Startup Founders Weigh In on CX Innovation in a COVID-19 Era

woman receiving package — Mature woman getting package from delivery person during pandemic. Courier guy delivers parcel to a woman at home during quarantine.

Disruptive companies are designed to, well, disrupt existing industries and business practices. But what happens when companies across the spectrum of industries and sizes are disrupted by a pandemic? At the recent MIT Sloan Retail Conference 2020: Modeling the New Normal, a panel of startup founders shared their experiences adapting to the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and their outlook on a new retail landscape.

The COVID-19 effect
Prior to the pandemic, Zak Normandin, founder and CEO of Iris Nova, the parent company of organic beverage brand Dirty Lemon, had a bustling wholesale business selling to hospitality and food services companies—many of which are now struggling to stay open. On top of that, Normandin said he noticed an influx of brands popping up. “The barriers to entry for launching a beverage company are relatively low,” he said. “Now, startups are accelerating because people are out of work and sitting at home.”

Normandin said these pressures forced him to move even faster to acquire and serve customers. That included expanding the company’s same-day delivery capabilities. And while the company was already mobile-first, it was also seeing a large behavioral shift in older customers such as Boomers placing online orders. “All of a sudden, food and e-commerce has been accelerated by several years in a matter of months,” he said.

Meg Maupin, co-founder and CEO of Atolla, a direct-to-consumer brand that sells customized skincare products, also saw a sudden uptick from other demographic groups. After the pandemic broke out, “who our customer is quickly changed,” Maupin said. “Because people can’t get facials or see an expert in person, we started seeing older customers put together their full routine [online].” In addition to more people shopping online, customer demands have changed, noted Cynthia Plotch, co-founder of Stix, a DTC brand that sells pregnancy and ovulation tests. “We’re seeing more demand for educational resources and online content because how people access medical care changed,” Plotch said. Plotch said she and her colleagues also noticed that instead of customers looking for information and products to increase their chances of pregnancy at the onset of the pandemic, as was anticipated, “70% of our customers were using our products to avoid pregnancy.” The company is using such customer insights to drive its marketing and ensure it delivers relevant content.

Rob Smith, founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free retail brand and community space, had recently opened a store in the trendy New York City neighborhood, NoHo, when the pandemic hit. “As a retailer, you always have competing priorities,” Smith said. The pandemic caused him to reorganize his priorities by closing the store to focus on the Phluid Project as an education platform and “lean into the activist part of who we are,” he explained.

New game plan
Leveraging more data insights and experimenting with other ways of reaching customers were top of mind for the panelists as they forge ahead in an altered retail landscape. “With all these brands coming online, it’s becoming expensive to acquire customers through paid channels like Facebook,” Maupin said. Her plan is to test a variety of earned and owned media channels, while embarking on more R&D to build out the company’s digital products.
Smith noted that in some ways, COVID-19 provided an opportunity to focus on what is needed to be successful. “I freaked out when everything disappeared in March,” he said. “But then I thought of a quote from Deepak Chopra: find every challenge and make them into opportunities. COVID has forced me to regroup and refocus.”

A Diehard Fanbase of Customers Help Create Sales Champions

One of the many lessons 2020 has taught us is that game time just isn’t the same without fans. Sure, the game can still be played, as long as there are skilled teams following solid game plans – but dedicated fans can really put a team over the top, giving it that winning edge.

This is true as true in sales as is it in sports – probably more so. But what’s the best way to develop diehard fans?

Timothy Blank, a vice president at TTEC, recently spoke with Customer Strategist Journal Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Glagowski about the crucial role practice plays in a sales team’s success. Here are some highlights from their discussion.

Value your customers

“Customer loyalty is absolutely critical,” said Blank, referring to both relationship-building and bottom-line benefits. “The proof is in the pudding for why you want to retain loyal customers.”

It typically costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, he said, and developing diehard fans can help brands score well into the future. Loyal customers are five times more likely than new ones to repurchase, five times more likely to forgive a bad experience, four times more likely to refer people, and seven times more likely to try a new offering.

True-blue fans can also be a slam dunk when it comes to sales.

“Converting is the ultimate goal,” Blank said, and brands typically have a 60 to 70 percent success rate when selling to existing customers, compared with a 5 to 20 percent success rate when selling to new ones.

