10 of the most Frequently Asked CX Questions

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how can you know if you're really
customer-centric it's a question i very
often get and there are multiple ways to
address this you can look to your
customer satisfaction scores you can
look at your net promoter score or you
can ask yourself is our rewarding system
linked with with our customer
satisfaction those are all very valid
points to look at but what i like to do
is i like to ask a company three
questions
to find out if they're really customer
centric and that first question is how
do you react when you have an opposing
interest with your client
let me give you an example to make it to
make it clear imagine a bank
imagine a client of a bank that has a
sleeping bank account that they didn't
use for the last five years but every
year they pay an annual fee for the
support and maintenance of that sleeping
bank account imagine that you have a
large pool of those customers how do you
deal with that as a bank
will you keep that as silent as possible
to bring in the money without any effort
or will you go to those clients and say
hey you have a sleeping account we need
to talk about this you need to shut it
down because you're paying us and it's
not bringing you any value or are you
going back to the client and saying hey
you've been paying us for the last five
years we didn't bring any value we're
going to pay you back for that and you
see how the level of customer centricity
is building up and and that's a mindset
that i think is crucial to understand
how customer-centric you are how do you
deal with those opposing interests that
was question number one question number
two
what's your mindset
when a problem occurs when something
goes wrong in an interaction between you
and your client do you have a let's fix
it mindset which means that you will fix
the problem as soon as possible and
that's your key priority at that moment
or do you have a
let's find out who's faulted this
mindset
and and the two define how
customer-centric you are the majority of
the organizations will look for the
person who made the mistake if it's your
fault as a customer or my fault and then
they will act whereas a customer they
just want to have a solution and
afterwards you can look how to improve
the process or figure out what went
wrong
fix it attitude versus let's find out
who did it attitude that's question
number two and question number three is
this how empowered are your employees to
solve problems
we all know these organizations where
you have a problem and you're talking
with an employee and at a certain moment
they're like let me ask my manager
that basically as a customer that's the
sentence you don't want to hear you
don't want to talk to a manager you just
want the problem to be solved and you
want that person that is sitting in
front of you to have the the capacity
and the empowerment to basically solve
that problem
and in some organizations people are not
allowed to do anything in other
organizations people are trained and
facilitated to solve a problem whatever
it takes because they know that is what
the organization and the customer
expects from them
three very simple questions but believe
me if you check that upon yourself you
will have a much more clear view to find
out how customer centric you are how do
you deal with opposing interests what's
your mindset with mistakes fix it find
out who did it and how empowered are
your employees that's how you can find
out how customer-centric you are
how can we create a customer-centric
culture
it's it's one of the crucial items uh we
all dream every organization dreams
about a company that is fully
customer-centric and that everyone is
part of that belief and everyone takes
the right actions for that now i i've
listed five criteria that can help you
to create a culture that you want to
have
the first one is and that's where it all
starts you need to have a crystal clear
vision people in your organization need
to know what you expect from them they
need to know that if you tell them to
focus on a customer that you're serious
about it and that you mean it and you
have to bring that in an enthusiastic
way and share all the stories you can
find about how you can make customers
happy that's number one
number two is
hire for diversity this is something
that is often overlooked but most of the
businesses that i know they have a very
diverse audience we're working with
people of color we're working with male
with females we're working with people
of different religions i mean your
audience your customers that's a diverse
group
if you want to understand them if you
want to serve them in a proper way you
need to hire for diversity and make sure
you have different points of view in
your organization to boost the overall
level of empathy that's number two
number three is
make sure you empower people don't
micromanage
every small mistake that happens and
don't tell them what to do just give
them a context and say look we want to
help out people we want to help out our
customers
and you have the authority to make that
call
i will be happy with you if you make our
customers happy and create a mindset
where people fix the problem you know if
something goes wrong with a customer it
doesn't matter who made the mistake even
if the customer made the mistake it
doesn't really matter it's about
understanding what that customer wants
and that customer wants to be helped so
even if the customer made a mistake
you invite your employees to help them
out and you empower them to do so that's
number three
number four is create a safe environment
and a safe environment means that people
will also believe you that they are
empowered
which means that at a certain moment if
they're for instance overshooting
imagine something goes wrong
and you told your teams to solve the
problem for that customer and someone
really overdid it they went
over the top to solve a problem and you
think by yourself well
if they're all gonna start doing that i
mean we're gonna go out of business that
was too expensive or it wasn't efficient
