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Words Of Wisdom On The 4th Of July July 4, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Executive leadership, Words of wisdom.
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Since it’s the 4th of July, I want to wish everyone who is celebrating the holiday a…

Happy

Independence

Day!!!

In honor of the holiday, I decided to look back at some insights from a couple of our founding fathers.

Let’s start with a quote from John Hancock:

There’s only so many priorities that you can fund. What you choose to target, you need to win.

Here’s a quote from Samuel Adams:

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason

My take: John Hancock points to an important concept — focus — which is something I spoke about in a post about Mayor Booker from Newark, NJ and in a post called Leadership Lesson: Less Is Better.

Samuel Adams’ quote talks about the need for empathy, which is critical when dealing with customers and employees. This quote from the Cleveland Clinic captures the essence of how to think about your customer interactions: ”The patient is not only an illness, he has a soul.”

When it comes to employees, this is a clear call for companies to focus on their corporate culture, which is why the first management imperative listed in my free eBook is ”Invest In Culture As A Corporate Asset.” 

The bottom line: Enjoy your 4th of July!

Health Care Needs More Empathy July 2, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum.
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The US healthcare system needs a major makeover. Costs are skyrocketing, institutions aren’t geared for chronic care, and customer experiences aren’t very good. But there’s some hope.

Retailers and medical providers are applying retail strategies to health care. After closing a majority of its walk-in clinics, Wal-Mart is rebuilding the business through partnerships with hospitals, Cleveland Clinic is working with CVS drugstore clinics, and the Mayo Clinic operating a couple of Express Care clinics. These retail locations aim to increase the convenience and decrease the costs of some health care interactions.

In Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum, I led a panel of customer experience executives that included the Chief Experience Officers from both CIGNA (Ingrid Lindberg) and the Cleveland Clinic (M. Bridget Duffy, MD). It was great to see such dynamic executives leading customer experience transformations inside of these institutions.

Lindberg’s team found that the language used by the large insurer (which is common across the industry) was a huge barrier for individual consumers. So they created a list of words and acronyms not to use with members. By simply changing the words they saw a 156% increase in understanding. The visibility of customer experience at CIGNA has been raised to the point that it’s a monthly topic for the senior executive team.

The customer/patient experience effort at the Cleveland Clinic can be seen in the first few pages of it’s 2008 Annual Report:

ClevelandClinicAnnualReport

This quote shows Cleveland Clinic’s commitment to more than medical outcomes. Duffy explained how each of the doctors at the Cleveland Clinic gets a scorecard at the end of the year with volume metrics and quality and safety metrics. The scorecard now includes patient satisfaction and loyalty scores.

The bottom line: Health care needs more leaders like Lindberg and Duffy

Editorial note: Bridget Duffy left the Cleveland Clinic.

My Marketing/Branding Favs Over 2 Years July 1, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, CMO advice, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction.
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In a continuation of the look back at my first two years of blogging, today I’m listing some of my…

Marketing/Branding Favorites:

From my perspective, brands aren’t color palettes or logos. They’re not tag lines or advertising campaigns. They’re an organization’s raison d’être. Here’s how I describe branding:

True brands are more than just marketing slogans, they’re the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause.

The bottom line: Most organizations need to re-establish their raison d’être.

My Customer Experience Favs Over 2 Years June 30, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience.
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2years

It’s hard to believe (at least for me) that I’ve been blogging for 2 years and that this is my 383rd post. Before I get too deep into this retrospective post, I want to send a big THANK YOU out to everyone who has been reading, commenting on, linking to, writing about, and passing along my blog.

I started blogging to raise the level and quality of discussions around topics that I am passionate about:

  • Customer Experience
  • Marketing/Branding
  • Corporate Culture
  • Leadership
  • Managing through the recession

Hopefully I’ve made some headway on this goal!

Over the next week or so, I will list some of my favorite posts in each of those topic areas. Today, I’ll start by looking at my…

Customer Experience Favorites:

Walt Disney captured the essence of customer experience in this quote:

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends

The bottom line: Customer experience has come a long way in 2 years!

The Customer Experience Journey To Oz June 28, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum, Managing in a recession.
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My opening keynote speech at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum was titled “Charting Your Customer Experience Journey Through Tough Times.”  I made a lot of references to Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard Of Oz.

Dorothy had to overcome a lot of obstacles (flying monkeys, cranky witches, etc.). It turns out that the key ingredients to her success are also the key ingredients for a company’s customer experience efforts in these tough economic times:

  • Heart (Tin Man): These economic times are unsettling for customers and employees. So companies need to raise the bar on their empathy to cater to the changing needs of customers and to build engagement with employees.
  • Brains (Scarecrow): It’s easy to make sweeping across the board cuts to respond to a tough economy. But companies need to think more deeply about their business to distinguish what’s really important (and shouldn’t be cut) from those things that are not important (and can be cut).
  • Courage (Lion): While the natural tendency is to get into a defensive mode during a recession, companies need to prepare for the future and strengthen their business. I referenced this quote from John F. Kennedy:

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.

