INTRODUCING: THE DEATH OF “STANDARD” CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THE RISE OF WHITE GLOVE CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Why Elite Customers Now Expect White Glove Customer Service, Concierge-Level Experiences
For decades, most companies treated customer service as a standardized operational function:
Same queue
Same process
Same escalation model
Same support experience
That model is rapidly collapsing.
Because not all customers create equal value.
Some customers:
Influence billions in purchasing decisions
Shape market perception
Control enterprise relationships
Influence Wall Street narratives
Drive ecosystem adoption
Accelerate or damage brand reputation
And increasingly, the companies winning at the highest levels understand something critically important:
High-value customers should never experience commodity service. They expect white glove customer service!
THE RISE OF THE WHITE GLOVE CUSTOMER SERVICE
The modern white glove service model is built around a simple premise:
The higher the customer value, influence, or strategic importance…
the more elevated, personalized, proactive, and frictionless the experience should become.
This is not favoritism.
It is intelligent customer strategy.
Many of the world’s most successful luxury, hospitality, financial services, and technology brands have quietly operated this way for decades.
Examples of World-Class White Glove Customer Service
EXAMPLE #1 — THE AMERICAN EXPRESS CENTURION MODEL
One of the most famous examples is the American Express Centurion Card, commonly referred to as the “Black Card.
“One of the most famous examples is the American Express Centurion Card, commonly referred to as the ‘Black Card,’ which helped redefine premium concierge-level customer experience through personalized service and elite relationship management.”
…with “premium concierge-level customer experience” linked to:
The Centurion experience was never simply about a payment card.
It was about creating:
Exclusivity
Status
Emotional connection
Personalized service
Operational prioritization
Elite access
The program became famous for:
Invitation-only membership
Dedicated concierge access
Personalized travel assistance
Event access
Emergency support
Premium reservations
White glove issue resolution
Highly personalized treatment experiences
The larger strategic insight was this:
The customer was no longer interacting with a call center.
They were interacting with a relationship ecosystem.
Over the course of my consulting and customer strategy work, I had the opportunity to help envision and architect several elite white glove customer experience concepts influenced by this exact model:
High-value customer segmentation
Concierge escalation paths
Elite service tiers
Proactive account orchestration
Executive relationship servicing
Differentiated support models for influential customers
The underlying principle was always the same:
Remove friction for the customers who matter most strategically.
EXAMPLE #2 — THE RITZ-CARLTON SERVICE MODEL
Another legendary example is The Ritz-Carlton.
Ritz-Carlton became globally recognized not merely for luxury accommodations, but for:
Anticipatory service
Empowered employees
Personalized guest memory systems
Concierge-level personalization
Emotional recovery experiences
Service ownership culture
Its Club Level experience includes:
Dedicated concierge staff
Personalized planning assistance
Curated guest experiences
Elevated access models
The company became famous for stories where employees solved highly personalized customer problems far beyond standard policy expectations.
The lesson:
White glove service is not reactive support.
It is proactive emotional relationship management.
EXAMPLE #3 — NORDSTROM’S HIGH-VALUE CLIENTELING MODEL
Nordstrom pioneered high-touch retail clienteling long before most companies understood personalized commerce.
Its highest-value customers often receive:
Dedicated stylists
Personalized recommendations
Direct outreach
Curated experiences
Appointment-based service
Frictionless returns
Elevated relationship treatment
Luxury retailers increasingly use VIP clienteling models because a very small percentage of elite customers often generate disproportionate revenue.
This is a critical modern business reality:
A tiny percentage of customers often drive a massive percentage of profitability.
THE NEW REALITY: NOT ALL CUSTOMERS SHOULD EXPERIENCE THE SAME SERVICE MODEL
This is where many organizations still fail.
They continue operating:
One-size-fits-all support
Generic escalation structures
Reactive service models
Commodity treatment architectures
Meanwhile elite customers increasingly expect:
Immediate access
Contextual awareness
Proactive service
Continuity
Ownership
Relationship familiarity
Strategic treatment
A CEO, EVP, SVP, major investor, strategic influencer, or enterprise decision-maker should never feel like:
Ticket #48372
Another queue entry
Another escalation
Another transfer
THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF WHITE GLOVE CUSTOMER SERVICE
1. KNOW WHO MATTERS MOST
Not all customers create equal value.
Elite service begins with intelligent segmentation:
Revenue
Influence
Ecosystem importance
Expansion potential
Strategic visibility
2. REMOVE FRICTION AGGRESSIVELY
White glove customers should never:
Repeat themselves
Navigate complex IVRs
Restart conversations
Manage internal coordination
The organization should absorb the complexity — not the customer.
3. PROVIDE A SINGLE POINT OF OWNERSHIP
The most important phrase in white glove service is:
“I’ll personally handle this.”
Ownership creates emotional trust.
4. CREATE CONTEXTUAL MEMORY
Elite customers expect:
Rremembered preferences
Relationship continuity
Contextual intelligence
Historical awareness
They should feel recognized instantly.
5. PRIORITIZE SPEED WITHOUT SACRIFICING QUALITY
White glove service is not merely “fast.”
It is:
Precise
Informed
Orchestrated
High confidence
6. ANTICIPATE NEEDS BEFORE THEY BECOME PROBLEMS
True concierge organizations become predictive.
They proactively identify:
Risks
Delays
Disruptions
Lifecycle events
Unmet needs
before the customer asks.
7. EMPOWER FRONTLINE CONCIERGE TEAMS
Elite experiences collapse when concierge agents lack authority.
World-class white glove teams require:
Decision authority
Flexibility
Escalation access
Operational autonomy
8. DESIGN FOR EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE
White glove customers remember:
Confidence
Reassurance
Calmness
Trust
Competence
Not just transaction completion.
9. MEASURE RELATIONSHIP STRENGTH — NOT JUST EFFICIENCY
Traditional metrics:
AHT
SLA
ticket closure
are insufficient.
White glove metrics must include:
Executive trust
Relationship durability
Strategic account health
Advocacy
Concierge satisfaction
Influence retention
10. MAKE THE CUSTOMER FEEL IMPORTANT
Because they are.
Elite service ultimately communicates:
“You matter differently here.”
That emotional signal is enormously powerful.
THE 10 PRE-REQUISITES FOR BUILDING A WHITE GLOVE CUSTOMER SERVICE
Many companies attempt white glove service without building the operational foundation required to sustain it.
That always fails.
1. CUSTOMER VALUE SEGMENTATION
Define:
Strategic customers
Executive customers
Influence tiers
VIP treatment criteria
2. DEDICATED CONCIERGE TEAMS
Do not mix:
Standard queues
Transactional service
Elite relationship management
These require different talent profiles.
3. ADVANCED AGENT CERTIFICATION
Concierge agents should undergo certification in:
Executive communication
Conflict recovery
Emotional intelligence
Operational orchestration
Relationship management
Industry expertise
4. CONTEXTUAL CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS
Agents need:
Unified customer profiles
Historical context
Lifecycle visibility
Relationship intelligence
Preference management
5. PROACTIVE MONITORING CAPABILITIES
Elite service organizations proactively monitor:
Account health
Usage anomalies
Risk indicators
Escalation patterns
Sentiment shifts
6. WHITE GLOVE HANDLING STANDARDS
Define:
Response times
Escalation ownership
Communication cadence
Executive outreach protocols
Recovery standards
7. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ESCALATION ACCESS
Concierge teams require rapid access into:
Engineering
Product
Operations
Logistics
Marketing
Pricing
Executive leadership
8. SPECIALIZED PERFORMANCE METRICS
Measure:
Relationship durability
Expansion rates
Executive satisfaction
Trust indicators
Advocacy
Retention quality
9. CULTURAL ALIGNMENT
White glove service cannot operate inside:
Cost-first cultures
Rigid bureaucracy
Empowerment-resistant organizations
The culture must support elevated treatment models.
10. EXECUTIVE COMMITMENT
White glove service requires leadership commitment.
The organizations that win the next decade will understand:
High-value customers should never experience commodity operations.
They should experience:
Confidence
Continuity
Ownership
Access
Orchestration
Emotional assurance
Strategic partnership
FINAL THOUGHT
The companies creating the strongest loyalty in the modern economy are no longer delivering “customer service.”
They are delivering:
relationship privilege.
That is the future of elite customer experience.
And the organizations that operationalize it correctly will create:
Higher retention
Stronger advocacy
Deeper loyalty
Greater expansion
More resilient executive relationships
Dramatically stronger long-term profitability
Because when elite customers feel truly understood, protected, prioritized, and valued…
they rarely leave.
Interested in architecting a world-class level white glove customer experience program? Contact Customer Experience strategist Steve Jeffes at stevenjeffes@gmail.com or 518-339-5857. Below is a small sample of the companies I have helped elevate their customer experience to best world-class.
If Your Company Has a Revenue Problem and Service Isn’t Part of the Growth Strategy, Fire the Leadership Team
How Leading Companies are leveraging sales in service revenue engine
Customer service is not a support function. It is the most underutilized revenue engine in the business.
Most organizations don’t have a demand problem. They don’t have a product problem.
They have a customer monetization problem.
Every day, thousands of customer interactions occur across service channels— moments where intent, timing, trust, and context converge.
And in most companies, those moments are handled correctly… but never monetized.
Not because the opportunity isn’t there. But because the operating model isn’t designed to capture it.
This is not “selling in service.”
This is precision
The right offer To the right customer At the right moment Through the right channel
And when orchestrated correctly, those moments don’t just resolve issues—
They generate millions in incremental revenue.
Before we break down how to do this, step back and look at the system holistically.
👉 This is what a fully engineered “sales in service” revenue engine actually looks like in Chart 1:Revenue Growth Engine Funnel
This model makes one thing clear:
Service doesn’t operate alone. It becomes powerful when it aggregates intelligence from across the enterprise and converts it into precision revenue actions in real time.
The Sales in Service Revenue Engine: 10 Commandments of High Performance
To operationalize this, elite organizations follow a disciplined model.
👉 Here is the complete blueprint in Chart 2, The 10 Commandments of Sales in Service:
Now let’s break down what this actually means in practice.
1. Redefine Service as a Revenue Engine
If your service organization is still measured primarily on cost efficiency, you’ve already lost.
Tie service directly to:
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Expansion revenue
Attach rates
Lifetime value
Industry benchmarks from OpenView Venture Partners show that top-performing SaaS and service organizations consistently outperform peers by prioritizing Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as a primary growth metric. Link to article: https://openviewpartners.com/saas-benchmarks/
This is not a support function. It is a monetization layer embedded inside customer interaction. It is leveraging sales in service revenue engine
2. Sell Outcomes, Not Products
Customers don’t buy because you offered something.
They buy because:
You identified a gap
You framed the impact
You solved something immediate
Diagnosis precedes monetization—always.
3. Engineer “Moments of Receptivity”
Not every interaction is sellable.
Top-performing organizations know exactly when customers are most open:
Post-resolution success moments
During friction discovery
At onboarding inflection points
Near renewal or value realization
Timing is the multiplier.
4. Arm Agents With Full Customer Intelligence
Without context, every offer feels random—and customers know it.
You need a true 360° view:
Usage patterns
Support history
Health scores
Lifecycle stage
This is where most organizations break.
Because that intelligence doesn’t live in one place.
WHERE THE MODEL ACTUALLY BREAKS (AND HOW TO FIX IT)
Most companies don’t fail because of intent. They fail because their customer intelligence is fragmented across functions.
👉 Here’s what’s really happening inside your organization today as depicted by Chart 3, Organizational Collaboration / Customer Service Hub
This chart exposes the truth:
Finance owns pricing signals
Product owns usage data
Marketing owns triggers
Sales owns targets
Engineering owns constraints
Customer Success owns health
And none of it is unified in real time.
Best-in-class organizations fix this by turning customer service into the central intelligence hub.
That’s when service becomes a revenue activation layer, not just a response function.
A practical guide to structuring, recruiting, and facilitating Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) that consistently produce actionable insights and new strategic revenue opportunities
I. Introduction: Why Most CABs Underperform
Most Customer Advisory Boards fail. Not because companies don’t invest in them, but because they fundamentally misunderstand what they are.
In practice, most CABs devolve into relationship theater:
Executive dinners disguised as strategy sessions
Polished presentations followed by polite feedback
“Great conversation” with no measurable business outcome
The result is predictable: high effort, low impact.
The failure modes are consistent across industries:
Discussions lack structure and strategic intent
Participants are misaligned (too senior to be candid, too tactical to be strategic, or too agreeable to challenge)
Outputs are disconnected from revenue, product strategy, or growth initiatives
Insights are captured but never operationalized
This is not a CAB problem. It is a design problem.
