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Tag: identity

  • What is CX and why should you care?

    What is CX and why should you care?

    Customer Experience, (abbreviated CX), refers to the overall perception and interaction that customers have with a company or brand throughout their entire journey. It encompasses every touch-point and interaction a customer has with a business, from discovery, before they buy, selecting your product or service, and post-purchase experiences.

    CX focuses on understanding and improving the customer’s satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy by providing a seamless and positive experience at every stage. It involves various elements such as the ease of navigation on a website or app, product or service quality, responsiveness to customer needs, and overall customer support.

    Companies strive to deliver exceptional customer experiences because they understand the impact it has on customer loyalty, repeat business, and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. A positive experience can lead to increased retention, higher customer lifetime value, and improved brand reputation.

    To enhance the experience, businesses often employ strategies that include personalization, anticipating needs, optimizing touch points, gathering and analyzing feedback, and continuously improving processes based on customer insights and interactions.

    In today’s digital age, this experience has become increasingly important as customers have more choices and higher expectations. With the dominance that ratings and online reviews can have in the decision making process, a single negative experience can quickly spread and have a significant impact on a company’s reputation. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in—many place significant emphasis on providing excellent customer experiences to differentiate themselves from competitors and foster long-lasting relationships.

    This excerpt from McKinsey & Company is a great summary of what CX is. McKinsey is a highly respected, global management consulting firm.

    …CX refers to everything an organization does to deliver superior experiences, value, and growth for customers. And it’s crucial in an age when how a business delivers for its customers is just as important as—if not more important than—the products and services it provides. In a digital world, where customers review and share their experiences with a company in public forums, it has become vital for companies to connect with customers across their journeys at an emotional level.

    Not only is customer experience the right thing to do for customers but it also results in 3x returns to shareholders.

    See their article, “What is CX“, for a deep dive.

    Why CX matters for you, your company, and your clients

    People do business with people. What you provide is very important. How you provide it is what retains clients.

    Defining CX is the first step to understanding why it’s important to you and your clients, if, your intent is to put the customer first. Customer Experience is critical to both companies and their clients for several reasons:

    Customer Loyalty and Retention

    A positive customer experience fosters loyalty and encourages customers to stay with a company for the long term. Satisfied customers are more likely to continue doing business with a company, leading to higher customer retention rates. This reduces customer churn and increases the lifetime value of customers, contributing to sustainable business growth.

    Competitive Advantage

    In today’s competitive marketplace, where products and services can be easily replicated, CX has emerged as a key differentiator. Providing exceptional customer experiences helps companies stand out from competitors and creates a competitive advantage. Customers are more likely to choose a company that consistently delivers excellent experiences over its rivals, even if the products or services are similar.

    Reputation, Referrals, and Positive Word-of-Mouth

    Happy customers become brand advocates and spread positive word-of-mouth recommendations. They share their positive experiences with friends, family, and online communities, which can significantly impact a company’s reputation. Positive reviews and recommendations can attract new customers, expand the customer base, and enhance the brand’s credibility.

    Customer Satisfaction

    Satisfied customers are more likely to be happy with their purchases, leading to increased customer satisfaction. When customers have a positive experience, it strengthens their relationship with the company, builds trust, and instills confidence in future interactions.

    Revenue Growth

    Delivering exceptional CX can have a direct impact on a company’s financial performance. Satisfied customers are more inclined to make repeat purchases, spend more, and even be willing to pay premium prices for products or services. By focusing on CX, companies can drive revenue growth through increased customer acquisition, retention, and up-selling or cross-selling opportunities.

    Customer Insights and Continuous Improvement

    CX initiatives provide valuable insights into customer preferences, pain points, and expectations. By actively listening to customers and gathering feedback, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their target audience and make data-driven decisions to improve products, services, and processes. Continuous improvement based on customer insights helps companies stay aligned with customer needs and preferences.

    Case in Point:

    Have you ever stayed at the Ritz Carlton?

    We got to attend a brilliant workshop, led by a mentor from another life, Aaron Kwittken, who happens to run and have built several amazing PR agencies. Founder and CEO of PRophet, Aaron, hosted our partner firms, teaching our tech startups how to communicate with writers to get our stories published.

    While our sessions were brilliant, and included a reporter from Fast Company, I bring up this story because of the amazing experience we had, staying at this hotel in Sarasota.

    It’s not the gorgeous beaches, immaculate venue, or even the career-making content that I speak of. The people at the Ritz made everyone feel like we were royalty. Our takeaway was that the staff were so nice—they made our stay special. I’d never experienced anything like it and in college I worked in the hospitality industry.

    It had never dawned on me, the importance, and the impact that stellar service can have on another human being. Since then, I strive to be that good, not only in the quality of our work, or the effectiveness of what we do, but in how I treat clients.

    In today’s world, where people skills seem to be the last thing on our minds, I know, that if I give a memorable experience in our service, good things will come of it.

    Visit Ritz Carlton, Sarasota, if you ever get the chance.

    Customer Experience

    To bring it home, prioritizing CX, benefits both companies and their clients by fostering customer loyalty, differentiating from competitors, generating positive word-of-mouth, increasing customer satisfaction, driving revenue growth, and enabling continuous improvement.