It’s much easier, and more efficient, for brands to get to know an existing customer better than it is to learn about a brand-new customer. It makes sound financial sense too: increasing customer retention by 5 percent can increase profits anywhere from 25 to 95 percent, Blank said.

It’s also important to recognize a customer’s lifetime value, or the amount that customer will spend with a company over the duration of the relationship. Brands can boost that value by increasing the amount of the customer’s spend, lengthening the duration of the customer’s relationship with the brand, or both.

Cultivate relationships strategically

No one becomes a diehard fan overnight – or, in the sales world, after just one touchpoint. The key to turning casual buyers into loyal customers is delivering a great customer experience, and a key element on that front is having an omni-channel strategy.

“Customers want to be met where they want to be met, when they want to be met, and in the manner in which they want to be met,” said Blank. That may mean offering them the option of communicating through chat or voice offerings, for instance.

Customers’ expectations are changing; these days, they want the fastest, least expensive, and easiest way to interact with brands complete transactions. But even as the sales cycle gets quicker, it’s important to ensure each interaction with a customer is well thought out and intentional.

“Every interaction with a customer is a selling interaction,” said Blank. “Whether that is a typical sales interaction or even a service interaction, it should be viewed as a selling opportunity as you engage with your customers in varying levels.”

Every effort to attract and retain loyal fans should center around customer experience, he added. Once high-value customers are identified, developing rewards programs that are tailored to their needs – in a way that makes sense for your company – will help clinch the game.

“It’s very much about taking a customer-centered approach,” Blank said.

Watch the full discussion and learn more sales strategies and tactics in the TTEC web series, “The Ultimate Sales Conversion Highlight Reel.”

Sales Acceleration is Possible, Even in a Pandemic

There’s no doubt the COVID era is reshaping the consumer goods industry, possibly forever. Consumers’ shift to digital, which had been steadily gaining momentum prior to the pandemic, has ratcheted into overdrive during this time of social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

Against this backdrop, the sales cycle continue to get faster, meaning companies looking to prioritize sales acceleration have to be smart – and quick – when it comes to devising and implementing strategies to boost sales. Even in these unprecedented times, consumers still want their needs met in the quickest, most convenient way possible.

To accelerate sales, brands need to meet consumers where they are – and, these days, that’s largely online, where people are flocking to buy everything from basic needs to luxury items. Successful companies are increasingly focusing on digital sales.

Once the pandemic hit, Indiana-based guitar and music retailer Sweetwater adapted quickly to meet changing customer and employee needs, said CEO and founder Chuck Surack.

“There were literally hundreds of adjustments, big and small that had to be made to adjust to the quickly changing environment,” he said. “We’ve been utilizing texting to communicate with our customers for a while, but when we moved to work-from-home and the ability to effectively call customers was diminished, we leaned heavily into texting to connect quickly and efficiently with our customers.”

It’s also been a priority to keep staff, including the sales team, engaged under these unusual circumstances.

“Internally, the real key for us was to communicate with the team even more than normal as they adjusted to working from home, using modified tools and being a notch removed from their coworkers and other resources,” Surack said. “We wanted to do all we could to ensure that nobody felt like they were on an island.”

The approach, he said, is working: sales are booming at the company, and Sweetwater has grown its workforce in nearly every month of 2020. The company sells instruments, music gear, lighting, and other supplies.

Surack attributes the company’s growth in sales to its “old-school” focus on customer service, coupled with the ability to adapt and embrace emerging technologies.

“For us, it’s always been about a focus on customer service. I’ve always believed that if you put in the effort to consistently do the right thing and do all you can to add value and take great care of your customers and each other, that the money will take care of itself,” he said. “It’s been that personal touch that has made the difference for us. It’s always been and always will be about building and maintain great relationships.”

COVID has spurred brands across nearly all industries to rethink their business models.

When foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores dried up earlier this year, sports retailer Nike shifted its focus to digital sales. Selling on digital platforms had long been a part of the company’s sales strategy, but the pandemic pushed it to forefront.

Earlier this year, Nike reported that digital sales surged 75 percent during its fourth quarter, which ended May 31. Even though that same quarter brought a $790 million quarterly loss and revenue well below Wall Street expectations, CEO John Donahoe touted the retailer’s renewed focus on digital sales as a success to stock analysts at the time.

