Category Archives: Customer Experience

When Scaling Innovation Backfires

How One Company Became the Theranos of Marshmallows

When Scaling Innovation Backfires

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Here’s a head-scratcher when it comes to scaling innovation: What happens when your innovative product is a hit with customers, but you still fail spectacularly? Just ask the folks behind Smashmallow, the gourmet marshmallow company that went from sweet success to sticky situation faster than you can say “s’mores.”

The Recipe for Initial Success

Jon Sebastiani sold his premium jerky company Krave to Hershey for $240 million and thought he’d found his next billion-dollar idea in fancy French marshmallows. And initially, it looked like he had.

Smashmallow’s artisanal, flavor-packed treats weren’t just another fluffy, tasteless sugar puff – they created an entirely new snack category. Customers couldn’t get enough of their handcrafted, churro-dusted, chocolate-chip-studded clouds of happiness. The company hit $5 million in sales in its first year, doubled that the next, and was available in 15,000 stores nationwide in only its third year.

Sounds like a startup fairy tale, right? Right! If we’re talking about the original Brothers Grimm versions. Corporate innovators start taking notes.

The Candy-coated Vision

Sebastiani and his investors weren’t content with building a successful premium regional brand. They wanted to become the Kraft of craft marshmallows, scaling from artisanal to industrial without losing what made the product special. It’s a story that plays out in corporations every day: the pressure to turn every successful pilot into a billion-dollar business.

So, they invested. Big time.

They signed a contract with “an internationally respected builder of candy-making machines” to design and build a $3 million custom-built machine and another with a copacker to build an entirely new facility to accommodate the custom machine.

Bold visions require bold moves, and Sebastiani was a bold guy.

The Scale-up Meltdown

But boldness can’t overcome reality, and the custom machine couldn’t replicate the magic of handmade marshmallows. It couldn’t even make the marshmallows.

Starch dust created explosion hazards. Cinnamon wouldn’t stick. Workers couldn’t breathe through spice clouds. The handmade ethos of imperfect squares gave way to industrialized perfection. Each attempt to solve one problem created three more, like a game of confectionery whack-a-mole.

By 2022, Smashmallow was gone, leaving behind a cautionary tale about the gap between what customers value and what executives and investors want. The irony? They succeeded in their mission to disrupt the market – by 2028, the North American marshmallow market is projected to more than double its 2019 size, largely thanks to the premium category Smashmallow created. They just won’t be around to enjoy it.

A Bittersweet Paradox

For so many corporate innovators, this story hits close to home. How many promising projects died not because customers didn’t love them but because they couldn’t scale to “move the needle” for a multi-billion dollar corporation? A $15 million business might be a champagne-popping moment for an entrepreneur, but it barely registers as a rounding error on a Fortune 500 income statement.

This is the innovation paradox facing corporate innovators: The very pressure to go big or go home often destroys what makes an innovation special in the first place. It’s not enough to create something customers love – you must create something that can scale to satisfy the corporate appetite for growth.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The lesson isn’t that we should abandon ambitious scaling plans. Instead, we must be brutally honest about whether our drive for scale aligns with what makes our innovation valuable to customers. If it doesn’t, we must choose whether to scale back our ambitions (unlikely) or let go of our successful-but-small idea.

After all, not every marshmallow needs to be a mountain, but every mountain climber (that’s you) needs a mountain.

Image credit: Unsplash

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The Dark Side and the Shep Side of Customer Service

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The Dark Side and the Shep Side of Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Let’s play a game. We can call it ‘Lousy Service Versus Good Service’, or a better title I came up with: ‘The Dark Side Versus the Shep Side’.

‘The Dark Side of Service’ is just bad. The opposite is what I teach in my customer service (CX) keynote speeches and customer service training program. Here are some Dark Side and Shep Side examples:

Dark Side: Making customers wait for long, unreasonable lengths of time.

Shep Side: Customers don’t wait. But that’s not always possible, so if they do have to wait, they are told how long, and the company honors its commitment.

Dark Side: Employees are rude. In my annual customer service research (sponsored by RingCentral), the top reason customers leave one company to go to another is rude employees!

Shep Side: Employees are the exact opposite of rude. Our research found the top reasons customers come back to a company are employees who are helpful, knowledgeable and friendly.

Dark Side: The experience is marred by friction and unfriendly customer policies. It seems like it’s never easy to reach a person or get help, and even if you’re trying to buy something, sometimes the company makes it hard. It’s almost as if they have a sales-prevention department.