The reframe is critical:
A Customer Advisory Board is not an event. It is strategic growth infrastructure.
When designed correctly, CABs become:
Early warning systems for churn and competitive risk
Engines for uncovering unmet customer needs
Platforms for co-creating new revenue streams
The difference between underperforming CABs and high-impact ones is not effort, it is intentional architecture.
The difference becomes clear when you look at how CABs actually evolve. Most organizations believe they are operating strategically—but in reality, they remain stuck in early maturity stages. This is shown clearly above in Chart 1 – The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Maturity Model.
II. Defining the Purpose: From Feedback to Revenue Discovery
The most important decision you make about a CAB happens before the first invitation is sent:
What is this board designed to produce?
Most organizations default to “gathering feedback.” That is necessary—but insufficient.
World-class CABs are anchored to three explicit business outcomes:
1. Retention Protection
Identify early signals of dissatisfaction, friction, or competitive vulnerability before they appear in lagging indicators like churn.
2. Expansion Discovery
Surface new use cases, unmet needs, and adjacent opportunities that customers are already willing to pay for—but that the organization has not yet productized.
3. Strategic Foresight
Understand how customer priorities, markets, and expectations are evolving—often ahead of internal awareness.
This is where most organizations miss the real opportunity. Customers don’t hand you fully formed strategy—they provide signals: friction, workarounds, and emerging needs.
“Customers don’t hand you strategy—they hand you signals.”
The role of a well-designed CAB is to convert those signals into: · Pipeline influence · Product roadmap prioritization · New monetizable offerings
This dynamic becomes clear in Chart 2 – The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Value Pyramid.
The difference is not in how much feedback you collect—it’s how far you take it. High-performing CABs systematically move from raw input to monetizable opportunity.
III. Member Selection: Precision Over Prestige
The instinct in building a CAB is to prioritize brand names and seniority.
This is a mistake.
The effectiveness of a CAB is driven not by who looks impressive on the invitation list—but by who contributes meaningful perspective. Chart 3 illustrates the best cross-sectional composition of a Customer Advisory Board (CAB).
Ideal Composition
High-performing CABs deliberately balance four archetypes:
Daily Operators Experience the product or service in real workflows and understand friction points
Strategic Buyers Understand long-term direction, investment priorities, and executive constraints
The final level is where revenue is discovered—and where most organizations never reach.
Most CABs never get past opinions and surface feedback. The real value emerges only when you push into root causes and unmet needs—where revenue opportunities actually exist. Chart 5 brings this to life – The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Insight Depth Ladder.
VI. Converting Insights into Revenue Opportunities
This is where CABs shift from advisory to value creation engines.
Most organizations stop at “insight.”
World-class organizations convert insight into commercial outcomes.
This is where CABs either create value—or stall. The organizations that win treat insight as the starting point of a structured revenue conversion system. This is shown clearly above in Chart 6 – The Revenue Conversion Funnel.
The Conversion Framework
Insight → Theme → Opportunity → Business Case
Categorizing Opportunities
New product features
New services or offerings
Pricing and packaging innovations
Quantifying Value
Each opportunity should be assessed based on:
Willingness to pay
Frequency and consistency of need
Validation across multiple customers
This eliminates anecdotal bias and creates investment-grade opportunities.
When done correctly, CAB outputs directly influence:
Product investment decisions
Go-to-market strategies
Revenue forecasting
VII. Operationalizing CAB Outputs (Where Most Fail)
This is the most common breakdown point.
Insights are generated—but not embedded.
This is the single biggest failure point for most CABs. Without a clear system to translate insight into execution, even the best ideas never reach revenue. This dynamic becomes clear in Chart 7 – CAB-to-Execution System Map.
To avoid this, CAB outputs must integrate into core systems:
Integration Points
Product roadmap governance
Sales plays and enablement
Customer success planning
Required Infrastructure
CAB Insight Tracker (owners, timelines, status)
Executive reporting cadence
Cross-functional accountability
Metrics Alignment
Tie CAB outputs to:
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Expansion revenue
Time-to-market improvements
Without operationalization, CABs are episodic. With it, they become systemic growth drivers.
VIII. Measuring CAB Effectiveness
If CABs are strategic assets, they must be measured accordingly.
What gets measured gets funded—and scaled. When CABs are tied to tangible inputs and outputs, they consistently demonstrate disproportionate ROI.Chart 8 illustrates The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) ROI Dashboard that measures the value of the overall value of conducting the CAB (cost, revenue).
Leading Indicators
Insight quality (depth, novelty, actionability)
Participation engagement and candor
Lagging Indicators
Revenue influenced or created
Retention improvements
Expansion rates
The CAB ROI Model
Inputs:
Time
Cost
Executive involvement
Outputs:
Revenue generated
Churn avoided
Pipeline influenced
When measured properly, CABs consistently demonstrate outsized ROI relative to cost.
IX. Case Example: CAB → Insight → Revenue Outcome
Context: A global enterprise organization was experiencing strong customer satisfaction but plateauing growth.
CAB Insight: Customers revealed a consistent but previously unarticulated need: They were solving adjacent problems outside the platform using fragmented tools.
Action: Through structured CAB sessions, the organization:
Identified common patterns across customers
Defined a new bundled offering addressing the adjacent use case
Validated willingness to pay across multiple participants
Result:
New revenue stream launched within 6 months
Significant increase in expansion revenue
Improved retention due to increased platform dependency
The insight was not hidden—it was simply never structured, surfaced, or validated.
X. Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Even well-intentioned CABs fail for predictable reasons:
These failure patterns are not random—they are systemic and repeatable. The organizations that outperform are the ones that deliberately design against them. Shown inChart 9, The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Failure Modes vs. Best Practices, demonstrated the operating principles for managing a CAB.
Pitfalls
Treating CABs as one-time events
Lack of executive alignment and ownership
Failure to close the loop with participants
Over-reliance on anecdotal input
Best Practices
Establish CABs as ongoing strategic programs
Ensure executive sponsorship and cross-functional integration
Communicate outcomes and actions back to participants
Validate insights across multiple data points
Avoiding these pitfalls is less about effort—and more about discipline and design.
XI. The Future of CABs: From Advisory to Co-Creation Ecosystems
CABs are evolving.
CABs are no longer periodic advisory forums—they are becoming continuous growth engines. Organizations that recognize this shift early will outpace those still operating in legacy models. Chart 10 brings this to life – The Evolution of Customer Advisory Boards (CABs).
The traditional model—periodic advisory sessions—is giving way to continuous, integrated ecosystems.
Emerging Trends
Always-on digital CAB environments
AI-assisted insight synthesis across conversations
In this future state, CABs are no longer a supporting function.
They become a core component of customer-led growth strategy.
Closing Perspective
Most organizations search for growth externally:
New markets
New products
Acquisitions
Yet some of the most valuable opportunities already exist within the current customer base.
The difference between companies that unlock this value—and those that don’t—is not incremental. It is structural.
It comes down to whether the CAB is designed to generate revenue—or simply to listen. This is shown clearly above in Chart 11 – Companies With, and Without Revenue Generation CABs
The challenge is not access to customers. It is the ability to systematically extract, interpret, and act on what they are already telling you.
When designed and managed correctly, Customer Advisory Boards become:
A strategic intelligence system
A revenue discovery engine
A durable competitive advantage
And in a market where differentiation is increasingly difficult, that advantage compounds.
About the Author
Steven Jeffes is a Customer Experience and Customer Strategy executive focused on one outcome: turning customer insight into new revenue.
Over a 40+ year career, he has worked with or consulted for organizations including Accenture, IBM Global Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cox Automotive, and INEOS Automotive, and led CX, CRM, and customer strategy initiatives for global brands such as American Express, Microsoft, Verizon, Pfizer, Capital One, Toyota, Ritz-Carlton, Amazon, and Delta Airlines.
While most companies treat Customer Advisory Boards as feedback forums, Steven designs them as revenue engines—structured systems that uncover unmet needs, validate demand, and convert customer conversations into new products, services, and expansion opportunities.
His work has helped organizations identify and activate hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue by transforming how they listen to—and act on—their customers.
He partners with executive teams to build customer-led growth engines, aligning Customer Success, Product, Sales, and Marketing around one principle:
Customers will tell you where your next revenue opportunity is—if you know how to listen.
Reduce cost, not loyalty: How to effectively deploy AI without eroding your customer base.
How many times have customers contacted a company…
…and been immediately pushed into interacting with AI that has no real understanding of their situation, only to get routed in circles, repeating themselves, and never actually getting their issue resolved?
Is that good customer service? Of course not.
What starts as a simple interaction quickly turns into something else entirely:
Customers get stuck in loops
They’re misrouted to the wrong solutions
Frustration builds with every interaction
And eventually—they disengage altogether
This isn’t random. It’s a predictable pattern.
…and many companies are currently falling into this AI trap where they’ve underestimated the effort and steps necessary to shore up the foundation upon which AI operates. Without undertaking this foundational first step in implementing AI, companies are rushing toward the shiny object of immediate cost reduction, while planting a long-term time bomb of much higher customer churn driven by frustration with AI that doesn’t serve their needs.
AI can reduce cost, or it can improve customer outcomes.
Very few companies are doing both.
Customers don’t go from satisfied to churn overnight. They move through this progression, often unnoticed, until they disengage completely. So why are so many companies deploying AI in ways that feel exactly like this?
Read on to understand where companies are getting this wrong, and how to implement AI the right way without frustrating the hell out of your customers.
The Real Problem Isn’t AI – It’s How You’re Implementing It
Most organizations didn’t get AI wrong because the technology failed.
They got it wrong because they skipped the foundational prerequisites required to make AI effective in a customer environment.
Instead, they:
Deployed AI into broken processes
Optimized for cost instead of customer value
Measured success with the wrong KPIs
Ignored adoption, context, and customer intelligence
The result?
AI is performing exactly as designed, efficiently reducing cost, while simultaneously eroding customer relationships.
The Root Cause: Missing the 8 Prerequisites for AI Success
AI in Customer Experience is not a plug-and-play solution.
It is an amplifier of your operating model.
If the foundation is flawed, AI scales the flaw. Remember the old adage, Garbage In, Garbage Out? This applies to AI implementation as well.
If the foundation is strong, AI scales value.
The difference comes down to whether you’ve established these 8 Prerequisites for AI implementation:
The 8 Prerequisites to Implementing AI the Right Way
Before you can implement AI effectively, you need the right foundation in place.
These are the essential components that determine whether AI drives better customer outcomes, or quietly creates risk of customer churn.
Chart 2 – The Essential 8 Foundational Steps to Successful AI Implementation
Miss any one of these—and AI stops creating value and starts creating problems.
1.A Clearly Defined Customer Outcome Strategy (Not a Cost Reduction Strategy)
Before AI can improve anything, you need to be clear on what success actually looks like for your customers. Most organizations start with cost targets, but customers don’t measure you on cost, they measure you on outcomes.
Customer Impact: If this isn’t defined, the customer experiences faster responses but not better outcomes. Their issue may be “handled”, from the company’s myopic perspective, but the customer’s problem is not actually solved.
If your AI initiative starts with:
“Reduce cost”
“Deflect tickets”
“Replace agents”
You’ve already lost.
AI must be anchored to:
Retention (GRR / NRR)
Expansion
Time to Value (TTV)
Adoption depth
Customer effort
CSAT per AI interaction
AI should optimize for customer value creation, not cost extraction.
2. A Unified, Multi-Source Voice of Customer (VoC) System
AI can only be as effective as the data it learns from. If customer information is scattered across systems, teams, and touchpoints, AI never sees the full picture and, therefore, can rarely solve the customer’s request efficiently or effectively.
Customer Impact: The customer has to repeat themselves across channels because no one, and no system, has the full picture of their history, context, or prior interactions.
AI is only as good as the data feeding it.
Most companies rely on fragmented inputs:
Support tickets
Surveys
CRM notes
That’s insufficient.
You need a single converged Voice of the Customer (VOC) system integrating:
Before AI can understand your customers, it needs a clear and consistent way to categorize what those customers are actually contacting you about.
Customer Impact: The customer gets routed incorrectly, receives irrelevant answers, or is forced through multiple loops because the system doesn’t even understand what their issue actually is.
That’s what a ticket taxonomy is.
It’s simply a structured way of labeling every customer interaction, the why they reached out, what the issue was, and how it was resolved, using standardized categories across your entire organization.
Without this structure, your data becomes inconsistent and unreliable. The same issue might be labeled five different ways by five different people or systems.
And when that happens:
Your AI isn’t learning patterns, it’s learning confusion.
