Even a blackberry in an Apple Store or a thrilling season of Game of Thrones can offer us insights into improved customer service. This week in CMO Perspectives, we share with you some great takeaway lessons and show you that you should always be ready to learn, because you never know what important piece of knowledge might be lurking just around the corner.
Customer loyalty is the holy grail of CMOs. It’s one thing to grab a customer’s attention and get him or her interested in your product or service. It’s another to keep that customer coming back for more. John Rampton, writing for Entrepreneur.com, emphasizes that improving customer loyalty should be a high priority. Otherwise, customers you have worked hard to convert could be out the door before you know it. Some of the top highlights on the list:
- Share your values.
- Don’t neglect existing customers.
- Be an expert.
- Anticipate problems.
- Ask for a review.
Which do
you place at the top of your list?
If you have ever felt guilty wasting time watching your favorite shows like Game of Thrones, you can stop now. Manuel Grenacher has written a great LinkedIn Pulse about how one of the most popular series on TV today can inspire customer service lessons, such as “pay attention before problems arise”. This might seem like an obvious lesson, but Grenacher does a great job of elucidating the ideas with examples from the show.
Are you daunted by starting your customer journey mapping? Fear not! Adam Toporek offers some great reassurance as well as 7 tips to help get you started on the right foot.
Among his tips, Toporek advises readers to walk through the customer experience, map multiple paths at a single point and differentiate on touch point intensity. There are a lot of great insights here, so read through the whole thing.
Not every sales opportunity translates into a great customer experience. After unfortunately having his new BlackBerry phone stolen from his pocket in an Apple Store in Germany, Jonathan Gebauer suffered the raw end of a bad customer experience and draws a lesson we can all learn from. Apparently, instead of trying to help the author recover his phone, the Apple salespeople tried to simply sell him a new iPhone!
Unsurprisingly, Gebauer wasn’t in the mood to buy, because he was really upset about having his new phone stolen right from his pocket. Unhappy customers don’t buy,; sounds obvious, but it’s clear that there are salespeople out there who don’t understand this idea.
Adweek recently posted about a great infographic that outlines the different ways companies are using omni-chanel marketing to communicate with their customers, based on a recent survey conducted by Neustar.
Among the companies surveyed, many understand why omni-channel marketing is important. 30% believe these strategies are critical, and 40% consider them important. Only 14% believe that omni-channel marketing is not important. This is a good overview of the current state of omni-channel marketing.
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So remember our top takeaways from this week’s CMO Perspectives: Customer loyalty is key – keep them coming back for more; unhappy customers don’t buy – so keep them happy, and most importantly you never know where your next great lesson will come from – so keep an open mind.
We hope you enjoyed this week’s CMO Perspectives, be sure to respond in the comments or tweet us @NICE_CX.