The company is pinning much of its sales acceleration strategy on direct digital sales, in particular. After the pandemic shuttered many stores across the nation, Nike put more attention and resources into its direct-to-consumer business. In July, the company announced it was reorganizing its management with the specific intention of growing its direct-to-consumer business.

In the quarter that ended May 31, 30 percent of Nike’s revenue came from digital sales. That’s a target the company didn’t expect to reach until 2023.

Household names and lesser-known brands alike can also accelerate sales by focusing on social media marketing, particularly by enlisting the help of influencers. This technique was gaining popularity prior to COVID-19 and is something brands can embrace even more now.

A 2019 survey of marketers by Big Commerce found 65 percent planned to increase influencer marketing budgets in 2020, and 89 percent said the return on investment from influencer marketing is comparable or better than other marketing channels. The most common influencer budget was $1,000 to $10,000 per year, the survey found.

Consumer habits formed during the pandemic will last well after it’s over, according to research by Accenture, which predicts these unprecedented times have forever altered how we shop. COVID-19 has spurred more people to embrace technology than ever before, whether it’s for health and safety reasons, for ease, or both. It’s also changed workforce dynamics as many employees are working from home.

While these are undoubtedly challenging times for many brands across many industries, there are real opportunities to accelerate sales for those that are willing to expand their digital and direct sales strategies. Just as consumer habits may be forever changed by the pandemic, brands may benefit well into the future from the changes they are making now.

Creating a Can’t-Lose Game Plan for Sales

A strong team that is well-practiced and has mastered the fundamentals is key to sales success – but even the best team can fumble out in the field without a solid game plan. So, what’s the best way to set your team up for a win?

Iain Banks, regional vice president of international markets for TTEC, recently spoke with Customer Strategist Journal Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Glagowski about the crucial role a strong game plan plays in setting your team on the path to victory. Here are some highlights from their conversation.

Know your sales targets

Team leaders and members need to know their end-game goal if they’re going to devise a winning strategy to attain it.

“Ultimately, in the sales industry, we are here to deliver on target,” said Banks.

A good place to start, he added, is by setting clearly defined and measurable targets. Each team member will bring a different level and type of experience to a team, and it’s the leaders’ job to identify the strengths of each member and assign them the tactics that will capitalize on their skills and set them on the path to success.

Sales is a tough – often ruthless – game, and the best way to prepare a team is ensure members are motivated and focused around target objectives. Those need to be clearly communicated, and reiterated as needed, to keep everyone moving toward the end zone.

It’s also important, Banks noted, to set a clear budget and communicate how team members will achieve key milestones. For a team to win, everyone needs to have their eyes on the same prize. That’s why it’s also important to periodically review the team’s sales approach, making improvements as needed.

Having a solid game plan from the outset brings an added bonus: it makes it much easier for teams to make quick adjustments if the unexpected happens.

Be flexible with your sales gameplan

Just as a football team might call an audible on the field, switching to a different play at the last minute, sales teams need to be quick on their feet and ready to adapt if things don’t go according to plan. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to prepare for the unforeseen.

It’s important to have a solid game plan, but equally critical to be able to pivot quickly when needed, Banks said. Agility is a major asset to any team and will help make any last-minute transitions as seamless as possible.

When something goes awry and adjustments need to be made, the first thing to do is take a brief timeout to consider the situation from all angles. Then, adjust accordingly.

“What’s really critical is that you take a step back and really observe what’s going on – make those changes, look at what’s happening in the market, look at what’s happening in the verticals that you’ve prioritized, and really understand how to switch from defensive to offensive schemes,” said Banks.

He added, “You have to be able to be flexible and adapt; and be able to switch in and switch out, substitute, and move as those strategic themes pan out through the course of your sales cycle.”

Watch the full discussion and learn more sales strategies and tactics in the TTEC web series, “The Ultimate Sales Conversion Highlight Reel.”

3 Hot Takeaways from CX Happy Hour

2020 has been a wakeup call for customer experience, but not everything will stick. In TTEC’s first-ever LinkedIn Live happy hour, guests from around the world raised their glasses (and coffee mugs for our Australian folks) for a Q/A discussion with famed CX coach and author Dan Gingiss: CX for What’s next – 2021 What’s Hot and What’s Not?

Between sips of my hot cocoa here are the three biggest customer experience takeaways I took from TTEC’s own Liz Glagowski discussion with Dan. Cheers!

