Customer Experience

If more of your store sales start on TikTok lately, you might wanna read this. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦. The checkout happens in-store. But the sale happens everywhere else. Here's the reality: This year 60%+, and in 2027, 70% of retail sales will be digitally influenced. I can't emphasize this enough; here's what most brands miss—digital influence isn't just about online sales. It's about shaping every moment before the customer even walks into your store. L'Oréal cracked this code: 100M+ AR try-on sessions driving real conversions. 31 brands orchestrating seamless experiences across 72 countries. No.1 in beauty influencer marketing (29% market share), 20-80% higher conversion rates through enhanced digital experiences. The new customer journey isn't linear—it's layered: - They discover you on social - Research you through reviews and UGC - Try your product virtually through AR - Get retargeted with personalized content - Finally purchase in-store (feeling confident they're making the right choice) Every touchpoint matters, and every interaction influences the final decision. The brands winning today aren't just selling products—they're orchestrating experiences across owned, paid, and earned media that guide customers from curiosity to checkout. Digital discovery is increasingly pay-to-play and shoppers are paying attention. ++ Tactical Recommendations for CPG / FMCG Brands ++ 1. Beyond just having perfect, high SOV product pages, create discovery ecosystems. - Optimize for "zero-moment-of-truth" searches. - Activate shoppable content at scale. - Leverage user-generated content as social proof. Brands that do these see a 35% higher conversion rate from digital touchpoints to in-store purchases. 2. Connect digital engagement directly to retail execution. - Geo-target digital campaigns to drive foot traffic - Create "store-specific" digital content CPG brands using geo-targeted social ads see a 23% higher in-store sales lift in targeted markets. 3. Most important one; stop flying blind—measure digital influence on offline sales. - Implement unique promo codes for each digital touchpoint to track conversion paths. - Use customer surveys at point of purchase. - Partner with retailers on shared data insights Brands with proper attribution see 15-25% improvement in marketing ROI within 12 months. 𝗧𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 ecommert® 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝟭𝟰,𝟲𝟬𝟬+ 𝗖𝗣𝗚, 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘁® : 𝗖𝗣𝗚 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿. #CPG #FMCG #AI #ecommerce Procter & Gamble PepsiCo Unilever The Coca-Cola Company Nestlé Mondelēz International Kraft Heinz Ferrero Mars Colgate-Palmolive Henkel Bayer Haleon Kenvue The HEINEKEN Company Carlsberg Group Philips Samsung Electronics Panasonic North America

Ensuring collaboration is central to a product's success during the UX strategy phase begins with uncertainty about where to start. ➡️ It's important to start by integrating resources and knowledge from various areas of expertise. Here's a combined approach on my experience to get a successful results and great user satisfaction rate 1️⃣ Get Smart Early in the Process: Involvement: Bring in PMs, Engineers, Designers, Researchers, and key stakeholders early to gain insights. Understanding: Focus on the "4W's" (Who, What, When, Where), technical impact, and project scope.
 2️⃣ Learn and Explore: Understanding Customer Needs: Identify customer pain points and their actual needs. Analysis and Metrics: Make assumptions, conduct competitive analysis, and define success metrics and current statistics.
 3️⃣ Define Problem: Validation and Conceptualization: Validate the problem, draft high-level concepts, and define hypotheses for testing.
 4️⃣ Design: Concept Creation: Develop low-fidelity (low-fi) concepts and involve researchers for testing. Collaboration: Show concepts to Tech and PMs, and address technical challenges.
 5️⃣ Re-iterate: Feedback and Refinement: Fix the main journey (happy path), take internal and external feedback, and implement changes. Testing: Conduct another round of testing.
 6️⃣ Hand off to Development: Finalization and QA: Design the final prototype, perform QA testing, and ensure all workflows are correct. Cross-Platform Check: Ensure designs are optimized for all viewports. Approval: Get sign-off from all parties before handing over to development.
 7️⃣ Launch and Monitor: Post-Launch Feedback: After launching, gather feedback through success metrics and third-party tools. Client and User Feedback: Seek feedback from real clients and conduct user interviews. Refinement: Address major feedback issues, prioritize, and monitor. Useful Resources ✅ Ux Vision — A vision is an aspirational view of the experience users will have with your product, service, or organization in the future. https://lnkd.in/gPPY-zPJ https://lnkd.in/g8Rc9pzp ✅ Outcome over Outputs — Work towards purposeful outcomes (problems solved, needs addressed, and real benefits) leads to better results. https://lnkd.in/gAFX_Wxw ✅ OKR in UX — Define objectives and measurable key results to guide and track UX work. https://lnkd.in/gDYvreN2 ✅ UX Goal Analytics — Focus on UX goals to drive analytics measurement plans, rather than tracking superficial metrics. https://lnkd.in/g3QmZqBd #UxStrategy #TransitionToUx #UxCoach #BeAvailable

