11 Potential Customer Experience Themes to Make 2023 Your Best Year Ever

Now is the best time to create your Customer Experience theme for the new year, one that you can rally your entire organization around. Here are some excellent and actionable insights to kick off brainstorming for making 2023 your best year ever:

1. The Great Retention

Great companies help people live amazing lives. Great leaders help their employees and customers reach their fullest potential. They inspire team members to forge lives of meaning and purpose. Business leaders who care about their employees and work for their employees rather than thinking that their employees work for them will disproportionately attract people who are hard-working and who want to work for them. This is true for the largest companies and the smallest as well. Focus on building a recruitment experience, an onboarding experience, and a world-class employee culture. Stop trying to find great employees; instead, focus on becoming the type of business great employees find.

2. The Relationship Economy and the Cost of Technology

Technology is changing the world and not always for the better. For all the benefits it is bringing to businesses, it is coming at a significant cost. The cost is weaker human relationships. Strong relationships are vital to customer experiences, employee experiences, and happiness. Focusing strictly on a digital experience will eliminate customer loyalty and emotional connection to a brand. In a Relationship Economy, the primary currency is the connections and trust among customers, employees, and vendors. This currency creates significantly more value in what we sell, leading to fewer bad experiences and more positive experiences with the highest levels of customer satisfaction. 

3. The Customer Service Revolution

A radical overthrow of conventional business mentality designed to transform what employees and customers experience. Your service team is re-energized with fresh motivation as this shift produces a culture that permeates into people’s personal lives at home, during family events, and in the community―which in turn provides the business with higher sales, morale, and brand loyalty―Making Price Irrelevant!  

4. Making Price Irrelevant

Based on the experiences your brand consistently delivers, your customers have no idea what your competition charges. We all know how great it feels when a company delivers on its promises. There is peace of mind for customers when they can trust your excellent customer service. Better yet, they can’t stop telling others about you and the conversation isn’t even about price. It’s about value.

5. CX Strong

The companies that will dominate the next decade will be the ones obsessed with evolving the experience they provide to their employees and their customers alike. A team that is highly engaged, happy, and feels appreciated is the most capable of delivering best-in-class customer service, the kind that customers can only enjoy with your company.

6. URX

Employees need to be constantly reminded, “You are the Xperience” (URX); that it is first and foremost about them and their customer interaction. Websites, iPads, apps, kiosks, and artificial intelligence don’t build relationships, people do. And it starts with building rapport with customers. Employees who connect, instead of merely communicating, create the most loyal customers.  

7. Carpe Momento 

Industry leaders know that the results of your products or services have the least to do with customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is created by the numerous micro experiences with a brand. Employees need to focus on how they can provide a positive customer experience in EVERY interaction. Applying the FORD method (family, occupation, recreation, and dreams) can enhance the connection with a customer, resulting in valuable insight and the chance to provide an even more personalized experience.

* Related – GOING FROM GREG TO BENNY: BUILDING A STRONGER CLIENT EXPERIENCE MODEL

8. Give More

The best way to build long-term sustainable relationships is to give more in both your personal life and in business. We live in a very cynical society. We tend to operate by agreement: You do A, B, and C, and I do X, Y, and Z. However, most people wait to make sure the other person does their part first. What I try to practice and teach my employees and my boys is do X, Y, and Z first and throw in W, even though it wasn’t part of the deal. Give more than the deal says, more than what is expected. Don’t wait for the other person to do what they promised, don’t keep score, and don’t have a good memory. Don’t remember three years ago when someone didn’t do what he or she said they would do. If you borrow your neighbor’s pickup truck to move furniture, return it cleaner and with more gas than it originally had in the tank. Go that extra mile, metaphorically speaking. Just give more. 

9. Become a Zero Risk Brand

Zero risk does not mean you will never screw up. What it does mean is you create systems and processes to dramatically reduce how often your company drops the ball. And just as importantly, when you do drop the ball, you have incredible recovery systems in place that allow the customer-facing employees on your service teams to make a brilliant comeback and create even stronger brand evangelists. What was initially a bad customer experience is transformed into a competitive advantage, often resulting in excellent customer feedback. 

10. Creating an Above & Beyond Culture

Create an awareness of the most common opportunities where employees can deliver truly heroic service for the customer, resulting in an above-and-beyond culture. Define a level of service which empowers and inspires your employees to exceed customer expectations, and in turn, increases customer lifetime. 

11. Your CX Is Always on Stage

Your Customer Xperience is Always on Stage. This has never been truer; both the marketing messages your company sends out and the experience your company delivers are on stage 24/7 in numerous ways. Check out these five short videos that demonstrate how employees can be unaware of how they are always on stage.

Leave It at the Door:

You are Still on Stage:

Must Be Present to Win:

Everyone is Your Customer:

Everyone is in the Media:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Give more than people expect, don’t keep score, don’t wait for them to do what they say, just do what you promised and a little more. If you borrow someone’s truck or car, give it back to them with more gas and cleaner than they gave it to you.”

5 spots remain to join the Class of 2023 Customer Experience Executive Academy starting in January

Are you in charge of your brand’s customer experience? Are you currently or on track to be your company’s Chief Experience Officer (CXO)? It’s time to start learning the methodology applied by world-class companies to create consistently memorable moments that lead to happy customers and happy employees. The Customer Experience Executive Academy (CXEA) is the Harvard of Customer Experience, featuring: 

• The DiJulius Group’s trademarked X-Commandment methodology
• How to improve the 6 components of your customer’s experience
• How to develop a strong Customer Experience Action Statement that brings purpose and meaning to your employees and organization
• How to recruit and develop a team with high customer service aptitude that aligns with your core values
• How to build a culture that always goes above and beyond what is expected during interactions
• How to develop tailored experiential standards for each customer, in each interaction they have with your company
• How to create systems that ensure consistency among departments and locations
• How to implement zero-risk systems that avoid service challenges and strengthen customer relationships
• How to measure your customers’ experience and execute with the data you receive
• And, become a world-class Customer Service Experience leader

*Register for the Class of 2023 Customer Experience Executive Academy