How do you foster a culture of customer engagement innovation within your organization?

Once you have aligned your vision, one additional, crucial step I would add is to prioritize your activities. Pick the problems and/or opportunities that matter most (both to your customers and to your organization). Start with those areas that you have the best chance of solving/achieving. Through such a classic four-box grid prioritization you will identify your MVPs and ultimately your roadmap. It is critically important that you are selective and can demonstrate wins along the way.

Vision alignment is more than a top-down approach. It's vital to ensure that every member, from leadership to frontline staff, understands and feels invested in this vision. Regularly revisiting and refining the vision based on market dynamics ensures that the strategy remains relevant.

If you operate in any services business the importance of a supported vision for customer engagement is crucial. Every employee should understand that the business' success depends on the customers. This begins with domain experts that have daily interactions with clients being aware of the role they can play outside their explicit mandate. They often are way more trusted than the roles that would be more quickly associated with "Customer Engagement" such as customer succes or account management roles. From their expertise and trusted position they can better bring the vision to the client, feel out opportunities and spot potential risks for a hickup in the relationship / experience of the customer with your organisation.

Simple - It starts from the top. Customer Success or similar departments should be on the company's SLT or exec team. Once you have representation, the voice of the customer grows and is meaningful.

I promote a culture of customer engagement by sharing my past positive experiences with colleagues and how those moments have yielded favorable results for client relationships. You can create a Google Doc to document these cases and share them with the entire team, categorizing them by color, segments, or themes. In conclusion, let's draw examples from these experiences to inspire!

The first step to the alignment question is to clearly define the vision and goals. Start by defining a clear and compelling vision for your organization's customer engagement. This vision should reflect the value you aim to provide to your customers. It might be about creating exceptional customer experiences, solving specific pain points, or differentiating your business through superior service.

Demonstrate a strong commitment to customer engagement innovation at the leadership level. If you can't see it you won't be it! Leaders should embody the values and behaviours expected from the entire organisation. Role model the behaviour aligned to the vision.

Align your vision: Ensure that your organization's vision and goals are centered around customer engagement innovation, emphasizing the importance of putting customers at the core of decision-making processes and driving continuous improvement in customer experiences. For example, if your organization's vision is to become a leader in sustainable fashion, align your customer engagement innovation efforts by focusing on eco-friendly product development, transparent supply chains, and engaging customers through educational campaigns on environmental impact.

In addition customer centricity does not only “do what the customer asks” it is about aligning your processes and feedback loops around meeting the customer where they are and developing service and support levels to bring them from their “actual” to their “ideal” outcomes.

Encourage your employees to contribute to the innovation process. Make them feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for customer engagement. Provide opportunities for them to suggest ideas and improvements, and reward innovation that aligns with your vision.

Rewarding failure is a good way to encourage innovation and experimentation. Showcase where someone has given something a go and analyse why it failed. Do it differently next time. Ask for input. Diversity of thinking could take the idea and make it fly.

Empower your team by providing autonomy, resources, and support, fostering a culture of creativity, experimentation, and continuous learning, and encouraging team members to contribute innovative ideas and solutions that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Direct interactions with customers, like co-creation sessions, can be transformative. Not only do they offer insights, but they also foster brand loyalty as customers feel a direct stake in the product or service evolution. It's a strategy that blurs the line between company and customer, creating a partnership dynamic.

Customer Engagement can only take place when you create a platform for your customers to engage. Below are some simple ways to involve /engage your customers innovatively: 1. Create a Customer Advisory Board and invite your most important customers to come and share their inputs into your products, operations, pricing, and delivery. They will feel accountable. 2. Schedule periodic reviews with them. Review your product, performance, and business impact with them. They will feel respected and valued 3. Your customer is not a company but an individual(s). Give her/him a podium to shine. Turn them into your brand ambassadors. Invite them to speak at your events, workshops, and social media platforms. Let them share their success stories.

Listening to customers is a bit of an art form in itself. Often, what customers say they want is limited to their expectations associated with the current products/solutions available. I find it valuable when approaching customers for feedback to go in with an understanding of what Job your product is doing for them (see: "Job to be done Theory") and focusing the conversarion on how you can deliver progress against that instead of limiting the scope of conversation to the current product.

One question I ask all my customer support agents daily is, "What are my customers asking today?" Keeping a check on this has helped me - Improving Customer Satisfaction Identifying Problems Early Enhancing Product and Service Quality Boosting Customer Retention Generating New Ideas Improving Customer Support Building Stronger Relationships Gaining Competitive Advantage Enhancing Marketing Strategies Increasing Revenue Personalizing Customer Experience Tracking Trends

Remember NOT to ask your customers what they want (because chance are they don´t even know. Remember Henry Ford: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.”) INSTEAD, show them what potential solutions could look like, improve the demo based on feedback until an MVP emerges.

One way to build long term engagement for B2B product innovation is with a Customer Advisory Board. Customers serve on a board of their peers for a set term, usually 1-2 years. This group gathers online and/or in-person 1-4 times per year. The meeting agenda should feature a range of industry-relevant discussion topics, product discovery sessions, product roadmap presentations and options for peer-led learning. Include ample opportunity for networking and conversation amongst CAB members and internal stakeholders. The ideal outcome is an impactful feedback loop for both the customer and the organization. By nurturing these high-touch relationships over time, a Customer Advisory Board can add significant value to your customer.

