Tag Archives: customer service

How Empowered Are Your Employees?

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How Empowered Are Your Employees?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Earlier this year, I wrote a Forbes article celebrating the 50th anniversary of the famous Nordstrom story in which a man wanted to return a set of used tires – even though Nordstrom never even sold tires. That fact didn’t stop the employee from giving the customer a refund. Right or wrong, that story is still talked about 50 years later!

I’ve mentioned this story in the past, and the point is that stories like these become legends inside an organization, and if the brand is lucky, they may even get some good press. They are not easy to find, unless you intentionally look for them. Nordstrom had been in business for 75 years before this legendary story was discovered and shared.

I’ve written about many such stories. They are a reminder for every company to find its unique story that exemplifies the importance of customer service. These stories are powerful because they become a “north star” for how a company should treat its customers. Publicity is optional. The real value is cultural.

Nordstrom Tires Story Cartoon from Shep Hyken

For example, there are numerous Ritz-Carlton legendary stories, such as Joshie the Giraffe, in which the hotel staff made a big effort to return a stuffed animal to a child. There are also stories that aren’t so famous. I interviewed Horst Schulze, the first president and co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton, who shared a story about empowering employees to take care of their guests.

The short version is that the Ritz-Carlton allows employees to spend up to $2,000 to resolve a guest issue without seeking manager approval. One day a housekeeper found a guest’s computer. The guest had already checked out and flown from California to Hawaii. She took it upon herself to book an airline ticket and personally delivered the laptop to the guest.

As crazy as this may sound, the housekeeper was not reprimanded but instead was applauded for her efforts. Then, she was coached that next time, overnight shipping would be sufficient. The point is, there’s no risk in taking care of a guest. The story became a teaching moment for both the housekeeper and all Ritz staff, reinforcing the hotel chain’s commitment to empowered, guest-focused service.

Not every company will have a $2,000 empowerment policy like the Ritz-Carlton or a story like Nordstrom that literally defines their customer experience, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy similar benefits.

So, here’s your assignment. Find your company’s legendary customer service story. If you don’t yet have one, start looking for those stories. Use them in training, meetings, and internal communications. Over time, they will become the DNA of your customer service culture. And who knows? Fifty years from now, someone might still be telling your story.

Image credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

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Customer Experience Failures Are a Gift

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Customer Experience Failures Are a Gift Pixabay

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

When things go wrong for your customer, that’s when you have the best opportunity to prove how good you really are. Anyone can look good when everything is running smoothly, but your true customer service “chops” show up during a service failure.

I recently went to a doctor’s office for an appointment. I arrived early to check in. The nurse at the desk was – no exaggeration – horrified that she had to tell me there was a glitch in the scheduling software, and my appointment had to be rescheduled. While some people might have taken a, “That’s too bad … it happens attitude,” she couldn’t have been more apologetic, showing tremendous empathy, and immediately went to work to find another time for me to return to see the doc.

I was at a restaurant and ordered a sandwich without mayonnaise. (I hate mayonnaise!) Of course, the sandwich came out slathered with mayo. The server spotted the mistake while setting the plate down in front of me. Before it even hit the table, she put it back on her tray. She served the rest of the food to everyone else at the table, and like the nurse who had to reschedule my appointment, she apologized and showed empathy. She immediately went to the kitchen to fix the problem. Several minutes later, I had a perfect sandwich.

Shep Hyken CX Failure cartoon

After both of these experiences, I received email messages asking me to complete a short survey. I gave each of these people and businesses a perfect, five-star rating. It wasn’t that they were flawless. In both cases, mistakes were made. But they each made a flawless recovery. In both situations, they didn’t offer a refund or anything for free. They just fixed the problem – but they did it with style. And when someone cares as much as these ladies did, how could I stay mad at them?

