Learn from the World’s leading experts on Customer Experience

Are you one of the growing number of Customer Experience professionals? Have you been given the task of ‘improving your Customer experience’? What do you do? What are the problems and pitfalls? Do you want recognition that shows you have been professionally trained and carries weight with employers? Are you looking for career progression and development? Who better to help you than the world’s experts on the Customer Experience?

Here are 5 reasons why the CEM certification program could be a practical solution for your current needs:

1. When an organization is looking to focus on the Customer Experience it is important to set the standard at the start. Train on the concepts of the Customer Experience and set the direction!

2. Due to the nature of business today, face to face training is impractical from a time and cost perspective. Beyond Philosophy offers remote learning in the form of a live, in person webinar solution, conducted by recognized world leading experts in Customer Experience .

3. Our live webinars are reinforced with tasks, homework, self-assessments and set reading designed to reinforce the learning. If you miss a live event you can listen to a recording of this at your leisure. This is not only practical & productive but you can set your own pace.

4. You will meet and network with other Customer Experience professionals from around the globe, during every live webinar and study group, to get a view of what other companies are doing. This gives you the ability to share one another’s problems and challenges you may be facing, understanding you are not alone in your current situation.

5. And finally, not only obtaining official recognition for your expertise upon completion of the Customer Experience Management Certification (CEM) program; but gaining the knowledge to make a significant difference to your organization’s Customer Experience strategy and into a competitive advantage.

Why learn with Beyond Philosophy?

It’s simple, Beyond Philosophy have helped shape the whole Customer Experience industry. We are literally one of the first companies in the world to focus solely on Customer Experience. From our first book in 2002, Building Great Customer Experiences and our subsequent three further books our concepts and CEM training methodology have worked for many organizations. (case studies link) to prove this.

We have many models, templates and self assessments that enable organizations to improve their Customer Experience and those wanting to participate in the Customer Experience Management Certification (CEM) program will be fortunate enough to use & put these theories into practice during the course. We will also reveal to you a number of secrets that we do not publicize worldwide. This is the reason why the CEM program is targeted at ‘client side’ professionals and consultants are not permitted to attend.

Customer Experience is a term that, like its predecessor ‘Customer Relationship Management (CRM)’, is being sufficiently discussed, debated and talked about. Here I would attempt to summarise the vast literature around it in meaningful way, which even a layman can understand while making the best of efforts to ensure sufficient academic stimulation for the well-informed of the field.

1. Customer Touch points

First, let’s look at what is a customer touch-point. A customer touch-point is defined as a point of interaction between the customer and the business that is selling the product/service which the customer requires. This customer-business interaction may happen over any of the channels of communication

2. Customer Experience Channels

There are multiple channels to facilitate interaction between a customer and a business. These could be classified as direct channels (like the call centre) or indirect (like TV advertising). Based on the use of technology, these channels could also be classified asDigital Channels (like Website, mobile phone) and Physical Channels (like retail store). There may also be social channels of customer experience. These are indirect channels typically where a potential customer hears about a product/service experience of a business from his/her friend. These are typically social channels, traditionally limited to word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) but more recently including new age Digital channels like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

3. Customer Lifecycle & Stages

Customer Lifecycle is the sum-total of all the stages that a customer goes through during his/her interaction with a business from awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, purchase, use, cultivation to advocacy/termination.Customer Lifecycle

4. Customer Journey

Each stage of the customer lifecycle above has a customer objective and the customer goes through a series of steps to achieve his/her objective. This is known as a customer journey. And Customer Journey Mapping has its promoters and detractors and the benefits have to be weighed in by the business before undertaking it.

Customer Journey Map - Life Insurance Customer

5. Customer Experience Definition

With those basic components defined, I believe we are at a point where we can define Customer Experience. Customer Experience is a cumulative total of what a customer feels (experiences) across all touch-points, across all stages of the customer lifecycle, across all customer experience channels.

6. Customer Experience Classification

Several sub-sets of customer experience have been attempted. From online experience to User Experience to Digital Customer Experience, there are many attempts to classify/slice-and-dice customer experience subsets. But most are in its infancy and industry specific.