Shep Side: Customers love companies that are easy to do business with. It’s more than convenience – although customers love convenience. Being easy in business means processes and policies that are customer-friendly. It’s easy to reach a customer support agent. Employees respond quickly to customers’ messages. Maybe it’s a hassle-free return or exchange policy. The point is, the experience is just easy!

Dark Side: Inconsistent experiences … one day, the service and experience are great. The next time, they aren’t. The customer wonders, “What will the next experience be like?”

Shep Side: When customers have a consistent and predictable experience, they trust you. They know what they are going to get. They “own the experience,” often to the point where a customer won’t take the risk of doing business elsewhere for fear of being let down. This is what you want customers to experience.

The Dark Side and the Shep Side of Customer Service I could go on and on with examples like these, but instead, how about you come up with your list? Use these examples as conversation starters to find your version of the Shep Side of service. Start by asking where you fall short or receive complaints. Dig deep to find the root cause of these problems. Then, determine what the opposite of these problems would be. More importantly, what drives the opposite experience? And when you find it, do what’s necessary to make it consistent and predictable. That’s what customers want: a consistent and predictable experience they can count on.

Image Credits: Unsplash

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Creating A Connected Human Experience

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Empathy Meets Technology

Creating A Connected Human Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Because of AI, so much has changed in the way companies do business. The technology hit a tipping point when ChatGPT and other generative AI solutions moved from behind the scenes to public awareness in November 2022. Even if the public didn’t know exactly what ChatGPT-type products were, they had an idea. This created both excitement and fear. For companies and brands, it created opportunities to employ more powerful technology at a lower price. It also created confusion about which technology to choose, how to implement it quickly and whether to implement something as new as this at all.

One company that quickly adapted and transformed itself is C1, a technology solutions provider that serves nearly half of the Fortune 500 (and many others) and partners with more than 140 technology vendors that they help match to their clients’ needs. I had a chance to sit down with Jeffrey Russell, formerly a “transformation leader” and president of Accenture Canada, and now the CEO of C1, who shared how he is leading his company to grow through acquisition and meeting the company’s and its customers’ ever-changing goals.

In our interview on Amazing Business Radio, Russell shared, “In a financial restructuring, you really need to have your story right from the outset.” His formula is simple.

Know what you’re really good at—your company’s superpowers.
Know how you want the organization to change and how you plan to get there. Clarity is essential to getting an ownership group and other stakeholders to support your plan.
Everyone on the team must tell the same story and communicate it clearly. You can’t afford miscommunication. You want to communicate the company’s vision and its long-term value and demonstrate confidence in the company’s future success.
Finally, you must have patience. Over-communicate throughout the process to keep everyone aligned as you move forward.

Russell states, “In the end, leading a change like this is about taking control of your destiny so you can come out on the other end as a financially stronger organization in a better market position to innovate, deliver value to customers and sustain growth.”

While leading C1’s growth and transformation in the era of the AI technology boom, Russell never took his eye off what was most important to a company: the human experience. In addition to taking us through that overview, he also shared how to create a powerful connected human experience for both customers and employees, which is the focus of what follows. Below are his ideas (in bold) followed by my commentary:

Two words that aren’t typically found in the same sentence are technology and empathy. Russell says, “Technology is stark. It’s cold, and often a barrier between the company and its customers.” The easiest way to explain this is that companies must find a balance between technology and the human-to-human (H2H) experience. While technology expands capabilities, you can’t afford to do it at the cost of the relationship. The concept of empathy means understanding what matters to customers. People must be the No. 1 consideration in a plan to acquire and implement new technology.
Ensure technology serves human needs. As you seek a balance between tech and H2H, consider how the technology helps people. Does it make life easier for both customers and employees? And, to emphasize Russell’s concern about the overuse of tech, will it enable better connections?
Use human experience to add new levels of business value. Without technology, what would the experience look like? Then, after implementing the technology, be sure it supports rather than disrupts the experience.
Walk in the shoes of your customer! As “cool” as technology can be, pretend you’re the customer who isn’t quite as savvy with technology as you are. What’s the experience like? It must be easy, intuitive and almost human-like.

