Social CEM. Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advocacy

8/13/2019 Social CEM. Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advocacy

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www.empathica.com

Authors:

Dr. Gary Edwards

Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff

Lisa M. Schwartz

Social CEM

Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advocacy


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Social CEM: Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advocacy

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Overview: Using Social CEM to Transform Your Business

The Current State of Customer Experience Management (CEM)

The Transformation of the Customer Experience

Leveraging Global Trends to Engage Todays Consumers

Targeting the Millennial Generation

Five Challenges & Implications for Brands in a Socially Connected World

Understanding the Customer Experience Lifecycle

Managing Customer Experiences throughout the Customer Lifecycle

Deciding When (and When Not) to Take Action on Customer Feedback

Consistently Delivering Customer Experiences That Positively Affect Your Brand

Going beyond the Loyalty Stage to Drive Active Advocacy

Recommendations for Managing the Social Customer Experience

Get a Deeper Understanding of What Drives Advocacy

Drive Focused Actions in Your Locations

Get Credit for Delivering Great Experiences

Ensure Your Whole Organization is Committed

Social CEM Readiness Checklist

Conclusion

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Table of Contents


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Overview: Using Social CEM to Transform Your Business

With the advent of social media and the rise of mobile smartphone technology,

consumers are in the drivers seat, posting their customer experiences in permanent,

online forums and providing instant customer feedback that is increasingly visible

to the public. To get in front of these trends, traditional, relatively passive Voice of

Customer programs have the opportunity to evolve into highly actionable Social

Customer Experience Management (Social CEM) solutions. The most advanced and

commercially advantageous Social CEM includes not only the process of gathering

one way customer experience feedback, but also the ability to provide true two-

way dialogue that drives local and immediate improvement efforts, drive positive

online and ofine customer advocacy, increase same store sales and increase

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). Social CEM is about moving beyond interrogating

customers about their experience with brands and creating an ongoing dialogue

where customers become co-creators of the brand by becoming active, engaged

advocates. This paper is about how brands are transforming their businesses by

using Social CEM.


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The Current State of Customer Experience Management (CEM)

Measuring customer experiences is really about understanding the sum of a series

of touch points, the gestalt of one or several moments of truth that drive an overall

perception of the individuals involved and the product purchased or consumed,

juxtaposed against the channel engaged and the expectations of the brand.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is how a company manages those

interactions with customers. CEM has emerged as a space or methodology in

retail parlance, as it provides a means to manage and create loyalty, and higher

customer lifetime values (CLTV) where customers buy more goods and services

over longer periods of time, positively affecting revenue, prots and margins. By

contrast, notmanaging CEM can lead to increased operational costs as well as

negative word of mouth and customer attrition. Social CEM acknowledges that

with social media the impact of either positive or negative customer experiences are

more immediate, tangible and amplied and as a result, must be integrated in the

customer experience management program.

It is an old adage in business that you cant manage what you dont measure. Many

companies do not effectively measure, communicate and hold their front line agents

accountable to continuously improve their customer experiences. They may collect

customer experience data, but the time and distance from feedback to a customer

evidencing any tangible improvement is so long that most consumers who provide

feedback do not believe any good comes of it. This is evidenced by Consumer

Insights research done by Empathica showing that only 46% of respondents

believe that feedback is used to improve the customer experience. This can only

be the result of two factors: 1) a lack of transparency and communication from the

brand outwards on what the score is and whats being done about it, and 2) a poor

understanding and execution of the improvements needed at the local unit (i.e.,

store, restaurant, branch, dealership, etc.) level. As a result, the revenue boost and/

or cost cutting goals of CLTV have often not been met and customer experience

improvements remain an elusive goal in many companies.

Whether taken seriously or not by the executive suite, customer experience metrics

have always been important indicators for the success of a company1. Whats

changed and made customer experience management a vital, bottom-line business

initiative in todays world is that digitally connected consumers are far more vocal

about their customer experiences and have a more far-reaching impact than everbefore. With studies showing 78% of consumers trust recommendations versus only

14% who trust advertisers messages, managing on/ofine customer experience

has never been more important2.

Whats made customer

experience management

a vital, bottom-linebusiness initiative in

todays world is that

digitally connected

consumers are far

more vocal about their

customer experiences

and have a more far-

reaching impact than

ever before.


