Join the editors of the Customer Strategist Journal as they discuss their favorite trends, stories and facts from the newest issue, "The Great Re-Engagement."

Transcript:

Liz Glagowski: Hi everyone and welcome to CX Bites, a web series about all things customer experience. I'm Liz Glagowski and today I'm here with the staff of the Customer Strategist Journal to talk about our upcoming issue, which is published on March 10. If you're not yet subscribed, please check out customerstrategistjournal.com to sign up for free and make sure you're signed up to get it in your inbox by March 10th. So with me today are Judith Aquino, Cara Rosner, and Dylan Haviland. Hey everybody.

Judith Aquino: Hello.

Cara Rosner: Hi.

LG: Thanks so much for being here today. Really great to talk to you all as always about another fantastic issue. So what is in this issue? We're really excited to share a topic that's of really great importance to everybody and that is the employee experience. It's a part of customer experience that sometimes gets overlooked, but is very important, especially in the age of the great resignation. So instead of the great resignation, though, we are focusing on the concept of the great reengagement, how companies can build employee engagement and loyalty with a mix of authentic experiences, resources, and tools that really matter to employees.

So the two covers many angles of this topic, plus other articles about customer experience, especially those around retail trends, cryptocurrency, electric vehicles, financial services, just to name a few. So I've gathered our crack team of editors here to discuss some highlights, get a little inside scoop of how it was to report on this issue and just discuss some unique or noteworthy aspects of some of the articles in this issue. So let's just jump right to it. Cara, how about you, what is something that was unique or noteworthy that you want to make sure to share with the audience?

CR: Well, I had a lot of fun working on this latest issue because I got to take a deep dive look at the future of customer experience, and that is immersive CX, experiences in the virtual realm, in the metaverse. I had a great conversation with DC Wright who is TTEC's chief transformation and innovation officer about how brands can start preparing to deliver seamless experiences in this new virtual world. I think that for a lot of companies, they may think that the metaverse is something they don't need to be thinking about or at least not yet, some may think that it's too futuristic or only for gamers or that the metaverse is something that their broad customer base isn't going to really be into.

But the reality is, savvy brands have been delivering immersive experiences. They're doing it already. They've been doing it for a few and immersive CX is really poised to become the customer experience norm quickly, within the next five years or so this is really going to be everywhere. We're going to be seeing it more and more. So it was really fun to dive into immersive CX presents a really exciting, great channel of opportunity for brands. So in the journal, we talk about that and also things that companies can start doing right now today to set themselves up for future success when it comes to this.

LG: Excellent. Yeah, so it's some topics that people are starting to hear about, but to really get a little more deeply into what that means for the employees and customer experience is really, really cool. So thanks Cara. So Judith, what about you?

JA: Well, for me, a story that stood out was one that I did about the importance of customer insights to the future of banking. I spoke with Alyson Clarke, a principal analyst at Forrester, and she pointed out that a better customer experience is only part of the battle. To paraphrase what she said, if you're not proactively leveraging your data for insights into what the customer needs, that's a significant problem. And a survey by FICO echoed that sentiment. According to the survey, 86% of Americans said they're satisfied or very satisfied with their bank, but only 1% of respondents mentioned a bank in response to the question, what is crucial to the future of your financial success? So I thought that was pretty telling. And on top of that, 41% said making smart decisions when making big purchases was crucial to their financial success. So in other words, banks have a lot of work to do when it comes to meeting their customers needs and ensuring that they're top of mind when solving consumers' financial concerns.

LG: Excellent. Yeah, that's a really great deep dive into that industry and some of the CX challenges they've had and are now continuing to have and some new ones that are popping up. So a really great piece with that. And now Dylan, how about you? What did you find especially noteworthy in some of the stuff that you covered?

DH: So actually I'm going to jump back into that metaverse. We did some really cool research on crypto and NFTs, which we're going to group under more of the umbrella term digital assets. And what we're seeing particularly in the financial space is there's a real lack of investments in knowledge bases, channel usage, and security. And really as more Americans are starting to jump into this topic, we have research from Pew Research that shows that 86% of Americans have heard of crypto, but we only have 16% that are actively investing in it. And these people that are investing in it, they're putting a lot of time, resources and it's an incredible investment considering the volatile nature of it. So what we're looking more to the future is bring more of a human connection to digital assets and investing in more of a safe and communicated future.

LG: Yeah, it was a really interesting one that most people assume if it's crypto or it's more of these digital high tech things that it should be all automated and no human connection. But obviously we found out that that's really not the case. So a really, really good piece with that one. And for me, I looked to our community to learn a little bit about what's happening in the employee experience. And we did a poll with TTEC and we asked people on LinkedIn, what's their plan for going back to work or what's your company's plan going back to work? And we found that there's no one size fits all plan to engage employees as the pandemic starts to wind down. Half of the people said they were going to go back to a hybrid model and stay permanent in some sort of hybrid work model.

35% said they would remain working remotely full time. And 12% said they were going to go back to the office. And 3% said they were going to work with an outsource company to manage some of their remote workers. So it really hit home that there is no one size fits all, that companies need to address individual situations and personalized experiences to really keep those people engaged because they may not all be at the office, or they may have a lot of different circumstances that they're working with as a team and individually. So some cool stuff around the employees engagement, some great new trends happening in CX. Just a couple of the articles that you'll find in the March issue of the Customer Strategist Journal. So thanks team for sharing your insights and for all of you watching, the issue, as I mentioned, comes out on March 10th.

So if you are not signed up, go to customerstrategistjournal.com. You can find the link right there. Sign up for free, tell your friends, and you'll get the issue to your inbox on March 10th. If you're watching this after March 10th, head over to customerstrategistjournal.com, you can find all the articles will be posted and you can also join our Customer Strategist Journal community on LinkedIn, where we'll have a lot of these articles. We'll have more discussions, more polls, more interactions, and a chance for you to connect with other CX professionals about these sorts of topics. So thanks again for watching. We will see you next time and enjoy the issue.