Tag: customer service

Using AI to Delight Your Customers With More AI (Authentic Interactions)

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives and has revolutionized how we interact with technology and businesses. This post discusses how to use AI to enhance customer experience with another AI, authentic interactions.

Over the past year, the AI landscape has witnessed a significant shift from AI versus AI competitions to AI working in collaboration with AI. Although AI-driven interactions have made significant progress, it is time to take them to the next level by integrating authentic interactions with AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Let’s examine how AI has evolved in customer relations and explore ten ways in which businesses can integrate authentic interactions with AI to enhance customer experiences.

Get ready to delve into a world where technology meets humanity, where the future of customer engagement is not AI versus AI, but AI working in tandem with AI.

 

The Evolution of AI in Authentic Interactions with Customers

Over the years, AI has greatly evolved in customer interactions. Initially, AI was used to automate monotonous tasks and to provide quick and efficient responses to customer inquiries. However, the early AI systems were often inflexible and could not understand and adapt to the subtleties of human communication.

With the advances in AI technology, we have seen the emergence of chatbots and virtual assistants that can engage in more natural and context-aware conversations.

This development has led to a shift from the traditional AI versus AI approach, where AI tries to outsmart or outperform other AIs, to a more collaborative approach known as AI + AI.

 

AI + AI: The Future of Customer Engagements

The combination of AI and AI marks a significant change in how businesses utilize AI technologies for authentic customer interactions. Instead of setting one AI system against another, businesses are now concentrating on integrating multiple AI components to function together fluidly, ultimately improving customer experiences.

Here are ten methods to integrate authentic interactions with AI to achieve this goal:

1. Embracing Emotional Intelligence (EI) is crucial for AI. It involves training algorithms to recognize and respond to human emotions by understanding cues such as tone of voice, choice of words, and facial expressions.

This helps AI to gauge a customer’s emotional state and respond appropriately with empathy and support. When AI acknowledges their feelings, customers feel heard and valued and offer personalized solutions.

I believe pre-programmed responses should be banned as they are easily recognized and do more harm than good. Call centre representatives should be given the autonomy to do what’s best for the customer within certain guidelines. If you’d like to read more about delivering best-in-class customer service, read the post: “7 Ways to Deliver Awesome Customer Service & Build Loyal Advocates”

2. Human-AI hybrid teams combine the best of both worlds by utilizing the strengths of humans and AI systems. AI is highly efficient in handling routine tasks and queries, allowing for quick and seamless responses to customers.

However, when complex issues arise or when human empathy

… Read the rest

Today’s Toughest Marketing Challenge is Not Achieving Customer Satisfaction!

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Customer satisfaction doesn’t last as long as it used to.

We’ve all become extremely demanding, thanks to constant new offers of innovation and novelty.

Today, we want things better, faster and sometimes cheaper as well. And customer satisfaction is becoming insufficient to drive growth alone. Companies need to deliver more, a lot more!

I was recently in the US, and as seems to be the norm these days, the hotel in which I stayed asked me to rate my stay afterwards. I completed their form, giving only four and five-star ratings, as I had been very satisfied with my visit, the hotel room, the staff and their services. Imagine my surprise, therefore when I got the following email a day or so after submitting my review:

“Thank you for taking the time to complete our online survey regarding your recent stay at our hotel.

On behalf of our entire team, I would like to apologize for failing to exceed your expectations. Your satisfaction is important to us and we will be using the feedback you provided to make improvements to ensure we offer an exceptional experience for our guests in the future.

I hope that you will consider staying with us again so that we can have another chance to provide you with a superior experience.”

Shocking mail, isn’t it? To think that a Hotel would apologise for not exceeding my expectations!

I believe that is exactly why they get a 4.5-star rating on TripAdvisor. For them, customer satisfaction is not enough; they want their guests to be enchanted, enthralled, and excited, so a return visit is a “no-brainer”; no other hotel choice would make sense!

So I have a question for you: How do you treat your own customers? Do you do just enough to satisfy them, or do you consistently look to exceed their expectations?

If you are a regular reader here – and I’d love to know why if you’re not, so I can do better in the future – you will know that I often talk about “surprising” and “delighting” our customers. These are not hollow words; there’s a very real reason why I use them. The reason is that our customers may be satisfied, but they will never stay satisfied for long.