Anyone who is customer facing should be building close, authentic, long lasting relationships with their customers. It pays off in more ways than you can imagine: repeat customers, references, community champions, content ideas, competitive intel and so much more. Here are 5 ways you and your team can start building those relationships: 1. Amplify a customer’s LinkedIn posts - When your customer posts something interesting, don’t just like it yourself but share the link on your internal chat and ask your team to like it as well. It’s amazing how powerful this is. It’s human nature to look at who is liking your content on any social platform and most people get a consistent number of likes. If you drive 50% more for a customer they will notice that. 2. Help find candidates for their team and jobs for them if they’re looking - In your position engaging with a specific persona all day every day you have amazing visibility and connections into relevant candidates for open jobs and companies hiring. If you let your customers know that you can be a resource for them on both sides of the table you will see how quickly you can start playing matchmaker. 3. Share best practices that have nothing to do with your company/product - Everyone is looking to improve in their job. Everyone wants to know what their peers are doing at other companies. When you hear good ideas from other customers or read about a best practice, send it to them. Just show them you’re thinking about them and are invested in them being successful. 4. Make them look good in front of their manager and/or team - It needs to be authentic and relevant but find a reason to give your customer a shoutout when you’re in a meeting with them. It doesn’t even need to be a big thing but something about how they’re the fastest to roll out your product, how their feature request ended up becoming a game changer for a bunch of customers, how they’re the most productive team you’ve seen at one particular thing. 5. Fight for a feature/bug fix/service that they’re asking for - In short, be the squeaky wheel for your customer. When they ask for something, set the expectation that it takes a while to get that thing done but then go fight for it internally. Each company has their own process for this kind of stuff but if you push in the right ways you can usually get their request prioritized. When it’s done make sure the customer knows you fought for them to get that thing done. The best thing is that these are “free”. Of course they will take time and energy but the return on this work is astronomical. I honestly didn’t appreciate the power of these relationships when I started my career but I now have close relationships with so many customers that I’ve worked with over the years. They’re a sounding board for business ideas, they’re working with companies I’m advising and we’ve become each other cheerleaders. What did I miss? What else are you doing to build relationships with your customers?

Surveys can serve an important purpose. We should use them to fill holes in our understanding of the customer experience or build better models with the customer data we have. As surveys tell you what customers explicitly choose to share, you should not be using them to measure the experience. Surveys are also inherently reactive, surface level, and increasingly ignored by customers who are overwhelmed by feedback requests. This is fact. There’s a different way. Some CX leaders understand that the most critical insights come from sources customers don’t even realize they’re providing from the “exhaust” of every day life with your brand. Real-time digital behavior, social listening, conversational analytics, and predictive modeling deliver insights that surveys alone never will. Voice and sentiment analytics, for example, go beyond simply reading customer comments. They reveal how customers genuinely feel by analyzing tone, frustration, or intent embedded within interactions. Behavioral analytics, meanwhile, uncover friction points by tracking real customer actions across websites or apps, highlighting issues users might never explicitly complain about. Predictive analytics are also becoming essential for modern CX strategies. They anticipate customer needs, allowing businesses to proactively address potential churn, rather than merely reacting after the fact. The capability can also help you maximize revenue in the experiences you are delivering (a use case not discussed often enough). The most forward-looking CX teams today are blending traditional feedback with these deeper, proactive techniques, creating a comprehensive view of their customers. If you’re just beginning to move beyond a survey-only approach, prioritizing these more advanced methods will help ensure your insights are not only deeper but actionable in real time. Surveys aren’t dead (much to my chagrin), but relying solely on them means leaving crucial insights behind. While many enterprises have moved beyond surveys, the majority are still overly reliant on them. And when you get to mid-market or small businesses? The survey slapping gets exponentially worse. Now is the time to start looking beyond the questionnaire and your Likert scales. The email survey is slowly becoming digital dust. And the capabilities to get you there are readily available. How are you evolving your customer listening strategy beyond traditional surveys? #customerexperience #cxstrategy #customerinsights #surveys

