Before we start, here’s some info about Martin and his background.
Martin was CEO of one of the first BPOs and CX consultancies in the UK. He then spent a decade in the systems integration industry, positioning the value of new technology and the associated change agenda. He is now in his tenth year at Brainfood Consulting, offering a mix of services. These include conference chairing, keynotes, webinars, whitepapers, workshops, consulting, and mentoring. Current topics include responding to new customer behavior, emotive CX for customer interaction, digital-first customer service strategy, and trends in contact center technology.
Online commerce was booming in 2020, and so did consumer reviews. – How can brands better utilize this data to improve their customers’ experience?
Consumer reviews offer one source of customer feedback that is best combined with others, such as verbatim transactional NPS feedback to show strengths and gaps in CX. The most important point is to ensure this data is transformed into actionable insight, which is shared, acted on, and tracked as a closed-loop process with clear accountabilities and skills (service design, etc.)
What is one element that must always be considered when working on a CXM (customer experience management) strategy?
The essence of any experience strategy (customer, employee, or discriminated cohort) is that it is their agenda, not yours, that needs to be understood and acted on. Sustained empathy into the lived experiences of others defines whether a strategy is aligned and relevant or constructed on other agendas.
Do you think personalization and customer-centricity are going to become increasingly more relevant in the coming year? How so?
Customers expect organizations to ‘know me,’ be effective regarding outcome delivery (both functional and emotive), enable that outcome with the least effort, and be human in the process (whether live or fully automated)
What are some of the ways companies can strive to eliminate the CX Gap?
Be obsessive about individual journeys by sampling, listening, testing, improving, and generally having ongoing attention on incremental improvement and drive to always make things better. Find out the pain points in major journeys and what behavioral impact they have on customers in relation to finding a better alternative (i.e., churn). Too few understand what specifically leads to customers quitting a brand and being able to predict that and pre-empt with effective interventions.
What’s the most insightful book you read in 2020?
Seven and a half lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Martin’s predictions for the future of CX
What are your predictions for trends in customer experience in the coming year?
Back to basics in terms of feeling connected to what customers feel and really want in relation to the pandemic and its impact on them.
Increased real-time use of ML to proactively recognize customer intent, offer the next best actions and suggest relevant experiences.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
The perception gap – differences between how customers and executives rate organizational capability