One important point: For this approach to work, problems have to be rare, not frequent, occurrences. No matter how nice employees are or how well they handle issues and complaints, if problems happen regularly, customers won’t trust the company. Excellence in recovery can only overcome occasional failures, not “systematic” ones.

I don’t need to rehash my Five Steps to Handling a Moment of Misery (Complaint), but it’s important to point out that both people handled the problems well. Rescheduling an appointment seems like a bigger issue than remaking a sandwich, but that’s not the point. The point is they both fixed the problem, and the attitude they took while doing so became even more important than the fix.

Both of these stories illustrate how, when you really care, you can win back your customer. A mistake isn’t the end of your relationship with a customer. Handled the right way, it’s an opportunity to build trust and loyalty by showing how good you really are when things don’t go according to plan.

Image credits: Pixabay, Shep Hyken

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of November 2025

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of November 2025Drum 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:

  1. Eight Types of Innovation Executives — by Stefan Lindegaard
  2. Is There a Real Difference Between Leaders and Managers? — by David Burkus
  3. 1,000+ Free Innovation, Change and Design Quotes Slides — by Braden Kelley
  4. The AI Agent Paradox — by Art Inteligencia
  5. 74% of Companies Will Die in 10 Years Without Business Transformation — by Robyn Bolton
  6. The Unpredictability of Innovation is Predictable — by Mike Shipulski
  7. How to Make Your Employees Thirsty — by Braden Kelley
  8. Are We Suffering from AI Confirmation Bias? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  9. How to Survive the Next Decade — by Robyn Bolton
  10. It’s the Customer Baby — by Braden Kelley

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

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!

Build a Common Language of Innovation on your team

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Creating Memorable Experiences to Drive Loyalty

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Memory-Driven CX

Creating Memorable Experiences to Drive Loyalty

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Why do customers come back to the places where they love to do business? Our annual customer experience research ranked the top experiences that get customers to come back:

  • Helpful employees
  • Knowledgeable employees
  • Friendly employees
  • A convenient experience
  • Hassle-free shipping and delivery
  • Easy returns
  • Personalized experiences
  • Empathy

The decision to come back could include any one of these or a combination of items on this list — or anything else that the customer experiences the first or last time they did business with the company or brand. The point is that it’s not the experience itself that drives loyalty — it’s the memory of the experience that truly determines loyalty.

This subtle but powerful distinction explains why some businesses enjoy fierce loyalty. The customer’s memory creates an emotional connection that transforms a simple transaction into one of many interactions—in other words, a repeat and/or loyal customer. A recent MarTech article about creating these emotional connections through CX memories and how B2B and B2C brands are winning over customers with “memory-driven CX” included some compelling ideas that validate this concept. The article emphasized the power of a sentence that starts with the words, “Remember when. …” It turns out that the memory of a good experience can boost dopamine in the brain, and the result is that customers are more likely to trust and stay with the brand.

And that is the basis of an emotional connection. Dopamine is a chemical the brain releases that makes you feel good. This chemical release potentially happens twice: during the actual interaction with the brand and when the customer recalls the interaction at a later time and date.

This doesn’t happen by accident. Just as a brand can be purposeful about giving the customer an experience worthy of remembering, it can also be purposeful about getting the customer to recall the experience.

Certain companies have done this at scale. Chewy, the online pet supply retailer, sends birthday cards to its customers’ pets. The cards are often personalized with the pet’s name. Starbucks sends its “members” a free drink or food item for their birthday. It also celebrates “coffee anniversaries,” reminding customers of when they first joined its rewards program. Netflix sends a “What We Watched” summary of what its subscribers have watched in the past year.

