How do you overcome resistance and barriers to customer engagement innovation within your industry or market?

To overcome resistance to customer engagement innovation, first identify the sources of resistance. Common reasons will be: - Fear of change. - Concerns about complexity (time to adopt the new innovative solution. - Doubts about ROI. Understanding these barriers allows you to address them directly and tailor your approach. Engage with stakeholders to uncover specific fears or misconceptions and provide clear, data-backed communication on the benefits. By addressing these concerns, and preparing well described answers will be key to earn decision makers trust, and get their support for such an impactful move. Doing it early and effectively, you can reduce resistance and foster a more receptive environment for innovation.

Resistance to customer engagement innovation can arise from sources such as fear of change, lack of resources, conflicting priorities, skepticism about benefits, and cultural barriers, which can be addressed through empathy, effective communication of strategic alignment and tangible benefits, and presenting evidence to build trust and encourage buy-in. By addressing these sources of resistance thoughtfully, organizations can foster a more receptive environment for customer engagement innovations.

The following strategies have been immensely helpful in overcoming resistance and driving innovation in Customer Engagement: Conducting a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis that not only addresses short-term gains but also highlights the long-term value, demonstrating how innovation aligns with overall business goals. Emphasizing anticipated improvements in customer satisfaction and showcasing the potential for increased upselling and cross-selling opportunities, which can further justify the investment in innovation

Unfortunately resistance to engage is a common issue and the first step is to find out why customers are refusing to engage. This feedback will provide insights into their reasons as it is not always what you think. It could be the obvious reasons like they are not getting value from your engagement/your product or it could also mean they are busy or going through some personal stuff and don't wish to engage. If the former, there are ways around this by ensuring the feedback you gathered about their concerns is taken on board and acted upon. Customers want to see value so personalizing the engagement and bringing value to every interaction is important.

If you collect feedback and don't do anything with it, you will stop receiving it. As a builder of customer experience and engagement software, it's important to make it easy for your customers to provide feedback and feel like their feedback is being heard. If you collect feedback and don't take any action on it, you will eventually stop receiving it.

To overcome resistance and barriers to customer engagement innovation within your industry or market, it is crucial to involve your customers and stakeholders throughout the entire process, from ideation to implementation. This collaborative approach enables you to gain valuable insights into their needs and preferences, fostering trust and buy-in. Effective methods for engaging customers and stakeholders include conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups, co-creation workshops, prototyping, testing, and implementing pilot programs. By actively involving them, you can better align your innovations with their expectations, ultimately increasing the likelihood of successful adoption and reducing resistance.

If customers have issues, reach out to them directly. If they refuse to talk to you, then you have bigger issues. When you seek feedback, do something with it.

Two fundamentals drive our sustainable engagement: 1. Give more than you take: Design experiences where customers gain more than they give, fostering ongoing engagement. 2.Feeling over Function: Emotional impact outlasts product features. An example of how we do this is by calling our Customer Support team our Customer Happiness team. Their goal is not only to answer queries fast, but to do so in a way that maximises happiness!

Most critical part of defining customer experience and engagement is to know your audience and understanding what are their motivators and frustrations. Therefore engaging them early on in process and keeping them engaged is critical, this can be achieved through design thinking workshops, interviews, focus groups or Voice Of Customer and Voice of Employee studies to cultivate a culture of listening and learning as you go, this will support your organizations ability to adapt quickly and show agility.

Most of the companies in the telco sector has a huge set of info coming directly from the customers that are not analyzed properly. The customers says exactly what they need to the Agents...unfortunately the speech to text and related analytics are not yet evolved. Gen AI can close the gap and give to the companies who are changing their approach vs their call center a great opportunity to create value

Design thinking is arguable the best design practice to ideate and define what key problem statements are and identifying innovative solutions that support optimization of processes, technology and interactions with customers throughout their journey. It is important to include all the relevant stakeholders during these sessions to ensure all voices are heard and key problems are surfaced.

In my experience, it's important to set up a cross-functional team to unearth the critical customer pain points and ideate innovative and feasible experiments. The team should consist of customer research, analytics, creative, technology, CX and strategy. Pressure from senior leadership to achieve quick results need to be carefully managed upwards. Experiments result more or less often in a different outcome than expected so time for iteration is important as it is having time for trying solutions that are bold and different.

Experimentation and learning are integral to customer engagement innovation, as the process is often nonlinear and unpredictable. Embrace a mindset of curiosity and agility, allowing room for testing assumptions and iterating solutions based on feedback. Foster a safe environment for your team to experiment and learn by offering support, guidance, and recognition of their efforts. Implement methodologies like the lean startup method, design thinking, or agile frameworks to structure your experimentation and learning processes. These tools can help you effectively measure outcomes, analyze results, and make informed decisions, ultimately driving continuous improvement and innovation in your customer engagement strategies.

Listen listen and listen...customers are telling us what they need in terms of product development/features, pricing packages...we need to listen them and use Data/AI capabilities to better address. We can quickly test on specific clusters the innovation also by using crowdtesting

Overcoming barriers to customer engagement innovation? Embrace experimentation like it's your new hobby—because nothing says 'innovative' like learning from your ‘oops’ moments. Keep the curiosity high, the risks low, and celebrate every ‘Eureka!’ like it’s a mini victory party! ????