The above example is one way that the hotel staff ensures they have enough time to correct whatever is not a “superior experience,” as they term their own desired service level, and to continue to offer total customer satisfaction.

 

Examples of Brands Going Beyond Customer Satisfaction

Here are a few examples of other companies that go above and beyond in terms of their own customer service. I hope they inspire you to do the same and to aspire to exceed customer satisfaction whenever and wherever you can.

Coming back to the title of this post, I hope you now agree that satisfaction is no longer sufficient to attract and keep your customers.

It’s time to step up your game to aim … Read the rest

7 Ways to Deliver Awesome Customer Service & Build Loyal Advocates

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

How can some companies deliver awesome customer service while others get it so totally wrong?!

I want to share a personal story of disinterested client support with you this week. From it, I have drawn seven learnings for everyone wanting to deliver awesome customer service and build loyal advocates.

Let me start by saying that it still puzzles me why any organisation would have trouble offering superior customer service when there are so many great examples they merely have to copy. (JetBlue, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Zappos) In fact, Mark Earls wrote a great book on exactly this topic, called Copy, Copy, Copy which I highly recommend.

This story is just one example of how some companies still struggle to accept that the customer is right, even when they’re wrong! Not that I was wrong in this case (at least I don’t think so, but I’ll let you be the judge of that).

However, the company concerned certainly gave me the impression that they believed I might have been trying to cheat them with the information I provided in my emails. They were never satisfied with what I sent, even when it was what THEY had specifically requested!

Perhaps they were just dragging out the process hoping not to have to “pay up”. You can see for yourself below, or just jump to the seven learnings at the end of the post so that you can avoid making the same mistakes yourself.

 

Background

Many years ago I bought a TomTom guidance system to help me navigate the streets of American cities.

I love to drive and feel just as much at home on a 26-lane Los Angeles highway as the two-lane Swiss autoroute system. (If you’re interested in which Californian road is 26 lanes wide, it’s the I-5/I-405 interchange.) However, after making many impromptu visits to unplanned US destinations I decided it was time to get a mobile GPS to use in my rental cars.

A few years on, I thought that it could also help me in Europe, even Switzerland, when trying to locate a new client or contact. (My car at the time was almost fifteen years old  and wasn’t equipped with a GPS!) I, therefore, added Europe to my online account, since my model couldn’t keep both in memory at the same time!

Last May I replaced the European maps with my American ones as I was visiting Florida that month. When I tried to reinstall the European maps in September, they had somehow disappeared from my account. I contacted TomTom customer service to ask how I could get my maps back and this is how our conversation went over the pursuing three months – with their worst English mistakes removed or corrected for better comprehension, but their own font bolding left in. (!)

 

The Exchange with TomTom

Me: “Hi there, I contacted you in May about changing from European to US maps. I now want to change back and the maps are no longer … Read the rest

Providing Amazing Customer Journeys by Leveraging the Power of Technology

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Customer journeys are evolving fast, and technology is at the forefront of this transformation, especially in the past couple of years, thanks to AI.

This post explores how businesses can embrace omnichannel experiences, self-service solutions, and data-driven personalisation to create amazingly seamless and unforgettable customer journeys.

I have also added examples illustrating some of the more successful implementations. Be inspired by these real-world illustrations of companies that have leveraged technology to build strong customer relationships and unlock new avenues of growth for your business.

 

Technology-Enhanced Customer Journeys

In the dynamic realm of modern business, the pivotal role of technology in shaping customer service has become undeniable.

Organisations adept at harnessing the potential of technological advancements offer seamless and personalised experiences and gain a distinct competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.

This article unveils the profound transformation of customer service in the digital age, underscoring how technology has revolutionised customer expectations and enabled organisations to deliver faster, more efficient and tailored support.

 

The Evolution of Customer Service in the Digital Age

The digital age has brought forth a sweeping transformation in customer service. Technology, the bedrock of this evolution, has spurred a revolution in customer expectations, compelling organisations to elevate their service standards.

By capitalising on technology, businesses can now offer swifter response times, enhanced efficiency, and personalised touches that cater to the individual preferences of their clientele.

As technology continues to advance, so do the expectations of today’s customers. A prime example of this is the seamless omnichannel experience offered by retail giant Nike.