You don’t have to be a recognizable brand to do this. Any size company—in any industry—can do the same with a little thought and this five-step process:

  1. Create the Experience: First, you must deliver an experience that is positive and worth remembering.
  2. Identify Key Touchpoints: Map the customer journey (if you haven’t already done so) and identify the key touchpoints that could have the highest emotional impact.
  3. Enhance the Key Touchpoints: Once you’ve identified the impactful touchpoints, engineer them to become memorable. For example, Trader Joe’s, the grocery store chain, trains its employees to interact with customers when they check out, enthusiastically commenting about what’s in the customer’s cart. This last impression leaves a lasting impression.
  4. Design a Follow-Up Campaign: Design a campaign similar to Chewy, Starbucks or Netflix that reminds the customer why they enjoy doing business with you.
  5. Measure the Impact: Don’t assume the prior four steps are working. Ask or survey your customers to ensure you’ve created the “Remember When” experience that will help drive repeat business.

When customers are excited about their experience, they say, “I’ll be back.” Taking that to the next level is doing something that gets the customer to think back on the experience, creating a “Remember When” dopamine reaction moment. That reinforces the original (or last) experience the customer had with you. By deliberately creating experiences worth remembering and then helping customers remember those memories, you are increasing the chances of the customer coming back. And the more they come back, the more likely they are to become a coveted loyal customer.

Image credit: Pexels

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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The Voicebots are Coming

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Your Next Customer Support Agent May Not Be a Human

LAST UPDATED: October 27, 2025 at 1:00PM
The Voicebots are Coming

by Braden Kelley

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Customer Contact Week (CCW) in Nashville, Tennessee and learn that the familiar, frustrating tyranny of the touch-tone IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system is finally ending. For too long, the gateway to customer service has felt like a maze designed to prevent contact, not facilitate it. But thanks to the rapid evolution of Conversational AI — fueled by Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) — the entire voice interaction landscape is undergoing a revolutionary, and necessary, change. As a thought leader focused on human-centered change, innovation and experience design, I can tell you the future of the call center isn’t purely automated; it’s intelligently orchestrated.

The voicebot — the modern AI-powered voice agent — is moving past its days as a simple chatbot with a synthesized voice. Today’s AI agents use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand intent, context, and even tone, allowing them to handle complex, multi-step issues with startling accuracy. More importantly, they are ushering in the era of the bionic contact center, where the human agent is augmented, not replaced. This hybrid model — where AI handles the heavy lifting and humans provide empathy, complex reasoning, and necessary approvals — is the key to achieving both massive scale and superior Customer Experience (CX).

Overcoming the Voice Friction: The Tech Foundation

The shift to true voice AI required overcoming significant friction points that plagued older systems:

  • Barge-In and Latency: Modern voicebots offer near-instantaneous response times and can handle barge-in (when a customer interrupts the bot) naturally, mimicking human conversation flow.
  • Acoustic Noise: Advanced speech recognition models are highly resilient to background noise and varied accents, ensuring high accuracy even in noisy home or car environments.
  • Intent Nuance: LLMs provide the deep contextual understanding needed to identify customer intent, even when the customer uses vague or emotional language, turning frustrated calls into productive ones.

The Dual Pillars of Voice AI in CX

Conversational AI is transforming voice service through two primary deployment models, both of which reduce Customer Effort Score (CES) and boost Customer Satisfaction (CSAT):

1. Full Call Automation (The AI Front Line)

This model is deployed for high-volume, routine, yet critical interactions. The voicebot connects directly to the company’s backend systems (CRM, ERP, knowledge base) to pull personalized information and take action in real-time. Crucially, these new AI agents move beyond rigid scripts, using Generative AI to create dynamic, human-like dialogue that resolves the issue instantly. This 24/7 self-service capability slashes queue times and dramatically lowers the cost-to-serve.

2. Human-AI Collaboration (The Bionic Agent)

This is where the real human-centered innovation lies. The AI agent handles the bulk of the call — identifying the customer, verifying identity, diagnosing the problem, and gathering data. When the request hits a complexity threshold — such as requiring a policy override, handling an escalated complaint, or needing a final human authorization — the AI performs a contextual handoff. The human agent receives the call along with a complete, structured summary of the conversation, the customer’s intent, and often a recommended next step, turning a frustrating transfer into a seamless, empowered human interaction.