Takeaway #1: Price and product Humanity is the differentiator

Competing on price and product alone is a loser’s game, especially during a global pandemic. Customer’s more than ever want to interact with brands that make them feel as if they are being taken care of. COVID-19 has brought forward people’s desire to have a relationship with the brands they do business with, and that has urged business leaders to think strategically about customer experience.

At its core it’s not that complicated. Dan stated that real, genuine, customer experience is delivered by employees. No single business has the same people working with them, and leaders need to explore how that makes them unique. Everyone in an organization is a human being going through the same hardships and can create connections with customers to truly stand out.

Takeaway #2: Invest in goodwill

Customers expect industries like retail to surprise them with deals and events, but occasionally moments of delight come from unexpected places. Dan recollected one of his career highlights at Discover bank where one simple action, $5 Starbucks gift cards to all customers, helped inspire unexpected goodwill for the brand.

The gift card was intended as a thank you to customers, with no hidden sales pitches or demands, but with a small hashtag to go along with the present. What resulted was thousands of photos on social media with members’ coffee, the company hashtag and words of thanks. On that day a financial institution surprised someone and created a memorable customer experience.

Though it was an investment, it paid dividends in organic, word-of-mouth advertising. Organizations spend fortunes on ad revenue to gain new customers. What they did with one gift card helped earn goodwill, an increased social media presence, and brand loyalty.

Takeaway #3: Extra touches go a long way

Customers, especially now, operate in a digital-first world but it doesn’t mean humanity must be missing. Taking moments to show appreciation for customers can go a long way, and this can be done by breaking through the norms with tangible gifts.

Dan celebrated, Punkpost, a company that hires artists to handcraft written letters requested by customers. People who get these letters he stated usually end up hanging them in their offices or home, where the piece of art becomes a constant reminder to the recipient of the brand they dealt with. One simple act can leave a lasting impression and brands today need to think of the small things they can do to reconnect or show thanks to their customers during difficult times.

Here’s to good customer experience

In a virtual room from across the globe there was a uniting theme: show customers you care. During COVID-19 it was the human touches that made the difference, and brands that want to succeed in 2021 need to make these connections happen now.

Next time, Dan Gingiss will explore impactful employee experiences in our next virtual happy hour on Wednesday, Dec. 9th and If you’ll like to learn more about the trends shaping 2021 please visit our CX Trends: The 2021 Edition today.

Mobile Commerce Projected to Represent 54% of Online Transactions by 2021

What’s next for mobile commerce in a world transformed by COVID-19? What new expectations do customers have and how can brands be prepared? Bill Bloom, founder and CEO of the mobile market research firm Fast Focus, shares insights on the mobile commerce trends that he and his firm are watching for in 2021 and beyond. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Let’s start by talking about some broad trends. What changes have you seen in consumer mobile behavior since the pandemic started?

Well, actually we saw a lot of changes going up to the pandemic. As everyone knows, more and more folks are engaging online with e-commerce through their mobile devices. And we predicted a rise from about 16% to about 25% of all transactions being made through Amazon and other e-tailers. And we actually see that accelerating. On the mobile side what’s happening because of demographics and because everyone’s becoming more mobile centric—even up to the Boomers—everyone is becoming more versatile on how to shop online. We’re seeing pretty soon half of all commerce transactions online will be through mobile devices. And we think that’ll be by Q1 to Q2, 2021.

I think mobile e-commerce will reach and exceed their projections sometime in mid-2021 [and] 54% of e-commerce will be done on mobile. And one of the critical things about that is brands who are selling on Amazon and through e-commerce have optimized their messaging and their packaging and their images where they’re packaging hero images for desktop, because that’s where it’s been and most brands have lagged way behind on mobile. So, the really big opportunity out there is for brands to get ahead of the curve and start looking at how to optimize the experience for their mobile consumers. As of the end of 2019 studies have found about 12% of mobile e-commerce shopping was really optimized for mobile.

What effect has the entrance of all these first-time mobile shoppers had on brands’ marketing strategies? Is it enough just to create something that’s mobile responsive or are they doing more to engage a wider variety of customers?

BB: Because digital is so fluid and because you don’t have to print anything, you can make changes pretty fast. So from a market research standpoint, you really need to be able to test the experiences that are online already, but also predict like would with any type of market research for anything before you spend the money. And creating images and messaging and branding, test that. Our tool Fast Focus was really made for that because we emulated the e-commerce or actually m-commerce experience so that you could test it as if you were shopping all the way from using virtual currency, using the imagery, the hero images and the messaging, and using competing creative and see what happens.

