There’s a motto in the eCommerce world that says, “customer is king.” Today, these customers have many avenues when it comes to shopping, whether it’s a brick-and-mortar store or an online retailer. That means that, more than ever, it’s important to stay on top of trends. So, let’s take a look at customer experience resources that can help, from the written page to the listening podcasts.
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What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience, or CX, involves everything from your customer’s first interaction with your company to their last. It’s a series of touchpoints, as follows:
- Interacting with your website
- Reacting to your advertising
- Speaking with customer service
- Placing an order
- Shipping and delivery
- Quality of product
- Follow-up support/returns
Want a really good definition of CX? We love this description from Maggie Young, a Customer Experience Evangelist.
“CX is in many ways similar to a good marriage or partnership: good early experience has a great influence on relationships, and each interaction is either a debit or credit.”
Importance of Customer Experience
Delivering a good customer experience is essential. Today, with so many options for customers, failure to create a good CX could make or break your company. In fact, the majority of companies are now competing on customer experience instead of just on product and price. Because of this, Gartner reports that almost 75% of organizations are spending more money on technologies that could help improve their customer experience. So, if you’re not investing in ways to up your CX game, your company could suffer.
25 Great Customer Experience Resources for CX
Customer Experience Books
Like a good read? These books can help you up your game when it comes to delivering a good – make that excellent – customer experience. Not a fan of reading? Most are available as audiobooks!
1. Customer Experience for Dummies
This book, one of the hundreds in the “Dummies” collection, offers friendly, practical, and easy-to-implement solutions for incorporating customer engagement into your business plans. It shows you simple ways to increase the CX and generate sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability, from optimizing social media to creating more loyal customers through positive reviews.
2. The Cult of the Customer
In today’s competitive business climate, you can’t just satisfy your customers, you have to give them experiences that they won’t forget, and author Shep Hyken understands this. In his book, he includes dozens of examples of companies that have designed and executed a strategy to create a customer-focused culture, shifting from “uncertainty” to “amazement” and turning customers into brand advocates.
3. Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers
Author Jay Baer, a CX and marketing expert whose motto is “Haters are not your problem, ignoring them is,” wrote this book to help companies improve their CX by embracing “haters.” In the book, he shares tips for how to deal with negativity and turn it into positive outcomes. Find book learning to be a bore? No worries – Baer’s humorous style of writing and his anecdotes will also keep you entertained!
4. Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the Customer in Customer Experience
This guide is all about putting the customer at the center of everything your business does. Author Annette Franz shows how to do this by incorporating the customers’ voice into meetings, decisions, processes, and designs using three approaches: surveys and data, personas, and journey mapping. With an understanding of these, Franz explains how they can be used to better understand needs, goals, and jobs to be done.
5. The Experience Economy
From Apple to Disney, LEGO to Starbucks, some companies embrace the benefits of the “experience economy” and are reaping the rewards. This book highlights why experience is a critical link between a company and its customers, especially in today’s increasingly distractible (and highly competitive) world. The book explores how savvy companies excel by offering compelling experiences for their customers, resulting in increased customer loyalty and a better bottom line.
6. Would You Do That to Your Mother?
She’s worked in the customer experience realm for Lands’ End, Allstate, Coldwell Banker, Mazda, and Microsoft. Now, Jeanne Bliss is sharing her experiences with you! Her latest book shows why “Make Mom Proud” companies outperform the competition, providing a five-step plan for evaluating current behaviors and implementing culture transformation. For proof of the power of good CX, Bliss includes 32 case studies and examples from more than 85 companies!
Customer Experience Online Publications
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7. Forrester
You’re probably familiar with Forrester, but it helps to follow them online! They provide a lot of insight that business and technology leaders can use to improve their CX and accelerate growth. Forrester aims to empower leaders to put the customer at the center of everything they do. They also understand that becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change, and they are ready to shape and guide the way you navigate today’s marketplace.
8. Customer Experience Matters
Bruce Temkin wants to help brands improve business results by engaging the hearts and minds of their customers, employees, and partners! He focuses on Experience Management, or XM, with the goal for companies to examine their strategy, culture, customer service, branding, and leadership practices to see what improvements can be made to boost their current CX.
9. Customer Bliss
She’s back! Another book from the “Godmother of Customer Experience,” Jeanne Bliss shows you how to treat customers with dignity and respect to earn their business and keep them coming back. She helps brands understand how they want to be remembered and then guides them to taking actions and demonstrating behaviors to show customers how much they’re valued.
10. Oracle CX
This website is loaded with content to help you improve your CX. Check out some of their top stories, such as “Improvements to Humanize Customer Experience” and “Improving CX with AI.”
11. The Michelli Experience
Dr. Joseph Michelli wants to teach brands how to consistently deliver memorable, profitable, and extraordinary customer experiences. Along with keynote and workshop presentations, he hosts a robust blog that shares insight and experience drawn from his work with companies like Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, UCLA Health Systems, and more.
12. The Fulfillment Lab
What does a fulfillment company have to do with the customer experience? Plenty! This company, which invented the concept of fulfillment marketing, provides a great CX by giving eCommerce retailers a way to customize their packaging. Great packaging not only helps with branding, but it can also lead to viral unboxing videos (1 in 5 consumers watch them).
13. Gartner
According to Gartner, more than 70% of CX leaders struggle to design projects that increase customer loyalty and achieve results. Their research shows that by improving the product experience, and more specifically, by enabling customers to self-affirm their purchase decisions, CX teams can build lasting customer loyalty.