As we came to the end of the interview, Russell shared three A’s people should consider when referring to AI:

Authentic Intelligence: Even if it is artificial, does the solution promote an authentic experience? Or will the technology come across to the customer as cold or stark?
Augmented Intelligence: Think of augmented reality and how it enhances the virtual experience. AI augments intelligence. It may or may not work by itself, but when combined with the H2H experience, it supports and makes it easier for employees to help customers with their questions and problems.
Actionable Intelligence: When you activate artificial intelligence, the implementation process should begin with what happens to the customer experience when it is applied. Just having something new or cool isn’t the reason to implement it. This concept takes us back to how the best companies seem to master the balancing act between technology and the H2H experience.

Rapid advances in AI technology bring both opportunities and challenges for businesses. As companies and brands explore, experiment and make their choices for what works best, Russell emphasizes never losing focus on creating a meaningful and connected experience. By balancing technology with empathy and understanding, businesses can not only survive but thrive in this new era.

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Be Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With

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Be Ridiculously Easy To Do Business With

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

You can’t argue with the evidence. Being easy to do business with attracts new customers, keeps existing customers and gives you a competitive advantage. Consider what we learned in our customer service and Customer Experience research (sponsored by RingCentral). Each year, convenience ranks as the most important customer service experience. These findings from the study back this up:

94% of customers feel convenience is important
70% are willing to pay more if the experience is more convenient
87% will likely recommend a brand or company if it provides a convenient service experience

David Avrin’s latest book, Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, is filled with tip after tip on how to avoid friction that loses customers. The book’s subject is one I’ve been studying and endorsing for years. In 2018, I wrote The Convenience Revolution, which featured the five convenience principles: eliminating friction, providing self-service solutions, using technology, delivery and access (location, hours of operation, etc.). Avrin’s addition to the very few but important books on the topic goes in-depth with very specific ways any business can be easier to work with. With that in mind, here are seven of the many ideas and tactics he shares in the book. Make it ridiculously easy …

1. To cancel, return or change your mind. An easy return or exchange policy reduces the customer’s risk and increases trust in the brand. Easy and hassle-free returns are one of the top reasons customers come back.

2. To provide feedback. When your customers provide you with feedback, both good and bad, it’s a gift. They’ve taken the time to share their thoughts, so don’t make it hard for them to do so.

3. To be easy to reach. If a customer has a question, and you make it hard for them to find your contact information, what do you think happens next? They continue their search with a different company. We suggest to our clients that contact information (phone, email, etc.) is available, at least in the footer, on every page of their website. Really, it should be easy to find on anything that has your company or brand’s name on it.

4. To navigate the website. One of the reasons people love shopping with Amazon is how easy it is to do business with, and it starts with a 100% self-service solution. They make it easy to compare products, pricing and more. Most importantly, it is an intuitive experience. You know where to go. It’s easy to get to the shopping cart, and to check out. While not every company can be like Amazon, they can take lessons from how its website is designed. If nothing else, remember that a website is designed by people to be used by people.

5. To pay you. Avrin shared a great example of a vending machine that required him to use a QR code to pay for his snack. Traditional machines have the option of cash or credit card, but making a QR code the only way to pay requires extra steps. It can be an option, but taking away what’s most convenient could hurt sales.

6. To track the status of your order. Let your customers know when their order is shipped and when they can expect to receive it. And, so there’s no hassle in checking on the order, include tracking information. Once an order leaves the warehouse, one of the major carriers typically takes over, such as FedEx, UPS or the USPS. It’s much easier for your customer to click a button and enter a tracking number than to search for your phone number, call you, wait on hold and eventually ask an agent, “When will I receive my package?”

7. To resolve issues. When a customer has a problem, do you offer self-service solutions? Do they need to call? It doesn’t matter what channel the customer uses to get their problem resolved, they just want it to be easy and fast. I refer to a metric I call “Time to Happiness.” The shorter the time, with little (or no) friction, the better.

Why do we make the effort to be easy to do business with? The answer is summed up in Chapter 25. When you create an easy and frictionless experience, you make it ridiculously easy to choose you over your competition!

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Eliminating Customer Anxiety

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Eliminating Customer Anxiety

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

If you have been to a Disney theme park, you know about standing in long lines. There are also signs that tell you how long your wait will be. Guests like this.

When you use Uber or Lyft for transportation, they not only tell you how long before your driver arrives, they also show you a map where you can track how close (or far) the driver is from where you are waiting.

When you order anything from Amazon, you receive at least three emails. The moment you place an order, you receive an email confirmation. Another email shows up in your inbox to let you know your order has shipped. And then, another email is sent once the order arrives, sometimes with a picture of the box sitting on your porch. This is one of the reasons customers love Amazon.