But the big thing we’re seeing is companies need to really start understanding the medium and then figuring out how to quickly test. In the time that we’re in right now, the COVID piece of it has changed a lot because companies are now looking at sentiment not in months or quarters or years—they’re looking at it in weeks. You know, when COVID first hit, everyone was [asking] what are people buying now? You know they’re buying disinfectant and toilet paper, but as we go through it that’s been changing on a weekly basis. So they really need to think about agile, fast, predictive ways to see where the market’s going.

Listen to the full interview at the CX Pod.

Mobile Commerce Projected to Represent 54% of Online Transactions by 2021

Women use mobile application software on smartphone phone .

What’s next for mobile commerce in a world transformed by COVID-19? What new expectations do customers have and how can brands be prepared? Bill Bloom, founder and CEO of the mobile market research firm Fast Focus, shares insights on the mobile commerce trends that he and his firm are watching for in 2021 and beyond. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Let’s start by talking about some broad trends. What changes have you seen in consumer mobile behavior since the pandemic started?

Well, actually we saw a lot of changes going up to the pandemic. As everyone knows, more and more folks are engaging online with e-commerce through their mobile devices. And we predicted a rise from about 16% to about 25% of all transactions being made through Amazon and other e-tailers. And we actually see that accelerating. On the mobile side what’s happening because of demographics and because everyone’s becoming more mobile centric—even up to the Boomers—everyone is becoming more versatile on how to shop online. We’re seeing pretty soon half of all commerce transactions online will be through mobile devices. And we think that’ll be by Q1 to Q2, 2021.

I think mobile e-commerce will reach and exceed their projections sometime in mid-2021 [and] 54% of e-commerce will be done on mobile. And one of the critical things about that is brands who are selling on Amazon and through e-commerce have optimized their messaging and their packaging and their images where they’re packaging hero images for desktop, because that’s where it’s been and most brands have lagged way behind on mobile. So, the really big opportunity out there is for brands to get ahead of the curve and start looking at how to optimize the experience for their mobile consumers. As of the end of 2019 studies have found about 12% of mobile e-commerce shopping was really optimized for mobile.

What effect has the entrance of all these first-time mobile shoppers had on brands’ marketing strategies? Is it enough just to create something that’s mobile responsive or are they doing more to engage a wider variety of customers?

Because digital is so fluid and because you don’t have to print anything, you can make changes pretty fast. So from a market research standpoint, you really need to be able to test the experiences that are online already, but also predict like would with any type of market research for anything before you spend the money. And creating images and messaging and branding, test that. Our tool Fast Focus was really made for that because we emulated the e-commerce or actually m-commerce experience so that you could test it as if you were shopping all the way from using virtual currency, using the imagery, the hero images and the messaging, and using competing creative and see what happens.

But the big thing we’re seeing is companies need to really start understanding the medium and then figuring out how to quickly test. In the time that we’re in right now, the COVID piece of it has changed a lot because companies are now looking at sentiment not in months or quarters or years—they’re looking at it in weeks. You know, when COVID first hit, everyone was [asking] what are people buying now? You know they’re buying disinfectant and toilet paper, but as we go through it that’s been changing on a weekly basis. So they really need to think about agile, fast, predictive ways to see where the market’s going.
Listen to the full interview at the CX Pod.

3 Steps to Creating a Winning Sales Team

When it comes to sales, you can’t play the game without a great team. So how can companies put together the best team possible to execute winning sales strategies and objectives?

I recently spoke with TTEC Chief Revenue Officer Judi Hand about how to build a roster of great sales playmakers in TTEC’s web series, “The Ultimate Sales Conversion Highlight Reel.” She described the essential skills needed to win at sales, and how each individual all-star can contribute to overall team success. Here are some highlights from our discussion.

3 steps to a great sales team

First, start with the acknowledgement that your customers and your prospects are all diverse, then build a sales team to match that diversity. Make sure that you understand the market in which you’re operating and you really understand those customers, their personas, their buying criteria, and what they are looking for in companies such as yours. Finding people from different backgrounds, industry experiences, geographies, etc. that will resonate with these potential buyers is one of the most important first steps to make sure that your sales team reflects the clients you serve and the customers that you’re going after.