or it was just too much
ask yourself what the impact will be if
you tell an employee that feedback maybe
that's a moment where you don't share
that feedback because at a certain
moment they will not feel safe anymore
they will feel safe if they get
supported your mission was
and your goal was to make sure that they
help customers we have to accept that
they will not always do that in the
exact same way that you would do that
but as long as that goal is achieved
that they help out the customer
let's be happy with that and if you do
that and if you don't criticize and
micromanage on the approach on how they
do that then you create a safe
environment that people will actually
believe you and that's the point where
they will change their behavior in favor
of your customers that's number four
number five is a crucial one
don't fall in the kpi trap
managers love kpis it's the first
question people have when they have a
new initiative how shall we measure that
which kpi are we going to use and i'm a
fan of measuring things but i'm afraid
of the kpi phone which means that
you're starting to take decisions to
boost your scores on nps or to boost
your scores on customer satisfaction and
the question that you ask yourself is
how can we increase nps
that's the wrong question the question
is how can we serve our customers better
how can we create more value at the end
of the day that's the goal and the
effect of that will be that your scores
will go up but if you manage the scores
you will take decisions that
are not always in favor of the customer
and are not always creating the value
that the customer wants and just in
everything that you do keeping your eye
on that customer will eventually create
that customer-centric culture
five ideas five criteria that i've seen
work in multiple industries and i hope
it brought some inspiration to to all of
you if you enjoyed this video please
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how to empower your employees to become
more customer-centric it's a question
that everyone is asking these days and
and to answer it
i think the most crucial part is that
you create a safe environment for your
employees
the goal is that you want them to
act in a customer-centric way which
means that you want them to solve
problems that you want to that that they
have to advise things to customers
that's the goal
to succeed in that you have to accept
the fact that they will do that in their
own way that they will behave different
than how you maybe would solve it and
that that is perfectly fine as long as
they achieve the goal of helping
customers now to make sure that that
safe environment becomes more concrete
it's important that you define
some sort of a playing field
some boundaries because if you just say
oh dear employee you can do whatever you
want as long as you help the client
they will feel uncertain so you need to
have boundaries
for instance you could say hey the limit
in budget that you have to help people
is 500 euros 500 us dollars i heard a
great example of my good friend shep
hyken
he talked about how how people in the
ritz curtain how employees in the ritz
carton are allowed to deal with this at
the ritz currently employees have a
budget of 2 000 us dollars to solve
problems that's pretty big and that
means that if you go to your room and
they didn't clean it in a proper way or
you find some dirty towels on the floor
and you tell that to one of the
employees
they will fix that of course but there's
a big chance that you will find some
chocolates in your room with a with a
handwritten card or a bottle of
champagne they will not give you two
thousand dollars for that
but they know that that's the limit
and the fact that there's a boundary the
fact that there's a playing field gives
them a very comfortable feeling they
know that they can do whatever they want
within that limit to help customers and
then of course you have to trust them
that they have the own their own
capabilities to make the right choice
and to figure out you know if the
mistake and the solution are balanced
out but the fact that there's a playing
field
gives them a more secure feeling so i
think that's something that you need to
have to create that safe environment and
the last thing that i would recommend is
do whatever you can to share as many
positive stories as possible
cultivate it i mean every time that one
of your employees is doing something to
help out customers make sure that you
that you recorded it or that you have a
quote from that customer that you have a
picture or a video or just an anecdote
that that employee is sharing but make
sure that you that you have that and
that you can share it with others so
that they see oh my colleague just did
that that's a great idea i'm going to
use that as well that they inspire each
other
and creating that safe environment
creating those boundaries
and sharing positive stories
will will be a big facilitator to make
sure that your employees actually behave
in a more customer-centric way
so i hope you enjoyed the video if you
did please like it share it with your
friends subscribe to my channel and
thank you very much for watching see you
again soon
how can you use your net promoter score
your nps score to actually have an
impact on your customer experience and
your customer centricity
first of all many people ask me what's
the best metric to use to measure your
customer centricity in my opinion it
doesn't really matter
there are people who are preaching for
mps against other prefer customer
satisfaction in my opinion that's not
what it's really about
if you want to have an impact with your
nps score or customer satisfaction score
what really matters is how you use it
and the companies that succeed in
translating the results of the net
promoter score
into the impact
for every individual employee are the
ones that make a difference i i've seen
too many presentations where a senior
leadership team is presenting the nps
course and they're like we have an nps
score of 10 this year guys and that's
good but next year we want to go for 17.