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When todays consumers post information about their customer experience online,

they can reach thousands of people in mere seconds. And those posts remain

online as a permanent record of customers experiences. If, as is often the case,

the customer experience is off, the company is in danger of not only losing the

future revenue of the customers who posted, but also the revenue from hundredsif not thousands of other customers who read about how the brands products or

services didnt meet customer expectations and subsequently choose not to buy

from the brand. In addition, the lack of improvement in the business can result in

increased operational costs dealing with customer complaints, the source of which

could have been rectied if recognized and corrected based on ongoing customer

feedback.

The rapid adoption of social media and mobility has left most companies

organizationally challenged to adopt new approaches in how they design and

improve customer experiences and drive customer loyalty and advocacy. Utilizing

a systematic approach to Social CEM can provide real-time feedback for thecorrections and adjustments required by the business as well as to build an ongoing,

online customer advocacy program. Companies can use Social CEM to drive

high quality interactions and provide end-to-end customer experiences across all

communication channels (online and mobile) as well as in face-to-face (F2F) brick-

and-mortar locations such as in retail stores, restaurants, hotels, bank branches

and auto dealerships. However, making these changes requires not only a change

in how leadership views customer experiences, but also the empowerment of the

various functional departments who are being measured by customers to actually

make the changes required to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

The Transformation of the Customer Experience

In the last decade, consumers have rapidly adopted disruptive, online technologies.

Customers went from being limited to visits to a brick-and-mortar location to

researching and comparing a companys products and services via Internet

searches and review websites followed by in many cases making the purchase

online. A shift from brick-and-mortar shopping to ecommerce signalled a new way

to communicate with customers, SMS text messaging over mobile phones is not

just a way to interact with friends; it is increasingly a means for companies to interact

with consumers.

The advent of handheld devices like the smartphone and iPad, have forced an

evolution in how consumers and businesses communicate. Today, handheld digital

tablet technology makes mobile communications available and useful at every age.

Unlike generations before now, even kindergarten students are indoctrinated into

this new paradigm. These future customers grasp for their parents smartphone or

tablet computer as if it was a link to life itself. Along with handheld devices, social

networking sites continue to proliferate. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest along with

dozens of new, well funded entrants into the eld allow consumers a direct line

Social Media Statistics:

Smartphone owners now spend

as much time using social

networking apps such as Twitter

and Facebook as they do playing

games

Users log an average of 77minutes per day using apps on

their smartphone

40% of Twitter users regularly

search for products via Twitter

12% of consumers have

purchased a product online

because of info they found on

Twitter

60% are willing to post about

products/services on Facebook ifthey get a deal or discount

Source: http://thesocialskinny.com/99-new-

social-media-stats-for-2012/


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of online communication to each other and to companies on a global scale . And

the Internet capabilities of modern smartphones and tablets now give consumers

access to social connectivity on the go.

The Internet capabilities of smartphones are also shifting how brick-and-mortarcompanies operate. Why? When a consumer has a good (or bad) experience, they

post via their smartphones, telling thousands of other connected consumers. This

issue alone is driving brand perception into the limelight with just a few clicks on a

smartphone. Not only can consumers help create or destroy a brands reputation

and brand equity, they can also access online content while they are in the store.

This content can include:

Reviews, comments and videos from other customers (both satised and

dissatised);

Product features, functions and offers; and

Competitors pricing.

Research from Empathicas Consumer Insights Panel shows that with social

technology proliferation, 55% of customers are making on-the-spot, real-time

purchasing decisions (Figure 1). Consumers are willing to provide feedback (Figure

2) and often this doesnt even require offering an incentive. Consumers want to

provide feedback to brands and are self-motivated to post comments online. A

large share of respondents feedback is simply to relate either a positive (31%) or

negative (25%) experience with the brand.

Source: Empathica Consumer Insights Panel, Wave 1 2012. empathica.com

Figure 1. Empathica Consumer Insights Survey shows

55% of smartphone users check prices while in-store.

Figure 2. Empathica Consumer Insights Survey shows

incentives are not the only driver for consumers to provide

feedback.


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This means that the need for companies to partake in these social interactions as

well as provide better customer experiences is extremely important. Companies

that do not pay attention to this phenomenon may eventually have to close their

doors because they wont be able to compete with competitors who do take social

networking seriously.

Leveraging Global Trends to Engage Todays Consumers

According to Nielsens latest Global Trust in Advertising report (Figure 3) which

surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries found that:

92% of consumers say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from

friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

70% of global consumers surveyed online indicate they trust messages from

online consumer reviews, an increase of 15% in four years.

While many companies are spending millions of dollars in traditional advertising,

data like this suggests that perhaps money might be better spent developing social

customer experience intitiatives.

Figure 3. Consumers trust recommendations from people they know more

than TV, newspaper or radio ads.