Involve your customers: Engage customers in co-creation processes, gather feedback through surveys and focus groups, and leverage customer insights to co-design products, services, and experiences that meet their evolving needs and preferences. Create opportunities for customers to participate in beta testing, user feedback sessions, and ideation workshops, fostering a sense of ownership and loyalty towards your brand.

While technology is an enabler, the focus should always remain on the human element of engagement. Implementing a tech solution without understanding its real impact on customer experience can backfire. Regular training sessions ensure that the team can harness the full potential of these tools while maintaining a genuine connection with customers.

To foster a culture of customer engagement innovation, consider these technology solutions: CRM Software: Utilize platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot for managing customer data and interactions. Social Media Listening Tools: Hootsuite or Sprout Social help monitor social media conversations to understand customer sentiment. Collaboration Tools: Slack and Microsoft Teams facilitate cross-functional collaboration and real-time idea sharing. Voice of Customer (VoC) Software: Tools like Qualtrics gather and analyze customer feedback to inform improvements. AI Chatbots: Intercom or Drift provide real-time customer support and personalization.

Leverage technology: Utilize data analytics, AI-driven insights, CRM systems, and digital platforms to personalize customer experiences, track engagement metrics, and identify opportunities for improvement. Implement automation tools for streamlined customer interactions, personalized marketing campaigns, and proactive customer support, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Regular audits, feedback loops, and even 3rd party evaluations can help gauge the effectiveness of your strategies. Staying plugged into industry trends, publications, and thought leadership content can help teams stay ahead of the curve, ensuring that the organization's approach to customer engagement remains cutting-edge.

Fail fast! Fall in love with the problem, not your initial solution or even the technology you chose to deliver it. Inevitably, some channels, solutions, pieces of content will not perform as hoped. Identify them based on observational data and drop or improve non-working items.

Customer engagement is not static, and neither should be your approach to innovation. Continuously gather feedback, analyze data, and adjust your strategy as needed to stay aligned with your vision and customer needs.

Continuously monitor industry trends, customer feedback, and market dynamics to stay agile and responsive to changing customer needs and preferences. Foster a culture of learning and adaptation, encourage teams to gather insights from successes and failures, and iterate on customer engagement strategies based on data-driven decision-making. Embrace a growth mindset that values experimentation, feedback, and continuous improvement, driving innovation and resilience in customer engagement efforts.

Customer engagement innovation demands a holistic approach across all business departments. Prioritize creating an emotional bond, ensuring engagements evoke feelings for brand loyalty. Use data ethically and transparently, always valuing trust. Embrace inclusivity and accessibility in engagement strategies. Opt for an agile approach, quickly adapting to changing dynamics. Regularly train teams to keep them updated. Partner with tech experts for specialized solutions. Balance automation with a personal touch. Establish a strong feedback system, maintaining long-term vision while achieving short-term goals. Ensure cross-channel consistency and keep a keen eye on competitors to differentiate and innovate.

Know your customer, By actively visiting them. Make your Phone available for problems with delivery or damages. This may feel uncomfortable to you but it is a requirement to follow up it is a requirement to your shipper. You are the Sales Representative, and this is the line of trust. Visit them to assess the damages, follow up with terminal managers. Help them with the clams process. Show up, take them out to Lunch, visit often!!! and you will come to know their behaviors! Customers want to feel like they are important. They are Important! You cannot be a call center representative. If you are looking for that this is not a job for you. They Trust action. You must visit. Know your Customer. Results matter!!

In my experience utilizing annual and/or quarterly NPS surveys are now a must. This drives an organization and Service Delivery. Intake or Service Desk staff to L4 Engineers, will all benefit.

In my opinion, you should always support the person, not the problem. It’s important to remember that the same issue can affect different customers in different ways. For one it may be a small issue, for another it could be affecting their entire business. So before you start, ask about the impact to them and understand what, in a best case scenario, could help them short term as you work to resolve the issue.

When I went for knowledge acquisition to the client's office as part of technical outsourcing project the first thing I did was to ask if the client was facing any problems because of two reasons. Technical problems could have business ramifications and as part of the outsourcing vendor it made no sense to take responsibility of the problems which could impact SLAs later. I was able to solve a burning problem with critical business impact. The work I did in the project earned me a superb recommendation on my LinkedIn profile from the client's IT head. The only way for product and service provider companies to keep growing is by fostering the culture of customer engagement.

Fostering customer engagement innovation? Think of it as a jazz ensemble where everyone is riffing on the theme of “Customer First.” 1. Listen Up: Employees closest to customers are your melody-makers. Tune into their insights. 2. Improv Allowed: Create a safe zone for experimental solos. Some might miss a beat, but the gems are worth it. 3. Quick Takes: Prototype and tweak. In music and customer service, timing is everything. 4. Scale the Chart-Toppers: Got a hit? Make it your organization’s new anthem. 5. Inclusivity: Whether it’s a sax or a violin, every role adds unique notes to the composition. Cultivating this kind of culture makes your company not just a business, but an ongoing jam session in customer delight.

Create an avatar for your customer. What do they look like? What do they read? What are their primary struggles? Creating a story around the customer helps bring them to life and can help others see what innovations should exist.