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10 Top Customer Experience Takeaways from CRM Evolution

While there were more than 100, perhaps more than 1000, top takeaways from the recent 2014 CRM Evolution conference (and adjoining Customer Service Experience conference), here are 10 terrific customer service and customer experience insights shared by key speakers and analysts at the event including Kate Leggett of Forrester Research, Ray Wang of Constellation Research, Brian Vellmure, Denis Pombriant and more:

  1. Getting Customer Engagement Right: “True customer engagement is making engagement personal, by knowing who you’re speaking to, and also interacting with each customer in the way they want.” – Bob Stutz, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM (@rlstutz)

  2. Experience vs. Engagement:  “The customer experience would have been something that the business designed, but now that you have social media and interactive experiences driven by the customer who is providing feedback and direction, you now need customer engagement.” – Banafsheh Ghashemi, VP, CRM and Customer Experience, Marketing, American Red Cross (@banafshehgh)

  3. Five Guiding Principles for Creating a Consistently Better Customer Experience: (1) Know me. Get better connected to your customer. (2) Remember me. Stay connected with more relevant touches. (3) Make me feel special. Proactively optimize the customer’s account and make product suggestions tailored to them. (4) Help me succeed. Continue to improve online tools and technology. (5) Always be there for me. Be there for your customers – whenever, wherever, however. – Jill Hewett, Customer Experience Designer, Catalyst, Inc. (@jhewitt98)

  4. What the Customer Really Wants: Customers want timely, competent, well-executed processes in moments of truth: what your company provides, stakes its reputation on, and what customers say they want or expect from you. But while customers want connected processes, most brands are currently delivering unconnected individual transactions. Brands need to empower their people with the technology and ability to successfully manage processes that will satisfy customer expectations and needs during a brand’s moments of truth. – Denis Pombriant, Founder and Managing Principal, Beagle Research (@denispombriant)

  5. It’s About Time: “You are not competing with your best competitor, you are competing with and for time. Whoever can deliver the fastest is going to win. If service is not convenient, you will lose in a digital world. Customers don’t care what department you’re in; they want you to solve their problem on the 1st interaction.” – R “Ray” Wang, Founder and Principal Analyst – Constellation Research, Inc. (@rwang0)

  6. The Four Ps of Customer Service: (1) Painless. Consumers want effortless service from the touchpoint of their choice. (2) Personalized. Customers don’t want a one-size-fits-all service experience. (3) Productive. A customer service experience has to be reliable, efficient, satisfying, but also delivered at a cost that makes sense to the business. (4) Proactive: Customers want to be notified of a problem and told it’s being fixed. Better yet, customers want this proactive service to happen, whenever possible, behind the scenes so that problems are addressed before they happen or before the customer is even aware there is a problem. – Kate Leggett, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research (@kateleggett)

  7. Creating an Emotional Investment: “Take your customers from making a financial investment in your brand to making an emotional investment. The value and return is even greater.” – Eric McKirdy, Global Customer Care Manager, Ask.com (@AskDotCom_Eric)

  8. Breaking Away from the Pack: “Digital transformation is creating new competitors, but the emotional connection will create breakaway companies.” – R “Ray” Wang, Founder and Principal Analyst – Constellation Research, Inc. (@rwang0)

  9. Nine Core Fundamentals for Digital Transformation: (1) Think networks. (2) Apply context and relevance – attention is scarce. (3) Know your customers. (4) Make everything intelligent. (5) Put speed at the center. (6) Every company is a tech company. Think Amazon, Starbucks, Nike. (7) Focus on the experience as a differentiator. (8) Build knowledge flows. (9) Develop talent. – Brian Vellmure, Principal and Founder, Innovantage / Initium (@BrianVellmure)

  10. Top Trends Shaping the Future of Customer Service: (1) Digital transformation; a massive push towards automation; decision support tools so that any person at any point in any interaction has the tools to make the right and best decision; mass personalization at scale. – R “Ray” Wang, Founder and Principal Analyst – Constellation Research, Inc. (@rwang0)

    (2) Social media has given corporations a consciousness that they did not have before; people look at that engagement and feedback and make decisions; giving customer service teams enough clout in an organization to change or get things changed. – ‎Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Inc. (@drnatalie)

    (3) The future of customer service will become much more amazing because it will become more meaningful. Whereas, the web was once just a bunch of pages, now it’s become meaningful and connected. The same will happen with customer service – an emergence of meaning. – Martha Brooke, Founder & Chief Customer Experience Analyst, Interaction Metrics (@MarthaBrooke100)

Tricia Morris

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