and the senior leadership gets really
excited because they're really into it
but then i look into a room and i see
like 75 percent of the employees are are
thinking sure
whatever have fun with your nps score so
there's a disconnect often with how
management looks at it and how everyone
on the floor is looking at it so if you
want to
you know break down that disconnect and
make sure that there's a connect
you need to know for every individual
employee how they can contribute to a
higher net promoter score and this takes
one-on-one conversations that means that
you go to someone in the warehouse you
sit down with that person and you're
like okay we just heard that we want to
increase our mps score this is how you
specifically can contribute you go to
the finance people you go to the hr
people you go to everyone in the
organization you have a one-on-one and
you tell them how they can contribute to
a higher nps score if you succeed in
doing that that will be the moment that
you will have a higher impact with your
mps and it will result in higher scores
and eventually you will become more
customer-centric because of that that's
for me the crucial question how does
everyone contributes to the success
rather than asking what kind of metric
do we need to use
just my five cents on nps guys i i hope
it helps
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how can you convince your senior
leadership to invest more in customer
experience this is a question so many
people have and there are two ways to
approach this you can do it in a
rational way which means that you make
this huge excel sheet and you tell them
if you invest in x and y the churn rate
will decrease that's an approach that
you can do
i'm not a huge fan of that i'm a bigger
fan of the more emotional way and my
recommendation would be take your senior
senior leadership on a safari don't take
them to the zoo take them on a safari
and this is what i mean with that very
often senior leaders are exposed to
customers
by the means of powerpoint presentations
with statistical data
which means that you will say for
instance look dear ceo ceo 75 of our
customers are happy
and and what you're actually doing is
you're dehumanizing the customer and
it's a very abstract kind of way it's
not a human it's a statistic
that's going to the zoo
what i would recommend is take them on a
safari which means that you actually
bring your senior leadership closer to
the end customer and there are different
ways to do that you can have breakfast
seminars where top leaders sit together
with real customers you can take them on
events they can sit down in customer
service and listen into phone calls
you can have events where they sit
together i mean there's so many ways to
do it but it's crucial to have that
direct feedback it's it's the end is one
effect is what i call it i'm sure many
of you had this that you talked to your
ceo and you said hey i have this great
idea i want to do this and that because
we're not really performing in the way
that we should on this dimension of our
company and and you're really excited
about it and then the ceo is like yeah
but that's not so important and then
like two months later your ceo has this
neighborhood barbecue and a neighbor
comes in and it's like hey mr ceo mrs
ceo i work with your company and this
isn't great i don't like this and then
they show their phone and say look this
is what i got and then ceo is like oh my
god this is terrible they come back to
the office and they tell you what was
your idea again that you had two months
ago and suddenly it becomes a priority
because a neighbor actually talked about
it that's the ns1 effect that's going on
a safari if you want to make sure that
your senior leadership is more into
customers take them on a safari bring
them directly to the customer so that
they can hear the oohs and the ass
directly from the mouth of the customer
and you will see that their commitment
towards customer centricity will
increase rapidly
go on safari if you enjoyed the video
please like it share the video with your
network subscribe to my channel and i
hope to see you again soon in one of my
next videos thanks for watching
how can you be more customer-centric on
social media
and to answer this question i actually
want to go back to the year 2010 that's
a while ago but that's the year that my
first book came out the conversation
manager that actually talked about how
to use social media to become more
customer centric and i there's a model
in that book that i still think works
today to become more customer-centric on
social media step one is listen
you don't always have to say something
when you listen to what people say it
can basically give you answers to
questions you don't have just tap into
their conversations there are many tools
out there to do so and try to look for
answers on questions that you don't have
it will learn you a lot that's number
one number two is facilitate the
conversation
you don't always have to lead the
conversation you can also facilitate it
which means that you can put content out
there which means that you can ask
