Academy Award Winning Customer Stories

Your Customers Are Scripting Mystery, Drama, Suspense, Intrigue & Thrill

I recently donated an enticing experience to a local charity as part of its annual fund raising gala. The experience was third in the live auction, which would take place between the entrée and the dessert.

My formula to raise as much money as possible for this worthy cause was local celebrity + celebrity chef + food experience. As the bidding rose higher, I pictured the number of kids whose lives would be positively impacted with the money raised.

Then, the fourth item came up for bid. An adorable puppy. Carried onstage by a charming little girl in pigtails. Missing a front tooth. And suffering from the illness for which we were raising money that evening.

My donated experience captured cash. Her real-life experience captured hearts.

How often do you fail to capture the compelling story line in the quest for better numbers?

As a Customer Experience professional, it’s tempting to focus exclusively on the numbers. Is your customer satisfaction score improving? What about your Net Promoter Score (likelihood to recommend)? Are you improving quality? Reducing cycle time? Increasing sales pipeline?

Meanwhile, your customers are telling you insightful stories about their experiences. Stories that compel your executives to take action. Stories that indicate new market opportunities. Sometimes stories that conflict with the very numbers and scores they just provided you.

Digital technologies and text analytics tools make it easy for you to capture and tell your customers’ stories in a compelling way. Why show box office scores in your next Customer Experience presentation when your executives would rather watch the customer scripted movie?

To embed customer stories in your corporate culture:

• Start each presentation with a customer story (either a quote or a video).                                  
• Display customer quotes on your company’s Intranet site.                                                          
• Capture customer stories on video (Experiment with VOXPopMe, OneMob, or the camera on your phone)          
•  Connect Customer Experience metrics with quotes and videos in presentations to executives.   
• Analyze how the sentiment of your customers’ quotes correlates with their survey scores (Clarabridge, Radian6, NetBase and others make this easy)

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own views and not those of Cisco.

Karen Mangia is the Senior Director of Insight Innovation and Diversity Business Practices for Cisco globally. She and her team spend time with customers and partners to understand what they need and then enable the business to exceed those expectations. She has expertise in Sales and Sales Leadership, Voice of Customer/Partner/Sales, and Global Supplier Diversity Business Development. Karen has a passion for building and connecting people, teams and communities around the world.