To be effective, a ticket taxonomy must be intentionally designed and consistently applied across the organization.
At a minimum, it should standardize how every interaction is classified across the following dimensions:
Standardized reason codes across all channels
Consistent tagging (intent, root cause, outcome)
Alignment across support, success, product, and training
Elimination of “miscellaneous / other” black holes
If your taxonomy is broken, your AI is learning the wrong patterns at scale.
4. Clean, Structured, and Governed Data Architecture
Even with the right data sources, AI still depends on how clean, consistent, and structured that data is. If your data is incomplete, inconsistent, or owned by no one, AI will scale those problems quickly.
Customer Impact: The customer receives inconsistent or conflicting answers depending on where they interact because the underlying data is incomplete, outdated, or mis-aligned.
Garbage in → scalable garbage out.
Before AI:
Standardize data definitions
Eliminate silos
Persistent customer IDs across all interaction channels
Address and geographic area standardization (For customers living in Pennsylvania the state is standardized consistently as “PA” (vs. Penn, Penna, Pennsyl., etc.)
Ensure data completeness and integrity
Establish governance and ownership
Owned customer product and engaged services sources from the standard product and services hierarchy and catalog.
Without this:
AI doesn’t create insight, it creates noise at scale.
Not all customers are the same, and they shouldn’t be treated the same. Yet most AI implementations apply a one-size-fits-all experience, regardless of customer value, risk, or lifecycle stage.
Customer Impact: A high-value, key market influencer or at-risk customer gets the same automated experience as everyone else when what they actually need is priority handling or a human interaction.
Not all customers should experience AI the same way.
AI should not replace humans, but rather it should know when to bring them in. The goal isn’t maximum automation. It’s making sure the right issues get the right level of attention at the right time.
Customer Impact: The customer knows they need a human, but the system keeps forcing automation, increasing frustration and effort with every failed attempt to resolve the issue.
The goal is not maximum automation.
The goal is optimal intervention.
AI must be designed to:
Detect complexity
Identify emotional friction
Recognize high-value customers
Trigger escalation early
Without this:
You automate frustration instead of resolving it.
7. Integration with Customer Success, Training, and Adoption Systems
Customer service is only one part of the customer journey. If AI is not connected to onboarding, training, and adoption, it’s solving surface-level issues while deeper problems go unaddressed.
Customer Impact: The customer keeps contacting support for the same issue—not because support is failing, but because they were never properly onboarded or enabled in the first place.
This is where most organizations fail—and where the biggest opportunity exists.
AI cannot sit only in customer support.
It must connect to:
Onboarding and implementation
Training and enablement
Adoption tracking
Success planning
Because:
Customers don’t churn because support failed— they churn because they never realized value.
Insights alone don’t create value, action does. If AI identifies problems but nothing changes as a result, you haven’t improved anything.
Customer Impact: The customer provides feedback or signals frustration but nothing changes. The same issues continue to occur, reinforcing the belief that the company either doesn’t care and/or isn’t listening.
Feedback loops into product, training, and CX design
Measurable outcomes tied to action
If AI doesn’t change behavior, it doesn’t change results.
The biggest risk with AI isn’t immediate failure.
It’s that the damage happens gradually—and most companies don’t see it until it’s too late.
Chart 3 – The Hidden Timeline of AI-Driven Customer Churn
By the time churn shows up in your metrics, the customer made that decision long before.
What “AI Done Right” Actually Looks Like
Coincidentally, I had a very different experience just yesterday, and it perfectly illustrates what AI looks like when it’s implemented correctly.
I had to call SiriusXM regarding a complex billing and contract renewal issue, the kind of situation that typically breaks most AI systems.
When the AI answered, I’ll be honest, I cringed.
Based on my recent experiences, I fully expected to get trapped in another frustrating loop.
So, I did something intentional.
I explained the entire issue in full detail—six sentences, including dates, billing discrepancies, contract terms, and my interpretation of the problem.
In other words: Exactly the kind of complexity that usually causes AI to fail.
What happened next genuinely surprised me.
The AI responded with a complete and accurate understanding of my issue, not a partial match, not a guess, but a clear articulation of what I was trying to resolve.
Then it recommended a specific path to fix it.
At that moment, I thought: “Okay, here’s where I get transferred to a live agent to actually make the change.”
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the AI executed the change itself.
It updated my contract. It corrected the billing issue. And while I was still on the call, I received a confirmation email validating the resolution.
I literally paused and thought:
“This is how AI is supposed to work.”
I went from expecting frustration…to experiencing what can only be described as surprise and delight.
Why This Worked
Experiences like this don’t happen by accident.
They are the result of doing the foundational work outlined above:
The AI clearly understood complex, natural language input
It had access to clean, structured customer and contract data
It was integrated into backend systems capable of taking action
It operated within a well-defined decision and resolution framework based on a clearly defined set of business rules for allowable solutions.
And critically, it was empowered to complete the solution-outcome, not just deflect the interaction
The Contrast Couldn’t Be Clearer
Across more than a dozen other companies I recently contacted:
AI misunderstood intent
Forced me into predefined “closest match” categories
Could not handle edge cases or complexity
And required escalation after increasing frustration
In this case:
The AI understood
The AI resolved
The AI delivered the outcome end-to-end
That’s the Standard
This is the difference between:
AI as a cost-reduction tool vs.
AI as a customer experience and value engine
One creates frustration at scale. The other creates loyalty at scale.
What Happens If You Skip These?
You get what most companies are experiencing today:
Lower cost per interaction ✅
Faster response times ✅
Higher deflection rates ✅
And simultaneously:
Lower retention ❌
Reduced expansion ❌
Increased customer effort ❌
Silent churn ❌
AI didn’t fail—you deployed it into an incomplete system.
The Bottom Line
AI is not a customer service tool.
It is a customer intelligence and value optimization engine—if implemented correctly.
The companies that win will not be the ones that deploy AI fastest. They will be the ones that build the right foundation before scaling it.
Final Thought
AI will not fix a broken customer experience.It will scale it.
The question is:
Are you scaling efficiency and cost reduction—or are you scaling customer value?
“If your AI is frustrating your customers, it’s not a technology problem—it’s a capability design problem.” –Steven Jeffes
The Experience Behind This Perspective
The ideas presented in this article are grounded in more than four decades of work across customer strategy, customer experience, consulting, technology, and—more recently—AI-driven customer intelligence.
Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to work with or consult for organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Carrier Air Conditioning, General Electric, IBM Global Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Unisys, Accenture, Cox Automotive, Wave Systems, and INEOS Automotive, as well as lead CX and CRM transformation initiatives with global brands including American Express, Intuit, Microsoft, HP, Samsung, Sony, AT&T, Verizon, Macy’s, Pfizer, Capital One, AstraZeneca, Best Buy, Vanguard, Dell, Toyota, Ritz-Carlton, Amazon, Google, General Mills, Oracle, Adobe, Southwest and Delta Airlines, Regent Cruise Lines, Siemens, Wells Fargo, and many others.
Across these engagements, I have helped organizations:
Transform customer service operations from cost centers into profitable, revenue-generating functions
Architect end-to-end customer experience and customer success operating models
Design and implement Voice of Customer systems that convert fragmented data into predictive insight
Deploy AI-enabled customer service and customer intelligence capabilities that improve both efficiency and customer outcomes
Uncover hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue opportunities through structured, customer-driven insight programs
Across every one of these initiatives, one lesson has remained remarkably consistent:
Technology alone does not create better customer outcomes. It’s how that technology is designed, integrated, and acted upon that determines success or failure.
The organizations that get AI right are not simply automating interactions.
They are building systems that understand their customers better, act on those insights faster, and continuously improve the experience over time.
An Invitation to C-Suite Leaders
If you are a CEO, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, or other senior executive looking to implement AI in a way that drives measurable customer and business outcomes—not just cost reduction—I would welcome the opportunity to connect.
I work with executive teams to:
Design AI-enabled customer experience and customer success operating models
Build and operationalize Voice of Customer and customer intelligence systems
Align customer service, training, and customer success into a unified, outcome-driven model
Identify and activate revenue growth opportunities within existing customer bases
Ensure AI implementations improve retention, expansion, and long-term customer value
The companies that will outperform in the next decade will not be those that deploy AI the fastest.
They will be the ones that implement it the smartest—grounded in customer understanding, operational discipline, and a relentless focus on outcomes.
How Customer Advisory Boards Reveal New Revenue Streams Hidden in Your Existing Customer Base
Executive Summary
Many companies search for growth through new markets, acquisitions, or product expansion. Yet some of the most valuable revenue opportunities already exist inside their current customer base.
When organizations create structured environments where customers openly discuss challenges, future needs, and industry changes, entirely new revenue opportunities often emerge quickly.
Across multiple Customer Advisory Board (CAB) programs I have designed and facilitated, these conversations have uncovered more than $500 million in previously unidentified revenue opportunities. Additional significant revenue discovery is almost guaranteed in future customer advisory boards given the approach I am about to lay in this and future CAB topic series blog articles.
1. The Untapped Revenue Inside Your Customer Base
Most organizations pursue growth through new products, new markets, or acquisitions. While these strategies can generate results, they often overlook one of the largest opportunities already available: unmet customer needs.
Over the course of facilitating Customer Advisory Boards and executive focus groups across more than fifteen organizations, structured customer discussions have repeatedly surfaced revenue opportunities that were invisible in company data.
The discovery process is illustrated in Graphic 1: The $500M+ Customer Insight Funnel.
Graphic 1 illustrates how structured customer conversations reveal operational pain points and unmet needs. These insights move through a progression—from identifying unmet demand to validating opportunity areas and ultimately developing new revenue streams. Over time, organizations that systematically capture these insights convert customer conversations into a powerful engine for innovation and growth.
2. The Revenue Discovery Gap
If the opportunity exists within the customer base, why do many organizations fail to discover it? The answer lies in what can be described as the Revenue Discovery Gap.
Most organizations rely on three sources of insight: • Analytics data – reveals past behavior but rarely unmet needs • Sales conversations – focused on tactical issues • Internal innovation sessions – based on internal assumptions
These blind spots create what can be described as the Revenue Discovery Gap, illustrated in Graphic 2.
Graphic 2 highlights the difference between traditional insight sources and direct customer engagement. Analytics and internal brainstorming provide useful information but rarely uncover the deeper operational challenges customers face. Customer Advisory Boards close this gap by bringing customers directly into strategic conversations about future needs.
3. How Customer Advisory Boards Unlock New Revenue
Customer Advisory Boards create a structured forum where organizations engage directly with thoughtful customers about industry trends, operational challenges, and future needs.
The strategic value created through these conversations is illustrated in Graphic 3: The CAB Value Pyramid.
Graphic 3 illustrates how CAB programs create value across three layers. The foundation is customer insight, where structured dialogue reveals unmet needs. Those insights drive innovation and revenue creation, which ultimately leads to deeper strategic partnerships where customers become collaborators in shaping future solutions.
Real Examples: Revenue Generators That Emerged From CAB Conversations
Example 1 – Automotive Concierge Ownership Service
During a Customer Advisory Board discovery session with a group of vehicle owners and fleet customers, I asked a simple question that often reveals entirely new opportunities:
“What services would you pay for — or pay more for — that we don’t currently offer?”
The room quickly began discussing the complexity of managing every aspect of vehicle ownership.
Customers described the number of tasks required throughout a vehicle’s lifecycle:
• Scheduling routine maintenance • Coordinating service appointments • Arranging transportation while the vehicle is being serviced • Managing repairs and insurance claims • Organizing detailing and upkeep • Transporting vehicles between locations • Dealing with unexpected breakdowns or logistical issues
One customer summarized the frustration succinctly:
“Owning the vehicle is the easy part. Managing everything around it is the real headache.”
Several CAB members then converged on the same idea: they would gladly pay a reasonable premium for a fully managed automotive concierge service that would handle every operational aspect of vehicle ownership.
The proposed service would function as a single point of coordination for the entire vehicle lifecycle, managing:
• Maintenance scheduling and service logistics • Detailing and vehicle care • Transportation to remote or alternate locations • Insurance and repair coordination • Lifecycle tracking and vehicle replacement planning
In essence, customers were asking for a “vehicle ownership management service” where they never had to think about the operational details of maintaining their vehicle.
Multiple CAB participants emphasized that the service would not only save time but also reduce stress and uncertainty associated with vehicle ownership.
Several customers indicated they would be willing to pay $1,000–$2,500 per year per vehicle for such a service if it were executed reliably.
Across a large installed customer base, a premium concierge program like this could realistically yield $50–$120 million in new service revenue while simultaneously increasing customer loyalty and retention.