By integrating web, mobile, social media, and in-store interactions, Nike has created a harmonious ecosystem that caters to customers’ preferred communication channels, resulting in a 40% increase in online sales.

This showcases how technology can amplify customer service, enabling organisations to meet customers where they are and provide a consistent, convenient, and personalised customer journey.

1. The Rise of Omnichannel Customer Service

In today’s digital landscape, omnichannel customer service has become a beacon of innovation and strategic importance. By seamlessly integrating multiple communication channels, including web, mobile, social media, and chat, organisations can provide a uniform and convenient customer experience. The synergy achieved through this integration nurtures customer satisfaction and provides invaluable insights into consumer behaviour and preferences.

As previously mentioned, Nike is one example of a brand that has successfully done this, but there are others. Starbucks is another industry trailblazer.

With its mobile app, customers can order ahead, earn rewards, and make payments seamlessly. This technological integration enhances convenience and deepens customer engagement, resulting in a staggering 40% of Starbucks transactions being conducted through its app today. This vividly illustrates how the convergence of channels empowers customers and fuels business success.

2. The Shift Towards Self-Service

The era of customers’ digital empowerment has fostered a discernible shift towards self-service options driven by the burgeoning demand for instant gratification and autonomy.

Organisations are now empowered to equip customers with comprehensive self-help resources, knowledge bases, interactive FAQs, and AI-driven chatbots that deliver … Read the rest

From Good to Extraordinary: Ignite Your Business with Personalized Customer Delight

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

It’s time to move from customer satisfaction to customer delight. After all, no one wants to be good when they can be great!

These days, providing a delightful, personalized experience for customers is no longer just a luxury—it’s a necessity for sustainable business growth. While every business is personal, which we would do well to remember, many companies shy away from truly getting close to their customers. Perhaps they’re afraid they will learn that they’re not as awesome as they like to think they are!

However, it is precisely through building strong engagement and trust that businesses can unlock their full potential.

It’s time for a paradigm shift in your approach to customer service, empowering your employees to exceed customer expectations, so they can drive sales, and foster long-term loyalty. (I wrote about this a few weeks ago; take a look at “4 Ways to Empower Your Employees to Give Outstanding Customer Service” for more details)

By understanding the importance of effortless customer journeys, personal connections, and continuous improvement, organizations can transform their customer service into a powerful growth engine.

 

The power of effortless journeys

Every touchpoint in the customer journey presents an opportunity to leave a lasting impression. To provide a truly personalized experience, businesses must go above and beyond mere satisfaction and aim for effortless interactions at every stage.

Understanding and anticipating customer needs is crucial to achieving this. By leveraging data, market research, and customer feedback, companies can gain valuable insights into their customers’ preferences, pain points, and desires.

Armed with this knowledge, businesses can tailor their touchpoints to meet and exceed expectations. Whether it’s a seamless online purchasing process, a user-friendly mobile app, or a responsive customer support system, every effort should be made to eliminate friction and make the customer’s journey as effortless as possible.

And the effort is worth it:

  • According to a study by Salesforce, 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is crucial to winning their business.
  • Research by Accenture reveals that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations.
  • A report by Deloitte found that companies that prioritize personalization see an average sales uplift of 10-20%.

 

Smiling for that personal connection 

Building genuine connections with customers is the cornerstone of exceptional customer service. A smile is one of the most powerful tools to establish this connection.

Even in a call centre environment, where interactions may be limited to voice-only, a smile can be heard through the phone and can significantly impact the customer’s experience. Encouraging customer service representatives to adopt a friendly, empathetic tone and providing them with the necessary training and resources to do so can make all the difference.

Customers appreciate feeling valued and heard, and a warm, personalized interaction can leave a lasting positive impression. By investing in employee development and creating a culture that values the human element of customer service, businesses can cultivate stronger relationships and inspire customer loyalty.

Building … Read the rest

Are You Giving What Customers Want Today?

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

As a dedicated customer centricity champion, just like you, I spend a lot of my time researching what customers want, just like you do too, I hope. In this period of great global unrest, understanding our customers has become more important than ever before.

Just a few short months ago, I didn’t think that it would be possible for customer-centricity to become any more important. But things change and now everyone is fighting to keep their businesses afloat. So the new and constantly altering needs and desires of our customers should be a top priority for all of us to follow.