OR, even better can be the solution where a single human agent provides approvals or other guidance to multiple AI voice agents that continue owning their calls while waiting for the human to respond (possibly simultaneously helping the customer with additional queries) before continuing with the conversation through to resolution.

Customer Contact Week Nashville

“The most powerful application of voice AI isn’t automation, it’s augmentation. By freeing human agents from transactional drudgery, we elevate them to be empathic problem solvers, enhancing both their job satisfaction and the customer’s outcome.” — Braden Kelley

Measuring the Success of the Handoff

The quality of the transitions between AI and human is the true measure of success. Leaders must track metrics that assess the efficacy of the handoff itself:

  • Repeat Story Rate: The percentage of customers who have to repeat information to the human agent after an AI handoff. This must be near zero.
  • Agent Ramp-up Time (Post-Transfer): The time it takes for the human agent to absorb the AI-generated context and take meaningful action. Lower is better.
  • Post-Handoff CSAT: The customer satisfaction score specifically captured after a complex AI-to-human transfer, measuring the seamlessness of the experience.

The Agentic Future

The voicebots are indeed coming, and they are bringing with them the most significant shift in customer service since the telephone itself. The next evolution will see agentic AI — bots that can dynamically choose between multiple tools and knowledge sources to resolve novel problems without being strictly pre-scripted. The challenge for leaders is to ensure that as this technology scales, our focus remains firmly on the human experience, leveraging the best of AI’s speed and the best of human empathy to create a truly effortless and satisfying customer journey.

🤖 Companies to Watch in AI Voicebots

The voicebot space is rapidly evolving, driven by generative AI, and the recent Customer Contact Week (CCW) in Nashville highlighted several key players. Companies to watch in this generative AI voicebot and contact center space include market-leading platforms like NICE, Genesys, Zoom and Five9, all of whom are heavily integrating generative and agentic AI features—such as real-time coaching and automated post-call summaries — into their core Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) offerings.

Beyond the traditional CCaaS providers, specialist AI firms like Replicant, Voice.AI and ASAPP (who had a significant presence at the event) continue to stand out by focusing on either full end-to-end voice automation for complex transactions or providing advanced Human-in-the-Loop AI features to augment live agents, particularly in regulated industries like financial services.

Additionally, major cloud vendors like Google Cloud and AWS (Amazon Connect) are increasingly aggressive, leveraging their foundational AI models to provide scalable, next-generation AI agents and contact center platforms, ensuring they remain transformative forces in customer experience (CX) automation.

HALLOWEEN BONUS: Save 30% on the eBook, hardcover or softcover of my latest book Charting Change (now in its second edition) — FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE — using code HAL30 until midnight October 31, 2025

Image credits: Customer Management Practice, Google Gemini

Content Authenticity Statement: The topic area, key elements to focus on, vendors to mention, etc. were decisions made by Braden Kelley, with a little help from Google Gemini to clean up the article.

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Boring AI is the Key to Better Customer Service

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Boring AI is the Key to Better Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Boring can be a good thing. When something works the way it’s supposed to, it shouldn’t be a surprise. There shouldn’t be friction or drama if a customer has a problem or wants a question answered. It should just be easy. And when it comes to customer service, “easy” and “boring” are good. The experience should just happen the way the customer wants it to happen. You might call that boring. I call that excellent.

That was the beginning of a conversation I had with Damon Covey, general manager of unified communications and collaboration for GoTo, on Amazing Business Radio. GoTo is one of the leading cloud communications companies, providing software and solutions to companies of all sizes and helping them implement AI systems that work, without the complexity and stress that can come from new technology. Covey’s goal for our conversation was to demystify AI, cutting through the noise and complexities of flashy AI and taking it down to a practical level. Boring was the word he liked to use, emphasizing it should be easy, simple and uncomplicated.

