Crack The Customer Code

Jeannie and Adam share research and expert tips for getting chatbots and humans to work together in harmony. Are chatbots and humans working well together? Chatbots are here to stay, and new research says we love them! However, we have a long way to go before they can fully operate on their own. For instance, bots are great for answering simple questions, but real humans do need to step in to answer the tough ones. “Not all chatbots are created equal not are all humans.” -Adam Toporek Even the best chatbots can create experiences that frustrate customers, and eventually, chase them away – especially when real human contact is not within reach. So how can we use chat bots in ways customers will always appreciate? More importantly, how can we use them to reduce effort where it counts without alienating customers? “AI and bots have the potential to make things better for your customers…” --Jeannie Walters Inspired by new research, Adam and Jeannie are sharing expert tips for fine-tuning your chatbot to

Adam and Jeannie share tips to unlock your full mobile potential and deliver what customers need most in the moment. What’s your mobile potential? We talk about mobile a lot on this show, but that’s because capabilities and expectations are always changing! Are you keeping up? Because there are many ways to leverage mobile technology to make it easier to do business with you. “Ask yourself, ‘What does a customer really want via mobile?’” -Jeannie Walters There are many ways mobile can be used to create a more rewarding, seamless and effortless customer experience, and we bet there are some you haven’t thought of! So we’re sharing some tips and ideas to help you create the best mobile experience possible. “What people are really looking for is fast information in most cases…” -Adam Toporek Is your mobile experience living up to its full potential? More importantly, are you sure you’re delivering the mobile experience your customers need most? Listen in to find out and learn some tips you can use toda

Adam and Jeannie interview Merit Gest to discuss powerful sales engagement and onboarding strategies for customer-focused sales teams. Onboarding for outstanding sales engagement Sales is often treated as separate from the customer experience. Consequently, sales staff is often not trained to deliver a customer-focused experience from start to finish. Even when customer experience principles are included, typical sales training falls short on empowering sales professionals to deliver great experiences throughout the entire customer journey. “Onboarding continues…through the entire sales cycle…” -Merit Gest Merit Gest joins us today to help onboard and train sales staff the right way. She explains that the onboarding process should continue through the entire sales cycle, not just through the initial closing. Therefore, training a customer-focused sales team requires much more time and attention than most of us may think. First of all, it’s critical to let trainees know they’re being welcomed into a cust

Adam and Jeannie explore recent research about prevailing ecommerce experience pet peeves and offer creative solutions. How does your ecommerce experience stack up? Ecommerce experiences have come a long way since the 90’s, but recent research shows that we still have a long way to go. Customers are still having problems with navigation, personalization, functionality, and just plain poor user experiences. “It’s still not really about the customer at the end of the day…” -Jeannie Walters  After great leaps in technology and design, would you believe some of the same pet peeves have prevailed through the years, or even decades? Why are customers still being blamed for “user errors” or just not getting things done? And these problems are not exclusive to retail. Qualified customers everywhere are shopping elsewhere for software, insurance, telecom services and more due to age-old experience gaps. We can do better! Today, Adam and Jeannie explore some of the top prevailing ecommerce pet peeves and what

Adam shares surprising statistics about first contact resolution, why it’s important, and tips for putting this knowledge to better use. First Contact Resolution (FCR) is not always customer-centric How many steps must a customer take before resolving an issue? More importantly, how does the customer feel about the experience of making contact? Because speediness for speed’s sake tends to harm the way customers perceive the experience. First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a common metric in call centers. Resolving customer issues quickly is very important! However, a narrow focus on FCR can misrepresent the experience the customer is having and lead to undesired results. “How can an issue be resolved, but not REALLY be resolved?” -Adam Toporek It’s common to think a service interaction has been a success if the issue was resolved at the first contact. Consequently, the experience around that first point of contact tends to suffer in favor of boosting FCR. Above all, customers need service that is not onl

Jeannie and Adam interview podcaster and employee attitudes expert Julie Ann Sullivan live from the NSA Influence 2017 conference. Employee attitudes vs overall success While you may have a solid business strategy and great employees, you may still struggle with engaging your workforce to deliver the best experiences possible. Do your employees WANT to come to work? Even more important: Is their attitude conducive to a healthy and engaging culture? Because policies and and skill sets aside,  a healthy attitude is critical to success in business. “What’s happening with the attitude of their workforce bleeds into everything else.” -Julie Ann Sullivan Julie Ann Sullivan helps business leaders understand the best ways to truly engage their people. As a result, customer satisfaction and loyalty improve along with workplace morale and better communication. In this interview, we discuss the keys to proper employee engagement, and how they affect the experiences delivered. Julie Ann shares some of the creative