7. Differentiation from Customer Relationship and other previous concepts

Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM), Customer Service, Voice of Customer (VOC) initiatives and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are all concepts related to customer experience. Each of them deserves its own discussion but broadly speaking they all represent a segment/subset of customer experience but not customer experience in its entirety. E.g. WOMM & NPS mainly reflect the outcome of customer experience but do not measure its enablers.CX, CRM & Loyalty Management

8. Challenges of Customer Experience (CX)

Lastly I want to briefly touch upon the current challenges of customer experience. So assuming you comprehend CX, its value to your business but the obvious next question is how? The primary obstacles in enforcing a proper CX strategy in an organisation are as follows, in my opinion:

a. Tools for Customer Experience – There are very few IT tools available for CX namely along the following objectives:

i. Customer Experience Innovation – How do I use technology to innovate CX of my business? Are there existing tools that I can implement and let them suggest innovative solutions to my CX challenges?

ii. Customer Experience Delivery – If I have a CX strategy in place, what IT tools should I procure to implement them in my existing IT ecosystem?

b. Customer Experience Monetization – What CX strategy should I implement so that I get the maximum bang for my buck? I have attempted to address the challenge of “Customer Experience Monetization” for hotels industry in one of my earlier posts.

c. Customer Experience Measurement – How do I as a business quantify “experience” and then measure it? Should I measure it using financial metrics like revenue or service metrics like FCR (First Call Resolution) or survey based metrics like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) or social metrics like NPS.

I hope the definitions and the challenges articulated would serve to give a foundation to those looking to learn about “What exactly is customer experience?” For experts in the field, I welcome them to contribute about what are the other major challenges that I might have missed out as well as proposing their solutions to the challenges I have elaborated above. I look forward to learning from my peers and seniors in the field…

Gen Y on Social Now

Gen Y- Ambitious to Save the World as Social Entrepreneurs

IEDP: The involvement of ‘millennials’ in social entrepreneurship highlights how the corporate world can benefit from engaging a generation ambitious to change the world. Experts Giles Hutchins and Martina Mangelsdorf have been looking into this new trend towards social entrepreneurship and identified five values in Gen Y which act as catalysts for the desire to better the world.

• 

While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit, a social entrepreneur also measures positive returns to society and the wider environment.

(PRWEB UK) 26 March 2013

A lot has been said and written lately about the rise ofsocial entrepreneurship. Not only does the world suffer from an increasing number of challenges that need solutions, it also seems that more and more people feel drawn to a career as a social entrepreneur.

While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit, a social entrepreneur also measures positive returns to society and the wider environment. Social entrepreneurship is commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors but it does not necessarily exclude for-profit business objectives. Common initiatives include community interest activities, social engagement and education, micro credits, cooperative farming, business development, supporting arts or vocational training.

Born between 1980 and 1995, many from themillennial generation have embraced social entrepreneurship as a valid and desirable career track – seeing it less as a ‘career’ in the traditional sense and more as a purposeful path in life. Several colleges and universities have established programs that focus on educating social entrepreneurs and FORBES recently published their annual “30 under 30” listing of innovators and entrepreneurs for 2012. Social entrepreneurs were added as one of six new categories this year, ranging across 15 fields from Art & Style to Technology.

Similar to the young disruptors selected by FORBES, countless Gen Y talents are impatient to change the world and social entrepreneurship offers them a great outlet to do so. It simply resonates with some of the typical Gen Y values that characterize this generation: collaboration; accessibility; sustainability; globalization; self-expression.

CE Steps 2

1. When we hold resentment in our hearts, we deliver far below our capabilities.  Learn objective caring to prevent taking customers’ criticisms personally.  When front line teams deliver negative customer feedback to the rest of the company, does everyone in your organization respond with an open mind?
2. Our future is behind every customer. The customer is the heart of business success. It beats for our future. Maintain heart health!
3. Trusting the customers, not mistrusting them, is the starting point. Customers expect you to trust them and they remember this as a super customer  experience. Mistrusting them will never lead to loyalty or great reviews. Have you unknowingly built your core beliefs around protecting your company from “untrustworthy” customers?
4. Scaling challenges don’t impress customers. Customers don’t make allowances for bad service even if companies are large. Customers expect large companies to use the power of technology to address the challenges of scaling and still provide super customer experience.
5. Care and adapt. Customers reject rigid rules. Super customer experience is about understanding what the customer wantsand how they want it delivered.
6. Touch my heart before you touch my money. Customers take a risk when they choose a company for products or services. They have at least 20 burdens of uncertainty they hope you will eliminate for them before you take their money.  Understand and address these uncertainties and you are on the road to delivering super customer experience.
7. The customer’s pulse is our vital sign too.  Every aspect of customer experience gives a business the customer’s vital signs. Shut out the vitals and we risk killing that customer relationship.