Let’s stick with Amazon for a bit longer. It’s not really the multiple emails that customers love. It’s the information. And why is this information important? There are two (at least) byproducts from these emails that can’t be ignored.

The first is confidence. Without confidence, why would a customer want to do business with a company again? Confidence also comes from a predictable experience.
The second is eliminating – or at least reducing – anxiety. This takes confidence to a higher level. The sharing of information gives customers a sense of control.

In all three examples – Disney, Uber and Amazon – there is communication. Even if it’s over-communication, customers are drawn to companies that provide information that reduces their anxiety, whether they know it or not. And once a customer experiences the pleasure of an anxiety-free experience, again, whether they know it or not, they may question why they would consider doing business with a competitor.

Shep Hyken Customer Anxiety Cartoon

Not all customers will realize this right away, unless you tell them. Consider making it part of your value proposition. Nordstrom did this with their extremely liberal and hassle-free return policy. Lifetime warranties on products give customers confidence and reduce anxiety because they know will be taken care of if there is a problem.

For my entire career I’ve preached that good customer service and customer experience sets you apart from the competition. Customer Experience (CX) is table stakes. Customers want to do business with nice, knowledgeable people. Take that to the next level by being easy and convenient to work with, in essence, eliminating friction. And now I want you to consider the next step. Find ways to reduce and eliminate anxiety. When you put all three of these together – great service, convenience and low or no anxiety – you have a CX triple threat!

Image Credits: Pexels

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Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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Happy Holidays!

For more than a decade I’ve devoted myself to making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because I truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

As a result, we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking to recognize the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024.

It is time to vote and help us narrow things down.

The deadline for submitting votes is December 31, 2024 at midnight GMT.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions to this web site by an author will be a BIG contributing factor (through the end of the voting period).

You can vote in any of these three ways (and each earns points for them, so please feel free to vote all three ways):

Sending us the name of the blogger by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on Facebook
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on our Linkedin Page (Be sure and follow us)

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024 will then be announced here in early January 2025.

Here are the people who received nominations this year along with some carryover recommendations (in alphabetical order):

Adi Gaskell – @adigaskell
Alain Thys
Alex Goryachev
Andy Heikkila – @AndyO_TheHammer
Annette Franz
Arlen Meyers – @sopeofficial
Art Inteligencia
Ayelet Baron
Braden Kelley – @innovate
Brian Miller
Bruce Fairley
Chad McAllister – @ChadMcAllister
Chateau G Pato
Chris Beswick
Chris Rollins
Dr. Detlef Reis
Dainora Jociute
Dan Blacharski – @Dan_Blacharski
Daniel Burrus – @DanielBurrus
Daniel Lock
David Burkus
Dean and Linda Anderson
Dennis Stauffer
Diana Porumboiu
Douglas Ferguson
Drew Boyd – @DrewBoyd
Frank Mattes – @FrankMattes
Geoffrey A Moore
Gregg Fraley – @greggfraley
Greg Satell – @Digitaltonto
Helen Yu
Howard Tiersky
Janet Sernack – @JanetSernack
Jeffrey Baumgartner – @creativejeffrey
Jeff Freedman – @SmallArmyAgency
Jeffrey Phillips – @ovoinnovation
Jesse Nieminen – @nieminenjesse
John Bessant
Jorge Barba – @JorgeBarba
Julian Birkinshaw – @JBirkinshaw
Julie Anixter – @julieanixter
Kate Hammer – @Kate_Hammer
Kevin McFarthing – @InnovationFixer
Leo Chan
Lou Killeffer – @LKilleffer
Manuel Berdoy

Mari Anixter- @MariAnixter
Maria Paula Oliveira – @mpaulaoliveira
Matthew E May – @MatthewEMay
Michael Graber – @SouthernGrowth
Mike Brown – @Brainzooming
Mike Shipulski – @MikeShipulski
Mukesh Gupta
Nick Jain
Nick Partridge – @KnewNewNeu
Nicolas Bry – @NicoBry
Nicholas Longrich
Norbert Majerus and George Taninecz
Pamela Soin
Patricia Salamone
Paul Hobcraft – @Paul4innovating
Paul Sloane – @paulsloane
Pete Foley – @foley_pete
Rachel Audige
Ralph Christian Ohr – @ralph_ohr
Randy Pennington
Richard Haasnoot – @Innovate2Grow
Robert B Tucker – @RobertBTucker
Robyn Bolton – @rm_bolton
Saul Kaplan – @skap5
Shep Hyken – @hyken
Shilpi Kumar
Scott Anthony – @ScottDAnthony
Scott Bowden – @scottbowden51
Shelly Greenway – @ChiefDistiller
Soren Kaplan – @SorenKaplan
Stefan Lindegaard – @Lindegaard
Stephen Shapiro – @stephenshapiro
Steve Blank
Steven Forth – @StevenForth
Tamara Kleinberg – @LaunchStreet
Teresa Spangler – @composerspang
Tom Koulopoulos – @TKspeaks
Tullio Siragusa
Yoram Solomon – @yoram

