Managing customer experience and social trends

The following sections contain recommendations to drive social customer experience success. It is important to understand that the very nature of customer experiences constantly changes because of evolving consumer behavior. With ever changing market conditions, companies must be nimble and be able to constantly tweak their approach and strategy.

1. Get a Deeper Understanding of What Drives Advocacy. As you decide on your customer experience management processes, begin by looking at whether the people, process and technology enablers you are choosing are in the best interest of engaging with your best customers as social advocates.
2. Drive Focused Actions in Your Locations. As you begin to evaluate your social customer experience program, it is also important to consider the critical role played by the locations and staff. Take an honest look at where you are with respect to standard operating procedures and best practices. If you have mapped out an ideal customer journey, have you also mapped out and created systematic plans for locations to deliver against it? Have your front line staff been thoroughly on-boarded and trained to do so?
3. Get Credit for Delivering Great Experiences. Social media isn’t just for fun anymore; it has evolved into a critical channel for customer outreach and customer feedback. Social CEM allows brands to monitor, listen and take advantage of social trends. By engaging with customers across all channels of communication brands can now engage in customer dialogue in an integrated fashion. Engaging in this dialogue is the first step towards a plan to co-create your brand with your customers.
4. Ensure Your Whole Organization is Committed. Consider who the stakeholders are that can affect the Social CEM program. To do this requires a dialogue within your company about the next steps for Social CEM. Realize that different people and groups will have different points of view on the program need and value.
5. Social CEM Readiness Checklist. Below is a checklist to help start to evaluate where an organization is with respect to Social CEM. How many of these questions does your organization have solid answers and practices for?

• Are we delivering superior, emotionally-connected customer and brand experiences across all channels and touchpoints?
• Are our employees sufficiently engaged and performing to advance our experience and brand goals?
• Are we doing enough to leverage our “Moments of Truth” efforts?
• Are we clearly standing out in the mind of the customer compared to our competitors, especially with respect to customer service?
• Do we have the technology and analytical resources in place to make dynamic new decisions on a daily basis (i.e. things change, every day)?
• What are we doing to move beyond customer satisfaction and loyalty to cultivating and measuring customer advocacy?