There’s some debate as to the accuracy of JFK’s interpretation of the Chinese characters, but the sentiment is absolutely correct! 

I ended my presentation with a rewritten version of the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Here are the lyrics:

SomewhereOverTheHorizon

Click here to download the song (.wav, 13.5MB)

There was a lot more in my speech, like the Yellow Brick Road of customer experience maturity. So I’ll be writing more about my comments and other parts of the forum over the next week.  Stay tuned!

The bottom line: Don’t wait for a wizard to improve your customer experience

Customer Experience Boosts Revenue June 25, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Customer loyalty, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum.
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Earlier this week I published a research report called Customer Experience Boosts Revenue. In the report, I analyzed consumer data to figure out how a change in customer experience affects loyalty and how that can affect revenues. It built off of my earlier analysis about how customer experience correlates to loyalty.  Here are a couple of slides that I used to introduce the research at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum:

Here are some of the key findings:

  • The difference in loyalty between companies in the top quartile of customer experience (when measured against industry averages) and the companies in the lowest quartile:
    • 14.4% more customers willing to buy another product
    • 15.8% more customers reluctant to switch
    • 16.6% more customers likely to recommend
  • I also examined the revenue change from a 10 point increase in a firm’s Customer Experience Index. It results in a $284 million change for every $10 billion in revenue (average across 12 industries):
    • Additional purchases: $65 million
    • Reduction in churn: $116 million
    • Word fo mouth: $103 million 
  • Here’s some of the industry-specific data:
    • Five largest revenue changes: Hotels ($311 million), credit card providers ($308 million), banks ($305 million), wireless carriers ($305 million), and TV service providers ($302 million)
    • Most change in additional purchases and reduction in churn: Hotels and banks.
    • Most increase from word of mouth: Airlines and wireless carriers

The bottom line: Customer experience is a great investment.

Congrats to VoC Winners: Experian, Progressive, and Vanguard June 22, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum, Voice of the customer.
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Well, it’s been a wild day; the Grand Hyatt was hopping today as we kicked off our Customer Experience Forum.

My opening keynote speech seemed to go over really well. I weaved the story of the customer experience journey together with the story of Dorothy’s journey in the Wizard Of Oz. I actually ended my speech with a rewritten version of the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” I also showcased some data from my new report that went live today called “Customer Experience Boosts Revenue.” I’ll talk more about my speech and that research in future posts.

For now, I want to congratulate the three winners of Forrester’s 2009 Voice Of The Customer (VoC) Award: Experian, Progressive, and Vanguard. We received 40 strong nominations, so these winners did a really great job. They all were adept at the four key elements of a VoC program: Listening, Interpreting, Reacting, and Monitoring and were able to identify significant business results from those efforts. You can download their nomination forms from Forrester’s customer experience blog.

There were so many outstanding nominations, that we named 11 finalists:

  • Cardinal Health
  • CIGNA
  • Experian
  • Gaylord
  • Hyatt Place
  • iRobot
  • Logitech
  • Oracle
  • Progressive Insurance
  • Symantec
  • Vanguard

Voice of the customer is a critical component for just about any customer experience effort. And the trends indicate that VoC will become even more important in the future. A lot of the advances in VoC are coming from innovative work from a number of vendors. That’s why one of the questions we asked was: ”What technology vendors or service providers are critical to your success?”

Here’s a shout out to the vendors that were mentioned by the 11 finalists:

Bain and Company, Burke Research, CAHPS, Clarabridge, Cognos, Convergys, ECHO, Healthways, iModerate, JD Power, Lotus Notes, M/A/R/C, Medallia, Microsoft, National Committee for Quality Assurance, NICE, Opinion Lab, Oracle, Radiano, RightNow Technologies, Satmetrix, Somentics, TeaLeaf, Vovici, and Webtrends.

The nominations were loaded with great insights, so I’ll be writing a lot more about what we found.

The bottom line: Congratulations to all of the winners, finalists, and the vendors that helped!

Customer Experience Forum Here I Come June 20, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum.
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After months and months of planning, it’s exciting to be on the verge of Forrester’s first ever Customer Experience Forum. The event, called The Customer Experience Journey: Keeping Momentum In The Downturn, starts this Monday at the Grand Hyatt in NYC. Maybe I’m too close to all of the planning to be objective, but I think the event will rock!