You probably have more customer info than ever.⁣ So why can’t your team answer basic questions or make confident decisions?⁣ It’s because data lives in separate systems. Align your tools, insights & the people serving customers.⁣ ⁣ Here’s what that disconnect looks like every day:⁣ ✓ The agent answering the call can’t see the customer’s last chat.⁣ ✓ The supervisor reviewing performance can’t trace a customer issue from beginning to end.⁣ ✓ And service teams are expected to deliver great experiences without knowing what’s already been said or promised.⁣ ⁣ The path forward isn’t more tools.⁣ It’s fewer, smarter ones that are connected and accessible.⁣ ⁣ ❶ Start by mapping one customer journey with your cross-functional teams at the same table (in person if possible).⁣ ⁣ ❷ Identify where handoffs happen, where data gets lost, and where communication breaks — both internally and with the customer.⁣ ⁣ ❸ Then rebuild your systems so the right people have the right context at the right moment — without logging into five platforms or asking the customer to explain again.⁣ ⁣ That’s how you create Emotional Highs™:⁣ Not surface-level satisfaction, but a meaningful emotional lift that makes people stay, return, promote, and forgive when mistakes happen.⁣ ⁣ Loyalty isn’t driven by your tech stack.⁣ It comes from how people FEEL when every interaction is easy, efficient, and clearly built around their needs.⁣ Yes — feel. As in emotions. The thing that’s always driven buying decisions, even if companies pretend otherwise.⁣ ⁣ This isn’t a tech upgrade.⁣ It’s experience transformation.⁣ And it’s how you compete and win in today’s market.⁣ ⁣ Are YOU #DoingCXRight®?⁣ Need help with ❶ ❷❸ above? Message me. ⁣ 👉 Share + comment if you found this helpful so others can benefit.⁣ ⁣ #CX #TheFormula #Nextiva #CustomerExperience #CustomerService⁣

#CustomerExperience leaders need to split their strategies into deliberate bottom-up and top-down approaches. Many get the bottom-up right, but they struggle with the top-down. Bottom-up strategies focus on improving customer-centric employee behaviors at scale. These approaches include #CX or empathy training for front-line workers, using Voice of Customer feedback to set touchpoint expectations based on customer feedback, and building customer-centric KPIs into individual performance appraisals. But where many CX leaders struggle is often with engaging senior leaders to influence their customer-centric behaviors. It's difficult to influence C-suite behavior, but if you're expected to improve customer-centric culture in the organization, then you cannot avoid this. Top-down strategies start with showing senior leaders how customer satisfaction impacts growth, retention, margin, and lifetime value. It also includes improving CX and VoC reporting to provide more recommendations and actions, not just findings and data. Having discussions with leaders about the importance of financial and non-financial rewards for customer-centric behaviors is another tool in the top-down toolkit. And using personas and journey maps is a vital way to convert customer and touchpoint data into a compelling story of necessary change. Don't rely on dashboards and reports to do the job of top-down CX engagement. Don't count on a couple of positive customer-centric comments from leaders as a sign of meaningful, irreversible support. And do not assume that the fact your CX job exists is evidence of senior leaders' commitment to customer experience. Part of the job for a successful CX leader is to constantly prove the value of customer-centric strategies, influence senior leader priorities, and arm decision-makers with the insight they need to make customer-centric decisions. Don't just empower your frontline workers and assume the job is done. If you aren't building a consistent dialog with executives, you're not only missing an opportunity to make the most significant customer impact but also seeding future problems that can lead to declining support, budget, and resources for customer experience initiatives. Take a comment today to identify or define your top-down and bottom-up CX strategies for 2024. If there's an imbalance, solving that now can lead to better outcomes by the end of this year.

I was just talking to a client about top trends in customer service for 2025. One of the top trends this year is Proactive Customer Service. Don't wait for problems to arise. Proactive customer service is about anticipating needs and providing solutions before customers even realize they have an issue. Think helpful resources, preemptive outreach, and personalized tips. Here's why proactive service matters: It shows you care 💖 You're not waiting for customers to come to you with issues. It builds trust 🤝 Customers feel you're looking out for their best interests. It reduces support volume 📉 Fewer problems mean fewer support tickets. It improves customer satisfaction 😊 Who doesn't love a company that anticipates their needs? Ready to get proactive? Try these strategies: -Analyze customer data to spot potential pain points -Create knowledge base articles for common questions -Send helpful tips via email before customers even reach out -Use AI to predict and address issues early For example, if you notice many customers struggle with a particular feature, why not send out a "Tips & Tricks" email before they get frustrated? Remember, the goal isn't just to fix problems - it's to create such a smooth experience that problems rarely arise in the first place! What's your favorite way to be proactive in customer service? Share your ideas below! 👇