The insight did not emerge from product analytics, surveys, or internal brainstorming.
It emerged from a structured conversation among customers describing the real-world friction they experience every day.
Example 2 – Veteran Affinity Credit Card
In another Customer Advisory Board discovery session involving credit card customers, participants were discussing the emotional connection consumers increasingly want to feel with the brands they support.
Several CAB members raised the idea of financial products tied to causes that customers deeply care about.
One participant suggested an idea that quickly gained traction among the group:
A credit card specifically designed to support U.S. veterans.
Customers explained that many Americans actively look for ways to support veterans and veteran-focused organizations but often lack simple, everyday mechanisms to do so.
The CAB participants proposed a credit card that would direct a portion of card proceeds — such as transaction fees or annual membership fees — to vetted veteran support organizations.
The idea resonated strongly across the group for several reasons.
First, it allowed cardholders to support veterans through everyday spending rather than requiring separate charitable contributions.
Second, it provided a simple way for consumers to align their financial behavior with causes they care about.
Several CAB members indicated they would gladly pay a premium annual fee for such a card, viewing the additional cost as a meaningful way to contribute to veteran causes.
Participants also pointed out that no major financial institution had yet created a credit card explicitly structured around supporting veterans in this way.
Strategic Product Design
The financial institution ultimately designed a new credit card that maximized the benefits available under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and the Military Lending Act (MLA).
The product incorporated benefits such as waived annual fees, enhanced rewards programs, charitable contributions to veteran organizations, and other military-focused features that made the card uniquely attractive to veterans, active-duty service members, and the millions of Americans who support them.
By aligning the product design with existing military consumer protection frameworks, the institution was able to create a differentiated financial product while maintaining full regulatory compliance.
This meant the concept could serve not only as a new product offering but also as a powerful market differentiator capable of attracting an entirely new audience of customers motivated by purpose-driven financial products.
CAB participants suggested that the product could appeal not only to veterans and military families but also to the millions of Americans who actively support veteran-focused initiatives.
With the right positioning and partnerships with credible veteran organizations, such a product could realistically yield $30–$75 million in new annual revenue through a combination of annual fees, transaction volume, and expanded card adoption.
More importantly, it would position the issuing financial institution as a brand aligned with a cause that resonates deeply with many consumers.
Once again, the idea did not originate inside the company.
The idea and new revenue stream came directly from customers when they were invited to participate in shaping the future of the products they use.
Example 3 – Predictive Maintenance & Failure Prevention Services
During a Customer Advisory Board discussion involving enterprise equipment operators and fleet managers, participants began describing a common operational frustration: unexpected equipment failures that created costly downtime and disrupted operations.
Several CAB members explained that while existing products performed well, they lacked advanced tools that could predict failures before they occurred.
Customers suggested that if the company could combine equipment telemetry, operational data, and predictive analytics into a monitoring service, they would gladly pay a subscription fee for predictive maintenance insights that would help them prevent downtime.
The proposed solution included:
• Continuous monitoring of equipment performance data • Predictive alerts for potential failures • Maintenance scheduling recommendations • Performance optimization insights across fleets or facilities
Customers emphasized that avoiding even a single major failure could save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in operational disruption.
Because of that, they viewed the service not as a cost, but as an operational insurance policy.
Several CAB members indicated they would be willing to pay $500–$2,000 per asset annually for such a service.
When applied across large installed equipment bases, this type of predictive maintenance platform could yield $40–$80 million in annual recurring revenue while simultaneously improving customer uptime and satisfaction.
In many industries, the shift from reactive support to predictive service has become one of the fastest-growing sources of new service revenue.
Example 4 – Industry Benchmarking & Performance Intelligence Platform
In another Customer Advisory Board session involving senior leaders from multiple organizations within the same industry, participants began discussing a challenge many of them shared.
While each company collected extensive internal performance data, they had very little visibility into how their operations compared to industry peers.
CAB participants expressed strong interest in an industry benchmarking and performance intelligence platform that could provide anonymized insights across participating organizations.
Customers explained that access to credible benchmarking data would help them make better strategic decisions, justify internal investments, and identify performance gaps earlier.
Several participants suggested they would gladly pay for such insight if it were provided by a trusted industry partner.
CAB members proposed a subscription-based benchmarking service available to participating organizations.
Early estimates from CAB participants suggested companies would pay between $50,000 and $150,000 annually for access to credible industry benchmarking intelligence.
If adopted across even a modest number of customers within the ecosystem, such a platform could yield $25–$60 million in recurring annual revenue, while positioning the provider as a trusted strategic intelligence partner within the industry.
In addition to the direct revenue opportunity, these types of platforms often strengthen customer relationships because they provide ongoing strategic insight rather than simply operational support.
4. The Revenue Discovery Framework
Organizations that consistently uncover meaningful revenue opportunities through CAB programs typically follow a structured process.
Step 1– Identify the Right Customers Step 2– Curate the Advisory Board Step 3– Design the Discussion Step 4– Facilitate Discovery
Step 4 – Facilitate Discovery (deeper dive, sample content of next blog topic on CABs)
Even with the right participants and discussion topics, the role of facilitation remains critical. The quality of insights generated during a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) session depends heavily on whether participants feel comfortable sharing candid perspectives—even when that feedback may challenge existing products, services, or strategies.
To create an environment where honest dialogue can occur, I begin every CAB session by establishing a simple set of ground rules designed to encourage openness, respect, and constructive debate.
CAB Ground Rules for Productive Discovery
Ground Rule #1 – Radical Honesty Is Expected All ideas and comments are welcome, no matter how negative they may be. If we are going to improve, we need complete honesty. I often remind participants of an old saying: only your best and most trusted friend would tell you that you have a dirty face or bad breath. The same principle applies here—honest feedback is a sign of trust.
Ground Rule #2 – Candor Will Never Be Penalized No feedback, regardless of its severity, will ever cause leadership to view participants negatively. On the contrary, those who share completely honest perspectives will be valued as trusted advisors to the brand.
Ground Rule #3 – Challenge Assumptions Participants are encouraged to speak openly and challenge assumptions. Many of the most valuable insights emerge when customers question ideas that organizations have long taken for granted.
Ground Rule #4 – Respect Every Voice Only one person speaks at a time, and all participants must respect each other’s viewpoints and perspectives. Productive CAB sessions depend on thoughtful listening as much as thoughtful speaking.
Ground Rule #5 – Think Like Owners As with brainstorming, no suggestion or criticism is off-limits. Every idea will be treated with respect and serious consideration. During the session, participants are not simply customers, they are co-CEOs helping shape the future of the company.
Segueing from this final ground rule, I then introduce an exercise designed to shift the mindset of the room even further.
Graphic 3A – Participant Certification of Company Ownership.
To shift the conversation from customer feedback to strategic thinking, each participant receives a Certificate of Ownership above that symbolically appoints them as the temporary owner and CEO of the company for the duration of the CAB session.
After distributing the certificates, I explain:
For new customer led problem identification and rectification focused sessions, the question becomes“For the next few hours, you are the owners of this company. You can change anything you want—products, services, pricing, policies, strategy, or how we operate.”
For customer led new revenue focused sessions, the question becomes “For the next few hours, you are the owners of this company. You need to focus on new revenue generation ideas that would sell easily – new products, services, premium services, events, partnerships, etc.”
Participants are then asked a simple but powerful question:
“If you owned this company, what changes would you make on day one, week one, and month one?”
This exercise immediately moves participants from the mindset of customers providing feedback to owners responsible for improving the business. The result is more candid conversations, more strategic thinking, and insights that rarely surface in traditional customer meetings.
A deeper look at the full methodology behind designing and facilitating high-impact CAB sessions, including facilitation techniques, session structures, and insight extraction frameworks will be covered in the next article in this series:
This process is illustrated in Graphic 4: The Revenue Discovery Framework.
Graphic 4 above shows how organizations move from customer insight to measurable revenue creation. Each stage builds upon the previous one, transforming structured customer conversations into a repeatable pipeline for innovation and growth.
5. Strategic Benefits Beyond Revenue
While CAB programs are powerful engines for uncovering new revenue, their impact extends far beyond innovation alone. They strengthen customer relationships and can serve as an early warning system for emerging risks.
This dynamic is illustrated in Graphic 5: The Loyalty Multiplier Effect.
Graphic 5 shows how including customers in strategic conversations creates a reinforcing cycle of engagement, advocacy, and loyalty. When customers help shape solutions, they often become advocates for the brand and long‑term partners in its success.
6. Types of Revenue Opportunities CABs Reveal
Revenue opportunities uncovered through CAB discussions typically fall into four categories:
• New services • Premium offerings • Product enhancements • Entirely new offerings These categories are illustrated in Graphic 6: The Revenue Opportunity Spectrum.
Graphic 6 demonstrates how CAB insights often begin with incremental opportunities such as services or premium offerings and can expand into entirely new products or businesses.
Internal brainstorming generates ideas, but it often lacks market validation. Customer Advisory Boards introduce perspectives internal teams cannot replicate.
The difference between internal ideas and customer‑validated insight is shown in Graphic 7.
Graphic 7 highlights how internal brainstorming often produces ideas based on assumptions, while customer‑driven innovation begins with real operational problems and validated demand.
The Strategic Imperative
Many successful growth strategies begin in the same place: a room full of customers sharing honest perspectives about their challenges and future needs.
The overall strategic impact of customer‑driven discovery is summarized in Graphic 8, Strategic Impact of Customer‑Driven Discovery.
Graphic 8 reinforces the central idea of this article: when organizations systematically involve customers in shaping their future, they unlock new revenue streams, stronger loyalty, and long‑term strategic partnerships.
“Every company has untapped revenue hiding inside its customer base. The companies that discover it first are the ones willing to ask their customers the right questions.”
The Experience Behind This Perspective
The ideas presented here are grounded in more than four decades of work in customer strategy, customer experience, consulting, and technology leadership.
I have worked with or consulted for organizations including Lockheed‑Martin, Carrier, General Electric, IBM Global Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Unisys, Accenture, Cox Automotive, Wave Systems, INEOS Automotive, American Express, Microsoft, Samsung, AT&T, Verizon, Pfizer, Capital One, Toyota, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Delta Airlines, Siemens, Wells Fargo and many others.
An Invitation to C‑Suite Leaders
If you are a CEO, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, or senior executive seeking to uncover new growth opportunities while strengthening customer relationships, I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you.
Customer Advisory Boards are one of the most powerful, and most underutilized, strategic tools available to executive leadership teams.
When designed and facilitated correctly, CAB programs do far more than generate feedback. They uncover entirely new revenue streams, reveal emerging market risks before they become crises, and transform customers into strategic partners in shaping a company’s future.
Over the past four decades working with global enterprises across industries—including financial services, automotive, technology, healthcare, and manufacturing—I have helped organizations design and lead Customer Advisory Boards that have revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue opportunities while simultaneously strengthening long-term customer loyalty and advocacy.
In the next three articles in this series, I will go deeper into the mechanics behind these outcomes, including:
How to Design and Run World-Class Customer Advisory Boards that consistently produce strategic insight and breakthrough ideas.
How Leading Companies Convert Customer Insight Into Revenue, transforming CAB conversations into new services, premium offerings, and entirely new business models.
The Hidden Strategic Value of Customer Advisory Boards, including how trusted CAB members can serve as early-warning systems for emerging operational, regulatory, and market risks.
Because when companies move customers from the sidelines into the strategy room, they don’t just learn more about their markets.
They start discovering opportunities their competitors haven’t even seen yet.
Covered in this blog article: A) The brand promise B) Customer bill of rights definition C) Why the customer bill of rights is needed and important D) Company mantra, tagline, and brand promise examples E) The hierarchy of company mantra, tagline, brand promise and customer bill of rights F) Customer bill of rights company examples G) Internal service organization customer bill of rights treatment standards H) How to get started creating your own customer bill of rights
The Familiar Brand Promise: We have all heard of a brand promise and have an idea of what this is all about. Simply put, a brand promise is the definition of the high-level quality of experience a company’s customers can expect to receive during every interaction with the company and its customer facing employees. The brand promise speaks to the brand’s purpose and speaks to the value that the brand will deliver.
Customer Bill of Rights Why Needed & A Simple Definition: The downside of a brand promise is that it is short of specifics on what the customer can expect during their interactions with the company. To bridge the gap between the higher-level brand promise and to explain what the customers can specifically experience when interacting with the company, we introduce the relatively new customer bill of rights. Here is a simple definition of what a customer bill of rights is:
A customer bill of rights is a public statement designed to communicate to customers what specific service level standards and guarantees the company is going to provide to them.