In our discussion, Covey said that large companies used to make six- and seven-figure investments to implement AI. Today, AI technology is far superior and, at the same time, much less expensive, so even the smallest companies can afford it. They can get advanced technology for hundreds of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Covey said, “For example, a small bike shop or an automotive dealership can now provide the same advanced customer service options as large corporations.” With that in mind, here are the main takeaways from our conversation:

Conversational AI

Until recently (within the past two or three years), a basic chatbot had to follow pre-set rules. Conversational AI provides a much broader opportunity, allowing a computer to interact with people in a natural, human-like manner. Today, AI can understand and respond to customers’ questions and issues with much more flexibility. It has the capability to recognize different languages and understand fumbled phrases, much like a human would. By using conversational AI, businesses can provide 24/7 service, allowing them to respond to customer queries and schedule appointments even when the customer contacts them outside of regular business hours.

Treat AI Like a Team Member

If you hire a new employee, you train them. Treat your AI solutions the same way. Covey said that, similar to training an employee, you need to set specific parameters and provide the AI with the necessary information to ensure it stays within the scope of your business requirements. He emphasized the importance of making sure the AI only draws from the information provided by your business, such as your website, FAQ pages, product manuals, etc., rather than pulling from a source outside of your company, to maintain accuracy and relevance. Covey said that AI should be continuously optimized and trained over time to improve its performance, much like you would train and coach a human employee to expand their capabilities.

Productivity: Automating Processes

Covey talked about automating processes. Anything you do more than three times can be a candidate for AI automation. For example, AI can integrate with a business’ telecommunications system to automate the process of taking notes during calls. It can then summarize the call, put the information into the customer’s record and create a list of next steps, if appropriate. This is a simple function that helps employees be more productive. Instead of an employee typing notes and summarizing the call, AI can handle the task so the employee can move on to helping the next customer.

Augmenting the Business

AI can help businesses do things they don’t normally do, such as remain open for certain functions (like customer support) after hours. It can act as an after-hours receptionist, answering phone calls, setting appointments or providing basic information to customers after business hours. That turns a business that’s typically open during traditional hours to a 24/7 operation.

It is Easier Than You Think

At the end of the interview, Covey dropped a nugget of wisdom that is the perfect way to close this article. For many, especially smaller organizations, deciding what technology to use and how to best use AI can be a daunting decision. It shouldn’t be. Covey says, “Start with the problem you want to solve, and solve for that problem.” He added that you should start using the technology for small problems. Once you understand how it works, the more complicated issues will be easier to solve for.

And that brings us back to where we started. AI doesn’t need to be complicated or flashy. It should be boring—in a good way. Start small, focus on one problem at a time and let AI do what it’s supposed to do: make customer service easier and more efficient. When done right, your customers won’t be amazed by the AI—they’ll just be amazed by how easy it is to do business with you.

Image Credit: Unsplash

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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Are Your Customers’ Calls Actually Important?

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Are Your Customers' Calls Actually Important?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Recently, I wrote an article about the customer service farce. One of several examples I shared was the line we often hear when calling customer support: “Your call is very important to us.” When we hear it, we hope it’s true. We hope it means that the company is going to respect our time, that someone will pick up the call quickly (versus being put on hold for an unreasonable amount of time), and that the agent we talk to will have the knowledge and skills to answer our question or resolve our complaint, and we’ll not have to repeat our story again and again.

In our most recent customer service and customer experience (CX) research, we asked a number of questions about contact centers that convey the message, “Your call is very important to us.” The answers will make you smile – maybe even laugh. I’ve shared some of these findings from surveys from the previous year. Here are the latest with a couple of new ones:

  • Cleaning the Toilet: Nearly four out of 10 customers (39%) say they would rather clean a toilet than call customer support. (That’s gross!)
  • A Root Canal Is Better Than This: A third of U.S. customers (34%) would rather visit the dentist than call customer support. (That’s painful!)
  • Dinner with In-Laws: Half of the customers (53%) say they would rather have dinner with their in-laws than call customer support. (That could be painful, too!)
  • Glossophobia (The Fear of Public Speaking): Even though speaking in public is one of the greatest fears, often ahead of death, one in four customers (26%) would rather speak in front of an audience of 1,000 than call customer support. (Yikes, that’s scary!)


