Crack the Customer Code

What is a customer experience touchpoint? Jeannie shatters common myths and shares tips for a more customer-centric and actionable approach.

Customer touchpoints make up your customer’s journey, but many business leaders don’t truly understand what this means. They are often not understood from the customer’s perspective, and the popular beliefs about how to identify them lure us into a narrow view of the customer experience.

Don’t be deceived by the way-too-simple customer touchpoint definition you find in google search, of fall into the trap of thinking your quest for understanding is that simple. Jeannie has been helping organizations understand their true customer journeys for more than 20 years, and she’s here to share the professional approach with you!

“Think of a touchpoint as any and every interaction a customer has with your brand...” -Jeannie Walters

The customer journey is more far-reaching than you think, and your customers are depending on you to understand it from end to end.  How can you do this? Listen in to shatter they myths and start using Jeannie’s tips today!

• 360Connext® post, Touchpoint Mapping: Discovery, Enlightenment, and A-HA! Moments
• Customers That Stick® post,Turn Your Customer Experience Inside Out
• Episode 120: Jim Kalbach, Experience Mapping Expert
• Episode 163: When to Update Customer Journey Maps
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Jeannie is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) who has held highly engaging Customer Experience Mission workshops for larger audiences, and customized ones for clients with outstanding results. Sign up to learn how to start your own Customer Experience Mission for free!

• Make your mission statement meaningful both to customers and employees
• Ensure customer-facing employees meet and exceed expectations
• Turn ordinary processes into a conduit for your mission
• Steps for creating a mission your team will be proud to get behind

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you using customer service bots? So much can go wrong! With Adam and Jeannie to help, you can use them to save time AND deliver better experiences.

If you’ve been a regular listener, then you know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. (Check the related content below to catch up!) One way AI has already entered our daily lives is through customer service bots, or chatbots.

Though they’ve recently made some great leaps and actually become helpful, these bots are still designed to merely assist humans, not replace them. Are you still in there someplace?

“If the bot can’t get it done or is going down the wrong path, that can get very frustrating very quickly…” - Jeannie Walters

We’re decades, if not centuries away from creating bots that can take over completely and still consistently deliver great experiences on the personal level... So what do we need to know before we put one of these in front of our customers?

Brands like The Cosmopolitan and Capital One have found brilliant ways to leverage this technology for better, faster, and more personalized customer service- without making it difficult to solve more complex problems or contact a real live person. So can you!

“Make sure your bot has a little personality and fits with your brand.” -Adam Toporek

Today, Adam and Jeannie are sharing great examples from these brands along with pro tips to help you use bots wisely. Why not leverage the power of bots to not just lighten your load, but also raise the bar on your ideal customer experience? Listen in, human!

• 360Connext® post, #SXSW: Emerging AI with a Focus on Greater Experiences
• Customers That Stick® post, Communication: The Most Important Skill in Customer Service
• Episode 222: 179: (Tip) Staffing Automated Customer Service
• Episode 174: Robert Scoble, Augmented Reality and the Fourth Transformation
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam explains the neuroscience behind different types of organizational conformity, how they help or harm your business, and how to strike a good balance.

Adam says, “the impetus to conform is strong for many,” and that’s typically a good thing in business. Organizational conformity is necessary to create consistent customer experiences, adhere to regulations, and maintain a stable workplace.

But it’s not just about following necessary rules and procedures, or maintaining a sense of order. Before you say it’s great for employees to conform in every way, imagine the innovation process with nobody sharing ideas. What if everyone just followed the rules, even when it didn’t help the customer in the moment? What if your employees took on a “mob mentality” adopting dissenting ideas?

“…the conformity is subconscious and almost frighteningly instinctual.” -Adam Toporek

In this episode, Adam explains the different types of conformity, and how to recognize and differentiate them. Is conformity helping your business grow, or harming your customer experience? How would you know?