Jeannie and Adam discuss creative ways predicting behavior and risk without investing in advanced technology. Predicting behavior is not a new thing Predictive analytics is amazing as it sounds, and the technology is improving rapidly. Machines can now analyze data to predict customer behavior, calculate risks, identify who is likely to upgrade or buy more… The list goes on. But what if you don’t have the budget and resources to take advantage of this amazing technology? “You can find behaviors in your customer data without a fancy computer or predictive analytics.” -Adam Toporek Business leaders have been predicting behavior and risk for many years, without the aid of advanced technology. In fact, you may already have what you need. How a suggestion or question is framed can tell you a lot about what someone is considering.” -Jeannie Walters Today, Jeannie and Adam are sharing some old-school ways to gain the insights many now believe to be out of reach without a supercomputer and outrageously exp

 Adam and Jeannie share tips for helping employees understand, align, and stay motivated to achieve goals. You’re setting goals, but are they setting in? Everyone sets goals to drive their business forward… But teams, departments, and the individuals within them have goals of their own. Keeping all those smaller goals in tune with the greater mission of an organization is challenging! “We are what we focus on.” -Adam Toporek It’s critical to make sure employees understand what their mission is and what their specific goals have to do with company-wide goals. They need to stay connected not only to the actions that lead to success, but to the why. “It’s not about just watching the numbers go up.” -Jeannie Walters Today, Adam and Jeannie are sharing expert tips on articulating goals, aligning them with the company mission, and keeping employees emotionally invested in achieving them. Related Content 360Connext® post, 5 Killer Mid-Year Review Questions You Need to Ask Now Customers That Stick® post,

Jeannie and Adam interview author and medical liability expert Pat Iyer live from the NSA Influence 2017 conference. Nurse your business to health! Stakes can be high in any business... but imagine if you had legal and medical issues thrown in the mix! Today’s guest achieved amazing results turning the experience around in the high-stakes medical liability industry. Dealing with lawyers, patients, and issues that require legal intervention, it’s no doubt medical liability is a touchy subject! But Pat Iyer built a million-dollar business by offering experiences that stand out in her industry. “Everything in our business had to be done well and with excellence.” -Pat Iyer Make no mistake- Your customers are touchy too! Are you prepared for those moments when things don’t go as planned, expectations are unclear, or tension is expected? Pat shares amazing insights into growing a business with a customer-focused approach – no matter what industry you are in. Listen in for great advice on creating better exp

Jeannie and Adam know how difficult it is to hire right. Often, organizations feel tremendous pressure to fill open roles, and too often, these rushed hires are poor hires. In this episode, Jeannie and Adam share tips for hiring well you're under the gun. One way to maintain hiring standards when you don't have time is to compress the hiring process. Make sure to not short the process by eliminating steps but to find a way to execute the full hiring process in a shortened window. Check out the full episode for Adam and Jeannie's other tips on hiring well when you're desperate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie shares 3 tips to prevent organizational structure from negatively affecting the customer experience. How organizational structure creates bad experiences A solid organizational structure is essential to delivering great customer experiences, creating new ones, or solving issues. But too often, we send customers on a journey through our internal org charts instead of a direct path to success – especially when there’s an issue. While it is important to establish accountability, customers don’t care who in your organization is responsible for solving an issue, so long as the experience is quick and painless for them. And yet, customers often find themselves at the mercy of internal processes when trying to get things done. “If there’s a customer champion in any organization, it should be in leadership.” -Jeannie Walters What is meant to keep things organized on the inside can easily spell disaster on the outside- while customer experiences suffer, customer satisfaction drops, and loyalty disappea

Jeannie and Adam interview Rocky Romanella, author of Tighten the Lug Nuts:The Principles of Balanced Leadership. Achieving balanced leadership Leadership in business means gearing not only yourself, but those around you for success. Too often, overwhelmed leaders become more focused on the goals of their business than the people and things that make success possible. How can you achieve consistency in the way you lead, motivate or mentor your people? How do you balance your goals with keeping those around you in a state where they feel valued? “They want to follow you because you’re that leader with consistency.” -Rocky Romanella Today’s guest, Rocky Romanella, literally wrote the book on achieving balanced leadership. Through amazing examples and highlights from his book, Rocky shares key some principles of balanced leadership with our listeners. (Spoiler: Leadership skills are not just for managers, politicians, or others we typically consider leaders!) “Each of us touches an influence in other li

Jeannie and Adam report live from the National Speakers Association’s Influence 2017 conference to discuss the power of situational awareness in customer service. Employees aren't really empowered without situational awareness Are your employees empowered to provide consistently great customer service, no matter what? Giving employees the freedom to act off-script is great, but without situational awareness, that power is not being utilized to its fullest. “You want to proactively anticipate CS issues and head them off.” -@Adam Toporek Being aware of situations that happen outside of the normal customer journey, or beyond the scope of their training, gives employees the power to solve problems proactively – before customers get angry or just leave you without a word! To consistently provide great customer service, reps must be aware of possible inconsistencies in the experience and surrounding context, then get ahead of them. “The best contact centers are run with very situationally aware employees.”