Customer-Focused Podcasts
Like to learn and listen on the go? There are many CX podcasts you can listen to while commuting to work, relaxing with a morning cup of coffee, or even working out at the gym. Here are a few of our faves!
14. The Modern Customer
On this podcast, CX expert and Forbes contributor, Blake Morgan, interviews top executives from companies like Zappos who leverage technology and invest in teams to build customer-centric businesses that stand out from competitors. The podcast covers a wide range of issues, with recent recordings such as “The Future of Customer Service is Conversational” and “3 Crucial CX Metrics.”
15. The CX Leader
Host Steve Walker welcomes various guests to discuss taking CX to the next level. The most recent podcast is all about “The Hyper-Personalized Experience,” however there is much more to listen to here! The series backlog houses topics such as “The ROI of CX,” “Best Practices in CX,” and “Experience Management 101.”
16. The C-X Files
They’re no Mulder and Scully, but C-X Files hosts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan are serious CX experts. Each week, they speak to leading analysts, thinkers, and practitioners focused on managing the customer experience. In each episode, Mark and Peter talk to their guests about the future of CX, the important trends, and what customers really expect from brands today.
17. Crack the Customer Code
Many of today’s business leaders struggle with just how to deliver an exceptional customer experience to create brand loyalty. Podcast hosts Adam and Jeannie have been focused on what makes a great CX for more than 25 years and are ready to share what they’ve learned and have fun doing it! In addition, they also interview Fortune 500 executives, authors, retail executives, marketing gurus, and entrepreneurs making things happen.
CX Webinars
18. Heart of the Customer
This CX consultancy firm empowers companies to optimize journeys and create business value through customer-focused transformation. It’s founded by Jim Tincher, a nationally recognized customer experience expert, author, trainer, and keynote speaker. Webinars available on the site cover topics such as “5 Questions to Answer for Customer Journey Mapping Success” and “CX for Skeptics: Showing the ROI of CX.” As a bonus, you’ll also find whitepapers and case studies on CX.
19. CX Network
CX Network provides regular customer experience webinars and CX Network LIVE virtual events on CX learnings, case studies, best practices, and more. Once you join the site, you can explore live and on-demand webinars for global customer experience leaders to learn, network, and engage with others in the community from the comfort of your home or office.
20. CXPA
CXPA webinars are designed to help CX professionals further their knowledge and understanding of the customer experience. Webinars feature CX experts who provide practical advice, proven techniques, and insight. There are many on-demand webinars available (“Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture,” “Customer Experience Strategy”) and more live ones to come.
Customer Experience Networking
Networking is a great way to learn from the successes and failures of other companies trying to improve their customer experience. You can discuss challenges, share ideas, and find solutions together!
21. LinkedIn
A lot of people think of LinkedIn as a place to job search and post resumes, or talent search and post jobs. However, there are also a lot of groups to join that are focused on the customer experience. This is a great way to network and learn from others in your industry.
Some popular customer experience networking groups include:
- Advanced Customer Experience Strategy (ACES): A group of seasoned customer experience experts who engage in the study of CX strategies.
- Building the Customer-Centric Organization: A group focused on customer experience management, customer-centric process design, and more.
- Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management: A wide-ranging forum that delves into customer experience from a B2B perspective.
- Customer Experience Leaders: Advice and insights from experts who are executing customer experience on a daily basis.
- Customer Experience Professionals: This group offers lots of case studies and varying points of view from a large group of customer experience experts.
22. Customer Experience Meetups
Meetup is a service used to organize online groups for in-person or virtual events for similarly-minded people. There are currently almost 170,000 CX members from across the globe, and about 350 groups dedicated to CX topics. Find out what’s happening in Customer Experience Meetup groups around the world and start meeting up with the ones near you to network, learn, and share experiences.
23. Customer Experience Conferences
Customer experience conferences were largely put on hold in 2020 due to the pandemic, or they went virtual. Now, many conferences are back on, and there is a variety of them to choose from, based on location and topics! CX experts Lumoa have provided a list of all 2021 CX conferences which you can check out here.
24. CX Network
This site, providing “customer experience inspiration and insight,” was established in 2012 to support professionals working to close the CX gap by offering content that guides users towards revolutionizing the customer journey. Senior customer experience pros and marketers from around the globe become members of the CX Network to access thought leadership primed to spark creativity and project breakthroughs.
CX Online Surveys
25. SurveyLegend
This is where we come in. As mentioned in many of the resources above, surveying your customers or potential customers is a great way to get feedback. Check out these stats:
- Companies that lead in customer experience outperform others by nearly 80%.
- 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.
- 73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors.
You can read more about the importance of CX surveys in our blog, 5 Reasons to Conduct a Customer Experience Survey + 20 Survey Questions.
Conclusion
A good customer experience is crucial, whether it’s in-store or online. Therefore, if today’s customers know that if they’re not treated right, they can find a competitor that will make up for it. The best way to gauge your own CX is with an online survey. So, are you ready to get started?
SurveyLegend will help you measure customer experience, often by monitoring the Net Promoter Score®, or NPS®. According to the official Net Promoter website, “NPS measures customer experience and predicts business growth. This proven metric transformed the business world and now provides the core measurement for customer experience management programs the world around.” So, let’s get started!
Have any great CX resources of your own that we may have missed? We’d love to include them next time, just let us know in the comments!
Create your free online survey, form, or poll now!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
It is a marketing strategy and good business decision in these competitive times. It is designed to always put the needs of the customer first.
A customer experience survey asks participants to rate every step in their buying journey, from the initial interaction with an ad to receiving the final product.
There are countless resources available as described in this blog (books, podcasts, webinars, etc) and SurveyLegend is always happy to help!