Recommendations from people I know

Consumer opinions posted online

Editorial content such as newspaper articles

Branded Websites

Emails I signed up for

Ads on TV

Brand sponsorships

Ads in magazines

Billboards and other outdoor advertising

Ads in newspapers

Ads on radio

Ads before movies

TV program product placements

Ads served in search engine results

Online video ads

Ads on social networks

Online banner ads

Display ads on mobile devices

Text ads on mobile phones

Trust Completely/ Somewhat

Global Average

Source: Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, Q3 2011

Dont Trust Much/ At All

92%

70%

58%

58%

50%

47%

47%

47%

47%

46%

42%

41%

40%

40%

36%

36%

33%

33%

29%

8%

30%

42%

42%

50%

53%

53%

53%

53%

54%

58%

59%

60%

60%

64%

64%

67%

67%

71%


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Targeting the Millennial Generation

While global trend research points to the need for the management of customer

experience and advoacy, companies need to especially focus on the Millennial

Generation. This next generation consumer is a unique and large target segment,consisting of consumers that are 13 to 29 years of age, who have adopted social

media into their daily lives more rapidly than any other target market. This group

is particularly important as history has shown that early adopter behavior typically

points the way to mass market adoption of new technolgoies. While over 50% of

the worlds population is under 30 years old, the purchasing power of the Millennial

group is estimated to be $170 billion per year.

According to comScore3, in the U.S. there are:

~79M Millennials (born between 1981 and 2000)

~48M Generation Xers (born between 1965 and 1980)

~79M Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)

In Edelmans study of Millennials, The 8095 Exchange: Millennials, Their Actions

Surrounding Brands, and the Dynamics of Reverberation, they found a direct link

between the immersive, symbiotic relationship Millennials have with social networking

channels and the likelihood to dene their personal brand and reputation by aligning

themselves with brands they favor. According to the study, 86% of Millennials are

willing to share information about their brand preferences online, this means creating

customer experience programs is of the utmost importance for companies.

Brands must understand and use the demographic, psychographic and online

interaction preferences of Millennials if they want to learn how to engage this next

wave of the largest mainstream market segment. For instance, when engaging or

surveying Millennials, standard consumer survey approaches may not garner the

response expected. Tech-savvy consumers often are fatigued by wordy, lengthy

demographic surveys and the old style of interrogation. Instead companies need to

consider engaging in a dialogue with not only Millennials, but all consumers. Generic

this could be any brands survey will not cut it with this segment.

In fact, consumer surveys should not be generic but rather they should capture

the unique customer experience with the brand. For example, a company who isvery focused on the customer experience would actually post completed survey

questions/feedback in the back room of the retail store or a restaurant. With that

information of what the customer experience should look like, staff members can

use it as their guide to focus their customer interaction behaviors. An insightful

survey should capture the customers emotional experiences with the brand, moving

beyond traditional questions that tend to interrogate customers. For example, in a

food service context, a generic question like Was your drink hot (or cold)? is an

impersonal way to ask a question. A new way to phrase it would be: The drink was

prepared perfectly for me.

Brands must understand

and use the demographic,

psychographic andonline interaction

preferences of

Millennials if they want

to learn how to engage

this next wave of the

largest mainstream

market segment. For

instance, when engaging

or surveying Millennials,

standard consumer

survey approaches may

not garner the response

expected.


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Five Challenges & Implications for Brands in a

Socially Connected World

Customer perceptions of their experience are formed over time and at every touch-

point where the customer interacts with a brand. And it can extend beyond the

direct interaction with the company and include indirect interactions with a third

party supplier or shippers such as UPS or FedEx. Customers perceive a good

experience with a company if they are able to obtain the product or service with

minimal effort on their part for a reasonable price.

Customer experiences, both online and in brick-and-mortar stores are important.

Many brands make a considerable investment in building out a physical presence.

Today, more than ever, with increased online competition there must be compelling

reasons for customers to buy at the store beyond just touching and feeling the

product. Additional motivating factors can be; helpful and knowledgeable staff, in-

store promotions integrated with online offers as well as an inviting atmosphere.

A good customer experience is when the customer believes they are treated

well, processes were efcient, the product worked as advertised and they received

what they expected for their money. A great customer experience is experienced

when the sum total of all the interactions during the journey were extraordinary

and went beyond the customers expectations. Some companies are challenged

with providing a consistently good customer experience and others are at the

stage where they want to go from good to great. In order to get on the path to

improvement, brands must ask themselves the probing question how are we

delivering against our customer expectations?