Hierarchy: Company Mantra, Tagline, Brand Promise and Customer Bill of Rights: To first explain how a brand promise ties into the customer bill of rights I thought it important to review the hierarchy of company-customer experience value statements starting with the Company Mantra at the highest level. Simply put, a company mantra states what the company stands for and why they exist. Here are some examples of company mantras that demonstrates “their why”. (a great related read on this “Finding your Why” by Simon Sinek):
A) Company Mantra Examples: Disney: “Fun, Family Entertainment.” Nike: “Authentic Athletic Performance.” McDonald’s: “Fun, Family, Food.” Next down in the hierarchy of company-customer experience statements comes the company tagline that supports the company mantra. A tagline is a very short and memorable phrase used to convey the value of a brand experience or its products. Here are some examples of the same set of companies and their taglines that demonstrates their why:
B) Company Tagline Examples: Disney: “The most magical place on Earth.” Nike: “Just do It.” McDonald’s: “I’m lovin’ it.” Next down in the hierarchy of company-customer experience statements is the brand promise, that at a high level, clearly and concisely states the quality of experience a company’s customers can expect to receive during every interaction with the company and its customer facing employees.
C) Company Brand Promise Examples: Disney: “to create happiness through magical experiences.” Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” McDonald’s: “make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone.”
While the company mantra, the tagline and the brand promise all support alignment to the company/brand and its values, it does little to speak to the customer on what specifically they can expect while interacting with the company and its customer facing employees. Hence, last, in the hierarchy of company-customer experience statements we introduce a relatively new tool called the customer bill of rights that explicitly states the specifics the customer can expect when interacting with the company and its customer facing functions and employees.
Hierarchy of Customer Experience Statements: Company Mantra – Tagline – Brand Promise – Customer Bill of Rights
Since it is relatively new to the customer experience world, we are going to break from the 3 previous companies we illustrated (Disney, Nike, McDonalds) and instead highlight some innovative companies who have been bold enough to create and display their customer bill of rights.
Customer Bill of Right Examples: Here are some great small business examples that illustrate exactly what a customer bill of rights is all about: A) Herb’s Auto:
Herb’s is a great example in that it combines their goals from a customer experience standpoint Delivering “fast, Courteous Service” along with specifics on what a customer is to expect “Lifetime Oil, Filter, Lube $12.99*”.
B) Here is another great example from Eden Prairie Painting Company:
Eden Prairie Painting Company Customer Bill of Rights
I absolutely love this example as it combines a mantra/tagline along with attractive and high quality visuals of what customer can expect as well as some service level agreements and standards (e.g., “we will begin painting within 3 weeks”, “no less than 4 years experience before working in the field for our customers”) as well as a contact number clearly visible for customers to contact them (i.e. clear call to action). .
The C&R tire resonates with me personally due to the last item above. How many times have you gone into a tire or auto service establishment’s dirty/dingy waiting room waiting for service and feel like you are in the actual service bay with all the grease, oil, and grime. Some auto establishment’s waiting rooms are truly cringe worthy. That last item on their customer bill of rights is the masterful capitalization on other competitor’s weakness and making it differentiator for your own business by putting directly into in a customer bill of rights!
D) Next up, we have this small business example from a service organization, Chautauqua Opportunities:
“Chautauqua Opportunities is an organization established under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to fight America’s war on poverty.” This community service organization tailors their bill of rights around service standards that are appropriate for the constituencies they serve. I particularly like their statements on the delivery of their service in a way that is “non-discriminatory” and “without bias” and safeguards their constituency’s privacy, etc. which is highly applicable to their constituents.
E) Next up, we have this small business example from Capital Homes, Inc.:
Having consulted and worked for numerous Fortune 500 companies, this bill of rights from Jet Blue is absolutely my favorite. This combines the commitment on informing customers and under what circumstances, details different customer impacting events and what customers can expect for the occurrence of each event type, but most importantly details the exact specifics the customer can expect for each customer disrupting event. Behind the scenes, I can safely predict that their revenue/finance department pre-calculated the cost of the specific customer considerations (vouchers) by multiplying the cost of each consideration by the historical incident rates and customer volumes for each type of event (departure delays, cancellations, etc.). In essence, it is solidifying a predictable revenue model while communicating this to their customer base to gain competitive advantage which is brilliant.
G) My Customer Bill of Rights Examples:
Here are some sanitized (removed client identifiable information) examples from companies I have recently worked for:
Client Customer Bills of Rights – Company Commitment
H) Customer Service Organization (internal) Customer Bills of Rights Example:
At a customer service representative level, I have created the following in terms of what type of specific customer treatment we will uphold and what the customer can expect from each and every one of our customer facing people and functions:
Our Customer Service & Experience Experts Make the Following Promises to Our Customers
Customer Service Customer Treatment Bill of Rights
5. How to Get Started, Create Your Own Organization’s Customer Bill of Rights
Does your company (large or small) have a Customer Bill of Rights? This is not in a company mantra, tagline, or brand promise, but rather a simple set of rules, standards and guidelines that details the specifics of your customer service and customer experience delivery and helps set specific customer <–> customer-service expectations.
Start by discussing this possibility with your upper management and with your customer support organization. Challenge your organization to create 5-10 customer service expectations that your customers can specifically expect from your company and team. Then make sure that every employee knows and understands it is their obligation to deliver on those expectations. Key to this is aligning your internal standards, process, employee incentives and technology infrastructure to support the pledge, training your frontline employees, and recognizing customer service employee stars who are exceptional in upholding your customer service standards and pledges to your customer.
6. Summary
We have all heard of and mostly understand customer experience terms like the company mantra, tagline, and brand promise. These terms while effective in communicating the values of the company and the brand(s), these fail to communicate what the customer is to specifically expect when interacting with the company and their frontline employees for various customer needs. To address this gap in helping customers understand what specifics the company will deliver from a customer service perspective the increasing use of the customer bill of rights has been introduced by a growing number of companies. The many examples of a customer bill of rights presented in this article will give you food for thought in terms of what your own might look like. It is easy to get started to create your own and can start as simple as with a conversation with your customer facing team and upper management. If you do create a customer bill of rights, you must ensure all capabilities are in place to deliver on these customer promises, otherwise it will be judged as just a company marketing gimmick that nobody believes and you risk losing a great deal of marketplace credibility and customer faith.
7) Need help in creating your own customer bill of rights?
If your organization is seeking a proven resource in measuring and improving your customer service and experience via a customer bill of rights, then give me a call or e-mail me at 518-339-5857 or stevenjeffes@gmail.com.
Lastly, this is just one article nearly 60 articles I have written on customer strategy, customer experience, CRM, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for Fortune 500 companies. In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 106,000 world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/.
A. What is RPA, a simple definition. B. The customer experience and business benefits of RPA. C. RPA market growth/trends. D. RPA Use Cases & Examples of how RPA Enables Better Customer Service & Experience. E. Top Companies embracing the use of RPA. F. Top RPA Solution Platforms. G. Top RPA System Integrators, Service Providers. H. How to get started in leveraging RPA. I. RPA Best Practices J. RPA, 911 & where to get immediate RPA assistance and additional insights.
A) What is RPA, a simple definition:
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the automation of relatively basic, repetitive, and traditionally lower value business functions and tasks.
RPA automation is achieved through software or hardware systems that deliver several functions and processes that human resources would traditionally accomplish.
B) The customer experience and business benefits of RPA
RPA allows companies to offload an array of manual and repetitive tasks so that company team members can be freed up to focus more exclusively on important higher value-added functions including improving customer service and experience. Tasks that are automated include both front-office and back-office tasks and range in function from sales to finance to HR to customer service. Verticals that are more heavily invested in RPA currently include retail, telecommunications, and financial services. There are numerous use cases for RPA and I cover samples of these use cases more in depth in section E of this article. The chart below is a great summary of both the customer experience and business benefits of RPA.
Customer Experience and Business Benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
C) RPA Market Growth/Trends:
• Gartner Says “Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software Revenue to Reach Nearly $2 Billion in 2021“
• Garner also states that the “RPA Market Forecast to Grow at Double-Digit Rates Through 2024 Despite Economic Pressures from COVID-19”
Table 1. Worldwide RPA Software Revenue (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Market Growth, Source: Gartner (September 2020)
• The pandemic and ensuing recession increased interest in RPA for many enterprises. Gartner predicts that 90% of large organizations globally will have adopted RPA in some form by 2022 as they look to digitally empower critical business processes through resilience and scalability, while recalibrating human labor and manual effort.
• According to the Research and Markets Report 2020, the Global Robotic Process Automation Market is expected to grow to $7.2 billion by 2025 at 32.6% CAGR.
D) RPA Use Cases & Examples of how RPA Enables Better Customer Service & Experience
1) RPA Use Case 1: Customer and Employee Onboarding:
Customer and Employee Onboarding RPA
The common tasks associated with employee and customer onboarding are very standard, structured, and repeatable. Therefore, these standard and repeatable tasks are perfect candidates for RPA. For example, RPA can handle the following customer and employee tasks:
a) Customers: RPA can be leveraged to establish customer profiles (e.g., segment, purchased products/services, payment and invoice financial accounts, credit worthiness checks and authorizations, etc.) and needed onboarding services (onboarding training, welcome kit delivery, initial sales account visits, etc.). Many of these customer onboarding processes are very standard with very few permutations and therefore are very likely candidates for the application of RPA.
b) Employees: RPA can be used to take employee and customer identifying information and update multiple information systems (payroll, emergency contacts, state employment and tax compliance, timesheet systems, training systems, security/access management, etc.). This behind-the-scenes RPA updating can save hours of valuable company resource time.
2) RPA Use Case 2: Customer Invoice and Payment Processing Automation:
Customer Invoice and Payments RPA
Customer invoicing and payment processing is a highly standardized and repeatable process. Take for instance the case of paying on an auto lease or financed purchase. The customer invoice and payment amounts are generally the same every month, usually at the same time of the month unless changed by request and, the calculation of the amount paid and remaining amount left to pay, a simple math exercise. The same is true for many other regular invoice and payment cycles: utilities, insurance, health plans, etc. These are all candidates for RPA whereby the robotic processing can automate the delivery of the standard customer process and experience delivery (vs. specialized 1-to-1 delivery). Some sophisticated rules-based RPA tools even allow for several complex permutations in the process invoice/billing amounts, timing, periodicity, etc.
3) RPA Use Case 3: Automation of Customer Calls:
Customer Call Center RPA
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the acceptance of online self-service by customers, and they expect simple point and click solutions for inquiries, ordering, payments, providing feedback, pointing out issues and problems, etc. In short, they expect one and done customer service. Multi-channel customer interaction center (legacy term was call center) customer representatives have SLAs to meet in terms of time on call metrics (average time spent on each customer contact).
Much of the work of customer contact agents is standard and includes commonly performed tasks across all customer contacts. These common and repeatable tasks lend themselves perfectly to RPA to enable the contact agents to work on tasks that are higher value to the customer. Here are examples of customer contact center tasks that are likely candidates for RPA: A) Data entry or update tasks B) Generating customer acknowledgement or thank you notes C) Completing a call after relevant customer information has been collected. D) Populating customer order forms and invoices
There are many virtual attendant RPA solutions that make the job of the customer contact center agent easier while simultaneously enhancing the customer experience.
4) RPA Use Case 4: Customer Banking Automation:
Customer Banking RPA
Just like applying RPA to common and simple tasks for invoicing/payments and customer interaction centers, banking has numerous common tasks that are easily adaptable to RPA and IoT (reference my other blog article on IoT here: https://bit.ly/3DwQz2i ).
The common, routine, and repeatable banking tasks applicable for RPA include the following: 1) Opening and closing bank account. 2) Processing deposits. 3) Processing withdrawals. 4) Processing welcoming messages for new customers, customer buying new products. 5) Processing account updates or simple inquiries. 6) Processing account addendums (i.e., adding checking to savings).
5) RPA Use Case 5: Customer Order Management Automation:
Order Management RPA
How many times have you ordered items on the internet from online retailers and found the process very routine and repeatable? Well guess what? If you guessed this is a perfect process adaptable to RPA, then you are getting the concept. From a company’s perspective, the processing of orders manually is both time and cost intensive while not really adding much to the customer experience. Today, people want simple, fast, point and click instant self-service without having to rely on a human to get what they need. The common, routine, and repeatable order management tasks that are candidates for RPA include the following: 1) Processing orders. 2) Scheduling fulfillment and shipping. 3) Sending order status messages to customers (e.g., ordered, shipped, delayed, etc.), 4) Handling payments. 5) Processing returns and refunds. 6) Processing defect and warranty claims.