questions which means that you can bring
a community of people together
and you facilitate them to talk about
the topic and you're just sitting in or
you're just adding a comment now and
then but it's basically being the
facilitator of the conversation that's
the second approach that you can use and
the third one is join the conversation
it's very simple this one but if people
ask you a question it's very polite to
answer that question
and it takes some time but by doing so
and by answering questions and by
reacting to comments on on youtube on
instagram on linkedin on twitter by
replying to comments you're showing
people that you really care i i've seen
many brands that share a lot of content
out there and one of their kpis to
measure success is the level of
engagement so they want people to like
they want people to comment
but they don't they don't react back
i mean it's that's like when you're
crossing the street
when you're trying to cross the street
and a car stops i mean if you don't wave
to that car that driver hates you right
if you're the driver and you stop
and and and a pedestrian just walks over
and they don't wave at you you don't
like that you're like i should i
shouldn't have stopped but it's the same
thing with online
if people give a comment on something
that you do
just reply it's a polite thing to do
it's like waving
to the car that stopped for you
three three approaches to be more
customer-centric on social media
listen facilitate join three steps try
them out and you will see that it works
fine hope this helps if you enjoyed the
video as always please like it share it
subscribe to my channel and stay with me
for new videos that will come soon
thanks for watching
how can we make our customer relation
more emotional
it's a crucial question and i think in
the world of cx the world of customer
experience too many of us are just
focusing on the process
and we feel that having a great customer
experience means that you have detailed
out every aspect of that customer
journey um and of course that's crucial
the process is the foundation but it's
not the differentiator and it certainly
doesn't bring in the emotion
let's let's take a very simple example
let's take a restaurant when you go to a
restaurant in every restaurant the
process is the same you order your food
the chef makes it then the waiter picks
it up in the kitchen and brings it to
your table it's the exact same process
over and over again but still in some
restaurants you're having a better time
than in others and the difference is not
made with the process the difference is
made with the kind of energy the
intention that the waiter and the staff
has at that moment so if you want to
bring emotion in your customer relation
it's about figuring out how you can
make every transaction more unique and
more human i i think that
we probably need more creative people in
every touch point like like you know
that i'm a huge fan of disney right and
at disney they have an imagineering team
it must be wonderful to work there and
the disney imagineering team their goal
is that every time that me as a customer
touches upon something of disney it is
within the emotion of disney and it's
every small detail in traditional
organizations it often works differently
you have your brand team
that is so much focused on logos and and
marketing communication and are not
involved in all the other processes like
like take if you call to a contact
center you're basically calling with a
human so you would expect an emotional
relation but very often it's very
transactionally scripted it's very
functional it's made to be efficient
what if you add some imagineering power
to that and you make that script more in
line with who you want to be and you
make it more human that's when you add
emotion to the process so basically you
need two things on top of that process
you need your creativity like the
imagineering group of disney you need
creativity everywhere you touches the
market you touch the market and on top
of that you need the human skill
because humans make it unique every
human has their own personality and that
personality is an an identification of
of the of the bra basically
so
if you invest in your humans and you
make sure that humans understand that
they will bring emotion to the
relationship and let's be honest
positive or negative that can make a
difference so very simply put your
prosthetic process is the foundation you
add creativity you add the human touch
and that's when you will create emotion
in the customer relation
hope this was a good
piece of inspiration for all of you i
hope you enjoyed the video if you did
please like it share it subscribe to my
channel and thank you very much for
watching this video take care
how can ai
change customer experience
there are two sides of the story first
of all it's behind the scenes
ai will help us to become more
productive and to increase the
experience for customers in a more
invisible way and on the other hand it
will be in front of the scenes where the
way that we buy and the way that we