    To grow your business, you have to retain clients, while adding more. By focusing on delivering exceptional experiences, companies can build strong, long-lasting relationships with their customers and create a sustainable foundation for success.

    I’d love to hear your take on this and let us know if we can be a resource.

    By Eric Needle
    What are you working on—and how can we help?

  • Change your brand—without derailing your web traffic

    Change your brand—without derailing your web traffic

    What happens to your web traffic when you change your company name?

    The decision to change your brand should never be taken lightly. Underestimating how it can affect your online traffic—can be devastating.

    Brand Narrative: Why change your name?

    SpectorSoft, a security software firm, underwent a huge shift from the consumer market to business customers. Their decision to change their name signified a change in their focus toward B2B, corporate and enterprise clients. That’s a great reason to change your brand.

    While we can expect excitement over a new name, we have to consider the implications, the Pros and Cons.

    What’s in a Name?

    SpectorSoft has been in business for over 20 years. There’s something to be said for longevity. They developed a serious trust—in a space that requires serious trust.

    For them, cutting ties to the consumer client in favor of a booming corporate business made sense.

    They felt their old name, “Spector” tied them to black ops and ghosts in the machine. In the consumer world there can be a negative connotation, especially if you’re on the receiving end of computer surveillance.

    Spyware is a controversial marketplace, and “Spector” brings to mind the image of an oppressive Federal agency or Big Brother is watching.

    Their new brand however, would change that perception, and their corporate image.

    Can you explain the new brand?

    What message does the new brand convey? Their new name, Veriato, is fresh and sounds like a modern tech startup. It comes from the Latin, veritas, meaning truth. In common Italian parlance, often adding -ato at the end of a word, denotes a place. Veriato can be loosely understood to mean a “Place of, or for, Truth”.

    That’s noble intentions and a strong narrative for their new name.

    Media bombards us with daily revelations about information leaks and a growing cast of characters from Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Anonymous—to former FBI Director James Comey and fears of the “deep state”.

    Scandal drives the news cycle—and fear powers the security market.

    The New Narrative

    In this environment, Veriato sees themselves as guardians. Their role is to protect the corporation from intrusion and internal leaks. They safeguard sensitive information and a company’s intellectual property—its IP.

    Their software increases productivity among employees and keeps them moving in the right direction. And, their new product, RansomSafe, provides detection, backup and recovery—to shield their clients from Ransomware, a booming threat on the horizon.

    While a staffer who likes to browse YouTube during work hours might not appreciate their employee monitoring software, the C Suite and management surely does.

    In the business space, Veriato certainly provides a needed service, and allows each company to set their own limits. You decide what constitutes bad behavior, and you manage your company’s own culture.

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    Cause and Effect

    Changing your name should be a great opportunity for positive change and generate some media buzz in the process. But, could there be unseen consequences?

    Digital Impact

    As we looked at analytics data, we immediately saw a huge problem. If most of SpectorSoft’s search traffic and recognition came from their name, then what would happen when they changed their domain? The lion’s share of their traffic, which is considerable, was branded.

    Google divides keywords in their Paid Search and Quality Scoring as branded and non-branded. If you’re Tesla, the keywords, “Tesla Model X”, is a branded phrase. While “electric luxury car” is non-branded.

    What that meant for SpectorSoft was—that changing to their new brand name would (not could) seriously diminish traffic to their site, for the short term. For a software company, digital drives sales—and had they proceeded, it would have hurt.

    Problem identified, we worked with Veriato on a strategy to minimize the hit their traffic was about to take.

    How do you transition?

    To address the issue, we performed a deep audit of their site. We created a big picture view of who visits, what pages, and how often. Keywords and phrases, managing tags, and an in-depth look at campaigns all played a major role. And knowing historic sales patterns, we wanted to know the best time to make the switch.

    Veriato-formerly-known-as-SpectorSoft

    To lessen the blow, we slowed down their roll-out and began a communications campaign. We spoke to their customers first to let them know we were in the process of changing our name. Then we helped craft press releases and news articles for the site to distribute to partners and media.

    Because “SpectorSoft” was part of our branded keywords, we added the old name to our content. When we announced the change was coming, we mentioned “Veriato, formerly SpectorSoft” prominently, creating a temporary bridge to connect both names. And then we worked to replace it with the new brand. When the switch was made, customers knew it was coming. As we slowed the transition, we gave search engines time to process and understand that both sites were ours, and that we were moving from old to new.

    All said and done, Veriato slowed their pace for their name change, yet communicated it to their customers and prospects. Understanding the impact of changes to your digital properties can be a life saver. Instead of a six-month battle to regain lost market share and sales—we helped communicate the change and saved the day for this amazing software company.

    Veriato, formerly known as SpectorSoft, is a software company that develops and sells user behavior analytics and employee monitoring software. They are based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

    Visit Veriato at https://www.veriato.com/solutions

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  • Clean Corporate Image in All Media

    Integrated Marketing is speaking in the same voice, in all media to project a consistent message.

    With Corporate identity, it is critical to stay on task and keep all your marketing collateral and outreach on theme. Everything a customer or prospect sees need to be consistent. It needs to project the same values and messaging. The user should subconsciously know it comes from you. Everything we do at Longbow.net is focused on this—continual brand reinforcement and promotion. That’s the Brand and Content we talk about.

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