Adam and Jeannie interview Alison Herzog, head of global social business strategy at Dell, about "deep listening" on a large scale. The art of “deep listening” in social business One of the most important elements to designing experiences is listening to customers. That sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to assume we understand what they’re trying to tell us when we really don’t! “Are we listening to really understand our customers, or are we listening to react…?” - Alison Herzog Our customers’ true intentions and the emotions behind them can be grossly misunderstood by humans and machines alike. So what happens when customers engage on so many channels that we need algorithms to sort it all out for us? To engage in meaningful ways, a socially active business needs more that the right software, qualified staff or a willingness to listen. Today’s guest, Alison Herzog, knows what it takes to connect all these things to a culture of “deep listening.” “If we don’t care about the person we are serving, th

Jeannie and Adam explore critical customer segments that typically get ignored when designing customer experiences. Are you overlooking critical customer segments? Creating customer segments is a great way to help deliver an easier, more personalized, and more relevant experience for different groups of customers. But in many cases – especially in B2B – the customer journey is much more complex than it seems, and simplifying it is not always an option. Those moving through your customer journey are not the only people to consider when designing experiences. People who never interact directly with your brand are affected in big ways, and they are also a part of the decision-making. Have you considered these other stakeholders, besides those going through the actual motions and making payments? Who is the customer behind the customer, and what is influencing their actions? “There’s an impact with other groups we might not consider as end customers.” -Jeannie Walters The person you’re dealing with, though

Adam shares 7 ways to deliver a faster customer experience without sacrificing quality, vital details, or personalization. Who doesn’t want a faster customer experience!? With more on their plates and fewer resources, customers are busier than ever before. So in most customer experiences, time is of the essence. But nobody wants to feel rushed through a transaction, left without direction, or treated in a cold, impersonal manner. Whatever you’re selling, the pressure is on you to deliver better, more personalized experiences... and in less time! What can you do to create speedier experiences without making them less memorable and rewarding? “The need for speed is no longer an option.” -Adam Toporek Believe it or not, you can make a huge difference with little or no additional investment, and in many cases, using (or losing) resources you already have. Today, Adam has 7 (yes, seven!) tips you can use today to start saving time for yourself and your customers, while actually improving the overall experi

Adam and Jeannie discuss several ways customer service training goes wrong, how that impacts the customer experience, and what you can do to fix it. Customer service training done right Companies talk or even brag a lot about the ways they train, mentor, and educate their employees. But for all their efforts, many of them are still doing it wrong. It’s easy for leaders to think that dedicating the right amount of time and resources ensures all the right ground is covered... so please don’t fall into this trap! “Great intentions do not always lead to great results!” -Adam Toporek It’s not just about following procedures, using available tools and software correctly, and simply helping customers get what they need. Truly great customer service training instills a customer-focused mindset, then works it into company’s DNA. It leaves employees with a greater understanding of customer emotions, a sense of ownership for the experience delivered, and a sense of empowerment to always do what’s right. “You hav

Adam and Jeannie explore some universal customer tipping points, or moments of truth in the customer journey, for you to examine today. 3 Powerful moments of truth in every customer journey Where are your customers when they decide whether to stay on board or jump ship? When do they decide to explore your competition instead of becoming loyal or advocating for your brand? These are powerful moments of truth, and every customer journey is filled with them. “Any journey has that moment of truth as a point of decision-making.” -Jeannie Walters While you may have a keen eye on tipping points around deal closings, renewals and upgrades, many moments of truth which can be just as powerful go unnoticed. “How are you reassuring them and making sure they know you’re there?” -Adam Toporek Every customer journey is different and has many unique tipping points, so finding them all is hard work! Where should you start!? To zero in on the moments that matter most to your customers, start with these moments of tr

Jeannie shares 3 powerful questions to get actionable feedback from customers. Powerful innovation starts with powerful questions Honest customer feedback is the key to maintaining a strong culture around delivering great experiences, but customers have a lot more to tell you than what you’re asking about in surveys! Sometimes you must pick up the phone, go beyond the surveys, and ask some one-on-one questions. “If you reach out and ask directly, you can listen for the nuance of the answers.” -Jeannie Walters But who has the time for this, and what should you really ask?   It could be one customer or a handful of them… but if you put aside a few minutes once a week or month for this, you’ll uncover amazing insights. What can you learn from your best customers, or the ones who’ve just left you – without wasting a lot of your time or theirs? Keeping these conversations short and sweet is the key, and Jeannie is here to help you get the most impact in the shortest time. Listen in for 3 powerful questions

Adam and Jeannie discuss Basecamp’s customer service ethic and tackle some of the top challenges faced by support professionals. Fine-tuning your customer service ethic If there's one thing customer service leaders need support with, it's connecting with, understanding, and  supporting their own customers! Today’s guest, Chase Clemons, hears all the challenges faced by businesses of varied sizes, then helps them make the right decisions. He’s made it part of his mission to help them help their own customers, and he's sharing some of his best insights today. “I wish more people knew the customer team was one of the core strengths of your company.” -Chase Clemons Not only does Chase help Basecamp customers use the product, but he helps them find ways to innovate around the support customers need. He shares fascinating stories, relatable examples, and powerful tips you can use in your organization. “When you make a solid hire, you don’t need a lot of processes in place.” -Chase Clemons Providing great