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We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

Don’t Throw Teammates Under the Bus

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Don't Throw Teammates Under the Bus

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

I couldn’t hold back. I told an employee to stop complaining about her fellow employees in front of us, her customers. Here’s the story.

My wife and I were at a restaurant. The server seemed pleasant and professional, but as our food was delivered, we saw a different side of her. There was a mistake in the order. The side dishes we received were not the ones we chose. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. She could either take our meals back to the kitchen or let us keep our meals and bring out the side dishes we ordered. But to the server, it was a big deal.

She started to complain about how this happens “all the time.” She said, “The people in the kitchen don’t read the orders properly. They don’t know what they are doing back there.” She said a few other words that insulted her coworkers, but I stopped her and said as nicely as I could, “I’m sorry you’re frustrated with the team in the kitchen, but you really shouldn’t complain about them to us.”

Customer service is a team sport. There are others who support you and those whom you support. Sometimes, things go wrong, and they need to be fixed. Often, the person the customer is talking to isn’t at fault, but that doesn’t mean they can’t own some responsibility and represent the company and its employees in the best light.

Blame Game Cartoon from Shep Hyken

I thought about how a company can avoid an employee “throwing other employees under the bus” and came up with a number of ideas to mitigate or eliminate this from happening. Here are three of them to get you thinking:

Emphasize the Team: Encourage employees to use the word “we” instead of “they.” The right vocabulary can support the idea of a team effort in taking care of customers.
Teach Accountability: It may not be an employee’s fault, but it is now their opportunity to fix the problem. Think about the last time you called a company’s customer support number with a complaint and it was handled perfectly. It wasn’t the customer support agent’s fault, but they owned the problem and solved it.
Recognize Employees Who Support the Company and Employees When Mistakes Are Made: Praise employees who handle mistakes properly and uphold the dignity of their coworkers in front of customers. You can use the example for both recognition and a teaching opportunity for others.

When mistakes occur in the workplace, especially in customer-facing roles, the manner in which employees manage these situations can impact a customer’s perception of the business. Everyone must remember their Awesome Responsibility, which is that at any given time, one employee interacting with a customer represents all other employees.

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

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The State of Customer Experience and the Contact Center

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The State of Customer Experience and the Contact Center

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Oh, what a difference a year makes. A few months ago I traveled to Las Vegas to attend the Customer Contact Week (CCW), the largest conference and trade show in the contact center industry. For the past several years, the big discussion has centered on artificial intelligence (AI), and that continues, but Customer Experience (CX) is also moving into the spotlight. AI and natural language models can give customers an almost human-like experience when they have a question or complaint. However, no surprise, some companies do it better than others.

First, all the hype around AI is not new. AI has been in our lives for decades, just at a much simpler level. How do you think Outlook and other email companies recognize that an email is spam and belongs in the junk/spam folder? Of course, it’s not 100% perfect, and neither are today’s best AI programs.

Many of us use Siri and Alexa. That’s AI. And as simple as that is, it’s obviously more sophisticated when you apply it to customer support and CX.

Let’s go back 10 years ago when I attended the IBM Watson conference in Las Vegas. The big hype then was around AI. There were some incredible cases of AI changing customer service, sales and marketing, not to mention automated processes. One of the demonstrations during the general session showcased AI’s stunning capability. Here’s what I saw:

A customer called the contact center. While the customer service agent listened to the customer, the computer (fueled by AI) listened to the conversation and fed the agent answers without the agent typing the questions. In addition, the computer informed the agent how long the customer had been doing business with the company, how often they made purchases, what products they had bought and more. The computer also compared this customer to others who had the same questions and suggested the agent answer those questions. Even though the customer didn’t yet know to ask them, at some point in the future, they would surely be calling back to do so.

