Artificial Customer Conversations beget Artificial Customer Experiences

Is your business fostering artificial customer experiences due to reliance on technology as the primary interface for customer conversations?

Listening strategies and tools for the voice of the customer can produce skewed insights. Simply because of where, and to whom, your organization is listening.

1. Are customers talking to bots and responding to prompts via digital interfaces? To purchase or complain? What subset of customers’ voices are captured? And are these captured voices accurate reflections of the real customers required to grow, expand and sustain your business?
2. Do sales people rely on canned (read artificial) scripts to flush out potentially interested customers? At least the customers interested enough to respond to that scripted conversation with that specific sales person.
3. Will sales enablement stories accurately reflect only the voice of specific customer personas? One story type simply does not fit all customer experiences. Especially across companies of differing sizes and business models.
4. Is machine utilization data an accurate reflection of human end user experience? Consider the machine, as well as software interface interoperability. And, let’s not forget the materials being run through that environment.

Then, is your organization or association measuring actual, qualitative customer voices? Or, do you rely on digitally-administered, quantitative survey methodology to create artificial customer conversations?

Ponder whether, or not, your organization relies on artificial customer conversations to measure the effectiveness (read ROI) of departmental KPIs. Versus understanding, responding to and innovating on behalf of the actual customers and membership you serve.

Consider whether, or not, your organization and association remains reactive instead of proactive, based on what you do with what you hear from the customer. You can end up being off-target, strategically, because of achieving self-focused, artificial goals. Rather than listening to the actual voice of the actual, not surveyed, customer.

The best resources of actual, instead of artificial, customer conversations reside across the organization. 

How successfully do you capture actual customer stories? And from whom? Because of what prompts? Actual, real live customer conversations showcase actual, real live customer experiences.

Researching the context of real customer stories showcases the power of customer experiences. The type of experiences responsible for your organization or association becoming more proactive and anticipatory: about what’s next. Instead of continuously wondering: what just happened?

To learn more about creating more profitable workforces engaged in business growth and a storytelling culture, take the following actions.

• Engage me to speak or conduct a keynote speaking program and/or workshop at your next corporate or association event.
• Book a 40-minute strategy appointment with me. Learn how to better serve your customers.
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Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset™ keynote storytelling for customer retention speaking programs and workshops focus on innovative strategies and tactics for business growth, workforce profitability and professional development. She catalyzes organizations and associations, like yours, to leverage collaborative business models and a profitable workforce, to retain the customers and members you work so hard to win. Babette is a member of SME, ASQ, SHRM and the National Speakers Association. Babette’s Playbook of collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Her professional speaker profile appears on the espeakers platform.

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