1. Understanding the Customer Experience Lifecycle

The customer experience lifecycle typically starts when the consumer receives

an advertisement, a marketing offer, or sees displays of packaging on shelves,

catalogs or even a referral by a friend can be considered an appeal to purchase.

These awareness-consideration phases gain market awareness, garner interest

and compel the consumer to consider buying (Figure 4).

In the consideration-intent stages, some consumers may know as much or more

than the brands staff about products or services from online investigation. Someconsumers may even go beyond this by applying different and unique ways to

test and use products or services and even menu choices. Serving the educated

consumer is increasingly becoming a challenge for retail stores as well as in

restaurants.

Some companies

are challenged with

providing a consistentlygood customer

experience and others

are at the stage where

they want to go from

good to great. In order

to get on the path to

improvement, brands

must ask themselves

the probing question

how are we delivering

against our customer

expectations?


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Serving the educated consumer to move from awareness to consideration and

purchase intent is increasingly becoming a challenge. One example is with big

box retailers who offer good price but at the expense of a good experience. It is

not that customers are shying away from big box, only that the market is going in

two opposing directions, with a resurgence of high end, high touch retail brands.

These trends are combining to put increased focus on customer experience

as a risk to the big box business model with Consumer Insights research fromEmpathica indicating that 61% of consumers are choosing big box retailers

specically because of price.

The next stage in the customer experience lifecycle is making a purchase. Buying

from a brick-and-mortar company or from a website is often then followed by

delivery, the use of products/services, through to receiving customer service or

customer care (e.g. getting questions answered, returns, etc.).

At each stage in the customer experience process, marketing, sales and customer

service and even a third party who may interact with your customer can either

gain support from the customer or bring the whole customer experience lifecycle

to a grinding halt. Companies who treat these stages as separate sprints by

their dedicated teams run into difculties. Those who understand that it is really

closer to a relay race, with overlap among each team and a careful handoff from

each, are prone to succeed.

Figure 4.The new customer experience lifecycle goes beyond

loyalty and drives advocacy and referrals.


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2. Managing Customer Experiences throughout the Customer Lifecycle

A growing concern for many companies is having limited knowledge or control

of their customers experiences throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Yet

research on customer experience (Figure 5) demonstrates that because manycompeting brands are so similar and the price among them so close, the only

real differentiator available is the customer experience. Brands inherently create

a particular customer experience, implicitly and explicitly, sometimes intentionally

but often unintentionally.

One way to look at this is to consider that each time a customer comes into

contact with a business the customers experience will result in an opinion. As

time passes, the customers collective set of experiences forms a picture in the

customers mind. That picture is what shapes their image of the brand. The trick is

to make sure that at every point at which a customer interacts with your company,

the experience exceeds the expectation.

For consumer-facing companies (e.g. retail stores, restaurants, banks, etc.) to be

effective at social customer experience management, they need to understand

the difference between just greeting customers versus creating an authentic

relationship and truly engaging with consumers over time, whether it be face-to-

face or online.

Figure 5. Key customer experience touch-points that build

consumer advocacy.


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A retail example in Figure 5 shows the key touchpoints on the customer journey

that are often called moments of truth. These are the moments on the customer

journey that will have the biggest impact on overall perception of the experience

and will drive customer advocacy if their expectations are exceeded. Developing

active customer advocacy is necessary to generate positive, peer-to-peerrecommendations and increase the positive share of voice online compared to

competitors.

3. Deciding When (and When Not) to Take Action on Customer Feedback

Almost all businesses collect feedback from their customers. The problem is that

few incorporate that feedback into their operation or follow up with customers on

their concerns. This is often discouraging to the customers that provide feedback

in good faith that it will be used by the brand (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Consumer Feedback on big box retail experience.


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As we can see from Empathica research on the big box retailer experience in

Figure 6, survey results showed that 85% of consumers have provided some

form of feedback to big box retailers, yet only 46% of respondents believe that

brands actually use this feedback to make constructive changes to the customer

experience. In addition, only 52% believe that feedback is shared with individuallocations.

Consumer feedback overload can be a problem as well. In an attempt to be

more responsive to customers, brands often provide their staff with data but

stores/locations can be overwhelmed with the data they get from head ofce.

For instance, what should be done with negative reviews on Yelp or Google?

Should they direct my staff to focus on an issue because of one or two negative

comments received in the last month? Location managers dont have the time

or expertise to digest and interpret the data. This causes a lack of focus and the

advent of social media can only make things worse. The answer lies in using

information from different sources at the right time.