interact with brands will change
fundamentally but let's start behind the
scenes
i like to play with these letters ai to
ia artificial intelligence to
intelligence augmented behind the scenes
we will find intelligence augmented
which means that the technology will
support the humans to do a better job
and the first place where we're going to
see this is the world of contact centers
and customer service there you already
have software that dives into the data
of the past and then when a question
from a customer comes in they look into
that data of the past and they suggest a
new answer for that specific question
and the human customer service agent can
see the suggested answer of the computer
they can play with it they can use it
they can personalize it and then send it
to the customer but because of this
software because of that automation
those customer service agents can be
faster in their reply and it can be done
in a more personalized way
and it's totally invisible for the
customer this is where we're going to
see a lot of change we already see that
right now but that's where we're going
to see a lot of change in the next
couple of years
and then you have the more futuristic
part
artificial intelligence
in in customer interactions and customer
interfaces there's already a lot
happening i mean we have our voice
assistants like alexa and siri and
google assistant
but i'm still waiting there for the
iphone after the blackberry moment for
voice assistance if you know what i mean
i have the feeling that they work for
like 90
but imagine that they will will work for
like 100
imagine that you can outsource certain
decisions completely to a machine like
that then the way that we buy will
change completely
imagine that you say hey alexa i want to
buy
colgate toothpaste that's brilliant for
colgate because then alexa will give you
colgate good base because that's what
you asked for but it becomes more
interesting when you say hey alexa i
want to buy batteries
how will that ai engine
decide what kind of batteries that you
will get
will you get amazon branded batteries
which batteries will get through that
filter
probably because of their review data
and their price quality perception in
the market and which brands will be
stopped
by the filter
so i think that ai will act as some sort
of a product filter in our decision
making
it's it's already happening in the field
of communication so we all know that
facebook is an information filter so if
you look to the front end
ai there will be some sort of a filter
in our life and a lot of people
criticize that a lot of people are like
yeah but i want to have some more
surprises in my life and a filter will
just narrow down my choices and that's
exactly right so in my opinion if you
really want to be customer centric with
ai you will also have to build in some
level of serendipity where there's still
a surprise if you know that your
customer likes serendipity you should
build that in into the algorithm to make
people even more happy and and that's
where the challenge will be i think the
behind the scenes aspects are pretty
clear how that will work in front of the
scenes that's where we still have a lot
of growth but if we do that in a
creative way and in a way that we do
more than just automation of certain
processes that's how we're gonna win the
the heart and the business of our
customers thanks to artificial
intelligence
so i hope this video gave you some new
insights i hope you will like the video
i hope you will share the video and of
course subscribe to the channel
and i hope to see you again in one of my
next videos take care
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how can we be more human in our customer
relations
it's something that almost every
organization wants to achieve they don't
want to be just functional they want to
have a more emotional relation and they
understand that humans can make a
difference there so i think there are
three things that your humans can do the
first one is empathy maybe the most
important human skill probably the only
human skill that at the end of the day
will not be done by a computer because
it's so complex so difficult we hardly
understand it ourselves how it works but
us humans we can be emphatic
and the better we understand the human
behind the customer the more value we
can bring so we need to bring empathy to
the table and if you can combine empathy
with the right timing then you make a
unique moment for your customer so
empathy number one number two what we
need to be more human is a positive
intent
it is a misunderstanding in the market
that every customer expects you to be
perfect customers do not expect you to
be perfect especially if you're in a
business with many many interactions
people just know that things can go
wrong
what they do expect is a positive intent
they want to feel that the human who
they're talking with who they're dealing
with shows the intention to help them
if you feel that that human is trying to
block you is trying to push you away
customers can become really nasty
but when they feel a positive intent and
