June 2024 | VOL. 23

"Customer experience is the new battleground, and AI is the weapon of choice. Businesses that harness the power of AI to understand and anticipate customer needs will thrive in the digital age."

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

AI is truly the new battleground in the customer experience ecosystem. Many organizations have fully adopted AI solutions to remove friction (which Verde Group fully supports) in the customer experience to reduce the cost to serve and improve business outcomes. But customers remain skeptical, especially older customers, where a profound generation gap exists.

This begs the question, how will organizations point the power of AI in the right direction to address the varying demographic needs of customers? One answer may be to understand the specific and discrete friction points that plague both Gen Z and Boomers. This is where the Verde Group approach excels. By identifying the specific friction points that drive negative market action for specific customer segments, companies can pinpoint the deployment of AI technology to address the common denominators that impact business results.

Customers want empathy and understanding for complex issues. A SurveyMonkey study supports this: 90% of people stated they prefer customer service from a human rather than a chatbot. And the commonly used customer satisfaction metric Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is 72 points higher for human service agents than it is for customer service chatbots. These challenges and more should be the focal point for brands pursuing AI solutions.

May Poll Results

In May, we asked readers, "What do you believe are the perceived risks of using AI to improve your customer experience?"  While privacy concerns and an over-dependence on technology rose to the top, the data is somewhat surprising given the information shared above. Interestingly, only 17% of companies that responded see a potential lack of a personalized touch as a concern. This may be a blind spot for companies investing in AI and something worth monitoring by CX insight teams.

We are here to help. To learn more about how we can help take your CX insight program to the next level, CLICK HERE.

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.

June 2024 Poll

Please choose just one answer.

In the competitive landscape of today’s business world, customer experience (CX) has emerged as a key differentiator. Customers now expect seamless interactions across all touchpoints with a brand, from the first ad, promotion, or social post they see to the purchase journey and post-purchase support they receive. CX insight teams wade through mountains of data, presenting insights in the hope they drive organizational action. But to create inertia with the marketing team, data not only needs to be actionable but also linked to a financial return on investment. This is where team collaboration begins to break down.

To bridge the gap between Marketing and CX organizations, it is important to understand the defining characteristics of high-performing teams. In a 2023 Forbes article, The Hidden Secrets of High Performing Teams, Brent Gleeson calls out two dimensions (Relationship and Results) and their respective pillars which we believe point us in an interesting direction. READ MORE...

Paula Courtney, Verde Group's President & CEO, will be the Keynote Speaker at the 2024 Loyalty Conference, held annually in Copenhagen, Denmark. Even with widespread CX investment, most businesses aren't seeing significant results in their CX measurement efforts due to a disconnect between insights and strategic decision-making. Metrics like NPS often fail. Paula will address this issue in her keynote presentation,

“Enhancing financial outcomes with Revenue@Risk®, a strategic CX model focused on actionable insights and reducing customer friction”

In conversations with leading CX practitioners, we hear over and over again that they’re frustrated despite mountains of data being generated. They’re searching for ways to increase the meaning and importance of their work, and to make a difference in the outcomes of their business enterprise.

We have a solution. Explore the data that suggests we need to be paying more attention to CX friction over satisfaction in our new white paper: The Great CX Challenge: Financially Linking the Impact of Customer Experience Insights

June 2024's Question:

Question: With all the talk about AI, I’m wondering if you have any recommendations on how our company can get the greatest benefit from deploying this awesome technology?

Answer: Thank you for your question! While AI is clearly a game-changing technology, some principles hold true. Focusing any resources to address the specific experiences most damaging to your business is the key to success. This applies to AI as well and the reason why we are so bullish on Verde Group’s Revenue@Risk® methodology. Our CX insight approach economically quantifies the specific experience most damaging to your business. This approach has been used by Verde Group for over 20 years and has led to companies deploying innovative solutions for over two decades. This doesn’t change with the introduction of AI. We believe that by understanding the friction points that drive negative market action, companies can deploy AI in a purposeful way that maximizes ROI. Let us know if we can help!

We can help you get there. Contact us to get started.