Unstructured data (for example reviews from sites like Google or Yahoo) can be

very useful to observe trends at the brand level, but often contain an insufcient

volume of location specic data to be helpful to individual stores. Structured data

sources (e.g. survey responses) can be highly instructive for location specic

issues. Semi-structured data (like that from social review sites like Yelp or open-

ended survey responses) can also be useful for locations as they may point to

specic issues with service or product when taken in aggregate. It is important

for brands to realize data from unstructured sources should not be given undue

weight versus feedback from semi-structured and structured sources (see Figure

7) like the customer satisfaction survey which relates to the individual location.

Figure 7.There is a wide range of feedback sources, and each

must be used carefully to improve the customer experience.


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This is critically important to avoid location managers wrongly interpreting one or

two bad comments (that may or may not apply to their location) and changing

their approach without looking at feedback in aggregate for their location or

understanding how this impacts customer loyalty.

4. Consistently Delivering Customer Experiences That Positively Affect

Your Brand

With the advent of social media, ecommerce and global Internet shopping, your

customers are always just a click away from purchasing from a competitor. While

some customers, on occasion, will buy a companys products or services even

though they have had a bad experience along the way, this has become the

exception not the rule with the variety of choice now available in the market. The

old mentality of build it and they will come worked in the past if the company

devised a way to completely lock up the marketplace. However, locking the

market is no longer possible in todays globally connected competitive landscape.Companies need to pay attention to the customer experience they deliver because

customers will post their experiences online and affect the opinion and shopping/

purchasing habits of other customers.

However, consistently delivering a great customer experience across all locations

remains a challenge for all multi-unit brands as seen in a restaurant example in

Figure 8.

As much as overall improvement is key, just as important for brands as they grow

is to develop a consistent experience. Being good every time is far better than

being great and terrible, each some of the time.

Figure 8.The brand promise is often challenging to deliver

consistently across all locations.


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5. Going Beyond the Loyalty Stage to Drive Active Advocacy

For many years, one of the primary goals for brand marketers has been driving

customer loyalty and thus one of the 20th century customer experiences goals

was to create loyalty (i.e. generating higher customer lifetime values as customersare consistently delighted and buy more over longer periods of time).

The 21st century goal is to add an additional step to the customer lifecycle

called customer advocacy (see Figure 4).Why? A study entitled Inside the Buy4

revealed that the very idea of loyalty has changed for 97% of consumers and that

a new consumer behavior, contemporary loyalty, is redening loyalty.

It was a widely held belief that consumers who bought a brand and liked it

would potentially become brand loyalists. In the past, brand marketers felt that

the demonstration of preference for that brand over competitors or even generic

store brands meant loyalty. The wake-up call for proponents of brand loyalty isthat because consumers are exposed to so much more information, especially

with the penetration of mobile devices, they are more open to a wider range of

choices in the marketplace. The study showed that consumers do a fair amount

of research (primarily online) prior to purchasing a product, from a high of 64%

before buying electronics, to a low of 25% before purchasing food or fashion.

Of those surveyed, 94% indicated that their decision to buy was positively

inuenced by research. Around half of consumers visit a brands website to

research the brand prior to purchase, and 40% said they go to third-party review

sites, but almost 75% rely on general consumer reviews as their rst choice for

research intelligence.

At the click of a mouse, consumers can be persuaded by all the online content,

especially content written by other consumers, to become interested and even

purchase from another brand. Because of the proliferation of online reviews and

content, purchase consideration has dramatically changed. Brand marketers

must re-examine their views on brand loyalty because this online world has lead

to constant competition to get wallet share from the consumer. This presents

brand marketers with a new challenge to make sure they get their products in

front of real inuencers (reviewers and consumers alike) and can result in costly

outreach blogger type programs. In fact, bloggers sometimes expect to be paid

for their endorsement of products and services.

The Consumer Advocacy Stage

Research shows that while a customer might be temporarily loyal, that loyalty

may not necessarily translate into consumer advocacy, the last stage in the new

customer lifecycle (see Figure 4). If the customer experience is good, often brand

advocates want to share their customer experience with others. Companies must

not only decide how best to measure the customer experience, but also address

how to systematically implement the customer advocacy and referral part of the

customer lifecycle.

Brand marketers must

re-examine their views

on brand loyalty becausethis online world has lead

to constant competition

to get wallet share from

the consumer.


