6 Customer Experience Insights from Opentalk 2016

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01 Empathy

02 Metrics

03 Segmentation

Table of Contents

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04 Culture

05 Language

06 Omnichannel

Talkdesk’s first customer experience summit was a great success. Opentalk 2016 featured a

full day of impactful content delivered by thought leaders and innovators in the CX space to an audience packed with customer-centric business leaders. There were multiple exciting product announcements and an assortment of gourmet food and drinks, all in San Francisco’s high-tech and sophisticated event venue, The

Village, on May 17th.

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Here are some of the best learnings and insights from Opentalk 2016:

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#1 Empathy

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Empathy is the heart of the most successful customer experiences. Smart businesses invest in learning what makes their customers tick and where their product or service fits into the customers’ daily lives. Creating a foundation of empathy in team members starts from the moment of onboarding.

Evan Maridou of Tuft & Needle explained in the “Debate: Customer Delight vs. Effortless Experience” session that his company requires new hires to visit legacy stores to determine the pain points of customers. Keynote speaker Bonny Simi of JetBlue Ventures explained that her airline requires pilots to attend training sessions in which they review NPS scores and Twitter feedback on their latest flights.

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#1 Empathy

“To build a great CX, you have to have a lot of empathy with your customers.”

Neil StraghalisExperience Design Group Manager, Intuit

—By Design: What Happens When CX Meets UX

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#2 Metrics

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Customer satisfaction can seem an amorphous goal at times. Many of the Opentalk speakers touched on ways to pin down and track customer satisfaction metrics.

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, Josh Stein of DFJ, Maridou and Simi all spoke at length about the merits and pitfalls of NPS. Talkdesk unveiled Customer Sentiment Score, our first predictive analytic, that enables companies to actively assess churn and take proactive steps to prevent it.

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#2 Metrics

“I find that if you do it right, NPS predicts the future.”

Jason LemkinFounder, SaaStr

—How to Grow Customer-Centric Companies

in Down Markets

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#3 Segmentation

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Rather than attempting to address every customer’s needs in the same way, companies should strive to break customers up by attributes. This makes the seemingly unattainable goal of making every customer happy all the time a lot more manageable.

Nick Mehta of Gainsight and Tien Tzuo of Zuora spoke about using both externally visible factors and customer behaviors to determine segmentation. Tzuo said that companies should aim to surface 8-10 salient items about customers and then bake them into their sales organizational structures.

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#3 Segmentation

"Two different people can expect opposite things when it comes to customer success.

Segmentation is the way to go.”

Nick MehtaCEO, Gainsight

—The ROI of Investing in Your Customers

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#4 Culture

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Employees are the determining factors for the customer experience. The culture that employees create and live in can make a tremendous difference on the consumer-end. That’s why it is imperative to develop and foster a customer-centric culture through training programs and ongoing refreshers.

Bryce Maddock of TaskUs discussed his “team-centric” approach that he feels creates a cycle of good agents attracting good customers who in turn attract better agents. Simi discussed JetBlue’s initial personality test to determine if potential hires are good organizational fits. She also went over her company’s devotion to instilling pride and promoting trust in team members so that they are empowered to continue to meet and exceed expectations.

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#4 Culture

“Your number one differentiator is your culture. It overlaps with your people

and your customers.”

Bonny SimiPresident, JetBlue Technology Ventures

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—The Art and Science of Delivering

Great Service

#5 Language

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The words we use to describe our business processes and goals can shape how we view our customer relationships. Emmanuelle Skala of Influitive debated the meaning of “speaking” to a customer if the contact is purely electronic and advocated for using “learning” instead of “discovery” in sales processes. Casey Whalen of Shopify explained that his company has merged the Sales and Support teams and now simply calls them “Improvers.” Simi explained that JetBlue calls all of its employees “Crew Members.”

Most audaciously, Tzuo and Mehta argued that the term “customer” is outdated because it suggests a one-sided interaction. Mehta went on to say that “acquisition” was also a misnomer because it can instill a false sense of security about the relationship.

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#5 Language

Nick MehtaCEO, Gainsight

—The ROI of Investing in Your Customers

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"One term that all of us use is 'customer acquisition'... But you’re not acquiring this

new customer. They’re not committed to you. You don’t own them."

#6 Omnichannel

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Modern businesses strive to meet customers on their level. This can mean humanizing experiences by promoting conversation, as was the subject of “The Lost Art of Conversation” session, providing a self-service option as discussed in the “Debate” session, or providing real-time service as discussed in the “The Rise of the Customer-Centric Company” session.

Along with Talkdesk’s many product releases at Opentalk, we introduced Talkdesk Omnichannel, which will include voice, SMS and video to allow companies to connect with their customers in whatever way works best for them.

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#6 Omnichannel

“Be mindful of consistency with customer relationships.”

John MayhallNorth American Sales Solutions, LinkedIn

—How to Grow Customer-Centric Companies

in Down Markets

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Even though Opentalk 2016 is over, you should still keep customer experience at the top of your mind.

Talkdesk has helped thousands of customers including Box, Cloudera, The Weather Channel and Dropbox improve their customer experience by

empowering their agents and reps to have real-time personalized conversations.

Talk to one of our experts to find out how Talkdesk can help you drive customer loyalty in your business.

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