Author: Mark Atterby

Rod has a fifteen plus year career working for a variety of mid-tier and large global organisations, designing, and implementing customer experience (CX) strategies. Recently, he co-founded Humind – a new CX design and consultancy collective, aimed at helping organisations to discover, design, and deliver experiences with the human in mind. In this interview, Rod reflects on his career in CX and shares his thoughts of where CX as a discipline, is heading. Mark Atterby (interviewer): Rod, can you provide a bit of a background to Humind and your role there? Rod: Humind is a collective of customer and employee…

Customers use a variety of channels to interact with organisations to purchase the goods and services they want. They expect their experience when dealing with a brand to be seamless and personalised to their needs. The biggest challenges brands face in delivering seamless omnichannel customer experiences are internal silos and disconnected customer journeys, according to a recent industry report by CXFocus. The report Customers do not think in terms of channels – They expect a connected journey highlights how siloed approaches to managing channels are a major contributor to disconnected customer journeys that frustrate customers. It’s common to hear customers…

Spurred on by the need to work remotely during the pandemic, the growth in hybrid work environments is expected to be a continuing trend. But in terms of maintaining employee engagement and productivity, a workplace environment that mixes in-office and remote work presents a range of unique challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many workers and firms to trial working from home. It was clearly demonstrated that numerous jobs could be done well remotely. As everything is reopening, many employees are reluctant to return to the office on a full-time basis. According to research from market research company YouGov market research company, up to 39% of global…

There’s a tendency to frame CX problems or digital transformation challenges in strictly technical terms. Organisations have thrown vast amounts of money at technology to solve a problem. Most, if not all significant CX challenges, however, are behavioural and cultural rather than systems and technology. Every CX problem is about addressing behaviour, according to Marty Nicholas, Business Consulting Partner at EY (formerly Ernst & Young), but it’s also about creating an experience that supports your brand promise, purpose, or growth ambition, “it’s helpful to remember that whenever you’re trying to improve the customer experience, you’ll have both challenges and…

As a result of the pandemic, we have seen customers dramatically shift to online channels. These days most customer journeys start online even if they may finish via a physical channel. It’s why Australian businesses are prioritising digital experiences and adopting what’s referred to as a digital-first mindset. Customers expect seamless, fast, and consistent digital experiences. As the number of digital devices in consumers’ hands continues to proliferate and the range of digital platforms they can access expands, brands need to be able to provide seamless experiences across these channels. Ragy Thomas, CEO and Founder of Sprinklr comments, “The digital-first customer…

The pandemic has elevated the importance of having engaged and loyal employees. In fact, employee experience (EX) is touted as a top priority by most CX leaders and their organisations in 2022. But like CX, doing EX well and successfully can face a series of significant challenges. Even if organisations are placing EX on the top of their list of priorities, the question remains – how well are they doing it? Across the globe for 2020, during the height of the pandemic, employee engagement at most major organisations averaged 20%, according to Gallup Research. Research from Qualtrics highlighted how organisations…

The #1 trend in CX for 2022, according to recent research by Freshworks, is the need for businesses to adopt a digital-first mindset. Mark Atterby (MA), Editor of CXFocus talks to Ben Pluznyk (BP), Director & Country Manager, ANZ for Freshworks, about this and the other trends covered in the research. The five key trends identified by the research include: 1. The new ‘want-it-now’ customer culture dictates the terms – The pandemic has forced consumers on to digital channels and they’ve embraced it. As their demand for speedy experiences grows, businesses will be forced to adopt a digital-first mindset to…

Over the last couple of months various industry pundits, analysts, and vendors have published their lists of CX Trends for 2022 and beyond. A quick search on Google will display a very wide and often conflicting range of customer experience predictions for 2022. During a recent CX Focus webinar Rebecca Wilson facilitated a panel discussion of CX leaders, where she asked each panelist what was their top priority for 2022. The panel included; Ayelet Mendel-Girin, General Head of CX, The Humm Group; Bonnie Mooney, Head of CX McMillan Shakespeare; and Preethi Bridgement, Director of CX Solutions Freshworks. This article is…

For many organisations, their contact centre operations and the people who work in them were at the frontline of supporting customers during the COVID-19 crisis. Customer demands on communication channels and services dramatically increased at the same as people had to work from home. The Auscontact Association played a critical role in supporting the industry during the pandemic. Retiring CEO of Auscontact, Fiona Keough, is a veteran of the contact centre industry who has seen the industry go through tumultuous changes over the years. In the last few years, she has led the association through the challenges brought on by…

If branding is about making promises and setting expectations, customer experience is about keeping them. Unfortunately, according to a recent study by Qualtrics, many Australian brands are failing to live up to expectations. The Qualtrics study surveyed 1000 respondents across Australia and New Zealand where more than half of them (54%) said they have switched brands because the customer experience they received did not meet the brand promise. 88% said they would swap brands due to lower product / service quality, 68% for dissatisfaction with customer service, and only 33% would swap due to price increases. “Great customer experiences start…