E) Top Companies Embracing the Use of RPA:
Here is a sampling of 20 of the more popular non-RPA service providers or consulting companies who are embracing the use of RPA: 1) Whirlpool 2) Siemens 3) Quest Diagnostics 4) LinkedIn 5) Linium (Now Cognizant (staffing)) 6) Intel 7) Hewlett Packard Enterprise 8) Hess 9) General Motors 10) Dell 11) Comcast 12) Boston Scientific 13) AT&T 14) Adobe 15) Xerox 16) Vodafone 17) Ambit Energy 18) Avande 19) Zodiac Aerospace (now Safran Group) 20) Latam Airlines Source: https://www.askeygeek.com/companies-using-robotic-process-automation/
F) Top RPA Solution Platforms:
Search the internet and you’ll find a great deal of rankings for the top RPA solution platform providers. Below is just one ranking of many that lists the top 10 vendors from a very well done article that lists the top 5 RPA service providers as UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft, EdgeVerve and Blue Prism (Softomotive removed since it was purchased by Microsoft, listed in #3 below, in 2020):
Beyond the top RPA solution platform providers article listed in the previous section, there are very few articles that focus on the RPA service providers that help a company implement RPA. Below are the findings from a very well done analysis that puts the top 5 RPA service providers as EY, Capgemini, KPMG, TCS and Accenture. Below is the list of the entire ranked top 10 RPA service providers from this analysis:
Top 10 Ranking: 1) Ernst & Young 2) Capgemini 3) KPMG 4) Tata Consulting Services (TCS) 5) Accenture 6) IBM 7) Deloitte 8) Symphony Ventures (Now Sykes) 9) Cognizant 10) Infosys
Tata Consulting Services (TCS) is bolded above since I feel they are at the very top of services firms who can help other companies implement RPA.
H) RPA Best Practices & How to get started in leveraging RPA:
Below is a simple step-by-step process I developed to help you get started in implementing RPA (vs. optimizing which is a separate list):
Focus on tasks that are easy to implement, yet deliver high value impact Develop a list of tasks that are likely candidates for the application of RPA per the information provided above – simple/common tasks, repeatable tasks, few permutations to a task, etc. For each potential task listed create two additional columns as follows: A) Value to the organization and customers for task automation B) Ease of implementation Those chosen to move forward should be those easy to implement that create the highest value. I call these tasks the RPA “low hanging fruit” that are no brainers for automation.
Start with small RPA pilots to demonstrate the proof of value Next find a way to limit the scope of the initial RPA pilot to include only exposing a limited (segment) of customers, choosing a task that is infrequently exercised (which still providing high value), or limit the time for testing the task automation (2-5 days, 1 week, etc.). Once the limited pilot is completed, document the results and value delivered from the pilot to build excitement and justification for full roll-out while make RPA adjustments based on lessons learned from pilot execution before going to full rollout.
Measure, measure, measure – improve, improve, improve Similar to measuring the results from the pilot and refining the RPA components to further optimize the value derived from automating a RPA pilot, a continuous measurement & improvement process cycle should govern all RPA pilots, implementations, rollouts, etc.
Focus on the simultaneous optimization of the internal organization and customer relationships A value delivery matrix should be developed that balances how to optimize the existing organization and labor costs such that resources are focused on delivering simultaneously the highest customer value and customer experience vs. focusing on routine and low value tasks.
Obtain the advice and help of RPA consultants, professionals Just like the saying “don’t try this at home”, I don’t recommend tackling RPA initially without the help of a professional services/consulting firm that has a great deal of experience implementing RPA that closely resembles what you are seeking to accomplish. Refer to section G above for a great list of highly qualified RPA experts and services companies.
I) Summary:
1) RPA is the automation of repeatable, common, and typically lower value tasks to free up company resources to focus on higher value and strategic tasks like delivering improved customer experience and customer service. 2) The benefits of RPA are numerous, but RPA decreases company operating costs by reducing labor and labor costs while enabling better levels of customer intimacy, customer service and customer experience. 3) RPA, while not growing as fast as the complimentary IoT market, is very rapidly growing after taking a short growth respite in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 4) There are many examples of RPA use cases that enhance customer service and experience and include invoice and payment processing, consumer banking, employee and customer onboarding, contact and call center automation, and order management . 5) The top 10 platform vendors include UiPath, Automation Anywhere, EdgeVerve, Blue Prism, Softomotive, WorkFusion, Kofax, NICE, Another Monday, and Pegasystems. 6) The top 10 RPA service and consulting companies include Ernst & Young, Capgemini, KPMG, Tata Consulting Services (TCS), Accenture, IMB, Deloitte, Symphony Ventures, Cognizant, and Infosys. 7) RPA quick start best practices include starting with tasks that deliver high value that are easy to implement, start with limited pilots to build excitement and prove the value of RPA, measure the results to continually improve, focus on the simultaneous optimization of the company organization and customer relationships, and hiring the support of RPA service firms and consultants to aid your RPA planning and deployment.
J) RPA 911 & where to get immediate RPA assistance and additional insights:
If you are seeking some quick advice on RPA, I can help point you in the right direction, provide some summary advice and am more than willing to help others beginning on this journey.
If your organization is seeking experienced assistance in lowering your overall cost to serve and increasing CSAT with automated and RPA, AI and/or IoT powered customer service, then give me a call or e-mail me at 518-339-5857 or stevenjeffes@gmail.com.
Lastly, this is just one article of over 55+ articles I have written on customer strategy, customer experience, CRM, sales excellence, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for numerous Fortune 500 companies. In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 105,000 world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/.
Topics covered in this blog: 1) The simple definitions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Telematics 2) Illustration of IoT personal and business devices, uses 3) IoT Trends 4) IoT Growth in Spend and Market Size 5) IoT enablers and why IoT has become so pervasive 6) How does IoT work 7) The benefits of IoT 8) The positives and negatives of IoT 9) The most Popular IoT Architecture Platforms in 2021 10) The 10 Hottest Industrial IoT Platforms Of 2020 11) The most Popular IoT Services Companies for 2021 12) Sample IoT Use Cases that illustrate the Customer Experience Benefits • Customer, Personal IoT Digital Assistants Use Case Benefits • Business, Fleet Management IoT Benefits Use Case: • IoT Dashboard Example with Customer Experience Benefits: 13) How to get started in improving your IoT driven Customer Experience
A) Simple Definitions of IoT and Telematics:
One new term I keep hearing about over and over is the “Internet of Things”, known shorthand as IoT. I thought this was a strange term at first and was puzzled about what it stood for. As a result, I set forth to research the topic and create a simple definition for IoT as well as “Telematics” which is frequently mentioned in the context of IoT.
1) IoT Definition: IoT is short for the Internet of Things and describes physically connected objects, that contain embedded sensors, processors, software, and other technologies, and that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet or by other communications networks.
2) Telematics Definition: Telematics is the practice of sending, receiving, and storing information using telecommunication devices to control remote IoT objects. In other words, and more put more simply, Telematics is the practice of managing information collected from an array of IoT devices (i.e., connected thermostats, GPS in an automobile, Alexa, Siri, etc.). For the rest of this article, IoT and supporting Telematics I will simply refer to as IoT.
Consumer & Business IoT
{click on image to expand}
B) IoT Trends and why IoT has become so significant:
With 1.3 billion projected subscriptions by 2023, IoT is about to experience another boost by the 5G technology.
By 2021, 35 billion IoT devices will be installed around the world.
The number of connected devices in 2021 will be 46 billion. (Juniper Research)
Households have ten connected (IoT) devices on average and will rise to 50 in 2021, (Economic Times)
Spending on IoT Endpoint Security solutions will reach $631M in 2021, (Gartner)
The Smart Home IoT market will grow to $53.45 billion by 2022, (Statista)
1) What are the driving forces behind all this IoT growth? 2) Why has IoT usage grown so much now? 3) What has enabled IoTs to be integral in almost everything we do, touch, etc.?
The simple answer is that the rapid increase in technological capabilities, miniaturization of devices, increased computing capacity and 24x7x365 high bandwidth are the enablers. The real reason is that this drives multiple win-wins including the decreased business cost and cycle times coupled with increases in accuracy and customer experience delivery. The chart below sums up these trends very succinctly.
IoT Enablers, Why Now
D) How does IoT work
IoT systems consist of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems (that include processors, sensors, data storage/management hardware, and communication hardware, to collect, send and act on data they acquire from the surroundings where they are embedded. IoT devices either share the sensor data they collect to the cloud to be analyzed or the data is made available locally to be analyzed.
In certain instances, these IoT devices communicate with other related IoT devices and act on the information they compile and aggregate from each another. These IoT devices perform most of their own processing and decision making without the need for human intervention, although persons can interact with the devices to either install them, provide updated instructions, or access and monitor the data associated with the systems they are overseeing and/or controlling.
E) The benefits of IoT, the IoT Revolution
Never has there been such a win-win enabled by technology than with the explosion of the use of IoT. Businesses win by enabling greater efficiency and accuracy while driving costs and time to market simultaneously lower. At the same time, companies can increase the ease of doing business with them through increased customer convenience along with increased customer experiences (marketing, sales, customer service, products, services, etc.) by having greater IoT enabled insights into what customer really need and want. The following chart captures some of the IoT enabled win-wins both for business and customers.
Business and Consumer Benefits of IoT
F) The Balanced Positives and Negatives of IoT
To not just present benefits of implementing IoT in the above chart, I also developed the following chart to show additional IoT positives balanced with negatives. For example, for business the benefit is the decreased maintenance cost and equipment downtime, while a negative is the risk of hacking and hijacking of IoT devices connected data and systems, etc. for both customers and businesses.
Balanced Business and Customer Positives and Negatives of IoT
G) Most Popular IoT Architecture Platforms in 2021
Here is a list of the most popular IoT platforms In 2021 from SoftwareTestingHelp.
I would also add to the top of the list Tata Consulting Services (TCS) as a company who excels in IoT strategy and integration consulting.
Tata Consulting Services (TCS)
J) Example Companies Going all In on IoT
While there are many companies embracing and adopting the concept of IoT, one stands out in particular. Honeywell has made IoT a centerpiece of their future company strategy and has developed a new IoT platform called Honeywell Forge. You may have seen some of the ads they are currently running online, on cable channels and in print. Honeywell plans to roll out versions of this IoT platform for the airline, industrials and buildings verticals.
I interviewed with Honeywell a while back for a Director of Customer Experience position and was impressed at how passionate they are was about IoT and how well they understood that it enabled much higher levels of customer experience. Other companies who have introduced IoT platforms include GE, Siemens and Johnson Controls (competitor to Honeywell).
K) Sample IoT Use Cases that illustrate the Customer Experience Benefits
1) Customer, Personal IoT Digital Assistants Use Case Benefits:
The user of at home personal digital IoT assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Samsung’s Bixby have exploded in the past 5+ years. They have enabled an entire new level of convenience for consumers. The increased customer intimacy and insights gathering comes with the potential balanced decrease in privacy. Users of digital personal assistants are generally aware and ok with this tradeoff due to the delivered convenience and enhanced customer experience. The chart below illustrates a sample of delivered customer experiences based on the potential to learn about users/customers and the enabled delivery of great customer experiences based on leveraging these enhanced insights.
Personal Customer Experience Benefits of IoT, Personal Assistant Example
2) Business, Fleet Management IoT Benefits Use Case:
The user of IoT in fleet management has also increased dramatically in the past several years. The use of these fleet management IoT solutions have enabled an entire new level of convenience for both their business users as well as the customers they serve. The chart below illustrates a sample of delivered customer experiences based on the potential to learn about users/customers and the enabled delivery of great customer experiences based on leveraging these enhanced insights.
Business Customer Experience Benefits of IoT, Fleet Management Example
3) IoT Dashboard Example with Customer Experience Benefits:
Above is a superb example of an IoT insights power management dashboard created via Sisense, a company that “Builds custom analytic experiences” and “Embeds actionable intelligence anywhere.” to “Transform the way you work.”
In this power management example, the Sisense enabled dashboard displays all the performance measures associated with the IoT monitoring devices such as the following:
1) Device A, B, C Power usage, voltage, frequency, and current 2) Average Power by device (A, B, C) 3) Energy Consumption over time by device (A, B, C) 4) Current over time by device (A, B, C) 5) Voltage over time by device (A, B, C)
In this example above, a customer user can remotely monitor systems and proactively watch for performance measures that show power supply or regulation degradation. In times past, instead of the IoT performing the monitoring, the monitoring would instead have to be accomplished by sending a person to manually monitor 3 devices (Device A, B, C) on a periodic schedule to ensure they are operating correctly and to manually intercede if they are malfunctioning.