The second is to acknowledge that not every perfect salesperson is exactly the same. They’re not cookie cutter. They have different ways to achieve their success. There are people who are much better at dealing with existing customers, because they are deep relationship builders. There are salespeople that are much better at prospecting. There are hunters always on the lookout for the next big whale.

And third, a great sales team has an amazing support team behind them dedicated to helping them win. So whether that be people who help develop the pitches or the solutions, or get to the right pricing or the right contracting, there is a massive support organization underneath a really great high-performing sales team.

Successful traits of an all-star sales team

When it comes to the people to fill sales roles, individual traits, skillsets, and personalities are important, especially when they are put all together. The best salesperson is actually the best collaborator. And they’re typically the best listener. They work with those around them and with customers to unveil what is necessary to achieve success.

For sales leaders, you’ve got to make it very clear that this is a team sport—we win together and we lose together. What that means is to bring everybody in to collaborate and truly win the day.

This isn’t much different than a matchmaking exercise. Put the right personalities together because at the end of the day, people buy from people. So you want to make sure that right from the beginning you understand the different types of people that you need, the different profiles that you need, and what the right ratios are from front-facing salespeople to support people.

Watch our full discussion and learn more sales strategies and tactics in the TTEC web series, “The Ultimate Sales Conversion Highlight Reel.”

How Kroger’s Contact Center Weathered the Pandemic

Mom & daughter with surgical masks doing grocery shopping for diary products in supermarket — Young Asian mom & her lovely daughter, both with surgical masks doing grocery shopping for diary products in front of a refrigerator in supermarket.

Grocery stores and supermarkets sit on the front lines of customer experience. They are literally a lifeline to communities, and when the pandemic hit, they needed to act fast to keep up with minute-by-minute changes.

Cincinnati-based Kroger, the largest traditional grocer in the United States, operates more than 2,700 grocery stores around the country with brands including Ralphs, Dillons and King Soopers. The company was already beginning a shift to digital self-service and more distributed customer support when COVID-19 began to spread. Like most other companies, the pandemic forced its hand to act fast.

Jamie Lancaster, vice president in Kroger’s Contact Center of Excellence, oversees Kroger’s customer contact center, support center and contact center shared services. He recently discussed how the organization doubled contact center operations and increased digital support by 92% in just a few weeks to manage customer interactions during the crisis. Here are some highlights.

Customer Strategist: How has the pandemic affected your business?

Jamie Lancaster: You are seeing the landscape shift, but you are also seeing the brick and mortar world that we operate in really fighting back. There is a lot more emotional attachment customers have to [grocery] purchases. If you are buying a book or a CD, it does not matter where it came from. The actual trust you have given is the author or to the movie studio that made it. But when people are providing food and things they need day-in and day-out for their families, there is a lot more of an emotional attachment. Kroger is still in your neighborhood. We’re still your local grocery, we’re America’s grocer, but we want to be digitally enabled.
There is a deep emotional connection to maintain. Every one of us remembers going to the grocery with our mother and watching her get her checkbook out, that kind of tactile response. We want to maintain that, but we also want to be really convenient. And obviously the pandemic has forced the issue. A lot of those things became very big because people didn’t want to physically go into the store. Delivery became big because people didn’t even want to leave the house. Those things have grown significantly.

What that means to the contact center is that our number of contacts has gone up because the number of people walking into the store has decreased as a percentage of the total customers. Now they need to use other modalities to talk to us —chat, email, voice, social, etc.

And while we’ve seen business grow by X, we’ve seen remote contacts grow way more than X. Grocery has always been a face-to-face business. Now that everyone has gone remote, shoppers are contacting us with the same questions, but in new ways. We’re seeing customers change very rapidly and those things are all trends that we in the contact center are responding to.

CS: When you talk about different modalities, what kind of channels do you have available for your customers?

JL: We still get a lot of voice. People have a relationship with their grocery where they feel more comfortable talking to someone. For brands like Amazon, their first idea is to go online to contact them. There is no picture in someone’s mind of an Amazon manager. That’s not the case with Kroger. It’s funny, I used the checkbook example before, but I know there are customers that write checks at one place and that’s the grocery. Certain parts of the grocery experience have been kind of frozen in time for them.

But I think it’s almost a tactile thing. It’s like going into an old bookstore and you smell it. You come into grocery, you smell the produce and it makes you think mom, dad, checkbook, it brings a tactile response.