To help me keep abreast of the changes, I’m regularly checking online searches for such terms as customer service, customer satisfaction and customer care. Google and Bing have become some of my best friends!

A couple of years ago, I came across some surprising facts, which prompted this post when I first drafted it. But with the incredibly unforeseen events of the past few years, I feel it deserves a update.

Already at the time, my analysis suggested a serious problem in the business of looking after our customers. Today it is clear that any organisation that hasn’t spent time putting things right, will most certainly be suffering in this post-pandemic, global unrest in which companies are trying to do business. I’d be interested to hear your own thoughts once you have read the article.

 

Customer Centricity

Wikipedia, another of my faithful friends, doesn’t have a definition for customer centricity! If you look up the term, you get directed to customer satisfaction! Unbelievable.  Try it for yourself and see!

Gartner defines customer centricity as:

“The ability of people in an organisation to understand customers’ situations, perceptions, and expectations.”

It then goes on to say:

“Customer centricity demands that the customer is the focal point of all decisions related to delivering products, services and experiences to create customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.”

What I particularly like about this definition, is that it refers to customer understanding and the need for customers to be the focus of decision-making. It also highlights the need to create not just customer satisfaction, but loyalty and advocacy too.

Now whereas it seems to be difficult to build longterm loyalty these days, especially in B2C businesses, advocacy is essential in today’s connected world. Of course the latter means that customers are surprised and delighted rather than just satisfied, so that they are excited to share their positive experiences with others.

Need help in adopting a customer-first strategy?

Check out our Brand Accelerator™ Course in the C3Centricity Academy

Aim for Advocacy Rather than Loyalty

As we all know, it costs between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer as it does to retain existing ones. (Invesp) Therefore strong loyalty is a valuable benefit for a brand. But covid saw us all changing our purchasing behaviours, as we researched, compared and then bought more online. So although loyalty is difficult, it … Read the rest

The 6 Best Ways to Show you Respect Customers

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

I was recently asked to speak about how to build relationships with clients, in this case for a realtor association. In preparing for the interview, I got to thinking about customer privacy and how important it is to build a mutually beneficial relationship to respect customers.

Customers don’t want to be automatically segmented and followed as they go about the web, viewing different sites. An article on Business2Community by Owen Ray says that

“The tracking cookie is crumbling. Smart cookie-blocking technology led by Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) now block third-party cookies by default, and even Google’s Chrome will soon get controls that let consumers block cookies.”

If you want to understand more on the topic of cookies I highly recommend this two-part article.

Companies that are truly customer centric know that it is important to build a mutually beneficial relationship where there is something for both parties in exchanging information and services. Many businesses ask far too much of their customers, with little if anything in return. I believe this is one of the major reasons that customers today are becoming sensitive to what and to whom they give any information about their interests, habits, needs and wishes. And why cookies are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

I, therefore, thought it was useful to review the major points to keep in mind, when a business wants to collect information about its customers in order to offer products and services that better meet their wants and desires.

 

1. Ask Permission to Gather Information

This should be a no-brainer and yet I still find myself on lists to which I didn’t intentionally, if at all, subscribe! You too?

Whether you are connecting with your customers by mail, phone, email or the web, you need to first request permission to ask any questions and to gather the information you are looking for.

Not only should you ask for their consent if you are not in direct personal contact, but when connecting via email or the web, you should also double-check that permission. You have to ensure that the agreement has been given by your customer and that they are still ready to provide the information.

Being attentive to privacy when starting to build a relationship is vital and shows you respect your customers.

This also means asking them to confirm their consent not once, but twice. Double opt-in as it is known, ensures that your customer is correctly identified and that they have indeed themselves agreed to provide or receive information, or to be put on your mailing list.

Far too often I see requests where the permission is encouraged by using colourful buttons to click, or an implied criticism if you don’t, with phrases such as  “No, I have enough sales” or “No, I don’t want to save money”.

 

2. There Must be Mutual Benefit

When your customer has agreed to provide information you need to thank them immediately. This … Read the rest

How Can You Provide Better Service For Your Clients?

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

How Can You Provide Better Services For Your Client? This is a great question isn’t it? It was asked recently on Quora and I answered it, as I do many that are posed on topics such as brand building and customer understanding.