A winning team plays by the rules, but is also empowered to make judgment calls, speak their mind, and share insights that help you grow as a business. How can you strike a healthy balance with organizational conformity? Listen in for tips you can use today!

• 360Connext® post, 3 Powerful No-Sweat Customer Experience Quick Fixes
• Customers That Stick® course, Don’t Let Conformity Stifle Ideas
• Episode 222: (Tip) Instilling Culture Throughout the Organization
• Episode 073: Hacking Your Workplace Culture
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie discuss neuroscience and new study data to better understand the emotional impact on CX.

We hate to be a downer, but improving customer experience isn’t all about thinking positive. As you push forward, adding moments of delight to the customer journey, are you paying enough attention to those tiny pain points?

“As leaders, we have to take the rose-colored glasses off.” -Jeannie Walters

A new study from InMoment reveals that negative emotions last longer than positive ones, so those tiny negative moments dominate the otherwise great experience you create! What’s more, executives typically perceive a watered-down version of the negative emotions customers experience. So as our brains are constantly seek out the negative stimuli that spoil our overall experience, the data decision-makers act on typically downplays their impact. 

“Until you resolve those feelings of disrespect, nothing else matters.” -Adam Toporek

Join us today as we explore staggering facts from InMoment and findings from Adam’s own study, digging into the neuroscience behind customer emotions. It’s heavy stuff, but Adam and Jeannie are here to help you make sense of it all, then get ahead of it.

Listen in for a better understanding of customer behavior plus some tips you can use today!

• 360Connext® post, 3 Destructive Consistency Issues You Need to Overcome Now
• Customers That Stick® course, Mastering the 7 Service Triggers
• Episode 194: (Tip) Taking Negative Interactions Personally
• Episode 097: The Best Customer Loyalty Metrics
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie attacks customer experience lip service head-on with tips for turning customer-centricity into action.

Are you familiar with the CBS television show Undercover Boss? CEOs literally go undercover as employees to discover broken rules and processes, workplace culture issues, and more. (Can you tell why we love this?)

“Culture in customer experience has to be bought in at the top.” -Adam Toporek

While it’s important for leaders to understand what’s going on behind the scenes, you may not be able to go incognito amongst your employees. But there are ways to get to the truth without a disguise or a bad dye job!

Today Adam and Jeannie are sharing some stealthy ways any leader can uncover hidden truths about your customer experience, and the people who make it happen.

“The further up the corporate ladder we go, the further away from customers we often get.” -Jeannie Walters

You don’t need a fake mustache, but go ahead and wear one if it makes it more fun. The important thing is that you listen in and start using these tips today!

• 360Connext® post, Becoming Customer-Centric: 5 Ways to Walk the Talk
• Customers That Stick® post, Creating a Customer Service Culture with Jeff Toister
• Episode 203: (Tip) B2B vs. B2C Customer Experience
• Episode 167: Signs You’re Losing a Customer
• Undercover Boss on CBS
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Jeannie is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) who has held highly engaging Customer Experience Mission workshops for larger audiences, and customized ones for clients with outstanding results. Sign up to learn how to start your own Customer Experience Mission for free!

• Make your mission statement meaningful both to customers and employees
• Ensure customer-facing employees meet and exceed expectations
• Turn ordinary processes into a conduit for your mission
• Steps for creating a mission your team will be proud to get behind

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie attacks customer experience lip service head-on with tips for turning customer-centricity into action.

Business leaders talk a lot about being customer-centric, but honestly, most of them are just talking. It often starts with a big rally or town hall meeting where it’s declared, “we’re becoming customer-centric!” It may make its way into a few emails and become the focus of a new campaign, but this rarely inspires change that leads to true customer-centricity.

So what are they doing wrong, and are you falling into the same trap? Do you really want customer-centricity to drive your organization, or is it just sexy to say it does?