So, while customers are willing to engage us in multiple ways, they still like to call us. And we’re very reluctant to do anything to damage that relationship. We will automate as much as we can, but we want you to actually talk to a human as much as possible if you want to. So we want to say, “It may be better to go talk to this automated assistant, but you’re always welcome to talk to a person,” because that’s much more tied to our brand identity than some other businesses.

CS: Do you have any specific initiatives that you’re proud of since everything went haywire?

JL: We effectively had to double the size of our customer support center from April to May. We had about a month because we figured out that things weren’t going back to normal and we saw what the customers were doing and the number of contacts they needed. Right around April 1st, we said we have to double our size by May 1st. And we did that. We restored our service to acceptable levels by May 1st. And it was four tough weeks, but we got there.

CS: What were some causes of volume surge?

JL: There were a number of issues. Our digital growth in the first quarter grew by 92% and every time there was issue, customers ended up contacting us. There are self-service options, but there are just a lot of calls that relate to them. We got calls about what’s in stock, or complaints about out-of-stock orders. Or something like “I came and got my pickup order and only half the items are there.”

Also, we use Instacart as a partner. They were getting hit at levels they’d never seen, so they were struggling. They were getting two, three, four, five times the number of orders they used to get. Their shoppers were going into stores and the stores were out of stock, so we would field calls from their shoppers as well as our own.

People called to complain, but there was nothing we could do. The supply chain was really struggling at that time. There just wasn’t any toilet paper in the world to be had back in March. Things like that.

We received more contacts into our contact center—they more than doubled [from April to May]. And so we just didn’t have the bodies to handle it. We had a few automation options [EG1] we turned up, but it wasn’t enough. In order to maintain service, we were actually able to double our size by May 1st because we had three or four different options that we could turn to quickly. If we had done it all by ourselves, we wouldn’t even have had the building space. But by having a good partner network, we were able to have each of them take a little bit of that burden and that made it bearable. Diversification was the key.

CS: How do you maintain your great emotional connection with customers while also increasing your digital footprint?

JL: The first thing is people. As people are getting more digitally engaged with us, we are not forcing them to use self-service. We’ve made the conscious decision to have a person on the other end of the line. That way, if customers have issues, we don’t want to send them through a really hard process to get to our people. We focus on people helping them. Now, once they get comfortable with digital self service, then they’re probably more happy to use an automated system. So if you want order status, you can obviously go check online. You can log in. You can use the voice response system and have it tell you. It’s very convenient.

But particularly when you’re having an emotional response, like during the pandemic, sometimes you just want to talk to a person. We feel like we, as America’s grocer, have a kind of a higher calling to be there for customers in multiple ways. So, I think the biggest part of it is that we’re using digital as an extension of the relationship we already have with you. Our core business is still being in your neighborhood, being there when you need us, with a personal connection.

CS: How do you plan to continue to evolve both the contact center operations as well as the overall customer experience?

JL: I see it as a continuum. There are things that are differentiators to the customer that won’t be differentiators in the future. For example, our loyalty program that gives people fuel points was this huge thing. And now customers expect it. When they call in and they need to know how many points they have, they can use the automated attendant. But 10 years ago, customers wanted to talk to an agent because they wanted to convey how awesome it was. You have to continually reevaluate. Whatever your brand is, you have to constantly be looking at what is commoditized and what’s a differentiator.

Differentiators for us now are freshness and being fresh in every way with the customer. But they also want us to get the basics right, like having the products they need. So the bottom line is we want customers to be satisfied. We’re very big proponents of the effortless experience model, which means we really want to lower customers’ effort when they interact with us.

If you’re calling that your coupon that didn’t work, we just want to fix it for you as quickly as we can. So that’s one where we say, get it done, get it taken care of. But we also want to augment areas that reinforce our brand promise of freshness and friendly. So when you’re doing your Thanksgiving dinner prep, we feature new products, cooking guides, and other ways to be a differentiator with the customer.

CS: What advice do you have for other CX leaders managing traditional companies that want to go more digital?

JL: I think you have to make it your own. You can’t look at what anyone else is doing and say it’s going to fit for you. You have look at the social contract you have with your customers. Where I see people make the mistake is when they suddenly add digital tools because they’ve seen other companies do it or because it’s a trendy thing to do, not because it fits what customers want from your brand.

