{"id":93238,"date":"2014-02-26T00:28:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T08:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maritzresearch.com\/soundcheckblog\/customerexperience\/time-country-up-cxm\/"},"modified":"2014-02-26T00:28:40","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T08:28:40","slug":"its-time-to-country-up-cxm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/its-time-to-country-up-cxm\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Country-Up CXM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"meadow\"<\/a>I recently moved from Los Angeles to Northwest Arkansas.\u00a0 So, as you might imagine, I have undergone somewhat of a culture shock in recent weeks.\u00a0 I have to admit, it hasn\u2019t been all-bad.\u00a0 One thing that immediately strikes you here is that people are very nice<\/strong>.\u00a0The 20 years in LA made me forget what it was like to see the same check out lady in the grocery store who knew you by first name. \u00a0 In particular, retailers go far out of their way to ensure you have a great experience.\u00a0 Business people at all levels seem to genuinely appreciate your business.\u00a0 Not that you don\u2019t get that in Los Angeles, it\u2019s not that all retail experiences are unpleasant there, but there exists this kind of milieu of retail emotional apathy;\u00a0 a kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude.\u00a0 Not so, in my new Razorback infested environ.\u00a0 To use the local vernacular, they seem to<\/em> give a darn gum<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So this got me thinking; why is that?\u00a0 We have seen in previous research that people in non-metro area are generally just happier<\/a> when it comes to their retail experience.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Let\u2019s set aside the Southern hospitality shtick and the fact the world\u2019s largest retailer<\/a> makes its home down the street and consider the social environment.<\/p>\n

The Fayetteville,-Springdale-Rogers MSA<\/a> is small and spread-out; less than half a million people are spread out across a number of small towns.\u00a0 Also, most of its residents are decidedly not from there.<\/em> Almost all of my neighbors are transplants from large metros. Taking these two factors into account capitalizes on the best of humanity.\u00a0 Our desire to be generally kind to those who you know\u2026or those who might know and depend on in the future.<\/p>\n

Do you really want to flip off the guy on the highway who could be doing your root canal next month?\u00a0 Are you going to try to swindle someone servicing their vehicle at your repair shop, when so much of business is dependent on word of mouth through uncertain new comers?\u00a0\u00a0 No, you are probably going to go out of your way to make sure Mr. Jones\u2019 coffee is the right temperature, or Mr. Jones will stop buying your coffee and will not only tell his buddies \u2013 his buddies will tell their buddies and you won\u2019t be selling coffee for much longer. \u00a0Social networks buzz with information when there is uncertainty in decision making and with so many newbies uncertain about where to get their hair cut or their oil changed here in Northwest Arkansas I can assure you that the social networks here sound like a 10\u2019 chainsaw mowing down a grove of trees in the Ozarks.<\/p>\n

For those of us who make their living getting opinions from customers what can we learn from this?\u00a0 For years we have been lurking out there with a tin can begging for opinions with our boring staid surveys and giving nothing in return.\u00a0 \u201cYour opinion is important!\u201d we write\u2026really? Do we even write that with a straight face anymore? My favorite whipping boy is a survey I get from an airline I like and use quite often.\u00a0 Every trip I take with them I get the same 30-question survey afterwards.\u00a0 I used to fill them out to ensure good survey mojo for the industry, but I have given up.\u00a0 It\u2019s clear the survey is about them<\/strong> and their needs, not<\/strong> mine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The airline doesn\u2019t acknowledge their appreciation of me being a long standing customer, they don\u2019t alter the content of the survey based on my past experiences, they give me nothing in return for my time, and they don\u2019t seem to do anything with the information that I can tell.\u00a0 It goes into a black hole.\u00a0 I like this airline, but the survey experience actually detracts<\/em> from my view of them.\u00a0 It\u2019s an apathetic and clinical approach to what you would hope is an emotionally charged experience.\u00a0 The irony is that an instrument that is supposed to help with the customer experience actual destroys value for the airline.\u00a0 If this was a rare example I could sleep at night, but in truth, it is commonplace.<\/p>\n

We need to change this.\u00a0 In a world of free music, movies, unlimited texts, and other free stuff, the customer will not provide their valuable opinion for nothing anymore.\u00a0 We need to make the experience of measurement<\/em> more engaging. It needs to be extension of the brand and reflect that brand promise.\u00a0 It needs to be friendly or even, god forbid, fun.\u00a0 It needs to give something in return; it doesn\u2019t have to be money, it can be information, feedback, or even acknowledgement about how one\u2019s opinions are being used.\u00a0 It needs to acknowledge loyal customers and entice those who are newcomers.<\/p>\n

As a trained social scientist, I can appreciate the purest research view that we may be influencing the measurement itself by doing these things.\u00a0 To that I say: so what?<\/strong>\u00a0 You think that airline survey has any useable integrity anyway from the 2% of oddballs who compel themselves to complete that masochistic task after each flight?\u00a0 No, the future of customer experience measurement is not in viewing it as measurement at all. \u00a0We should try and influence the experience in a positive way through our interactions with customers.\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus on listening to them and help them out, one customer at a time if necessary. \u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s provide the authentic experience of the waitress genuinely concerned about the service and food quality in our CXM programs.\u00a0 We need to give something back.\u00a0 We need to make it easier.\u00a0 We need to make it\u2026nicer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently moved from Los Angeles to Northwest Arkansas.\u00a0 So, as you might imagine, I have undergone somewhat of a culture shock in recent weeks.\u00a0 I have to admit, it hasn\u2019t been all-bad.\u00a0 One thing that immediately strikes you here is that people are very nice.\u00a0The 20 years in LA made me forget what it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7959,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,84],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}