For one thing, we’ve blown past our projections for attendees and sponsors. That’s pretty amazing in this economy. We’ll probably have more than 700 people on-site including Forrester employees and the press, so the place will be hopping.

I’m giving the opening keynote speech which is titled “Charting Your Customer Experience Journey Through Tough Times.” I’ve given hundreds of speeches, but I’m more excited about this one than any of the others that I’ve given. It’s loaded with cool insights, fun content, and it will also showcase some brand new research. On Monday, we’ll be publishing my new report called “Customer Experience Boosts Revenue” which estimates the additional revenue generated by improvements in customer experience across 12 industries. I’ll definitely be blogging about that report down the road.

At the end of the day on Monday, I’ll be announcing the winners of Forrester’s Voice Of The Customer Award. We received 40 strong nominations, so the winners really did a great job.

On Tuesday, I’m thrilled to be leading a panel discussion with some very dynamic customer experience executives:

  • M. Bridget Duffy, M.D., Chief Experience Officer , Cleveland Clinic
  • Aisling Hassell, Vice President, Customer Experience and Online, Symantec
  • Ingrid Lindberg, Customer Experience Officer, CIGNA

Those are my appearances on the main stage, but there’s also a lot more that I’m excited about. Moira Dorsey, a Forrester research director, will be giving the opening keynote on the second day called  ”The Future of Online Experiences: Prepare Now For Recovery.” And Harley Manning, another research director, will undoubtedly keep the entire event fun and entertaining in his role as host.

We also have a number of fantastic industry speakers on the main stage:

  • C. David Cush, Chief Executive Officer, Virgin America
  • Wayne Peacock, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Business Operations, USAA
  • F. William McNabb III, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vanguard
  • Martin A. Nisenholtz, Senior Vice President, Digital Operations, The New York Times Company
  • Chuck Cordray, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
  • Sohrab Vossoughi, President and Founder, ZIBA Design

There are also four tracks loaded with great content in these areas: Designing Great Web Experiences, Mastering Cross-Channel Experiences, Building A Customer-Centric Culture, and Reinforcing Brands With Every Interaction.

The bottom line: I’m looking forward to the Big Apple!

TV Service Providers Actually Got Worse June 14, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer Experience Index, Customer experience.
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In Forrester’s 2008 Customer Experience Index (CxPi), we ranked 113 companies across 12 industries. I recently published a snapshot of the results for TV service providers (Bright House, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, DISH Network/EchoStar, Time Warner Cable, and “other cable TV provider”). Here are some highlights of the eight TV service providers on the list:

  • Experiences are “very poor” and falling fast. As a group, TV service providers ended up with a “very poor” rating of 52%; the next to lowest score for any industry we examined. But it’s the trend that’s most concerning. The industry experienced an eighth point drop from its 2007 CxPi results, which more than doubled the decline of any other industry.
  • DirecTV, Bright House, and “other” are the least bad. With “poor” scores of 63%, DirecTV, Bright House, and “other cable TV provider” came out with the top scores of the group. On the other end of the list, Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter Communications all fell below 45%; representing three of the five worst ratings across all 113 firms in the CxPi.
  • None of the firms improved. The providers that we also rated in 2007 didn’t show any improvement. Only “other cable TV providers” stayed the same, while all of the others got worse. Time Warner and Comcast experienced the sharpest decline.

The bottom line: TV service providers need a severe customer experience makeover

Vanguard And Credit Unions Top Investment Experiences June 12, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience.
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In Forrester’s 2008 Customer Experience Index (CxPi), we ranked 113 companies across 12 industries. I recently published a snapshot of the investment industry looking at the results from the seven firms on the list (Charles Schwab, credit unions, Edward Jones, Fidelity, Merrill Lynch, Vanguard, and “other” full service brokers). Here’s some of what we found:

  • Experiences are “okay.” As a group, the seven firms ended up with an “okay” rating of 69%; a drop of three percentage points from the 2007 CxPi results.
  • Vanguard and credit unions lead the pack. With the only ”good” scores on the list, Vanguard and credit unions ended up with a rating of 77%. Not only were these the highest rated investment firms, but they were also the only ones to show an improvement from 2007.
  • Merrill Lynch takes the bottom. With the only poor rating in the group, Merrill Lynch ended up with the lowest score. It also ended up with the largest drop from 2007, eight percentage points. Edward Jones’ decline wasn’t far behind, dropping seven points.
  • Enjoyability took a hit. Three of the four double-digit declines in the underlying CxPi elements were in the enjoyability components for Edward Jones, Merrill Lynch, and “other” full service brokers. The other large decline came in Merrill Lynch’s meeting needs score.

The bottom line: Investment firms should get bullish on customer experience