But this question is I believe very different from most of those asked on Quora. That’s because it is one that every company, product, service and brand should be asking!

The answer is actually in the question itself if you look closely.

 

Provide Better Service

Firstly what is better service? Is your clients’ perspective the same as yours? And better than what or whom? Whenever a comparison is made it is vital to understand with what it is being compared.

To answer that, we need to understand what is important for customers. What is essential and can’t be forgotten, and what else would delight them and make them not just satisfied, but delighted and maybe even surprised. That’s a lot to ask I know, but even that is not enough!

We also need to ensure that we are better than our competitors, assuming that they are to what we are being compared. You’d be amazed how many brands are not competing in the category in which they think they are. We need to understand the exact category in which we are competing so that we can also identify the major competitors. Let me give you some examples.

Are dried packet soups competing with other dried packet soups? Or also with canned soups, or boxed soups, or homemade soups, or even sauce mixes? Depending upon the answer to each of those questions, the competitive set is going to be vastly different.

[bctt tweet=”Depending upon the category you identify as being the one in which you are competing, your competitive set is going to be vastly different. Are you sure about yours? #Brand #Marketing #Competition” username=””]

Once you know with which other brands you are competing, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your competitors. You should be able to identify one thing at which you excel in order to have a reason for customers to buy your offer rather than a competitors.

Now it is obviously difficult to be better at everything, but we should strive to be better than every other competitor in the category in at least one area. That should be our USP or unique selling point. It should be what we are known for and hopefully also the reason people buy what we have to offer.

[bctt tweet=”It is difficult to be better at everything, but we should strive to be better than our competitors in at least one area; that’s our USP or unique selling point. #Brand #Marketing #USP” username=””]

To identify this, we need to know our competitors very well and understand why their customers buy them rather than us. Is there anything about these customers that we could satisfy better than they are? Is there … Read the rest

Customers Care About a Product’s Value, Not How the Company Treats Employees

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Your customers only really care about themselves and your product’s value to them!

I’ve been a customer champion for most of my career. But with the likes of Richard Branson saying it’s employees first, customers second, my confidence was beginning to slide a little.

Thank goodness, therefore, for some new research from Global RepTrak® that has finally confirmed what I have always believed. Customers care about themselves first and foremost! Everyone else comes second.

Dale Carnegie spelled it out really well when he said:

“People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves – morning, noon and after dinner.”

[bctt tweet=”People are interested in themselves – morning, noon and after dinner.” Dale Carnegie ” username=”Denysech”]

It was the below chart that I first saw on MarketingCharts.com that alerted me to this work by RepTrak™. (I highly recommend signing up for their daily charts by the way; they’re a great source of facts and inspiration!)

 

 

The article that accompanies the chart is a great read too. However, I wanted to take a look behind these numbers and try to understand why some influencers have been pushing employee centricity.

 

Products And Services Are Key

The first four factors of reputation shown in the graph above are all product related. Therefore it’s clear that customers think about themselves first and foremost. They want satisfaction and therefore it’s a product’s value that matters most. I think that’s normal, don’t you? They are looking for a solution that meets their needs and a company that stands behind what they offer.

Great customer service won’t make up for a terrible product or service offer. So every organisation needs to ensure that what they propose is the very best they possibly can.

[bctt tweet=”Great customer service won’t make up for a terrible product .” username=”Denysech”]

However, it is also true that the quality and value you offer depends to a large extent on the excellence of your employees in delivering it. If employees are not motivated to give their best, then what they deliver will be sub-optimal.

This is why it is essential that everyone within a company understands their role in satisfying the customer.

One of the quickest ways I have found to achieve this is by providing regular access to the customer. Once an employee sees and understands what they can do to increase satisfaction, they are much more likely to do it. After all, it’s absurd to think that they would want their employer to fail, isn’t it? In fact, I have seen a genuine excitement around customer connections whenever I have introduced them within an organisation.

If you’d like to organise your own customer connection sessions then I highly recommend reading “Five Rules of Observation and Why it’s Hard to Do Effectively.”

 

Employees Are An Important Touchpoint

I think it was P&G who coined the phrase “the first moment of truth” in referring to the beginning of the shopping experience. … Read the rest

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