But seriously … as humorous as some of these findings are, there’s some truth behind them. Consider these three findings from this year’s report:

  1. Half of U.S. customers (51%) say that when they call customer support with a question or to resolve a problem, the company does not value their time.
  2. And speaking of respecting time, over half of the customers we surveyed (55%) say they stopped doing business with a company or brand because it kept them on hold for too long.
  3. Six out of 10 customers (63%) say they have stopped doing business with a company because of the inability to connect with someone from customer support. </li?

It sounds like I’m being negative, but the reality is that this information gives me hope – for the companies that get it right. The more serious findings mean that more than half of customers are ripe to switch companies, and if you’re doing it right, they are hopefully going to switch to you.

Whether your company has just a few dedicated employees to support your customers or a large contact center, this information and the opportunities we take from it are applicable to you. Your customers deserve attention and respect. Don’t make them feel as if their call is NOT very important to you!

Image Credit: Pexels

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of May 2025

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of May 2025Drum 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 May’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. What Innovation is Really About — by Stefan Lindegaard
  2. ‘Stealing’ from Artists to Make Innovations Both Novel and Familiar — by Pete Foley
  3. Benchmarking Innovation Performance — by Noel Sobelman
  4. Transform Your Innovation Approach with One Word — by Robyn Bolton
  5. Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle — Five Questions for Tendayi Viki
  6. Change Behavior to Change Culture — by Mike Shipulski
  7. The Real Reason Your Team Isn’t Speaking to You — by David Burkus
  8. The Enemy of Customer Service is … — by Shep Hyken
  9. Three Real Business Threats (and How to Solve Them) — by Robyn Bolton
  10. Better Customer Experiences Without Customer Feedback — by Shep Hyken

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

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!

Build a Common Language of Innovation on your team

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Nothing and Everything Has Changed in Customer Service

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Nothing and Everything Has Changed in Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

With all the talk of AI, ChatGPT and more, I’m often asked when interviewed, “What’s changed in customer service?”

My answer is accurate: Nothing!

For thousands of years – actually about 3,775 years – when customers have had a problem or question, they have contacted the company they are doing business with and hoped that it would be resolved to their satisfaction. That’s the way it’s been and will continue to be for thousands of years to come.

But there’s also another answer to the same question about what’s changed: Everything!

By everything, I’m referring to the latest methods of responding to customers’ questions and handling their problems and complaints. I mentioned that for 3,775 years, customers have been contacting companies when they have problems or questions. About 10 years ago, I wrote a Forbes.com article when I learned that tucked away in the British Museum is an ancient complaint that dates back to 1750 B.C.

Nanni, the customer, bought copper ore from a supplier, Ea-Nasir. Unhappy with his purchase, Nanni sent a letter in the form of a stone tablet with the engraved complaint. Loosely translated, the “letter” opens with these words, “What do you take me for that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” The rest of the letter was a demand that he receive what he thought was right.

Ancient Customer Service Shep Hyken

Customers still complain, and companies – at least the good ones – respond and properly take care of their customers. But how they do so has radically changed.

What may have started as an engraved complaint on a stone tablet eventually turned into handwritten letters, then phone calls, emails, chat, and more modern-day ways of communicating. AI has become the topic of the day, and the strides made in automation and self-service have come a long way.

While many companies are still improving and trying to keep up with the technology, customers who take advantage of the new ways to get questions answered and complaints resolved are very happy with the companies that have kept up with the latest ways to manage the customer experience.