In the same manner that businesses have benefitted by an increase in convenience and business (B2B) customer experience, IoT has enabled the consuming public to be able to interact with their vehicles, home security systems, personal assistants, smart phones, etc. to also improve their lives through increased convenience and improved personal (B2C) customer experiences. Smarter IoT devices become smarter in automating tasks, maintaining our needs, preventing malfunctions and breakdowns, ensuring we get what we need when we need it, increasing our safety and security, while bring us life’s needs at the sound of our voices while going about our normal routines.
L) Summary
IoT stands for the “Internet Of Things” and is simply smart devices that monitor, control, and interact for a variety of functions that collect and transmit data from an array of IoT devices through telematics.
IoT has emerged as one of the fastest growing technology segments in the last several years and will continue this pace of massive growth for the next 5-10 years.
IoT rapid market diffusion has been enabled by even smaller and more powerful device level processing capacity, aided by IoT enabled cloud technology.
IoT has been embedded in almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives including cars, homes, critical infrastructure, personal wearables, etc.
IoT has delivered a tremendous amount of benefit to businesses in terms of reduced cycle times and costs.
While IoT has delivered many benefits, there are a set of downsides to IoT that must be considered and actively managed like the increased risk of hacking and hijacking.
While many businesses would point to the reduction in costs and cycle times as the major business case justification, the common denominator for both business and consumers is the increased convenience and improvement in customer experiences.
The bottom line for IoT is, as stated by the title of this article simultaneously improves customer convenience and customer experience while simultaneously decreasing business cycle times and overall cost. This statement clearly sums up why we are in the midst of an IoT revolution and why the market for IoT has and will continue to experience explosive growth.
M) Need help getting started in improving your IoT driven Customer Experience?
If your organization is seeking a proven resource in measuring and improving your customer service and experience via IoT, then give me a call or e-mail me at 518-339-5857 or stevenjeffes@gmail.com
Lastly, this is just one article of 50+ articles I have written on customer strategy, customer experience, CRM, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for Fortune 500 companies. In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 106,000 world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/
Current trends in the adoption of AI as applied to customer service.
The business case for AI adoption in customer service.
Common use cases for AI powered customer service delivery.
Real companies that have implemented AI driven customer service.
How to get started implementing AI applications for customer service.
The application of AI for customer service has been traditionally viewed with skepticism and believed to be somewhat bleeding edge as a non-matured and risky investment prior to 2018. While this has been true up to that point in time, this reality is quickly changing for the following major reasons:
AI software applications now have proven the business case for implementation in that the business value delivered vastly exceeds the initial implementation investment costs.
AI application functionality has stabilized to the point of being highly reliable and mainstream.
There are now several common and proven use cases for the application of AI for customer service.
There are now numerous best-of-breed & enterprise-level AI customer service applications to choose from vs. just a very few.
Companies have now caught onto the fact that AI can help improve the delivery of customer service and exceptional customer experiences while simultaneously accomplishing the following wins (Quadruple win!):
Decreasing the overall cost to serve customers.
Decreasing the reliance on expensive human capital to deliver customer service.
Increasing the levels of customer insights and customer intimacy.
Changing the company’s customer service from a reactive model (i.e., upon customer request) to a predictive and proactive model (i.e., upon automation detection of latent customer need).
Here are some of (small sample) the more common use cases for the adoption of AI powered customer service:
AI Powered Social Listening to detect customer issues, trends, brand mentions, etc. and with proactive workflows to help the internal team resolve these issues. This capability allows AI to perform real times scans of 1,000’s of social media posts and media channels including mobile application data to spot social mentions, potential customer service issues, potential product/service defects, brand and/or company mentions, etc. that are trending. The more powerful tools also search and respond to specific customer service inquiries from a multitude of channel sources. Here is an example of a social brand listening dashboard from Brandwatch:
Several durable goods product/manufacturing companies use this function for listening to track trending potential product defect issues like “my front loading xyz brand washing machine keeps growing mold” or “my air bag caused extensive injuries during my crash”, etc. to get ahead of potential disastrous crisis’s and then manage them proactively. Here are a few good articles that point to some of the leading social listening tools for the purpose of providing improved and more proactive customer experiences.
2. AI powered customer account authentication & access via advanced number/voice recognition and biometrics. Instead of having to remember your password for each account, wouldn’t it be great to use your own unique physical identity to securely access your accounts? These physical identity attributes include your unique voice, eye attributes, and fingerprint to name a few. Many banks are quickly adopting this new capability by allowing people to access their accounts simply by speaking their voice into their phone. I first encountered this on my personal funds account and have since seen this at several banks. Here is a great example from HSBC bank as to how AI voice recognition is powering bank account authentication and access. Source: https://ciiom.hsbc.com/ways-to-bank/phone-banking/voice-id/#tab-2
HSBC Customer Voice Account Authentication and Access
3. AI powered customer personalization. There is a growing need to better develop and understand customer profiles and to develop personalized content based on this specific profile. With the help of AI, a deeper understanding of customer’s specific needs and unique profiles is now possible. Here is a great graphic depicting this capability from Unfold Labs:
Unfold Labs AI Driven Customer Personalization Solution
4. AI powered agent matching via AI call classification and intelligent call routing. Based on triaging the reason for the customer to contact the company in #3 above, AI then matches the customer-need to the best available customer service agent (i.e., those who specialize in resolving those specific customer needs). The call is then routed to the best CS agent with a pre-brief on why the customer is contacting them, their interaction and purchase history, any previous known attempts to resolve this or any other issue, etc. Here is a great pictorial of how Genesis Predictive routing accomplishes this along with a high-level explanation of how it works.
AI powered customer service agent interaction response improvement suggestions. Bots will scan customer service agent’s sessions (calls, chat, text, etc.) and then suggest in real-time optimal answers to improve customer satisfaction and to standardize the customer experience. Here is an example of how Digital genius suggests who will respond (agent or Bot) and what the content of the reply should be:
Digital Genius AI Automated Customer Response Engine
6. AI powered customer service and ecommerce chatbots with advanced analytics. Chatbot are being used in increasing numbers by companies due to the simultaneous increase in chatbot customer service capabilities as well as decreased cost of these solutions. Here is a great example of Dom, the Dominos pizza chatbot located on messenger, Facebook, website, etc.
Chatbots are also increasingly being used to automate the ecommerce process for ordering, re-ordering, resupply, etc. Here is a great example from Hewlett Packard being used to service customers ordering or reordering toner cartridges, using the leading Netomi solution for their AI chatbot solution.
AI powered call mining & analysis with systemic improvement recommendations & workflows. These applications are designed to be the powerful engine that analyzes and recommends systemic improvements for agent customer interaction. Think of these applications as the 24×7 call center director’s expert analysis assistant that never sleeps and has the ability to monitor the equivalent of the combined workload of 100+ top expert analysts. Specifically, here is what these solutions like Call Miner from Eureka can accomplish: A) Analyze: Better understand conversations with root-cause analysis. Discover what matters most with omnichannel customer journey mapping that scores performance, tags transcriptions with sentiment and emotion, and delivers customer insights that drive business growth. B) Coach: Create cultures of improvement and persistent optimization. Improve customer experience and agent performance with automated scoring, data-based feedback, and progress monitoring. C) Alert: Real-time guidance. Gain immediate awareness of next-best actions to turn around a negative customer experience and reduce risk for fines or legal action – all driven by powerful AI and ML capabilities. D) Capture: Gather speaker-separated audio. Collect high-fidelity, dual-channel audio for the most accurate conversation analysis, with encryption to ensure the security and an always-open API to integrate easily across platforms. E) Visualize: Compel action with data. See and share the story your data tells with an interactive, easy-to-use interface that makes it easier to drill down into the detail of a single agent or customer, and visually connects the dots between insight and action. F) Redact: Accurately identify and remove sensitive numeric data. Extract the value of conversation analytics without exposing private customer information.
Eureka AI Call Miner Call Analysis and Recommendation Engine
8. AI powered Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). Leveraging Natural Language Analysis and OCR of customer documents like surveys, invoices, orders, reviews, questionnaires, etc. AI is being adapted to analyze text fields in documents to uncover customer insights and trends in order to improve systemically and increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) and service efficiency while reducing costs. There are several tools available in the market as shown on the Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) chart for Infrrd.ai which is one of the leading IDP Software vendors. View this chart here: https://www.infrrd.ai/. Other IDP leaders include Workfusion, Automation Anywhere, IBM, etc. IDP tools enable the automatic scanning of millions of documents and hundreds of millions of lines of document text, characters, numbers, symbols to extract and record key information from these documents and then aggregates and reports on the important customer facts, figures, issues, etc.
If your organization is seeking experienced assistance in lowering your overall cost to serve and increasing CSAT with automated and AI powered customer service, then give me a call or e-mail me at 518-339-5857 or stevenjeffes@gmail.com.
Lastly, this is just one article of over 50 articles I have written on customer strategy, customer experience, CRM, sales excellence, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for numerous Fortune 500 companies. In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 107,000 world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/.
How & why top companies are inverting their organization charts and putting their own customers in charge of customer operations while increasing Customer Diversity & Inclusion (D&I).
How and why this practice also leads to the following ratings:
1) Higher NPS, 2) Increased customer loyalty, 3) Increased customer satisfaction levels & CSAT, 4) Growth in customer zealots that virally promote your brands and company, 5) Increased customer diversity and inclusion (D&I).
The top 10 things you will learn by reading this blog: 1) The spectrum of customer first cultures – find out where you stand on this spectrum. 2) The trends in developing customer insights and customer feedback via customer inclusionary programs and customer onramps. 3) How customer onramps support customer diversity and inclusion (i.e., customer D&I programs). 4) Customer Experience metrics from real companies who have developed and deployed these customer onramps. 5) Creative win-wins to make your customer experience more fun, engaging, educational, rewarding, and inclusive. 6) Innovations in creating customer communities that increase brand loyalty, customer referrals. 7) Market leading companies and their case studies in leveraging customers as the Chief Customer Officer (CCO). 8) The customer organization Inversion and customer empowerment of the future. 9) Quick & easy wins in getting started in the customer inversion that will create customer zealots and a customer experience 2nd to none. 10) The top 10 things you should immediately consider implementing to increase Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) levels, NPS and customer loyalty rates by double digits.
A) The Customer Organizational Inversion-Revolution:
There is an organizational customer inversion-revolution going on and it will only accelerate in the future. What this revolution entails is a complete inversion of the customer decision making structure for companies, one where the customers (vs. the company) are in charge, leading the design of customer strategy and future customer programs. I call it the customer inversion revolution. This inversion looks something like the chart below. We will detail this customer organization inversion-revolution in following sections of this blog.
FROM:
Traditional Customer Service Organization
TO:
Customer Service Organization Inversion-Revolution
Key to implementing this customer organizational inversion-revolution is the development of customer inclusionary “on ramps” (shown in the green symbol above) that allows customers to participate and join the company team as brand partners, advocates, insights experts, advisors, etc. We will cover this more in depth in following sections but hence forward, customer on ramps will be designated by this symbol below:
Customer Inclusionary Onramp
These onramps detailed in the following blog increase customer inclusion by their very nature of creating an array of customer chosen methods for these customers to contribute to and participate in the company’s success. The enhanced diversity is derived from tapping into and leveraging the diverse set of perspectives and needs from existing customers that represent a cross-section of different cultures, races, genders, ages, political views, national origins and religions, etc. so that the best product and/or services are engaged in the marketplace.
Many companies have omitted these onramps in the vetting of new products, services, marketing campaigns, etc. and have ended up offending and alienating their own customers and potential prospects. A great web article points to how companies have fielded expensive and disastrous marketing campaigns and ads in the past only to have to quickly pull them from the market. These campaigns/ads are often a result of corporate myopathy and not taking into account a multitude of diverse perspectives enabled by an array of customer D&I onramps: “7 of the most controversial ads of our time” https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/04/08/7-the-most-controversial-ads-our-time. A major West Coast bank vets all of it marketing concepts through a customer insights group (covered below) before ever releasing the ad and/or campaign into the market. Only after the CIG group (onramp) has weighed in and provided their approval and feedback will this bank to go market with their marketing concepts.
Bottom line, these onramps enable your customers to become brand and company partners/advocates who, through time and continued onramp participation, develop an ever increasing vested interest in the brand(s) and company success.
