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Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences.

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Ready, Set, Action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:28

Hi everyone! Welcome to a special episode of the Experience Action Podcast. I'm Jeannie Walters and let me just say I can't believe we're already at episode 99. Not only are we at episode 99, but it's the end of another year. This is a great time, as a customer experience leader, to really reflect on where you've been this year and what could you do differently next year and how can you have an even greater impact in 2025. So I want to give you five questions today. These are the questions that we use with our clients in what we call a reflection period. We want you to really reflect on what is the progress you've made, not only so you can celebrate it, but also so you can learn from it. As customer experience leaders, there is always pressure on us. We always have to prove that this is worth the investment, that we are speaking the language of our leaders, that we are showing that not only is this the right thing to do, but it's the right thing to do for business. So let's talk about it. So, first of all, let's talk about these five questions. The first one I want you to consider is what was the top priority for our customer experience goals? Did we meet that priority? Did we actually achieve what we set out to do? And then, the most important part, why or why not? Now, in this exploration, I want you to be really careful about something. Don't just say, well, we said we were going to achieve an NPS of 70 plus and we did, because, remember, net promoter score, customer satisfaction, all of those customer experience measurements, those are feedback measurements. Those tell us something. They are indicators, they are metrics, but they are not actually outcomes for the business. So we need to look at what did our improvement in customer experience do for the business? What were our goals there? And if you're having an aha moment which I've seen plenty of leaders do here saying, gosh, I don't know, I don't know what our top goal was, what our top priority was, then you know what. That's a good indicator too. That's a good chance to reflect and think about how can we make better goals next year. How can we get crystal clear on the number one priority as a customer experience leader that we want to achieve? So that's your first one what was our top priority and did we actually achieve that? Did we make the progress we were looking for? Why or why not? All right.

Jeannie Walters: 3:08

Question number two: what was the best thing we heard from customers? Now, this is really where I like to get into what is it that makes what we do meaningful for the people that we serve. So this is why I like to get a little tactical, a little tangible here, because if we just say things like, well, we achieved a net promoter score of 70 plus and we achieved customer satisfaction rate of 85 plus and all of that, that's great, but those are still numbers. Numbers don't fuel the soul and the imagination, quite like stories do.

Jeannie Walters: 3:40

When we get into really what we heard from customers, this is where we can lean into our storytelling techniques. We can say, okay, what was it that made them give us that feedback? What did they actually say to us? Here's what I want you to really listen for. So this is where you can go into your qualitative feedback. Maybe sentiment analysis, lean into the AI, if you have have it, to really help you understand what customers really said over and over again. Or maybe there's that one customer or one story that really stuck with you this year. What I want you to listen for are did they mention specific employees? Did they mention specific processes? Did they react positively to an improvement that was made? Did you create a meaningful moment in their journey? Those are the types of things I want you to not only listen for, but celebrate and then share those throughout your organization. Once you really zero in on what they're saying about your organization, that also gives you an idea of where to maybe over-invest next time. Remember, we want to over-invest in positive moments because we know that negative moments will happen and we, of course, have to address those. But if we can look for ways to create more positive moments, that actually builds trust with our customers. So if you identify what made it meaningful, what made it special, that can help you look for that throughout the journey so that you can overinvest where it matters the most.

Jeannie Walters: 5:13

All right, ready for question three. Question three: what was the best business outcome that we achieved due to our efforts in customer experience? Now, remember I talked about priorities before, as your number one. Maybe the priority was really well, we need to improve net promoter score or we need to improve customer churn rate. So yay, we did it.

Jeannie Walters: 5:35

What I want us to look at for this one is what did our efforts do to provide the best business outcome? So, for example, maybe you made some great improvements to your customer journey. You were able to reduce the time between the first purchase and multiple purchases, maybe you were able to achieve a higher customer retention rate, maybe you got more share of wallet from your customers. All of those things are really important. But what do all of those things do? Well, they increase revenue, they might decrease expenses or, better yet, they might do both. So that's the part that I want you to really look at what did this really do for the business? How did our efforts really contribute to the success of our organization from top to bottom? This is where you might have to think about connecting dots a little bit more. But again, if you have that aha moment and you think about gosh, I don't know, I don't know how to connect our customer experience efforts to our business outcomes, then that's an insight, that's a learning for you to address in 2025.

