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Predictions for 2012

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As a Customer Experience professional, I am more accustomed to reading predictions than making them! (Which reminds me of some sage advice: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."). But after an exciting year of writing, presenting, and participating in compelling discussions with industry leaders, I remain passionate and committed to the field of customer experience.

So, while this may be called a “prediction list,” it is – in reality – as much a wish list for how I would like to see the customer-centric focus expand. My wish is for improved experience for customers everywhere, as well as the continued growth and maturation of the customer experience professional community.

Bring it on, 2012!

1. Customer Experience leadership will become a necessity for competitive businesses.
   
   A growing number of organizations understand the value of the culture change required to become a customer-centric organization. Such firms have responded by increasing the investment in retaining their customer base and by reallocating funds previously dedicated to pursuing new customers. For others, the customer experience program is a nice-to-have or “flavor of the month” program that receives periodic attention and dollars from the company’s executive team – but little true nurturing or targeted expansion.
   
   And you certainly don’t have to look far to see the business results (or lack thereof) when leaders turn a deaf ear to their customers. The New York Times recently published an article about the Worst CEOs of 2011. Three of the five CEOs were “highlighted” in the article because they outright ignored customer feedback and suggestions.

   Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion (RIM) ignored customer preferences for iPhone and Android, not recognizing – maybe even ignoring – the blowing winds of change. Add to that the disastrous (and numerous) Blackberry outages, and the un-customer friendly response to said outages, and you come up with erosion of over 70% of shareholder value (ouch!).
   
   Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, rounds out the list of challenged CEOs who suffered by ignoring customers. Hastings chose to increase prices, make it more difficult for customers to do business with Netflix. Then he, too, responded poorly when customers voted with their feet (and their subscriptions). In what seems to be the magic number for failure, Netflix stock is down almost 70%.
   
   With the obvious necessity of Customer Experience leadership, the field itself will feel tremendous pressure to mature in 2012. According to the 2011 Beyond Philosophy Global Customer Experience Management Survey, 78% of CE Executives were deployed having no direct background in the practice. Additionally, many Customer Experience programs are simply re-branded CRM programs. The result is limited progress for those organizations – and the industry.
   
   The formation of Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) in mid-2011 was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak horizon for customer experience professionals. Founded by industry experts, Bruce Temkin and Jeanne Bliss, the organization is dedicated to the advancement of customer experience management practices. Gaining over 1000 members within the first months of existence is evidence of the commitment many CE professionals have to rise to the challenge of maturing the field.
   
   We think it’s about time – maybe even long overdue – because no one wants to be the Netflix or RIM of 2012.
   
   

2. Big data becomes actionable.
   
   While many organizations recognize the importance of engaging customers, most find it difficult to evaluate interactions across surveys, phone calls, Web chat, emails, and social media. Typically, gathering customer feedback mirrors how an organization is structured. Either each business unit gathers information for their own use via their own methodologies – stranding business-critical information in silos – or all gathered information flows into a data warehouse, which dooms it to an uncertain (and often delayed) value to the organization.
   
   Formal Customer Experience programs bring some order to the chaos by developing the in-depth process of capturing a customer's expectations, preferences, and experiences – with the goal of linking them to business metrics. But there is still the challenge of what to do with all that data. To be effective in their roles in 2012 and beyond, CE professionals will demand a more intimate connection between business data and the people who need to understand it. They will look for an approachable solution wherein data analysis is conducted – by business stakeholders – wherever that data resides.
   
   Internally, CE programs will strongly align with IT, Market Research, and the business to provide effective – and timely – insights. Market Research will be a particularly important partner as collection and analysis of the data is designed.
   
   In 2012, vendors will race to provide the solution that will reduce the friction in data analysis, minimizing the barriers between people and their data. Like Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics^™, these programs will capture customer feedback across multiple channels, interpret it in the context of business objectives, and act upon it to drive change – change that results in improved performance and customer experiences. A single platform will conduct email, mobile, and IVR surveys; evaluate social media; harvest Web site visits; collaborate with online communities; mine customer calls; and analyze email, chat, and free form survey responses.
   
   
3. Loyalty metrics will mature by becoming more relevant, actionable, and timely.
   
   In his book, The Loyalty Effect, Fred Reichheld declared that a 5% improvement in customer retention rates will yield between a 20-100% increase in profits across a wide range of industries. Since loyalty is a strong driver to customer retention, we at Vovici have spent the past years debating which survey question best measures that loyalty.
   
   With access to better solutions that collect and analyze cross-channel data, organizations in 2012 will move beyond what question is best and start building unique loyalty metrics using more than survey feedback. These metrics will be available on a real-time basis, using interactive reports and dashboards that are tremendously flexible and customizable for each level of the organization.
   
   While traditional customer feedback will continue to provide the foundation, organizations will add results from other customer interactions to provide a more sensitive measure of loyalty in 2012. Social media metrics, Voice of the Customer through the Employee (VOCE), and Voice of the Employee (VOE) programs will all come together to provide a new metric – or set of metrics – for the organization.
   
   These new metrics will be unique for organizations, which means that while industry-wide measures will continue to be used for benchmarking purposes, competitive organizations will have unique measures enabling them to be more agile when it comes to improving business processes and transforming their culture.

Which of these predictions will turn out to be correct? That will only be revealed with the passage of time. But I know one thing for sure – it is an extremely exciting time to be part of the Customer Experience profession! 2012 will prove to be a pivotal year for the profession, and for organizations that choose to use customer experience as a differentiator!