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Brand advocates are built through a series of positive experiences with the

brand. Some social media technology solutions offer the ability to reward true

advocacy when brand advocates exhibit behaviors that affect top line metrics. By

measuring who the most engaged and active advocates are, the brand can make

sure to reward those advocates each time a new campaign begins. Social CEMtechnologies can enable a brand advocate to share great experiences online

immediately with a friend or en masse to many friends and followers through

Facebook and Twitter.

Over time, various customer interactions can result in the customers seeing

brands as great (likely to advocate/promote), passive (personally loyal but not

necessarily a promoter), or negative (a detractor likely to defect or complain).

Research shows that if your customers feel they have had a great experience with

your company, they are more likely to re-purchase and even tell others about their

wonderful experience in a quick moment over social media (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Customers use social media recommendations to

make purchase decisions.


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Studies from Purdue University also show the direct affect the customer experience

has on branding, customer loyalty and propensity to repurchase:

of people create their opinion of a company and the brand by theexperience they have with the company.

of customers said they would become disloyal, (never shop at that

company again) because of a bad experience.

follow the opinion of their friends and family; if they have a bad

experience, they tell everyone they know and spread bad-word-of

mouth5.

One of the big challenges brands have is getting credit for their efforts. Experiencewith over 150 brands using Empathicas GoRecommend social media

advocacy solution has found that most brands have a silent majority of potential

brand advocates. Whats required is simply a gentle push or simple ask to convert

their positive sentiments into a powerful marketing message, as well as validation

for a job well done. Making it easy and seamless for customers to go beyond

just providing survey feedback and later liking the brand on Facebook, creating

immediate brand advocates can be transformational.

Recommendations for Managing the Social Customer Experience

The following sections contain recommendations to drive social customer experience

success. It is important to understand that the very nature of customer experience

is constantly changing because of evolving consumer behavior. With ever changing

market conditions, companies must be nimble and 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

(Figure 10).


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Figure 10. Mapping the pathways to customer loyalty is a critical component of a well-rounded Social CEM strategy.


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Focus on the total customer experience. In good times and bad, there is one

constant people expect a great experience when they come into your stores

and locations the people, the product, the facilities, etc. If they dont get it, they

have a lot of other choices and their social networks will be more than happy to

point them to your competitors. If you do deliver on a great customer experience,customers will reward you time and time again through increased visits, higher

spend and theyll tell their friends. Focus on training and knowledgeable, friendly

staff.

Before designing a customer experience map, conduct the appropriate

research to understand customer needs from across all traditional communication

channels, including social media. Examine not only the rational (logical) part

of an experience (e.g. the product comes with a carrying case), but also

the emotional aspects(e.g. the carrying case ts with the lifestyle needs and

brand of the buyer).

Continue to get to know your customers all over again with a deeper understanding

of their experience through customer journey mapping, and loyalty and advocacy

modeling. This exercise will allow you to map out in detail the customer interaction

journey and the key points where you can enable technology, people and process

to drive customers toward customer advocacy.

Finally, analyze the way your customers are served and process map all aspects

of your business, key processes and integrate third party suppliers and partners

that serve your customers. This thorough evaluation of each component of your

business can ensure that the way work gets done always serves the customer.

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?

Remember that all locations are NOT created equal. Dont treat all your locations

the same each location has its own challenges based on the local clientele,

customers, as well as the skill levels of the people who work there. Instant mobile

and social media consumer interactions are driving geographically dispersed

brands and locations to adopt technology to provide the information necessary

to guide each location to operate in a way that is unique and driven by its local

patrons and local social commentary. This information enables brands to shift

local operations, to take corrective steps in product/service development,

product/service delivery, product/service offers and customer service based upon

local preferences. Technology from solution providers like Empathica can also

automate the sharing of best practices among locations.

Focus on the total

customer experience.

In good times and bad,there is one constant

people expect a great

experience when they

come into your stores

and locations the

people, the product, the

facilities, etc. If they dont

get it, they have a lot

of other choices and

their social networks

will be more than happy

to point them to your

competitors.


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This can be advantageous especially for new managers to get up to speed quickly

by learning from more experienced managers.

Following the brand leaders can provide all locations with additional coaching.

Often times other high-performing stores or locations have had similar experiencesor made similar improvements when faced with particular challenges. In a lot of

cases, you can leverage that information and those best practices. You do not

have to reinvent the wheel.

Finally - Focus. Focus. Focus. Every employee who is focused on the customer

experience should be given consistent direction. These employees in turn build

your culture and your brand even when you are not there in person to oversee

every interaction. Every interaction point serves to give the customer an opinion

of your brand. Give staff the tools and information they need to focuson the right

interactions for the operation of their store or location.