CE Steps 1

Customers always remember a super customer service experience. Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach ™, shares 15 essential beliefs for your support team to remember:

1. Customers cannot observe your intentions. Treat them well in every aspect of interaction and experience.
2. The customer’s voice echoes forever. Of course they talk about you. What they say is actually up to you.
3. Persist when you sense potential; shift and innovate when you see futility. Never let frustration with a customer stop you from finding a solution and delivering super customer experience!
4. Make customer service experience easy! Count the number of hoops you ask customers to jump through & you’ll find the places they may jump ship! Leave the hoops for basketball.
5. Courtesy and civility do not undo your message. They allow the customers to hear it.
6. A customer’s trust is an invitation for a human bond. Your actions RSVP the truth about you and your beliefs and foretell the customer’s next choice.
7. There is a difference between service and servitude. The first you choose; the second you don’t. Customers believe this applies to whole companies not just to the individual reps with whom they speak.  Do your customers see your company living an enthusiastic service mindset or begrudgingly working in servitude?
8. A sincere apology is the quickest way to repave the road of customer trust. Waffling, defending, and delay leaves a trail of mistrust. Apologize and make amends!

Social Media Implications for Gen X and Gen Y Marketing

5 Critical Trends to Grasp How Your Market Is Shifting

Do you really know how the 18 to 49 year old market, better known as Gen X and Gen Y, is changing and what this means for your marketing, especially where social media and mobile are concerned?

If not, this research is crucial to your marketing since these two market segments live and communicate via social media and they research, connect and purchase with their mobile devices.Therefore you must move from being present on social media to integrating social media into every aspect of your business to be where your customers are when they want to engage with you.

5 Critical Gen X and Gen Y trends

Here are five critical Gen X and Gen Y trends that emerged from NBC Universal’s The Curve Report 2013, an in-depth bi-annual research project to highlight trends and insights of this critical, high purchasing segment.  (Note: The names of these segments were created by NBC Universal.)

1. Indie Women. These are a growing segment of single women who don’t have children and have chosen a solo living alternative to having a traditional family. Actionable Marketing Implications: Indie women need a variety of different support systems to fulfill needs and supplement services traditionally provided by family members. The autonomous mindset of these independent women is redefining household structures, relationship dynamics and products and services for the life of one person. Marketers must get rid of their old stereotypes to win over this segment!
2. Personal grid. Gen X and Gen Y view local as personal, flexible and transportable. Actionable Marketing Implications: There’s been a fundamental shift in how people navigate through their lives and interactions with others across their work and personal lives. Marketers must be able to connect via smartphones and tablets to be part of the purchase process.
3. Pop-Upreneurs. A new breed of instant entrepreneurs enabled by new platforms that facilitate transforming their ideas into reality, is disrupting the status quo. Technology is allowing them to find new, easier and cheaper ways to accomplish their goals. Actionable Marketing Implications: Embracing a beta-test mindset, this segment thrives on fast, democratized creativity. They’re creating solutions to problems and finding more profitable ways to circumvent established hierarchies and ways of doing business. Marketers have a difficult time competing with them since they’ve got less overhead and other costs. With this segment, some businesses may do better to hire them and work with them rather than compete.
4. Popular “Click”. These are the hyper-connected tastemakers and curators encompassing influencers, stylists, bloggers and celebrities who are taste and cultural arbitrators. Actionable Marketing Implications: They’ve become an integral part of the social commerce ecosystem connecting marketers and customers. Consider how you can leverage the power of your brand’s influencers.
5. Group Think. This segment puts a new positive spin on an old negative business concept. Gen X and Gen Y use a collective intelligence model focused on getting as much top talent together to find the best idea.Actionable Marketing Implications:  This is a shift from mass crowd sourcing to seeking specialized skills to provide solutions for specificproblems and needs

Guide customers through their lifecycle whilst enhancing customer relationship and value

It is commonly known that retaining existing customers is less expensive and more profitable than acquiring new ones. The ability to effectively manage customer relationships whilst optimising customer value is more essential than ever before.

Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a framework developed to nurture ongoing customer relationships throughout the lifecycle. It is about handling and fulfilling every customer interaction across all touch points.

Digital Alchemy’s proprietary CLM framework has been developed based on our experience in working with an extensive range of industries. We have designed CLM solutions for telecommunications, banking, insurance and others, this in-depth experience will be used as the building block to jumpstart your project.

