This story is a version of a post published here.
No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.
~ Chris Brogan.
Customer experience has gained a certain hype in the last 10 years. Just by looking at Google Search trend for the term ‘customer experience’, you could see that it has become one of the business buzzwords of recent times.
Image Source: Google Trends
With this growth in popularity of customer experience, organisations have also realised the importance of maintaining and exceeding their customers’ experience if they want to survive and grow in today’s competitive world. It has inevitably lead companies to look out for ideas, expertise, tips, and tricks to manage and improve customer experience. Thankfully, there are a ton of customer experience blogs from subject matter experts, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators who have ‘been there, done that’ and are happy to share their knowledge. Blogging has become a medium for these experts to share their invaluable experiences and ideas with those in need. But how do you know which one to follow!?
There are millions of blogs that are offering insights on how to manage and improve customer experience – ranging from measuring customer satisfaction, improving customer service, and enhancing customer engagement, to empowering employees to deliver excellent customer experience. We have managed to filter out the 20 best blogs that businesses must follow to keep abreast with the latest in this new management idea:
1. PeopleMetrics Blog
Image Source: PeopleMetrics Blog
This ‘Customer Experience Knowledge Blog’ has immense information on how to improve customer experience and also provides inputs on how to create a customer-centric culture for your business. They have been blogging for almost 15 years now!
2. Shep Hyken’s Customer Support Blog
Image Source: Shep Hyken’s Customer Service Blog
Shep is a ‘Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author’; he shares his knowledge on topics ranging from customer care, reliability, service enhancements and more. His articles provide the much needed self help philosophies that can be implemented off the shelf to immediately enhance customer service and customer experience. The best part to look for when you are on Shep’s blog is the “Amazing Business Radio”, which is a weekly podcast where he hosts a discussion with experts in brand building, customer service, business etc.
3. Michel Falcon’s Customer Experience Blog
Image Source: Michel Falcon’s Customer Experience Blog
Here is a blog that is written by an individual who has worked as a call center employee and went on to become one of the most engaging customer experience speakers. Having consulted some of the major brands in the industry, Michel’s blogs provide practical inputs on changing an organisation’s existing people practices and providing awesome employee experience that would convert to amazing customer experiences.
4. Bill Quiseng’s Customer Service Blog
Image Source: Bill Quiseng’s Customer Service Blog
Bill has 30 years of experience that he uses to provide rich and innovative content on delivering world’s best customer experience, and how to influence social customer service. He is a speaker, blogger and also an award winning writer in the field of customer service and customer-centric leadership.
5. Micah Solomon’s Customer Experience Blog
Image Source: Micah Solomon Customer Experience Blog
The financial post has named him the ‘New Guru of Customer Service Excellence’. His blogs focus on providing companies with 21st century service and experience realities. His take on customer service and the importance of people and technology is an essential component for companies looking to transform their experiences with their clients.
6. Customer Bliss
Image Source: Customer Bliss
Jean Bliss is the founder of CustomerBliss – a website of formulas for improving customer experiences, and co-founder of ‘The Customer Experience Professionals Association’. Author of the bestselling book – Chief Customer Officer 2.0, Jean’s blog provides practical and amazing techniques for companies to move towards customer centricity and building the leadership position of Chief Customer Officer.
7. Net Promoter System-Loyalty Blog
Image Source: Net Promoter System-Loyalty Blog
The Loyalty Blog is authored by the two founders of Net Promoter System – Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey. Fred is a Fellow at Bain and founder of Bain and Company’s Loyalty Practice and Rob is is the Global Head of the Loyalty Practice. From their exhaustive industry experience, both Fred and Rob share practical knowledge on how to make NPS® work for you. The loyalty blog is a great place for companies looking to investing in building customer and employee loyalty.