3. Get Credit for Delivering Great Experiences

Social media isnt 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 rst step towards a plan to

co-create your brand with your customers.

Some brands now have their own fans run their fan pages for them with minimal

oversight. This is just one of the ways that you can mobilize advocates on social

networks. Look for other opportunities to create social advocates. There are

many! And you want to look at technology providers like Empathica to help you

deploy and scale advocacy development programs.

Once you have delivered a great experience make sure you get credit for it by

making it easy for your advocates to share their stories on social media. Once

improvements are made and consumers know about those improvements, many

will often respond in kind by recommending the company to friends; driving positive

word of mouth conversations, posting positive comments online and blogging

about how the company moved heaven and earth to respond and provide great

service. This is the turning point when a consumer becomes an advocate.

It is in this moment that it is important to capture that customers positive emotions

and thoughts about their experience. In todays instantaneous landscape, mailing

out surveys and hoping the customer remembers to post online their great

experience is not efcient or reliable. From the point of view of the consumer, great

customer experience memories can be eeting. Companies who use technology

to enable the consumer in the moments of truth of the transaction to brag

or recommend instantly, enables their customers voice to be heard about their

great customer experience are leaping ahead in building and retaining consumer

advocates.

Every employee who

is focused on the

customer experienceshould be given

consistent direction.

These employees in turn

build your culture and

your brand even when

you are not there in

person to oversee every

interaction.


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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 onthe program need and value.

Change is good and should be embraced. Often changing current operations

and processes can seem like a monumental effort. The wisdom of the old

question how do you eat an elephant? applies. (Answer: one bite at a time.)

Organizational changes such as a shift to Social CEM are complex processes that

take place one step at a time.

Larger organizations are often daunted by the magnitude of the implied changes

they will need to make in their operations and technology infrastructure to deliver

great customer experiences in todays socially networked world. Empathicasapproach to Customer Experience Transformation (Figure 11) maps out a pathway

to reach customer advocacy. This transformation process focuses on how leaders

can shift their organizational culture, put people, process and technology to work

and deliver a consistent and differentiated customer experience.

Figure 11: Empathicas approach to customer experience

transformations.


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The rst stage is viewing the data from which decisions can be made. While gut

instinct will always play a role in business, astute leaders will always look to data

to validate any key decisions before moving forward. Once the data is collected

and reviewed, the next stage of evolution is managing the outcomes. This is

where decisions become actions and the outcomes of the insights uncovered bythe data are put into play. As the actions begin, integrating the changes across

the entire business is the next phase of program evolution. When complete,

then a brand reaches the nal stage of evolution where the customer experience

becomes a key aspect in engineering the brand, and brand identity itself.

What can set this approach apart is the focus on the endgame of brand engineering

(or re-engineering). The end goal is to have the entire company culture focused

on the customer experience. When that happens, improvements in the customer

experience can be measured as business outcomes and brands can predict the

nancial impact of improvements in customer experience scores.

A particular capability of leading Social CEM vendor solutions is the ability to

provide, (through nancial linkage analysis an example of which is shown in Figure

12) the impact of higher customer satisfaction scores on return visits. In addition

it has been statistically shown that a 5% increase in customer satisfaction can

reect the growth of sales by ~0.7%. This can translate into tens of millions of

dollars each year for large enterprises.

For organizations interested in quickly acquiring new customers as well as

supporting the current ones, long, drawn out transformation programs may not

work. Today many organizations need to take action quickly or their companies

will cease to exist. The goal of most organizations is to build customer advocacy

quickly with a short-term Social CEM strategy.

Figure 12: Level of initial satisfaction across frequency of return.


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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 BrandExperiences across all channels and touch-points?

Are our Employees sufciently engaged and performing to advance ourExperience 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 dynamicnew decisions on a daily basis (i.e. things change, every day)?

What are we doing to move beyond customer satisfaction and loyalty tocultivating and measuring Customer Advocacy?


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Conclusion

Customer Experience Management is evolving into a social experience for customers

and brands alike. In an always on, changing and connected world, the gameto engage and interact with consumers in real-time regarding their likes, dislikes,

wants and wishes is on in full force. As a consumer facing company, the challenge

is to respond to social consumers, and perhaps even change how the company

operates when consumers point out their disappointments and suggestions.

In this new world, one thing is clear. Companies that continue to embrace new

consumer behaviors and develop new approaches to engaging with their brands

will be the market leaders that forge deeper connections and build active advocacy

across all brand stakeholders owners, employees and customers.

