Recently, we hosted our virtual Experience-Led-Growth (XLG) summit with guest speakers from HelloFresh, Google, Qonto, and Eon Next. It was an energizing experience, where we met customers and friends, learned, and shared our knowledge on driving business growth from Customer Experience (CX).
Rory Sutherland gave a keynote on how to “Find the Magic in Your Customer’s Weirdness”, challenging the belief that customers know what they want and can say in advance what a good quality experience is. He shared his view that it’s the things that customers aren’t expecting that really stick in their memories.
We also hosted panels on innovative ways to keep customers close from speakers at HelloFresh, Eon Next, and Google. And looked at how CX can drive awareness and word of mouth as well as how CX can support short-term wins in a challenging economy.
Here are my three major takeaways:
Your customers will surprise you
A theme that kept coming through in the panels and workshops is this: the true value of CX lies in the things that you don’t know about your customers. However, this is often counter to the mindset of executives and economists who often value predefined market tactics - pricing or product quality - over customer experience and psychology.
As CX practitioners, we have a responsibility to listen to our customers. This wasn’t just highlighted by Rory Sutherland. It was also mentioned in sessions about navigating the economy, the role of CX in driving revenue, and word of mouth and awareness.
Chloe Wars, Customer Insights lead, Community Operations EMEA at Uber said: “It's about really understanding your users and their needs and motivations. What are the specific moments that matter to them most? Then make sure that the support you provide in those moments meets their needs.”
The link to revenue is about use cases
So many of our speakers and attendees are focused on proving the revenue impact of CX.
During a session with Eli Weiss at Yotpo, Rachael Bartlett, Insights Lead at River Island said:
“CX and revenue is about embedding customer feedback into every facet of the business in order to create experiences that foster loyalty, drive larger purchases and a larger LTV, and reduce returns, which ultimately improves the bottom line.”
Ariel Morgan, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Faire uses annual pain point analyses to rank use cases. She shared how shipping costs have consistently come out on top saying,
“Most recently, we relaunched our insider program, which is a free shipping membership for retailers. Retailers are not only more likely to make purchases when they see free shipping, but they also tend to buy more when they don't have to absorb the shipping costs.”
She continues, “So, as a wholesale marketplace, this means that retailers can purchase more at a lower cost, allowing them to pass those savings to their customers. And this in turn boosts their sell through rates and drives increased demand for wholesale products, which we can provide.”
“So it's a very powerful flywheel that free shipping kind of helps us set in motion”, she adds.
Historical data and speed matter in AI
When it comes to AI, including your historical data in analysis can make or break your CX initiatives. In the session with Dennis Wakabayashi, one of the leading voices of CX, he explained how the power of AI is in understanding vast quantities of data.
He says, “Tools that have a breadth of experiential data from many years or trends, but can tie that to the present, provide a whole new set of measurements that bring us speed to market, product innovation, closing sales cycles, and making sales cycles shorter.”
I found myself nodding along because this is where AI tools pay off for customers. It was great to hear Aji Ghose our, VP of Data and Research at Chattermill, emphasize that businesses need to be able to measure the effectiveness of AI using concrete metrics like reducing time to insights.
In the session with Amy Vetter, Global Senior Manager at a global DTC, she also emphasized the value of speed: “We didn’t have that before. It was “read every line and work it out”. But it means that the customer then gets the end result. Our engagement rates have increased, as have our click through rates, and revenue.
And with new tools such as Chattermill’s Co-pilot emerging, the scope for data analysis and customer feedback is only going to get better.
How to get ahead with CX
The key to success in CX is to focus on these three core areas:
- Look for unmet or unasked for customer needs
- Push the revenue link with prioritized use cases
- Ensure your teams have the right AI to analyze historical data at speed
I hope these takeaways will spark some inspiration that will drive forward your CX strategy.