Never stop learning and enhancing. Specific programs driven by business with full tech support with an agile model is the key to improve the customer experience; standard kpis to monitor the customer experience (NPS, CSAT) are becoming obsolete...we need real time check as customer are changing behaviours quickly

When scaling customer engagement innovations internationally, it is important to consider the differences in consumer expectations and buying habits between different regions. For example, a social shopping innovation in APAC might not be immediately applicable to Europe. Sometimes, it requires different approaches by region. That's why customer research in different regions early on in a project is so important.

Scaling and sustaining customer engagement innovation is like keeping a plant alive—it needs ongoing care, the right environment, and the occasional check-in. So water those ideas, prune the old ones, and make sure your team’s not just growing weeds!????

A key lesson I've learned is that scaling customer engagement innovation requires more than just initial success—it demands integration into the organization's DNA. When we rolled out a new engagement initiative, we ensured it wasn’t just a one-off project. We embedded it into our processes, aligned it with strategic objectives, and secured ongoing resources. By consistently using metrics like the Net Promoter Score to measure progress and openly sharing our results, we kept the innovation alive, relevant, and supported by the entire team.

Customer engagement innovation is not a one-time initiative but a continuous and evolving practice that must be scaled and sustained over time. To achieve this, ensure that your efforts align with your organizational culture, structure, and processes, while being supported by adequate resources, systems, and policies. Monitoring and evaluating the performance of your customer engagement innovations is crucial, as it allows you to assess effectiveness and make necessary adjustments. Sharing results and learnings with your team, customers, and stakeholders fosters transparency and collaboration.

Use to celebrate the enhancement both involving a set of customers who help you to improve and the team. This can create a positive environment where to continue testing

Celebrating and inspiring your team, customers, and stakeholders is vital in the journey of customer engagement innovation. It’s not just about facing challenges; it’s also about recognizing opportunities and reaping rewards. Highlighting achievements through success stories and showcasing best practices can motivate everyone involved. Rewarding innovation champions fosters a sense of ownership and encourages continued efforts. Hosting innovation events can further galvanize enthusiasm and collaboration. Customer engagement innovation is essential for gaining a competitive edge, enhancing customer loyalty, and driving business growth. However, resistance and barriers may arise.

Customer engagement innovation is a powerful tool. For example, we recently celebrated our team's achievements by showcasing success stories and rewarding innovation champions. This approach not only boosted morale but also inspired continuous improvement. By the way, turning customer feedback into actionable insights is a very healthy methodology, but of course that you should develop in-house a model that can help you understand which feedback is a repeated one, or one that might impact a large portion of your audience, leading to overall business growth at higher scales.

Overcoming barriers to customer engagement innovation? Celebrate your wins like a rock star on stage and inspire your team with the same enthusiasm—because nothing says ‘keep innovating’ like confetti and a standing ovation! ????

A powerful way to sustain customer engagement innovation is through celebration. When our team hit a major milestone with a new customer engagement tool, we didn’t just move on to the next task—we took time to recognize the achievement. We highlighted success stories, rewarded those who championed the innovation, and shared these wins across the company. Hosting a small event not only boosted morale but also inspired others to think creatively. This recognition helped solidify a culture of continuous innovation, motivating the team to keep pushing boundaries.

Resistance is often due to ingrained processes or fear of change. To overcome this, leadership must champion a clear vision for innovation, aligning it with long-term customer value and business goals. Build a culture that encourages experimentation and data-backed decisions. Start with pilot projects to demonstrate value and secure quick wins. Leverage cross-functional teams to break silos, ensure stakeholder buy-in, and use real-time analytics to measure impact and refine initiatives.

Ah, the quest to innovate in customer engagement often meets resistance. Start with education, addressing fears and showcasing benefits of innovation. Build a coalition of like-minded individuals to challenge the status quo. Kickstart with small-scale innovations, showcasing their success to gain momentum. Engage with resisters, understanding their concerns can lead to better solutions. Leverage diversity for creative solutions and never forsake the human touch in engagement. As a disruptive storyteller, paint a vivid narrative of the vibrant potential innovation holds against the monochrome of tradition.

Trust building personal approach Building trust with senior citizens in direct marketing requires a personal and patient approach. Due to their natural caution, especially towards direct marketing, establishing long-term engagement is crucial. This can be achieved through personalized direct mail and thoughtful communication that makes them feel cared for and valued. It often takes time to build the necessary trust, with the first sale commonly happening up to two years after the initial newsletter signup. Consistent and meaningful engagement is key to fostering this relationship.

One additional insight is the importance of cross-functional collaboration in customer engagement innovation. In one project, we brought together teams from marketing, sales, and customer service to co-create solutions. This diverse input led to more holistic and effective innovations. For instance, marketing insights helped refine messaging, while customer service highlighted pain points we hadn’t considered. This collaboration not only improved the innovation but also strengthened interdepartmental relationships, leading to a more cohesive approach to customer engagement overall.