they feel that human is doing whatever
that human can to help you out
you're gonna score points no matter what
happened before
positive intent is number two and number
three is serendipity
i recently read a study from the journal
of marketing that showed that if you can
create serendipity in your customer
relation the happiness levels go up
make sure that sometimes something
unexpectedly happens some some magic is
is added to the process today we live in
a world you have to just think about
this we live in a world with hardly any
serendipity anymore when you go to a
concert you check out the youtube videos
up front when you go to a hotel you've
seen all pictures on booking.com when
you go to a restaurant you already know
the menu before you set even a foot in
that restaurant you know everything up
front because of the internet
and because of that no more serendipity
in other words if something becomes
scarce it increases in value so if your
humans are being trained and are
sensitive for the fact that your
customers like a positive surprise like
a piece of magic that they didn't expect
if you train them if you make them
sensitive for that you will increase
your level level of being human towards
your customers and they will be happier
because of that so three ways to make
your customers or to make your employees
more human towards your customers
empathy a positive intent
and making sure you add some serendipity
hope you enjoyed the video like it if
you did share the video subscribe to the
channel and i hope to see you again soon
take care
we've all seen the big digital jump
forward of the past couple of years and
because of that there's a lot of doubt
about the role of physical locations in
a customer experience strategy and you
know in this video i want to talk about
the kind of criteria you should take
with you when you're trying to define
how can bring value to customers in an
offline world
first part is think about which digital
aspects you can bring to the offline
world and i see two dimensions there
that are really important first of all
in the offline world we want to have the
level of convenience that we're used to
in the digital world so when people come
to a store we need to make sure that the
checkout procedure and and everything
that is really not related to shopping
becomes as efficient as possible because
that's what we're used to
and the second thing that we need to you
know copy paste from the digital world
is personalization
online we have a lot of personalized
content can we figure out a way how to
bring that in stores with content that
is being personalized with the way that
they communicate with you that is being
personalized those are two items from
the digital world that you can bring to
the physical world as well
but then the interesting part happens
then it's about thinking what you can
add that we don't have on fly that we
don't have online
what can we add there
and there i'm looking for a couple of
things first of all human kindness
showing that you care about people being
nice to people listening to what
customers are saying and trying to help
there and that's also the moment when
you bring in your personal expertise
and and the trick is in my opinion that
you can act
on the floor as some sort of a human
filter
online we have digital filters a human
filter can add empathy to the equation
because digitally when we have a filter
the only thing they do is they look to
our behavior of the past right they look
at what we've done in the past couple of
months and they assume that in the
future we're going to do the same things
that's how the digital filter works a
human filter adds empathy to the
equation and because of that we look at
the real-time feelings of people and we
try to understand how they feel at this
exact moment and what they need at this
exact moment and when you understand
that real-time emotion your level of
advice your expertise can be really
tailored to how people feel at that
moment and that is something that a
machine cannot do and i think that's
what we need to bring to the physical
world
and and you know when i i've myself i
i'm i'm to blame as well i've heard so
many people say that if you want to
create something in the offline world
it's all about creating an experience
but i've been thinking about this i mean
what does that mean an experience it's a
very vague term
i think we need to combine the best of
the online world and the offline world
together you bring in the convenience
levels you bring in personalization at
the same time you're a real-time
empathic human filter you bring in human
kindness and that is something that we
cannot find online and if you can
combine both i think you have a very
strong proposition for your offline
locations to win the heart of the
business of your customers there
that's my opinion on this one if you if
you like it if you share your opinion
let me know like the video if you have
other ideas just let them know in the
comments share the video subscribe to
the channel and above all i want to
thank you for watching thanks for being
here take care
you