That demonstration was a preview of what we have today. One big difference is that implementing that type of solution back then could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more than a million. Today, that technology is affordable to almost any company, costing a fraction of what it cost back then (as in just a few thousand dollars).

Voice Technology Gets Better

Less than two years ago, ChatGPT was introduced to the world. Similar technologies have been developed. The capability continues to improve at an incredibly rapid pace. The response from an AI-fueled chatbot is lightning fast. Now, the technology is moving to voice. Rather than type a question for the chatbot, you talk, and it responds in a human-like voice. While voice technology has existed for years, it’s never been this good. Google introduced voice technology that seemed almost human-like. The operative word here is almost. As good as it was, people could still sense they weren’t talking to a human. Today, the best systems are human-like, not almost human-like. Think Alexa and Siri on steroids.

Foreign Accents Are Disappearing

We’ve all experienced calling customer support, and an offshore customer service agent with a heavy accent answers the call. Sometimes, it’s nearly impossible to understand the agent. New technologies are neutralizing accents. A year ago, the software sounded a little “digital.” Today, it sounds almost perfect.

Why Customers Struggle with AI and Other Self-Service Solutions

As far as these technologies have come, customers still struggle to accept them. Our customer service research (sponsored by RingCentral) found that 63% of customers are frustrated by self-service options, such as ChatGPT and similar technologies. Furthermore, 56% of customers admit to being scared of these technologies. Even though 32% of the customers surveyed said they had successfully resolved a customer service issue using AI or ChatGPT-type technologies, it’s not their top preference as 70% still choose the phone as their first level of support. Inconsistency is part of the problem. Some companies still use old technology. The result is that the customer experience varies from company to company. In other words, customers don’t know whether the next time they experience an AI solution if it will be good or not. Inconsistency destroys trust and confidence.

Companies Are Investing in Creating a Better CX

I’ve never been more excited about customer service, CX and the contact center. The main reason is that almost everything about this conference was focused on creating a better experience for the customer. The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Companies and brands know what customers want and expect. They know the only way to keep customers is to give them a product that works with an experience they can count on. Price is no longer a barrier as the cost of some of these technologies has dropped to a level that even small companies can afford.

Customer Service Goes Beyond Technology: We Still Need People!

This article focused on the digital experience rather than the traditional human experience. But to nail it for customers, a company can’t invest in just tech. It must also invest in its employees. Even the best technology doesn’t always get the customer what they need, which means the customer will be transferred to a live agent. That agent must be properly trained to deliver the experience that gets customers to say, “I’ll be back.”

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of November 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of November 2024 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are November’s ten most popular innovation posts:

A Shared Language for Radical Change — by Greg Satell
Leadership Best Quacktices from Oregon’s Dan Lanning — by Braden Kelley
Navigating Uncertainty Requires a Map — by John Bessant
The Most Successful Innovation Approach is … — by Howard Tiersky
Don’t Listen to These Three Change Consultant Recommendations — by Greg Satell
What We Can Learn from MrBeast’s Onboarding — by Robyn Bolton
Does Diversity Increase Team Performance? — by David Burkus
Customer Experience Audit 101 — by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia
Daily Practices of Great Managers — by David Burkus
An Innovation Leadership Fable – Wisdom from the Waters — by Robyn Bolton

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in October that continue to resonate with people:

Everyone Clear Now on What ChatGPT is Doing? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
The Keys to Successfully Leading Change — by Stefan Lindegaard
Why Small Innovations Matter Now More Than Ever — by Robyn Bolton
We Must Unlearn These Three Management Myths — by Greg Satell
How Leaders Make Employees Feel Respected — by David Burkus

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Innovation, change and transformation thought leadership, lovingly curated by Braden Kelley

Category Archives: Customer Experience

When Scaling Innovation Backfires

How One Company Became the Theranos of Marshmallows

The Recipe for Initial Success

The Candy-coated Vision

The Scale-up Meltdown

A Bittersweet Paradox

Finding the Sweet Spot

The Dark Side and the Shep Side of Customer Service

Creating A Connected Human Experience

Empathy Meets Technology

Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2024

Be Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With

Eliminating Customer Anxiety

Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

Don’t Throw Teammates Under the Bus

The State of Customer Experience and the Contact Center

Voice Technology Gets Better

Foreign Accents Are Disappearing

Why Customers Struggle with AI and Other Self-Service Solutions

Companies Are Investing in Creating a Better CX

Customer Service Goes Beyond Technology: We Still Need People!

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of November 2024