8. Customer Think
Image Source: Customer Think
This is probably the biggest and busiest global online community of customer experience enthusiasts. With close to 100k visitors everyday, Customer Think probably offers something for everyone. It is a platform that publishes and curates blogs from global customer centricity thought leaders, a must visit for anyone looking for comprehensive information on building customer centric organisation.
9. Customer Experience Matters
Image Source: Customer Experience Matters
This blog is pioneered by Bruce Temkin, who is the founder of Temkin Group, a customer experience consulting firm. It provides rich insight on employee engagement, voice of customer and more.
10. CX Journey – Annette Franz’s Customer Experience Blog
Image Source: CX Journey
Annette’s experience includes leading consulting services to help improve customer and employee experiences. Her blog focuses on making companies understand the importance of employee engagement and experience. She provides awesome techniques to becoming a fair and forward thinking leader to the employees. Most importantly, as the blog’s name suggests, CX Journey focuses on creating an ultimate customer experience not just at specific touch-points but throughout the customer’s journey – if you are looking for great content on customer journey mapping, look no further!
11. ClearAction CX
Image Source: Clear Action CX
A seasoned customer experience leader, Lynn Hunsaker provides customer experience management inputs with her expert guidance along with key metrics, benchmarking and best practices. The blog assures that your business would be more of preferred, not just referred.
12. Beyond Philosophy
Image Source: Beyond Philosophy
One of the most active contributor to customer experience best practices since 2002, Beyond Philosophy showcases business news but with the customer experience lens. It also communicates innovative ideas on persuasion, marketing and other finer and peripheral aspects of working on improving customer experience.
13. Freshdesk Thoughts
Image Source: Freshdesk Thoughts
Freshdesk is the winner of the ‘Microsoft BizSpark Startup Challenge’ held in June 2011. Also referred to as a goldmine of customer support knowledge by some, Freshdesk’s blog, also called Freshdesk Thoughts, carries various content about customer care, customer service, and customer support. The blogs are well written and kept simple at the same time. It provides amazingly thought out concepts on customer service and support management specially for online software businesses.
14. 360 Connext
Image Source: 360 Connext
If you are having major problems managing your customer experience, then 360 Connext will provide for valuable info on how to overcome the many obstacles and get it right. They have content with regards to customer journey, social customer service, changing customer experience and more.
15. Smith Consultancy – CX Talk
Image Source: Smith and Company CX Talk
Several authors on this blog provide innovative insights on customer experience; their approach is unique in the sense that it is simple, practical and engaging. This blog has been navigating businesses and brands for almost fourteen years.
16. Ian Golding
Image Source: Ian Golding’s Blog
Probably the best storyteller I have come across. Head to Ian’s customer experience blog if you wish to learn about customer experience through personal stories and anecdotes. Ian’s a customer experience expert, speaker, and consultant and is on the field all the time helping his clients deliver an exceptional customer experience.
17. Adrian Swinscoe
Image Source: Adrian Swinscoe Blog
The grand daddy of all customer experience blogs! For almost two decades now Adrian Swinscoe has been sharing his invaluable customer experience knowledge through this blog. The website offers exceptional as well as not-so-great examples of customer service along with tips to understand the customer base.
18. CXPert Blog
Image Source: CXPert Blog
Last but definitely not the least, CXPert is the one-stop shop for everything Customer Experience. They frequently publish insightful and thought provoking customer experience blogs. One of the leading customer experience consulting company, CXPert also brings over 20 years of experience in helping companies build outstanding customer service that delivers nothing short of the WOW customer experience.
Finally, to necessitate concepts on retaining your customers, building brand loyalty, maximizing profits and the overall need to deliver consistent customer experience you can always follow our many updates at customerguru.in.
Digital customer experience is the essence of any successful marketing strategy,
this article really gave me a clear overview of how and what is digital transformation and how exactly can companies make sure they implement it in their day-to-day strategy to create a much better cx relationship hence a perfect way to stand alone in a competitive market.
Looking forward to more of such amazing articles.