“We are going to make sure that every interaction with our customers is focused on them.” -Jeannie Walters

It’s time to start walking the talk.  Becoming customer-centric is real work that affects your entire organization, and remaining so is a project that never ends. You’ll need to:

1. Think big
2. Keep talking (what!?)
3. Invite customers into the process

What do these mean, and how can you apply them to your ongoing experience strategy? Jeannie explains with some tips you can use today. Listen in!

• 360Connext® post, Becoming Customer-Centric: 5 Ways to Walk the Talk
• Customers That Stick® post, Creating a Customer Service Culture with Jeff Toister
• Episode 193: Amy Downs, Customer Success
• Episode 094: Joseph Michelli, Becoming Customer-Obsessed
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message:

Jeannie is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) who has held highly engaging Customer Experience Mission workshops for larger audiences, and customized ones for clients with outstanding results. Sign up to learn how to start your own Customer Experience Mission for free!

• Make your mission statement meaningful both to customers and employees
• Ensure customer-facing employees meet and exceed expectations
• Turn ordinary processes into a conduit for your mission
• Steps for creating a mission your team will be proud to get behind

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie interview Dan Gingiss, author of Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Design Engaging Experiences on Social Media.

Providing great customer service is important, no matter what channel is being used. But when it comes to engaging with customers on social, many companies are reluctant to invest where it counts.

They fear opening up social channels will also open up the floodgates for serial complainers, trolls and negative word-of mouth. They fear their team isn’t large enough, interesting enough, or knowledgeable enough to do it right. And with recent PR nightmares in the airline industry, who could blame brands for being hesitant to engage on social?

Customers need you on social, and they expect social customer service as part of the omnichannel experience your competitors already deliver. It’s time to overcome those fears!

Dan Gingiss is here to help dispel the myths around social customer care. Sure there are risks, but there are also opportunities a forward-thing company can’t ignore. You can give customers what they expect on social, and you can turn unhappy ones into a brand advocates.

You’ll want to take notes today, because Dan is explaining what it takes for a company of any size to provide excellent social customer care. Backed by real-life examples from large and small companies doing it right, this episode is loaded with simple but powerful tips for hiring, engaging, strategizing, and maximizing your ROI.

Grab your notebook and listen in!

Dan Gingiss’s 20-year career has consistently focused on delighting customers, spanning multiple disciplines including social media, customer service, marketing, and digital customer experience. Dan has hands-on experience as an executive at multiple Fortune 300 companies, having served as Head of Digital Customer Experience at Discover, Head of Digital Marketing at Humana, and currently Head of Global Social Media at McDonald’s.

Dan is the author of the new book, Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Design Engaging Experiences on Social Media, which is available on Amazon. The book includes a Foreword by Jay Baer and is endorsed by several other notable social media and customer service experts. Dan also hosts the Focus on Customer Service podcast, where he interviews brands which are renowned for outstanding customer service in social media, garnering tips and best practices. The podcast was recently named one of "The 50 Best Customer Retention Podcasts to Help You Attract, Engage and Retain Customers" by NGDATA.

A frequent conference speaker (Social Media Marketing World, Social Shake-Up, Corporate Social Media Summit, The Customer Service Summit, The Secret Service Summit, and more), Dan has also been named to several notable industry lists, including:

• "The 30 Most Influential People in Social Customer Service" by Conversocial
• "The Top 15 NPS & Customer Service Thought Leaders to Follow in 2017" by CustomerGauge
• "50 Social Media Marketing Influencers to Follow" by TopRank Marketing
• "Behind the Brand: 30 Influencers That Drive Social Media for the Brands We Love" by Leadtail and Purematter
• "Mover and Shaker" by The Social Shake-Up Conference 2017
• "The Top 10 Service Cloud Influencers" by Traackr

Dan holds a B.A. in psychology and communications from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. in marketing and strategy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He resides in Chicago with his family and is an avid Cubs fan.