Based on the industry you’re in, our CLM solution will be mapped into your existing marketing programs so you are able to:
  •  identify the gaps in your marketing activities  •  understand what necessary actions are missing from your current programs  •  shift your focus to improve the relationship with your customers and achieve your business objectives

CLM framework consists of 5 stages: Acquisition, Onboarding, Growth & Nurturing, Save, and Winback. Each stage, consisting of a suite of highly specific triggers and recommended campaign ideas, works in a coordinated way to:
  •  increase customer value  •  improve customer tenure, and  •  enhance customer relationship

78% of Customers Bail Because of Bad Customer Experience

Are Your Employees Passionate?

Having the right people on your customer service team makes all the difference. If you sell cookware, your staff should know the difference between steaming and sautéing. If you sell beauty products, make sure they know which color palette looks best with different skin tones, hair colors, and eye colors. Passion comes through in each interaction; so does a lack of it.

Are You Going Above and Beyond?

You can easily distinguish your product from one that’s nearly identical simply by offering better customer service. Go above and beyond to help your customers during their shopping experience.

• Be ready to answer questions, no matter how trivial, with a polite and patient attitude.
• Offer samples or swatches for online-only products.
• Make returns or exchanges as simple and pain-free as possible.

Are You Readily Available?

When customers have questions or complaints, they want to talk to someone immediately. Offer 24-hour help when possible. If this isn’t possible, get back to your customers as quickly as you can – preferably in no more than 48 hours. Make sure your job scheduling is as efficient as possible so there’s enough staffing to handle all issues in a timely manner.

Is Your Service Personalized?

Track customer behavior so you can pull up the individual’s file and deal with his issue in the context of his past experiences. A frequent buyer with a first-time complaint deserves VIP treatment for his loyalty. If you can see that an individual returns items often, perhaps you can get to the bottom of the issue and offer advice that will make the next buy a success.
Related: 15 Things Your Customers Are Dying to Hear

Are Your Employees Properly Trained?

Customer service professionals need unfailing patience and courtesy. Equip them with the skills they need to deal with even the most difficult customers. Give them as much power as you can so they don’t have to put callers on hold and get manager approval for every decision. Customers appreciate when the service department has the power to actually get things done.
With the right service strategies, you can make your company stand out among the competition. These tactics will help you make sure that your customers become loyal repeat buyers who are anxious to spread the word.

The Social Evolution for Generation Y

In a matter of a few short years, social media has been infused into our daily lives. According to an Altimeter study, “In 2011, the US hit a milestone – more than half of all adults visit social networking sites at least once a month.” As social media has evolved and matured, these consumer technologies have started to make the cross-over into the enterprise. This is often referred to as the “consumerization of IT,” where consumer technologies such as mobile and social are making way into the business world for better productivity.

Not only is business changing at a rapid pace, the workforce is also undergoing a major shift. As baby boomers are reaching retirement age, 75 million millennials are expected to hit the job market at the same time. These youthful workers possess a fresh perspective and approach; qualities that are highly desirable for any company seeking to remain competitive, relevant and ahead of the curve.

This emerging workforce has grown up connecting through networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They welcome and expect social tools in the work place, e-mail is perceived as an outdated form of communication. Companies that lead this trend and leverage social technologies will be seen as innovators by the new workforce.

Today, about half of enterprises are providing social tools to their workforce. With these tools employees have the resources to capture knowledge, overcome information gaps, collaborate, and communicate with the community in real-time. This is the groundwork for building strong relationships with co-workers, between departments, throughout companies and even globally.  Collaborating, working in a team environment, and making decisions by consensus is preferred by the new generation. The ability to create and foster relationships will be a critical component to keeping them happy.

Enterprises can no longer ignore the evolution of social media and its adoption in the workplace, especially as it relates to recruiting the younger workforce. Incorporating social technologies has enabled an increase in productivity and has provided a more efficient workplace. The Generation Y workforce is more comfortable and familiar working in real-time, adopting new technology trends and working with social tools in the workplace. To bring in this workforce, recruitment through social media is critical. Going social has become increasingly more popular within HR departments and companies that have adopted the use of social business have become more successful recruiting Generation Y. According to Socialware.com, there are four ways to use social recruiting efforts:

1)     More Social Employees = More Recruiters

2)     Your Culture Will Recruit for You

3)     Younger Generations Will Expect Access

4)     Social Media Access is still a Differentiator

Social business is the way of the future and the younger workforce is looking for companies who have adopted enterprise social collaboration for daily use. A recent survey by the National Computing Centreshowed, “employees using social business tools have an increase in connectedness by 39% and a third reported an increased level of workplace satisfaction.” The younger generation is starting to filter in and fill the shoes of the baby boomer generation.  Generation Y is armed with experience and knowledge of social tools, making complete adoption throughout companies inevitable and the way of the future.