At its core, customer service hasn’t changed. Customers still want to be heard, understood and valued. Sometimes, they even want a little empathy. However, what has changed is the way we deliver that experience. The tools may have evolved from stone tablets to AI chatbots, but the goal remains the same: take care of the customer.

Companies that embrace new technologies while staying true to the timeless principles of great service – listening, responding quickly, and meeting or exceeding expectations – are the ones that will keep their customers coming back. The best companies know that while everything seems to change, the most important thing never changes: a relentless focus on the customer!

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Doing Personalization Correctly

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Doing Personalization Correctly

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Companies today face three critical marketing and Customer Experience (CX) challenges:

  1. How can you keep customers coming back?
  2. How can you get your customers’ attention so they don’t consider switching to the competition?
  3. How do you create an experience that makes price less relevant?

These questions and others can be answered in one word: Personalization.

It used to be that personalization was a marketing tactic. Simply using the customer’s name in the salutation of an email or letter, such as “Dear Shep,” was personalization in its most basic form. Include a reference in the body of the message, for example, what city the customer lives in, and you had what many considered to be a more sophisticated personalization program.

Today, the concept of personalization has blended into part of the customer experience. Using a name is barely a personalized experience. Using information about the customer that feels like the company or brand knows them takes marketing from promotional to customer experience.

For example, if I call a company that I’ve done business with and have questions about a new product I’m interested in purchasing or a customer service question, the company representative should have enough information about me to know how long I’ve done business with them, what products or services I’ve purchased, what problems, questions, or complaints I’ve called about and more. Using that information the right way is the beginning of a more powerful personalized experience. Customers like it when you know them.

And this concept goes beyond live interactions between a customer and an employee. A modern-day personalization messaging campaign is powerful and turns traditional email or text message marketing into a highly personalized experience.

This same experience can be used in email or text messages, either as part of customer support when customers “write in” with a question or for marketing when you want to push a message to the customer. Used the right way, you’re showing your customers that you know them.

On a recent Amazing Business Radio episode, I interviewed Ronn Nicolli, chief marketing officer of Resorts World Las Vegas. He talked about how storytelling can hit an emotional chord with a customer, helping to create and maintain an image that customers embrace and look forward to. And when the customer can relate to the story—or maybe they are part of the story—you connect at a different level. A higher level.

Nicolli said, “Ten years ago, email marketing was like fishing with dynamite. Throw the dynamite in the water—in the form of a big email campaign—and see what floats to the surface.” It was a mass marketing campaign, and the extent of personalization was the customer’s name. Today, because of advances in technology, Nicolli says, “AI gives us the ability to market in mass, but on a one-to-one basis.”

What you’re selling may be the same for everyone, but the message is highly personalized by merging the customer’s name, dates they did business, comments they made and more into the message. Nicolli referred to the AI program as an intelligent learning program.

Curating personalized messaging and visuals in mass that speak to each individual is going to resonate far better than a general message with no personalization other than the customer’s name. Nicolli shared that he can send out a million emails, and the messages are all re-curated to ensure they are meaningful and speak directly to the customer. For example, the resort may want to promote a seasonal package to its database. A message to a customer/guest who comes in with a group of friends for college basketball’s March Madness tournament weekend will receive a different email than a customer who frequents the hotel with a spouse or loved one for the occasional romantic weekend—even if the promotion is asking for the same call to action.

So, whether you’re personalizing the experience for customer support or a marketing message, it’s now all part of the customer experience. Our latest customer experience research finds that eight out of 10 customers prefer a personalized experience. They will even pay more for it, making price less relevant. They want to do business with or go to the place, like the title of the theme song from the hit 1980s TV sitcom Cheers implies, ‘Where Everybody Knows Your Name’.

This is what your customers want and expect. So, take your customer experience efforts to the next level with a personalization strategy that creates an emotional connection and gets customers to say, “I’ll be back.”

Image Credit: Shep Hyken, Pexels

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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