Howard Lax
Howard Lax, Ph.D.
Supporting better informed decision making with technology, research and strategy, Howard is Director, Experience Management Strategy at VistaXM. With a focus on CX/VoC/NPS, Employee Engagement and emotion analytics, Howard's domain is the application of marketing information and SaaS platforms to solve business problems and activating CX programs to drive business objectives.
The User Experience & Customer Loyalty Mobius Strip
Every user interaction is an opportunity to deliver on the brand promise, to strengthen the planks of the customer relationship. And with every interaction...
The ROI of CX (RoCX)
If you want your CX efforts to be taken seriously at budget time, in the C-Suite, or the Boardroom, you must be able to...
The Human Experience = Human Economics: CX and EX in the Real World
Homo Economicus – the characterization of people as rationally guided wealth-maximizing missiles in their behavior -- never really was more than a textbook stick...
The Lake Wobegon Effect: Employee Performance and Customer Experience
“Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Those closing words from...
Making CX Cexy
Process improvements in the call center, easier online search facilities, more efficient order fulfillment, easier to navigate stores, more helpful staff. None of these...
18+ Questions To Assess Your Firm’s “CXness”
References to Customer Experience are everywhere, from annual reports and analyst calls to job descriptions and performance appraisals to business plans and operating procedures....
Emotions, Memories, and the Customer Experience
If you don’t remember an experience, did it really happen? Sure, lots of things happen to us that we don’t remember. If you don’t...
The Fundamentals of the Science of Customer Experience
Customer Experience is a science. CX isn’t a “hard” science like chemistry or physics because people don’t behave like chemicals or atomic particles. But...
Integrating Employee and Customer Experience Data: Blueprint for a Business Imperative
The overwhelming majority of companies talk about connecting EX (Employee Experience) and CX (Customer Experience), but they are not integrating their employee and customer...
Leading from the Front on CX: A Legend and a Challenge
Talk, as they say, is cheap. You can’t pick up an annual report or listen to an analyst call without hearing how companies profess...
Raising the Bar: Getting Aggressive on CX
Z-Z-Z . . . That is the sound of many CX programs. Capture scores. Report scores. Celebrate or commiserate. Repeat. Face it: for many...
Customer Experience Hyperbole
If you listen to some CX firms you’d think that their tools/platforms/approaches are panacea cure-alls for everything from the common cold to revealing the...
The CX Metrics Agnostic: Does it Matter Which Metric You Use?
So unless you are “results agnostic” and don’t care about the success of your CX efforts, the next time someone tells you they are CX…
Stickers, Switchers and Shoppers: Lessons from the Auto Insurance Industry
Some people display a propensity to be “stickers,” that is to “stick” with companies they use, while others are prone to be “shoppers” and...
Patching the Leaky Bucket: Satisfice, Remediate and Improve
It may be a trite and overused metaphor, but everyone knows what I am talking about: lost customers. Churn, defection, leakage – call it...
Beyond Closing the Loop: VoC/E
“Closing the loop” – the process of responding to customers who provide weak feedback scores or critical comments to address or resolve the customer’s...
The Science of CX
Customer Experience is still regarded by many as a soft-and-fluffy activity. There is a tendency to reduce it to simplistic statements: make customers happy;...
Reflections on the Causes of Lousy Customer Experiences
These days, it’s hard to find a company that doesn’t say it competes on customer experience. At the same time, we know as both...
Linking the Employee & Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to the Holy Grail
Pundits and CEOs have long debated the relative merits of whether to focus primarily on the Customer Experience (CX) or the Employee Experience (EX)....
CX and COVID-19: What’s the Same, What’s Changed and What’s To Do?
The pandemic has dramatically redefined how we live, work, play and interact with each other. Our daily routines, relationships of all stripes, simple indulgences,...