JANUARY 2024 | VOL. 18

"The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction

when it could be turned into momentum."

Frances E. Willard

Happy New Year to all our readers! We at the Verde Group hope that your 2024 is off to a great start and that your CX insight agendas are full of strategies and tactics that will deliver business results for your respective enterprises. After all, isn’t the purpose of investing in voice-of-customer insights to deliver business results?

Over the past two years, we’ve asked you to weigh in on several topics and we thank you for your contributions, questions, and feedback. The somewhat surprising results of our reader surveys indicate that there are likely headwinds facing your CX plans in 2024. Here are a few highlights from data collected in 2023:

• 72% of companies are not confident that they know the specific friction points causing the greatest risk to their business.
• 62% indicate that they do not effectively separate noise from signal in determining CX priorities.
• 57% state that your CX programs are not delivering the results your organization expects.
• And only 1 in 3 of you indicated that your organization is “all in” when it comes to achieving CX excellence.

This data, and the data collected over 20+ years of work at the Verde Group, suggest that there are significant obstacles organizations face in attaining their CX goals. Most notably, the ability to drive sustained and improved financial performance via an improved customer experience.

The answer to solving these persistent challenges is actually quite simple…. Shift your focus from solely measuring attitudes and focus on the specific and addressable experiences that create the attitudes in the first place. Unfortunately, we cannot simply wave a magic wand and change someone’s attitude about our brand, product, or service. We can only change the experiences that created or shaped the attitudes in the first place. And what we know to be true is that negative experiences are much more predictable of negative market action… much more so than positive experiences. So, as Frances Willard eludes to, the world is wide, do not waste your time mired in friction… solve for the friction points most damaging to your brand and turn it into momentum for your business!

At the Verde Group, understanding the specific problems that create market damage is what we do. To learn more, visit our approach page or contact us to learn more about how we can help you take action and drive revenues and profits.

December Poll Results

This past December, we asked about what CX gift you would like to give your Leadership Team over the holidays. A majority of respondents (36%) indicated that the number one gift would be a higher ROI on your CX investments. What we found interesting is that the second highest-rated “gift” was an aligned Executive Leadership Team. Fundamentally, we believe these two points are explicitly linked.

To align a Leadership Team you need financially-focused facts. Opinions or “fluffy” but interesting notes on the changing attitudes of your customers may be thought-provoking, but let’s face it, they will not get the job done when it comes to rallying the organization behind your CX efforts.

This is precisely the reason why we focus our efforts solely on quantifying the economic risk present in your customer experience (MORE). We are always willing to share our perspective on how today’s CX research and insight methods are fundamentally flawed and how you can shore up your efforts to ground your insights in the business and ultimately drive an improved ROI and executive engagement in your program. 

READY TO TALK? Book an intro session with Dennis Armbruster, Verde Group Executive VP, to discover how you can enhance the impact of your CX program. We want to help you find methods to anchor your customer insights firmly within your business framework, driving stronger ROI and increasing executive buy-in. We want to learn more about your current challenges.

January 2024 Poll

What is your greatest challenge in connecting CX insights to the financial performance of your business?

Will 2024 be an AI-powered year?

Do a quick Google search on 2024 Customer Experience Predictions and you'll get a long list of articles, opinions, and links. But one trend that stuck out for us was the focus on artificial intelligence and its role in successful CX programs in the coming year.

In this article from CX Today, Tom Wright, CEO of CX company GLANCE, discusses balancing AI advancements with the importance of human interaction: 

“…much work goes into building trust and loyalty with customers and how easy it is to lose it in a single negative experience.”

Originally published October 2022 by The Verde Group.

At Verde Group, my team and I have spent years researching customer experience and counseling businesses on how best to deal with their customers, as well as how to reduce friction, cultivate relationships, build trust, and avoid negative experiences.

This past summer, a very personal CX nightmare reminded me just how quickly and spectacularly companies big and small can destroy their longstanding relationships. It’s a cautionary tale of how things can go wrong in the blink of an eye.

For 12 years, “Bob” serviced the water pump that provides clean water to my summer cottage. Bob installed the original pump and every spring, he and his team came up to my home away from home to make sure the pump was working properly. And for 12 years, he did a wonderful job — anytime I had an issue, he dropped everything and resolved it the same or the next day. He was amazing. I liked Bob and I trusted him.

Then, last summer, while I was at the cottage with friends, Bob showed up unannounced and told me his team had to perform some water pump maintenance to make it easier to shut down the system at the end of the season. I thought it was a bit odd that he hadn’t notified me in advance. I just shrugged and he proceeded to do whatever it was he needed to do. Three weeks later, when I was back in the city, he texted to tell me he needed to return to the cottage to finish the work. I told him okay.

A week after his second visit, I received an invoice from him for $650 for parts and labor. I thought it had to be a mistake — he’d explained earlier that the maintenance was meant to make his team’s work easier, not to repair or replace any parts and, had I not happened to be there on his first visit, I wouldn’t have even known what he was doing or why.

I texted to tell him that I refused to pay for work I never requested. He responded by insisting that I at least pay $350 for the parts he installed. I said no again and, on the spot, I decided to terminate our relationship.



Despite a 12-year association and the responsive and professional work he had always done, in an instant, Bob had shattered the trust and respect I had for him. Not only had he lost a customer who had paid him thousands of dollars a year, he lost a lifetime of business to come. And to make matters worse, I ended up sharing my story with all of my neighbors. Negative word of mouth like this can destroy a business. Research confirms this — a study conducted in 2006 by the Verde Group and the Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School, found that one in two shoppers chose not to visit a particular store because they heard about someone else’s bad experience there.

My very personal and disappointing experience got me thinking — as it often does — about how much work goes into building trust and loyalty with customers and how easy it is to lose it in a single negative experience.

Here are a trio of customer experience dos and don’ts to consider:

1. Avoid unpleasant surprises — particularly when it comes to billing or charges customers don’t anticipate. These are often viewed as the worst kind of violation of trust.
2. Understand the true value of your customer over time — you may think you can get away with a dishonest one-time charge but before you nickel and dime loyal customers, consider the risk you’re taking in destroying their full lifetime value.
3. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth and reputational harm. The most detrimental effect of my experience with Bob wasn’t the $650 charge he lost or even my lifetime value. It turned out to be all the friends and colleagues and especially neighbors around my cottage whom I’ve vented to about my experience. Word of mouth can build a business but it can also utterly devastate it.

I recognize these tips aren’t exactly brain surgery and yet, every day, companies ruin perfectly great relationships with customers over what should be “common sense” issues. Common sense, as they say, is a superpower and, evidently, too few people and businesses have it.

Paula Courtney, CEO – The Verde Group

"The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing."

John Russell, President, Harley Davidson

January 2024's Question:

I’ve read in several issues that Verde Group focuses on connecting voice-of-customer research/insights to business performance. Without spilling the beans, can you provide me with a high-level understanding of how you do that?

Answer: Thanks for your question. This question hits at the fundamental philosophy and approach of The Verde Group. This topic requires more than a brief response, but to sum it up, the key is to focus on understanding if specific experiences occurred or not (binary). And, by focusing on negative experiences, which are much more predictive of negative market action, we develop insights that show the linkage between those experiences and purchase behavior. This grounds your CX insights in the business and, trust us, it will increase the visibility of your program to the C-Suite.