Social software in the workplace is the collaboration tool of today’s generation. Can your company afford to ignore the adoption of enterprise social networking? Not only will lack of adoption keep your company from evolving, it could also prevent successful recruitment of the Generation Y workforce. The emerging workforce is full of new ideas, creativity, and innovation. They have their pulse on trends that will define our future. Not speaking to this group, in their language, or providing them with the tools they are comfortable working with could retract from workforce productivity, or even stifle the social evolution we see today. Incorporating a social enterprise agenda should be a priority to make your business blossom.

3 'Magical' Tips for Attaining Customer Ecperience Enhancement

In today’s competitive environment, it’s more important than ever to provide consumers with a positive and memorable experience to separate your business from your competitors. Due to advancements in technology and the way consumers are now interacting with brands, it’s becoming inevitable that they will start to form emotional connections and relationships with the brand or business as a whole and further continue to utilize their goods and services. The question then becomes, how can you improve your customers experience and develop these memorable encounters between the consumer and your brand?

A recent article titled Rebecca Cross: The ‘magical experience’ begins with your people provided a recap of helpful advice to ensure that your consumer relationships are ‘magical’. In this article, Cross reviews the best tips from customer service guru John Formica, also known as the “Ex-Disney Guy”, on customer experience enhancement. Let’s take a deeper look at a few of these recommendations.

1. Understand your customers’ wants and needs.
In order to develop a relationship with your consumers, you need to have a complete understanding of their wants and needs. Implementing customer feedback programs is a great way to offer consumers an outlet in which they can voice their opinions. If your consumers feel as though their ideas are being heard and applied to your everyday agenda, you will build their confidence in your company. Always remember that your consumers are the ones using your products and services and they know what they need from your business. Building this loyalty will drive customer experience enhancement and yield a more successful outcome.
2. First impressions and perceptions are critical.
The overall atmosphere of your business will ultimately impact the consumers’ first impression. From the time they set foot in your business, they begin to develop a perception of your brand. Are they greeted when they walk in the door? Where are the service counters? Is signage easy to read? Are products placed in a way that make sense to the consumer? These factors, and many more, play a pivotal role in determining if your customers will decide whether they will return. Consider utilizing customer experience management tools that can provide you with a deeper understanding of how your consumers perceive your brand from the beginning. It may be beneficial for you to hire a mystery shopping provider that is qualified in presenting relevant  information so you can  listen objectively and deliver actionable feedback for further customer experience enhancement.
3. Pay attention to details and think of yourself as on-stage.

When it comes to customer experience management, all of your employees should be on board. Each individual person plays a key role. Exhibiting a good attitude and applying the right technique are two important attributes that contribute to the customer’s perception. One of the main reasons that consumers do not remain loyal is because of the way they are treated by your team. To further improve the customers’ experience, consider the insight that a performance consulting and training company can deliver.

About The Author

Service Excellence Group, Inc. is a customer experience measurement and solutions provider with a focus on performance management, research and customer intelligence. Service Excellence Group has developed partnerships with clients in an open and collaborative way that is flexible to the changing environment. Thorough research and analysis of your business could lead to customer experience enhancement. If you are interested in services such as mystery shoppers, feedback programs or training to improve your customer experience management, we can help you achieve your goals.

life cycle

Telecom

Increased attrition due to slower economic conditions, a highly competitive marketplace, and competition from newer technologies like wireless and voice-over-the-Net services, have all added to the challenges faced by the telecom industry around the world. Heightened competition and overcapacity are pushing down prices for telecom carriers, putting higher pressure on margins and profitability.

To address this multitude of challenges, telecom leaders need to focus on core performance, understand customer segments, and develop sustainable business strategies. Sutherland’s Telecom Solutions offerings are geared toward providing a structured response to many of the profitability challenges faced by telecom players.

Sutherland Solutions

Customer Lifecycle Management

Our customer lifecycle management solutions support the entire lifecycle of customers in the telecom vertical.

Other Solutions

Sutherland also offers risk and survey analytics solutions to augment its lifecycle management of the customer. These solutions enable telecom providers to achieve superior returns on given risk profile of the business.

Revenue Management

• Recommendations for profitable partnerships and right pricing for accessing competitor network
• Lost revenue analysis by reconciling multiple data sources

Risk Mitigation

• Origination Scorecards to assess risk at acquisition
• Predictive risk modeling

Survey Analytics

Measuring customer satisfaction and understanding needs by

• Framing survey design
• Capturing responses
• Analyzing the responses and providing feedback to business

CRML

What is CRM (customer relationship management)?
CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise might build adatabase about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.

Ask your CRM questions at ITKnowledgeExchange.com

According to one industry view, CRM consists of:

• Helping an enterprise to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team.
• Assisting the organization to improve telesales, account, and sales management by optimizing information shared by multiple employees, and streamlining existing processes (for example, taking orders using mobile devices)
• Allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.
• Providing employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers, understand and identify customer needs and effectively build relationships between the company, its customer base, and distribution partners.

Many organizations turn to CRM software to help them manage their customer relationships. CRM technology is offered on-premise, on-demand or through Software as a Service

7 Tips for Recovering from a Bad Customer Experie

As much as every business would love for each of its customers to have an excellent experience each time they do business with them, in the real world, that’s not always how it works. Even the best brands and businesses have customers who, from time to time, have a less-than-positive experience – for a variety of reasons. So, here are seven tips for how to recover when a customer has a bad experience with your business.

1) Address the Complaint Quickly

Today, a customer may complain at the time of service or wait to make a phone call or email the business. Whenever and however a customer contacts you about a negative customer experience, it’s important to resolve their issue directly and as quickly as possible, for a number of reasons. First, you want the customer to know you care about their business and want them to return, so being quick to resolve their problems helps them feel more positive about your company while they are most concerned about their experience. Also, quickly resolving customer issues is critical in helping keep negative reviews about your company from showing up online. That’s because often, customers turn to review sites, social media outlets, or even blogs to express their frustration about a bad customer experience. So, not only does quickly resolving their issues help make the customer happier – it can also help nip negative reviews in the bud, protecting your online reputation.

2) Identify the Root of their Complaint

When a customer complains about a bad experience, they may mention a variety of issues when they speak with you. They may wander off topic and also share about their overall bad day, or an awful experience with a competitor, or anything else that’s on their mind. But, it’s important to respectfully listen to what they have to say, paying careful attention to the specifics they mention pertaining to your business. Did you miss your appointment window? Were your products or services below the level of quality the customer anticipated? Were they overcharged for their purchase? Did your staff or partners provide poor customer service? There are many potential issues that can arise, but it’s important to identify the root of the problem so you can respond to their specific issue and not just offer a blanket response to any and all complaints.

3) Offer a Resolution Immediately

If a customer is unhappy with your products or services, try to solve their problem and make sure their anger is resolved as soon as you hear about it, before they ever leave your business or, for service companies, before you leave them. The longer it takes for their issue to be resolved, the more upset they are likely to become. To make sure you can consistently offer immediate resolutions to customer complaints, create a system, procedure, or policy for each of the different types of bad customer experiences your business has faced so that you’ll have a go-to way to handle issues as soon as they arise.

4) Take Responsibility for their Experience

Is every customer complaint your fault? Probably not, but it’s important to take responsibility for whatever contribution you have had in the issue. Don’t blame the customer, because that is likely only going to make them more upset. Instead, identify the parts of the issue that your business played a part in, and let the customer know you are aware of your responsibility in the matter. 

5) Offer a Heartfelt Apology

Next, make sure to apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Be sincere and genuine, and stay professional in your response. Let the customer know you appreciate their business and are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Don’t be snarky, frustrated, or terse in your conversation with the customer. Instead, put yourself in their shoes and let them know you care. A heartfelt apology can go a long way in helping ameliorate any animosity the customer may have and in keeping a negative review at bay.

6) Provide a Tangible Resolution 

In most cases, an apology alone, while nice, is not enough to truly recover from a bad customer experience. In order to fully resolve the issue with the customer, it’s usually best to offer a tangible resolution. For example, many businesses offer a discount, refund, or complimentary future product or service package, depending on the severity of the issue. If your business has caused harm to a customer or their property in some way, you may need to seek expert counsel on how to resolve the issue to avoid potential legal action.

7) Empower Your Team to Resolve Bad Experiences

“May I speak with a manager?” This is often one of the telltale questions that a customer has a complaint about your business. But often, the chain of command, authority, and approvals to get customer complaints resolved can make the process take more time and ultimately make the customer feel more frustrated instead of pleased at the outcome. So, to the best of your ability, empower your team to be a part of the complaint resolution process so that issues are handled at the front line instead of having to escalate them up for a true resolution. Of course, some situations are more severe than others, and due to the varying nature of customer complaints, they are ultimately handled on a case-by-case basis. But by getting your entire team trained on how to provide great customer service and finding consistent resolutions you can offer for the most common customer complaints, you can help reduce the number of customer complaints that you or your management has to deal with – and help ensure that your customers are happier as well.

Stages of CE Lifecycle

Prospective Customers: The First Phase of the Customer Life Cycle

Before your customers are actually your customers, they are simply prospects who may or may not be aware of your product, brand, or company. Your job, as a marketer, is to first make them aware of your product, brand, or company and then peak their interest enough that they will convert to an active customer or user. Once you have their interest peaked, of course, your next job is to provide the trust, security, and incentive that they need to overcome any barriers or obstacles and become a registered or paying user or customer. This phase of the customer life cycle – the process of converting a prospect into a customer or user - is often the most challenging. It involves a marketing acquisition budget as well as an awareness of what will transition prospects from "just interested" into fully engaged. Many marketing books have been written about the techniques and challenges of acquiring new customers. While it is an important part of the mix, email marketing is only a portion of the many marketing activities you'll need to master in order to effectively convert prospects to customers.

Another common term you'll hear used referring to this part of the customer life cycle is "leads."Leads are the names and contact information (typically in the form of an email address) of people who have shown an interest in your product, service, or brand. Often, they have done so by signing up for a special offer or even a piece of free content. Leads may also be purchased from data companies. However, if you are purchasing a lead list, we recommend that you be extremely careful and research that the data you are buying is from a reputable company and won't put you at risk of violating any privacy or CAN-SPAM laws.

New Customers or Users: The Second Phase of the Customer Life Cycle

So, now you've converted a prospective customer or lead into a paying or registered customer. That's great and shows that you have some real marketing skills. However, ideally you want your new customer or user to be a customer or user who has a long term relationship with you, not just one who purchases one time and then never returns. Think of this phase of the customer life cycleas though it's like the early phases of dating. Your new customer has been "sold" enough on you to go out on one date or make one purchase, but they're not sure if you're a long-term commitment yet! It's your job to build a relationship with them so that they continue to return, interact, and purchase from you for a long time to come. Again, the quality of your product or service will certainly matter here, but so will the way in which you communicate with your customer and show them that you respect their privacy, time, and, most importantly, business.

Active Customers or Users: The Third Phase of the Customer Life Cycle

Now you've converted a prospective customer into a paying or registered customer. This is the stage at which you need to not only impress the customer with the quality of your product, but also follow-up with them to build a relationship, make them feel important to you, and ensure that, when they think of you, those active customers think of returning to you. If we're still using the dating analogy, think of this as the time when you make sure that you're always being polite and wearing your best clothing when you communicate with the customer!

Migrating an application to SaaS (Software as a Service) means rethinking and redesigning the software in several fundamental ways including changing the hosting model from single to multi-tenant, the business model from perpetual license to subscriptions and the update cycle from years to months.
The customer life cycle
But in our experience having designed over 60 SaaS applications, one of the most significant changes is in the management of the customer life cycle. Customer life cycle refers to the full progression of steps a customer goes through when exploring, purchasing, using, getting support and upgrading a product or service. With SaaS you build some or all of these steps directly into the software. This is a dramatic shift in software design but is essential to meet modern user expectations as well as achieve scalability and profitability. Let me detail this out further.
On-premise software customer life cycle (traditional)
With traditional on-premise software, the customer life cycle is handled by many departments and individuals.  There is a large upfront sales effort with a protracted sales cycle, from a large team (pre-sales, account manager, marketing, advertising) that "manages" the buyer through the sales process. A purchase cannot even move forward without engaging with the sales team.  Installation/setup including customization and provisioning requires a systems engineer or consultant. Training and a post-sales support staff manage the usage and on-going maintenance phases. A person in finance handles renewals. At every customer life cycle "touch point", the buyer must engage with a human gatekeeper that is outside of their everyday use of the "core" application  (e.g. the CRM or ERP).
SaaS customer life cycle
With SaaS, the above "high touch" model falls to pieces due to economics and user expectations.  When you migrate to SaaS you still have your core application as the center of focus, but then you systematically identify all of the points in a SaaS application where the software or staff will touch the customer (e.g. early sales, marketing, demos, provisioning, configuration, billing, monitoring, renewals, support etc.). Based on your specific business, customer and technology dimensions, you evaluate which of these touch points can and should be migrated online and be built into the SaaS application.
Put in very broad buckets these touch points address:

• Purchasing & Deployment
• Configuration & Provisioning
• Usage
• Monitoring & Upsell

Designing for buyer self-service
In a pure SaaS model, the underlying economics mandate that almost all of the touch points in the customer life cycle be designed, delivered and managed via the SaaS application. So in addition to delivering the core application, the software is designed to use automation and self-service do the tasks that would otherwise require support staff to service.  Buyers can do these tasks on their own, right within the software. This is essential to achieve economies of scale, rapid iterations, and broad market appeal. When implemented correctly, the cost of acquiring and supporting 100 customers should be just marginally higher than for 1 customer.
Of course, pure SaaS is not appropriate to all business models. The underlying business value of a piece of software may require unique customer processes, or complex integration tasks that can't be automated. The steps in the SaaS life cycle framework are however still appropriate for developing a roadmap on how to design your SaaS.  Examine the touch points in the life cycle of your own organization and your product to determine the appropriate combination of self-service and high-touch services interacting with one another.
In some cases you may need to offer enhanced customization, additional sales support, or on-site professional services, and the premium you charge for this will cover the cost hit you take by not being able to scale via automation or self-service.  But even in these cases, don't fall back on traditional on-premise software approaches. You should still thoroughly examine all points in the customer life cycle and determine the fundamental cost advantages of addressing each component in software vs. with sales and support staff. This will help you to align your business model with the underlying economics of how the core application and supporting services are exposed to users.
A real world example
We worked with one of the leading SaaS CRM providers on a problem they had with losing more than 20% of the people who initially signed up for the service. Because SaaS makes it possible to track online activities, we were able to determine where users were dropping out. The company had assumed the problem was in their core application, but it was actually in the customer life cycle during the provisioning and customization process (that at this point was still being managed by support staff). Once we knew where to work, we were able to move these touch points into the application to create a smooth and simple user experience to allow self-provisioning and customization.  This very effectively reduced the dropout rate. 
A visual model
The below diagram explains the SaaS customer life cycle visually.

On the left is a traditional on premise solution. This inside area is the part of the software that the customers touch i.e. the core application. Around this on the outside are all of the touch points of the application that are not built into the software. Someone has to come in to sell it. Someone has to come into provision it. Someone has to come in to customize. Someone has to come onsite to do training. Etc.  So there are many touch points that are not part of the design of the software.
On the right is a SaaS application. You still have the core application in the middle that users touch. But there are many points around the core application but still inside the circle (the lifecycle of that product) that users can touch.  This includes things like trial software, purchasing, configuration, provisioning etc. Buyers have an expectation they can do these things on their own without the need to interact with a sales or support person.  Consequently the implementation and user experience needs to be simple, easy and effective.
As an organization you need to understand the life cycle touch points that surrounds your product.  If a touch point is inside the circle it means buyers are going to touch it as part of the software.  If outside the circle it means that aspect will not be built into the software.

CRL

What Is Your Customer Relationship Lifecycle?

For your customers and prospects, your customer relationship lifecycle is the basis for their experiential “journey” with your brand–from awareness of your company or product to selection or purchase, satisfaction, and loyalty. It’s called a lifecycle because it depicts the life of your relationship with your customers. And since the goal of your lifecycle is to engage and deepen the relationship, it is circular in nature with the customer appropriately located in the center.

The better their experience as they progress through it the more customers will move from one stage to the next, driving increased engagement and loyalty. In each stage, you have the opportunity to understand and meet their needs, deepening the relationship along the way. Or, you might unwittingly erect barriers to progress along the way, causing customers to drop out of the relationship–most never to return.

Defined by a series of predictable stages, your lifecycle is a unique experiential "journey" from awareness of your company to, ideally, advocacy for it. Throughout the lifecycle, your brand, marketing, and service delivery touchpoints–digital and otherwise–define customer experience.

Attracting and keeping customers begins with understanding how well your brand and touchpoints work, or don't, at driving movement from one stage to the next. By understanding attitudes, perceptions, and influencers at each stage, you can see where the relationships between you and your customers can be improved.

A multi-stage journey from discovery to engagement, with loyalty the goal.

While every company has its own unique customer lifecycle, the core framework remains the same. This five-stage model is the basic framework for all lifecycles, though analysis of yours may identify four, six, or seven stages. 

Regardless of your unique lifecycle, the early stages align closely with the traditional sales or marketing funnel, beginning with awareness or discovery. Once a customer has discovered your brand, they need to learn more about it. Does it fit their wants and needs? What alternatives exist? Assuming your customers make it this far, the next step is to choose your brand. This stage includes selection or purchase, and is followed by use.  

Looked at through the sales funnel these steps conclude the acquisition process and–and for many companies–signal a decreased focus on customers. Realistically, this is where the hard work begins. Because the step following choose is use, and this is where most companies need to excel to boost repurchase and retention, and drive towards loyalty.