Effective client management begins with proactive engagement, anticipating needs and potential hurdles. Mastering the art of listening plays a crucial role in this approach, allowing us to gain deep insights into our clients' operations and strategic objectives. Imagine setting the stage at the beginning of a project by discussing with your client: Dependency Exploration: 'Can we discuss any dependencies your team has on this project’s milestones? Understanding these can help us ensure alignment and timely delivery.' Impact Assessment Question: 'Should unforeseen delays occur, what impacts would be most critical to your operations? This will help us prioritize our project management and contingency strategies.' Preventive Planning Query: 'What preemptive steps can we take together to minimize potential disruptions to critical milestones?' Success Criteria Definition: 'How do you define success for this project? Understanding your criteria for success will guide our efforts and help us focus on achieving the specific outcomes you expect.' These discussions are essential for building a roadmap that not only aligns with the client’s expectations but also prepares both sides for potential challenges, reinforcing trust through transparency and commitment. By adopting a listening approach that seeks comprehensive understanding from the onset, we can better manage projects and enhance client satisfaction. Let’s encourage our teams to integrate these listening strategies into their initial client engagements. How have proactive discussions influenced your project outcomes? Share your experiences and insights. #ClientRelationships #AdvancedListening #BusinessStrategy #ProfessionalGrowth

Here's what your customers really think about your "account management"… "They only call when they want to sell us something." "Our quarterly business reviews are just glorified product demos." "They ask how we're using the platform instead of how it's impacting our business." "When we have problems, they always blame our implementation." "They act like customer service reps, not strategic partners." (I’m guessing as a sales leader, you’re cringing as you read those quotes. If so, read on) Most account managers are order-takers with fancy titles. They manage renewals, respond to support tickets, and pray nothing breaks. Meanwhile, customers are getting pitched by hungry competitors who actually understand their business. Here's the shift that changes everything: Stop thinking like a vendor. Start thinking like a consultant. Vendors manage products. Consultants drive outcomes. Vendors react to problems. Consultants prevent them. Vendors talk about features. Consultants talk about ROI. Vendors hope for renewals. Consultants create expansion opportunities. The account managers crushing it right now are doing three things differently: #1 They own business metrics, not product metrics. Instead of tracking "seats deployed" they're measuring "cost savings delivered." Instead of "feature adoption" they're focused on "time to value" and "user productivity gains." #2 They facilitate growth, not just maintain status quo. They're constantly asking: "What's next for your business? How do we help you get there?" They position expansion as business evolution, not vendor upselling. #3 They become indispensable strategic advisors. They know their customers' markets, competitors, and challenges better than most employees do. They bring insights from other customers and industry trends. The results speak for themselves: Average account managers: 85-95% NRR, constant churn battles. Elite account managers: 120%+ NRR, customers become references. Your existing customers are your biggest growth opportunity. They already trust you. They have budget allocated. They know your product works. But only if you're thinking bigger than maintenance mode. Your customers want partners who help them win, not babysitters who manage products. — Sales Leaders! Stop treating symptoms and start solving the real problem behind missed quotas. Claim your free diagnostic and pinpoint the exact cause in minutes: https://lnkd.in/g8M-ah5s

How can we stay focused on every customer’s experience when we operate at the scale of Chase? 🤔 At the Chase Technology Senior Leadership Conference, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on a crucial aspect of customer service, and I shared something I find myself thinking about often… we need to stop saying "only." As Head of Chase's Infrastructure and Production Management, I’m concerned about any issue that impacts even a small percentage of our customers. This is because at our scale, 1% can mean hundreds of thousands of customers. Given our scale, there can unfortunately be a tendency to say it “only” affects a small number of customers when we have issues affecting our ability to meet our customer promises. But using "only" can diminish the severity of issues and lead to complacency... and considering our scale, we can't afford to be complacent. Using the word "only" stifles curiosity in improving our business and makes us less empathetic to our customers. Here are my suggestions to remove "only" from our vocabulary: • Solve the "Small" Problems: Give teams the time and resources to address minor issues. This allows them to practice empathy and understand the customer experience more deeply. This allows us to address existing customer friction and helps us build better products for customers in the future. • Engage with Customer Challenges: Visit call centers, listen to complaints, or visit a branch and observe how customers and employees interact. Engaging with front line employees and customers directly brings immediacy and emotion to problem-solving, which makes for better solutions. • Focus on Customer Journeys: Establish "customer journey labs" to review pain points and improve experiences from the customer’s standpoint, not the bank’s. As I shared in Nashville with my peers, every minor hiccup represents a real customer with a genuine experience. Let's commit to "sweating the small stuff" and reward our teams for focusing on every customer problem. #CustomerExperience #Leadership