Connect with Dan

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Website
• Podcast
• Dan’s book on Amazon

• 360Connext® post, 5 Ways Everyone Wins with Proactive Social Media Engagement
• Customers That Stick® post,When Sales Does Service on Social with Phil Gerbyshak
• Episode 150: Phil Gerbyshak, Social Connections
• Episode 096: Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters
• We’re on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message:

Jeannie is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) who has held highly engaging Customer Experience Mission workshops for larger audiences, and customized ones for clients with outstanding results. Sign up to learn how to start your own Customer Experience Mission, for free!

• Make your mission statement meaningful, both to customers and employees
• Ensure customer-facing employeesnot only meet, but exceed expectations
• Turn ordinary processes into a conduit for your mission, and positive change
• Steps for creating a mission your team will be proud to get behind

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share three things all customers want from the experience, regardless of what they do or do not ask for.

All customers are different, have different goals, and may run into different issues through their journey. We’ve talked about many great ways to find out what customers want, including social listening, co-creation sessions, and different feedback mechanisms. These are all great ways to uncover opportunities to innovate around their needs.

What are those things customers may not be asking for, but still want? -Jeannie Walters

But these methods don’t reveal what all customers want. And while it’s typically not a good idea to bank on assumptions, there are a few critical things they’re probably not asking for, and Adam and Jeannie want to share those with you today.

“Customers are depending on you to innovate for them!” - Adam Toporek

So regardless of your strategy for improving the customer experience, or even if you don’t have a strategy yet, you can’t go wrong by examining and improving these three things.

What can every organization improve for guaranteed wins? Listen in for tips you can use today!

• 360Connext® post, Surveys Results are Great, but What About the “Untold” Feedback?
• Customers That Stick® post, Customer Information Form Basics: What You Need to Know
• Episode 196: Innovating with Customers
• Episode 101: How the Innovation Process Fails Us
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam shares tips for preventing small details from spoiling an otherwise great overall customer experience.

We usually perceive the phrase “majoring in the minors” as a bag thing, but it’s different when we’re talking about customer experience. Both consciously and unconsciously, the small details have a huge impact on how customers perceive the overall experience.

The best companies obsess over these small details – not only to remove pain points from the customer journey, but to add delight and differentiate the brand.

"The things we saw made us wonder about the things we did not see!" - Adam Toporek

Today, Adam shares real-life examples where little things added up to a lousy overall experience with a brand that usually delivers great customer service. What went wrong, and how could they have done better?

Are you majoring in the CX minors? How many not-so-great experiences must your customers step over during their journey, and will they make it through? And more importantly, will they come back?

• Jeannie's TEDx video, Microinteractions Lead to Major Engagement
• Customers That Stick® post, In Customer Service, Is Ordinary Now Extraordinary?
• Episode 158: Christoff Weihman, Excellerate Service
• Episode 110: Mike Ganino, Guest Experience Expert
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share some lessons we can all learn from recent airline customer service disasters.

There’s been so much in the news about airline customer service, it’s time we talk about it here on Crack the Customer Code! Including, but not limited to the customer who was dragged off his United flight, we’re not sure any airline has been left unscathed.

“This was so visceral that I think people did respond in a very emotional way.” - Jeannie Walters

It’s not news that airline customer service a long way to go, but more common issues are getting more public attention in the wake of these high-profile incidents. Clearly, there’s a theme of processes and regulations superseding the customer experience. Even United CEO Oscar Munoz has come right out blaming not his people, but the outdated processes they’re chained to.

“There are people there that know better, so why are their voices not heard?” - Adam Toporek

Today, Adam and Jeannie share their take on what’s happening with airline customer service, what’s causing the biggest problems, and why we’re seeing little improvement.

What can you learn from airline customer service? Find out how airlines’ processes, regulations, corporate politics, and poor culture prevent them from doing right by their customers. Could this happen to you? Listen in to find out, then take action!

• 360Connext® post, This Is What an Epic Customer Experience Fail Looks Like
• Customers That Stick® post, Southwest Airlines: A Service Recovery Surprise
• Episode 215: (Tip) Losing Control of the Customer Experience
• Episode 123: CXPA Live, Regulated Industry Challenges
• We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices