Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Voice of the Customer
Forrester will be presenting its inaugural Voice of the Customer awards during the Forum. Manning hinted that the entries reveal a level of sophistication that was surprising. "The results were really impressive on the business side and with customers," he said. "We're seeing tangible proof that companies have continuous listening that informs their business decisions, product design, and more."

Additionally, Manning said, nominees are "using sophisticated, business-oriented analytics to tie changes they make to dollars and cents: This program resulted in this dollar impact."

Temkin noted that the entries showed an overall growth in the use of text analytics. "There's a whole new player in town: unstructured data," he said. "Companies are gaining way more insight from mining unstructured data."

The Customer Experience Journey
Temkin recently conducted primary research on how customer experience has changed and what companies should be focused on to gain a business impact from their customer experience improvements. According to Temkin, companies need to think about principles like obsessing about customer needs not product features. "When you think about the economy we're in, it's more important to focus on one group of high-value customers and what they need because you have less to spend. You risk leaving revenue on the table if you don't. And a recession is last time that you want to leave money on the table, because there's not a lot of it."

"Proving the business value of customer experience is coming up over and over again," Manning added. "Customer experience officers--no matter what their official title--have to do this, of course, or they could lose their job."

Customer Experience Versus Customer Service
I asked Temkin and Manning if customer experience will overtake customer service as a company focal point, or if the two will stay closely connected. "We're seeing a number of approaches," Temkin said. In some cases customer experience is being led by customer service, because often customer service has the most touchpoints to the customer.

Another model is where a more independent chief customer experience officer not associated with any one channel looks at how to integrate customer service with all touch points. "We're seeing companies taking a new look at customer service in this model. That is, the strategic value of customer service," Temkin said. "This trend in customer experience is changing the perspective of how companies are seeing customer service." He cited as an example Cleveland Clinic, which is linking improved medical outcomes to changes in the patient experience. "The whole organization is focused around empathy. Think of what transformation that is for an organization run by doctors.

Inside Information
USAA has a long-standing reputation for delivering a top-notch customer experience, but rarely speaks publicly about its approach. Wayne Peacock, executive vice president, enterprise business operations, for USAA will deliver a keynote speech during the Forum discuss the organization's customer experience, and how it has changed--and not changed--over the course of the recent economic meltdown. He's also going to reveal USAA's customer experience "secret sauce," which starts with its executive leadership and includes both a defined customer set and programs to maintain employees' empathy of customers.

"The way they get everyone to be emphatic to their members is amazing," Manning said. "It's important in understanding how to serve their particular audience, [the military]. You better make sure take care of their problem on first call, because that's what their availability is."

What is your organization doing today to link customer experience improvements to business outcomes?