When it comes to Social CEM, dont feel you need to go it alone. Reach out and gethelp. The Customer Experience Managementindustry has been around for more

than ten years and there is a treasure trove of knowledge available. Companies

such as Empathica have a wealth of information from current consumer research

and trends as well as technology that can help at http://www.empathica.com/

resources/.


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http://thesocialskinny.com/99-new-social-media-stats-for-2012/

Next Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials, comScore, January 2012

What It Takes to Win at Customer Experience, Bain & Company

http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/putting-social-media-to-work.aspx

The 8095 Exchange: Millennials, Their Actions Surrounding Brands, and the Dynamics of Reverberation by

Edelman and StrategyOne

http://www.empathica.com/consumer-insights/wave-1-2012-key-trends/

http://www.empathica.com/press-release/while-85-percent-of-shoppers-provide-feedback-few-believe-it-will-

have-an-impact/

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/using_social_networks_to_impro.html

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/consumer-trust-in-online-social-and-mobile-

advertising-grows/

References

Endnotes

1Customer Experience Management Papers Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Bruce Temkin, Claus Fornell - University of Michigan2Edelman, Trust Barometer, 2011.3Next Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials, comScore, January 20124AMP Agencys Consumer Shopping Survey Inside the Buy Reveals Modern Consumers Lack True Brand Loyalty, February

7, 20115Integrating People with Process and Technology Gaining Employee Acceptance of Technology Initiatives, Dr. Natalie Petouhof

and Lisa Schwartz, 2007


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Social CEM: Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advo

About the Authors

Dr. Gary Edwards

Gary is the Chief Customer Ofcer of Empathica and is responsible for oversight of sales, marketing, client strategy, marketing

science and retail insights. Gary is involved in solving business challenges with research and technology solutions. He has

served a key leadership role during program development, implementation, and follow-up with clients for the past ten years

at Empathica. For over 15 years prior, Gary led worldwide and domestic research projects in customer and employee

research.

Garys prior experience includes serving as a Senior Vice President at Maritz: Thompson Lightstone and an account executive

in the then newly formed Financial Services Research Group. Prior to Maritz, Gary served as the General Manager of Gallup

Canada. Garys research career began as an epidemiologist for the Culture, Community and Health Studies division of the

Clarke Institute. Gary has a PhD specializing in Social Research Methods from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Dr. Natalie L. Petouhof

Dr. Natalie is the Director and Instructor of the UCLA Social Media Business Course at UCLA. Dr. Natalies applies her unique

perspective on business and social media via her social media assessments and ROI calculators that help clients to develop

social business strategies, tactical plans and real-world execution capabilities so that social media can be integrated into

the business to increase the bottom line. She develops custom training programs for social business/media, leadership,

employee motivation and organizational change.

Dr. Natalies four business books and many white papers are the subject of hundreds of articles in publications like USAToday,

Adage, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Peppers and Rogers 1-to-1 Magazine

and CRM Magazine as well as national television and radio.

As an emeritus member of the Board of the Los Angeles Social Media Club, Dr. Natalie has held positions as a Forrester

Analyst, Chief Strategist for a Weber Shandwick PR/Marketing Agency, management consultant at PWC and Hitachi and in

management at Hughes Electronics, GM and GE.

Dr. Natalie also teaches Social Media, PR, Marketing and Leadership courses at USC and Pepperdine University.

Lisa M. Schwartz

Lisa has an MBA specializing in marketing and business management. She partners with Dr. Natalie in conducting research,

social media business assessments, brand audits, organizational change management, traditional market planning

integrated with social media. Lisa creates custom strategic business programs in social business/media and focuses on

leadership and employee motivation, specializing in customer service and CRM. She is an experienced business analyst,

program manager, data center, network operations and contact center manager.

Lisa is the author of two business books, many white papers on the topics of technology adoption, change management,

call centers, customer service and social media. And she has held positions as a Vice President and Director of Marketing at

Oracle Corporation, Business Management Director at Accenture and Hitachi, and Management positions at Cedars-Sinai,

Intertainer, and Geffen Records.


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About Empathica

Empathica is the leading provider of social Customer Experience Management (CEM) programs to the worlds most respected

multi-unit brands in the retail, food services, automotive and hospitality sectors. Its rich analysis of survey data using state-

of-the-art surveying and dashboard reporting software allows for performance-improvement solutions, evidence-basedmarketing insights, and customer experience management consulting. Empathica is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with

executive consultant ofces throughout the United States and a European ofce in Birmingham, England.

www.empathica.com

Documents

Social CEM. Moving Beyond Customer Loyalty to Customer Advocacy