciting space. By way of just one example, American beauty retailer, Sephora has leveraged this technology to augment the way it helps customers explore and experiment with its products. Through its Virtual Artist app, Sephora enables customers to virtually “try on” different makeup products with augmented reality.