Jeannie Walters: 6:42

Make sure that you are developing your goals, your priorities, your efforts all around business outcomes, and get real about what those are. Now if you have things to celebrate, it's time to really address that too. So using these questions can help you both reflect on what's happened and prepare for what's next and help you really tell those around you here's what customer experience does for the business. So this is a really important one to get real about. And then number four this one's a little trickier, but it's important.

Jeannie Walters: 7:17

What was the worst thing we heard from customers? Get real about it. How did we earn this criticism? Once you put it into that context, it helps you open your mind to realize that, yes, things will happen. People don't often complain just to complain. They are talking about something that happened to them personally. So think about how did we disrupt their day, how did we disappoint them and not meet their expectations? Really get into why it happened and then ask did we do anything already to change this? Did we do anything to make sure this doesn't happen for the future customers? This is another one to get really honest about. Make sure that you are asking these hard questions and sharing the hard truths. Sometimes I like to say that our job in customer experience is about sharing those hard truths, and so that also applies to ourselves. When we reflect. We have to be honest here. How did we earn customers' criticism? And if you can get really honest about that and understand the why, then you have the tools to improve it. You have the tools to do something about it, and that's where it can really lead to those business outcomes, those successes that we talked about. So ask yourself what was the worst thing we heard from customers and how did we earn that criticism?

Jeannie Walters: 8:50

Complaints are a warning red flag. They are a gift and we have to look at it that way. Not always easy, I know, but there are times we have to read it, we have to take it in, we have to listen to the customer, take that big, deep breath and realize that, just like every part of delivering on the customer experience, this is a team effort. So don't take that complaint on all by yourself. Think about what are the ways that we as an organization maybe need to communicate better, maybe need to improve our internal processes, maybe need to hire differently in order to make sure that we can really deliver for our customers. There are reasons we earn those complaints. Let's get real about it and let's do something about it. And then, number five: did we improve or change the customer's journey for the better? I'm going to say that again. Did we improve or change the customer's journey for the better?

Jeannie Walters: 9:54

Now, you notice here, this is not a how did we question. This is a simple yes or no. Did we or did we not? The reason I like this question is because there are times where we put in a lot of effort and work and yet, at the end of the day, we can't point to those improvements. We can't say, wow, this is what we did.

Jeannie Walters: 10:15

So, if this question is hard to answer, one of your goals for 2025 needs to be about tracking what are those improvements and what do they do. Because, at the end of the year, we all need to justify why we're here. We all need to say, yes, I earned my salary and my bonuses and my benefits and all of those things, and I deserve to be in this role because because look at all the improvements that we made. Look at what we did as an organization, doing not just the right thing for our customers, our employees and our organization, but the right thing for our business.

Jeannie Walters: 10:57

So, if you can't answer this question, or if you are struggling with answering yes, that's another indicator for you for where you need to put your focus on customer experience in 2025. So the follow up here is, of course, if we did, what happened? If we didn't, why not. Really reflect here on what could you do within your organization to make more changes for the better? You all work so hard and I know that it is really challenging to take a step back, especially this busy time of year, and think about these questions, but we have found that it can be so valuable to just take a half hour, take a half day, take a few minutes, jot some things down, get those ideas flowing and then ask yourself how can you have a bigger impact in 2025?

Jeannie Walters: 11:50

I have seen the extraordinary things that happen when we invest in the right places, when we make sure that we're spending our time and our resources and our energy really improving the customer journey for the right reasons.

Jeannie Walters: 12:06

These questions, I hope, can give you the tools to really reflect and understand and move forward with an intention of a proactive, positive experience that drives business results, and that's what it's all about. So thank you so much for being on this journey with us for the 99 episodes so far. We love your questions, as always. So please leave me a voicemail at askjeannievip and I cannot wait to talk to you again in 2025. We're taking a few weeks off for the holidays. I hope you enjoy the time with your family, your friends and just reflection time so that we can all hit the ground running next year and make sure that we have an incredible 2025 full of customer experience improvements. Thank you so much for all you do. Happy New Year, thanks again. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more. And please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.