To be receptive to this change and to get onboard with customer leaders who are in the process of putting customers in charge and implementing the customer organizational inversion-revolution, you must first have a foundational customer centric culture. Companies that are implementing this customer centric change and building customer brand partners include Apple, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Amazon, Marriott, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc. Let us first explore what a customer centric culture is and the spectrum of companies on the customer centric continuum.
B) The Customer First, Customer Centric Culture
To begin with, almost every company claims to be customer centric, that their customers are their most important asset, customer satisfaction is a priority, etc. In practice I have found that there is a spectrum of truth to these public statements ranging from treating customers as a necessary commodity to the other end of the spectrum and treating customers as equal and respected partners and treating customers as a true extension of the company-employee team.
Referring to the chart below, we can see that spectrum of company cultures and their treatment of customers based on these different company customer cultures. To simplify this illustration, I have only included 3 types of companies as follows (along top of chart):
Customer Centric Company Spectrum
“Customers are our most valuable asset”: Companies that truly value their customers and view them as an integral part of their team and company’s success. This type of company also maintains a true customer first culture, policies, standards, etc. (right side of chart, spectrum).
“We Value our Best Customers”: Companies that only strive to cater to their most valuable customers since these customers benefit the company the most (middle of chart, spectrum).
“Customers are a Necessary Commodity”: Companies that interact and ‘deal with’ customers when it benefits them (they pay lip service to slogan ‘customers are their most important asset’), left side of chart, spectrum.
On the left side of the above chart, we have a number of customer facing dimensions including the following:
1) “Customer Input”: How the company views and approaches soliciting customers for insights, input on new programs, detailed feedback (i.e., focus groups, crowdsourcing, etc.), etc. 2) “Customer Complaints”: How the company views and approaches the handling of customers complaints. 3) “Customer Inclusion, Partnership”: How the company approaches being customer inclusive by offering customers ways to partner with the company including online communities, customer co-blogging, customer spotlights, etc. 4) “Customer Engagement”: How the company approaches customer communication and creates a rewarding and engaging customer experience.
Companies located on the far-right side of the chart have the following belief that is not only a slogan, but embodied in the company culture, operations, practices, standards, rewards systems, etc.:
“Customers are our Most Valuable Asset”.
For the first customer dimension on the left side of the chart, “Customer Input”, a comment that I heard from a CEO with this type of culture is as follows:
“We make no (major) decisions (that will impact the customer) without the customer’s direct input”.
For the first customer dimension of “Customer Complaints”, a company CEO said the following,
“Customer complaints are a valuable insight and gift to help us improve, beat our competition”.
You can read the comments for each type of company aligned to each customer dimension. Bottom line, without a foundational customer first mindset, rewards and incentive system and culture, you will be impeded on implementing the effective customer inclusion program with many possible customer onramps detailed in the remainder of this blog.
C) Mainstream Customer Inclusionary Programs & Onramps:
As I mentioned before, once you have established a totally customer centric culture, the 2nd step is to build customer incremental onramps for the customer to become a brand partner and an integral part of the customer team. These onramps invite the customer to participate in a number of activities that will increase customer satisfaction (CSAT), loyalty, NPS, viral referrals, etc. Based on my experience, building these customer inclusionary onramps can net your company huge increases in key customer measures as follows:
1) NPS: +14 to 49 2) Customer Loyalty: + 4% to 36% 3) Customer Positive Sentiment: +12% to 71% 4) Customer Viral Referrals: +11% to 26%
Customer On-Ramp: Customer Advisory Board Program
1) Customer Advisory Board Program:
A Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is the composition of a group of trusted, and generally top customers, who meet on a regular basis (i.e., Quarterly) to advise the company on strategic direction such as the product and/or service roadmap and on upcoming major new programs. Customer advisory boards (a.k.a. trusted customer advisors) can also be a conduit to award top customers for their input, loyalty, spend, referrals, etc.
At a top US automotive company, we invited our top and most open/honest customers to these focus group and advisory events, paid their travel expenses, hosted a nice dinner reception and, at the end of the session, gave them an appreciation gift for their continued participation and loyalty. We also had Platinum private customer events for our top 1% spend customers which were meetings with the EVP and above for open-ended candid feedback & insights gathering discussions.
Customer On-Ramp: Customer Insights Group Program
2) Customer Insights Group Program:
A Customer Insights Group (CIG) is the composition of a wider cross-section of customers or specific customer segment(s) who meet on a regular basis (i.e., weekly, quarterly) to advise the company on new tactical programs, proposed sales campaigns, and marketing concepts, provide feedback on existing program effectiveness, provide customer experience insights based on their own actual experience, etc. Customer insights groups are usually on a voluntary enrollment basis and typically come with some sort of incentive to participate (i.e., participate and be entered in a drawing for a gift certificate).
A top 5 US bank uses these extensively and there is a directive from the CMO that no new marketing programs/materials/etc. will be fielded without first getting the input of this insights group. After implementing this program, marketing effectiveness increased by an overall 27% and the loyalty of the group increased by a whopping 38% as compared to non-CIG participants. When surveyed, 92% of CIG members indicated that they told 26+ about their positive perception of this bank CIG program (survey choices were 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-25 or 26+).
Amazingly enough, 5,000 participants volunteer up to 8 hours of their time per week to participate with another 5,000 eagerly waiting in the wings for their term to participate (participation is limited to a 2-year term).
In addition, by tapping into a diverse customer set, the bank was able to avoid potential marketing disasters by stopping the fielding of proposed marketing materials that were deemed offensive and culturally insensitive by members of the customer insights group.
Customer On-Ramp: Customer Co-blogging & Co-Authoring Program
3) Customer Co-Blogging & Co-Author Program:
Customers telling their story (the voice of the customer) about their success in using your product/service and their customer experiences are 5-7x more credible than coming from the company. In addition, customer authors bring with them an entirely new audience sphere (their friends, connection, relatives, etc.) which will result in a dramatically increasing your website traffic, SEO, referrals, etc. Customers love the opportunity to be spotlighted and write their own story (with helpful company editing of course) when it comes to their experience interacting with the company. Co-blogging can also be about customer stories with a human-interest side to it vs. always being business oriented. Customer co-authored articles can be about topics such as how to gain the most value from the product/service, tips/tricks they have learned, the value they have gained from using same, etc.
We recently used this for a struggling newsletter program that had only penetrated 27% of our customer base. Six months after I implemented the co-blogging program, the newsletter distribution grew to 56% of our customer base and we experienced a simultaneous increase of 17% in new visitor web traffic.
Customer On-Ramp: Top Customer Appreciation & Recognition Program
4) Top Customer Appreciation & Recognition Program:
Remember the movie “Up in the Air” with George Clooney? He was a top traveler who strived to be in the 1% club in terms of air miles flown per year on a particular airline whereby, if he achieved this distinction, he would then be invited to an awards dinner with the CEO of the airline and be showered with a whole host of flying perks after achieving that level of spend/loyalty. Banks, hotels, brokerage firms, etc. all have an array of top customer loyalty rewards programs.
For the very top customers, there are more hands-on personal perks like a dedicated/private concierge assigned to customers like for the American Express Black credit card which can only be obtained by direct invite by American Express (i.e. not via request). A top US air conditioning company I used to work for had top distributorship recognition events for the distributors who sold the highest revenue generating air conditioning units. While focused internally for a company, many salespersons have benefitted from such top achievement loyalty programs by achieving the distinction as top salespersons for their companies and being rewarded with trips, cash, luxury items, cars, etc. as a thank you for their contributions.
Customer On-Ramp: Customer Product/Service Beta Group Program
5) Customer Product/Service Beta Group Program:
Before top companies like Microsoft and Apple ever release a new product into the market, they first try these new products with limited volunteer beta groups. They gather feedback from these beta test groups and then continuously improve the beta product before releasing the product to mitigate potentially disastrous consequences of releasing products with potential flaws that internal testing failed to consider via their test cases.
Customer On-Ramp: Customer Success Program
6) Customer Success (Spotlight) Program:
Does your company have successful customers using your product and/or service? Why not showcase or spotlight this success by detailing what they did, how they did it and the value they were able to derive from doing so? Challenge customers to submit their success stories for selection to spotlight in the newsletter, website, articles, FAQs, consideration for prizes for the top stories, etc. The more customers witness real customer successes, the more other customers will want to figure out how to acquire your product/service to emulate the success of other customers.
Customer On-Ramp: Ambassador Program
7) Customer Ambassador Program:
The Syracuse University (SU) admissions and student success programs received a big boost with the adoption of its Alumni ambassador program whereby successful alumni would volunteer to host regional recruiting events, student college send-off events, and answer questions from interested students in their area. Alumni ambassador groups increased the level of excitement and enthusiasm for new students and families while simultaneously decreasing the levels of anxiety and confusion among students and families.
The entire ecosystem of a customer first, customer inclusive company that has inverted the customer organizational structure and has built a comprehensive set of customer onramps to be able to put customers in charge of customer operations would look something like the following chart:
D) Other Customer Inclusionary Programs & Onramps:
In addition to the more popular and mainstream customer inclusionary programs above, there are several other programs that I have encountered that were effective by increasing the levels or customer loyalty and creating many customer-brand zealots (those who actively and aggressively advocate for the brand/company).
Customer On-Ramp: Creative Council Program
1) Customer Creative Council Program:
Many customers have a wide range of creative talents outside of simply being a customer. A company with a large customer base tends to have customers who are very creative such as artists, craftspeople, etc. A large SaaS software firm I consulted for would solicit creative ideas for new campaign concepts from the creative group among their customer base (and sometimes from their employees) to get the best creative concepts as possible. Many times, customers would develop far more appealing creative concepts than their own dedicated creative talent working within the company. Why not source from the best of the best, including creative customers?! This would allow the company to harness this creativity while allowing creative customers to be spotlighted for their hidden talents and feel valued by the company.
Customer On-Ramp: Talent Showcase Program
2) Customer Talent Showcase Program:
Beyond just being creative, a company with a large customer base typically includes customers who are also poets, book authors, those with interesting and varied professions such as paramedics, volunteer firefighters, food bank volunteers, world travelers, iron men or women, triathletes, extreme cyclists, paragliders, scuba divers, treasure hunters, etc. Many companies I have worked with have conducted customer showcases that highlight the interesting lives of their customer base beyond merely being a customer. These personal story showcases add a human-interest side to the customer base and tend to make customers feel more connected to and understood-appreciated by the company.
Are you planning on creating a customer journey map and want to know what the important steps and metrics are in that journey? Why not invite the customer to join in on these development sessions to provide the team with some insights, feedback, important items to consider? I have used this approach quite effectively and have developed far more qualitative customer journeys as a result. I used this approach to develop a brand new and innovative customer journey map I have labeled “The Quantifiable Customer Journey Map”. Refer to my previous blog article for insights here: https://bit.ly/3bvPRal
The Quantifiable Customer Journey Map
Bottom line, without the customer’s input, the high quality achieved in the final customer journey map would have been much more difficult and time consuming to achieve.
Customer Diversity & Inclusion Council
4) Customer Diversity & Inclusion Council:
A few companies I have worked with in the past have managed and conducted employee diversity councils whereby employees would provide their perspective on how the company can be more diverse, culturally sensitive, and overall inclusive.
A few companies have taken this further and included their own customers into the diversity council along with their employees. In this manner, the company ensures that it is considering the widest possible perspective on D&I and not falling victim to company group think.
Regardless of whether you include a formal customer diversity council, what all the above illustrated customer onramps do in essence is help build a company culture that supports customer diversity and inclusion (D&I) as follows:
1) Enables the assembling of a diverse set of perspectives, based on unique and diverse set of customer experiences, needs, etc. 2) Provides diverse feedback on potential new customer programs, marketing, etc. that might be perceived as offensive and discriminatory to certain customer groups. 3) Enables customers to showcase their diverse backgrounds, talents, interests, viewpoints. 4) Enables a voice of the customer cultivation that represents the full cross section of diverse customers. 5) Enables the delivery of the best of the best solutions by allowing feedback on proposed programs from a wide and diverse set of customers.
If your organization is seeking experienced assistance in creating these customer onramps and a more diverse and inclusive and customer first organization where customers are leveraged to assist the insights Chief Customer Officer (CCO) and are transitioned to full brand-partners/advocates/participants/etc., then give me a call or e-mail me at 518-339-5857 or stevenjeffes@gmail.com. I am also a Certified CultureTalk (https://culturetalk.com/) consultant that can help you develop and/or improve a customer-oriented, customer first culture.
Steven Jeffes, Certified CultureTalk Consultant
Lastly, this is just one article of over 50 articles I have written on customer strategy, customer experience, CRM, sales excellence, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for numerous Fortune 500 companies. In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 107,000 world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/ .