We don’t want to change [our service] significantly. We want to go [more digital] when customers let us, but not force them.

It’s Finally Time for Frictionless Financial CX

It turns out the coronavirus pandemic is also a time machine. Instead of a lengthy march to digital transformation, the pandemic condensed years of change into a few months. For financial institutions, what was a slow shift toward mobile banking, contactless transactions, and digital insurance sped up when COVID-19 reinforced the need for fast, secure, and remote access to funds and financial information.

As financial leaders plan their next move, we’ve identified key customer experience trends and best practices that will help companies earn customer loyalty today and in the future.

Think effortless experiences
Most traditional digital transformation initiatives are on hold as financial institutions focus on projects that can be deployed quickly to meet their customers’ pressing need for services like digital payments and online banking, as well as virtual employee training on the back end. For maximum impact, make digital transformation decisions that are based on reducing the effort it takes for customers to do business, employees to do their job, and for the company to reach its goals.

Why is this so important? Customer experience strategist and author Don Peppers has long said that frictionless customer experiences build loyalty—not delightful experiences. “As technology makes it possible, your customers will demand an increasingly frictionless customer experience,” Peppers predicted back in 2013 in a post presciently titled, “May You Live in Frictionless Times: Imagining the Customer of 2020.”

Other experts agree. “If we look at the customer data, their clear preference is for organizations to simply solve the problem. There’s no customer need for delight,” Nick Toman, Gartner group vice president, and co-author of The Effortless Experience, Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty, recently explained. To earn customer loyalty and keep it, financial institutions should identify the key pain points customers face, (e.g, reaching a live agent, making a deposit) and eliminate as many as possible.

Empower employees to be empathetic with AI
No matter which channel they’re using, customers want to know that the associate understands the issue and is working to resolve it. This can be hard to do if an insurance specialist or online bank teller is distracted by administrative tasks. Prioritize the customer experience by automating redundant tasks with AI-powered bots to allow agents to focus on complex issues and build customer relationships.

For instance, common questions can be intercepted by AI-enabled bots, such as, “how do I know what is covered under my policy or how do I check my statement?” Programing bots to collect basic information from customers to share with the associate also helps deliver faster and better support, with less effort.

Build flexibility into the workforce
The pandemic crisis proved that financial services employees can successfully work from home. But as contact centers and offices begin to reopen amidst uncertainty, what will it mean for employees moving forward? The possibility of a virus resurgence, natural disasters, and other crises make it critical for financial organizations to have a business continuity plan that allows for staff and resources to quickly and safely shift to a new location while continuing to support customers.

The more flexibility that companies have in ramping up or down quickly with a variety of internal and outsourced staff, the better positioned they will be at meeting service levels and delivering a great customer and employee experience.

Share customer insights across departments
To deliver a consistent customer experience, all employees, regardless of department or location, need a shared understanding of customer behaviors, preferences, and expectations. Unnecessary silos must be integrated or removed, allowing the voice of the customer to flow across the organization. Customer insights journey mapping enables companies to visualize the customer experience across all customer touchpoints, giving insights into customer emotions, behaviors and key moments of truth. Scheduling time to speak with customer service teams as part of an information-gathering process is also a good strategy for including the voice of the customer in broader decisions.

Proactive communications are a must
In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, financial firms scrambled to expand their digital services, waive fees, and offer a moratorium on loan or insurance payments. Customers now expect clear and proactive guidance on changes to the products and services that they receive from the banks, insurance firms, and credit card companies that they do business with. This is an opportunity for financial institutions to increase customer trust by ensuring real-time digital transparency and communication.

For instance, updating customers on service availability is not enough—60 percent of bank customers expect specifics on waived fees, delayed payments, and interest rate adjustments, according to a Forrester survey. Only 10 percent mentioned local branch status and availability. To understand what customers care about, leverage the knowledge of front-line agents. Agents are often the first to notice when customers are struggling. Equip them with speech and data analytics tools as well as training to identify customer trends and turn them into actionable insights.

The future is now
Even if it means starting with small improvements, the time is now for financial institutions to catch up to demands for effortless/frictionless experiences. In the words of Don Peppers: “The only thing you should really worry about is whether, by the year 2020, your customers will be getting their frictionless customer experience from you, or from some other business that planned further ahead, anticipated these rising customer expectations, and adapted to them faster.”