Resources for Course on Customer Experience

In this post, you will find a collection of resources that I am using and maintaining for my different classes and workshops on this topic. Unfortunately I couldn't list everything that I am reading or watching and I have only selected some vital fews that mights inspired you. It is also a good start if you are interested by this topic. The list contains websites, books, articles and videos.

Cheers

Laurent 

Recommended WebSites

Recommended Books

Easy to read and a good start if you are curious about Customer Experience from a Marketing Perspective. A lot of good tools and and a powerful process.

Customers are powerful. They have a loud voice, a wealth of choice and their expectations are higher than ever.

This book covers ten principles you can use to make real world improvements to your customers’ experiences, whatever your business does and whoever you are. 

One step further on this subject with the notion of Moments of Truth. Brian Solis is a though leader on Digital Transformation.

In his new book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design bestselling author Brian Solis shares why great products are no longer good enough to win with customers and why creative marketing and delightful customer service too are not enough to succeed. In X, he shares why the future of business is experiential and how to create and cultivate meaningful experiences.


Recommended Articles

1998 - Harvard Business Review - Welcome to the Experience Economy

First there was agriculture, then manufactured goods, and eventually services. Each change represented a step up in economic value--a way for producers to distinguish their products from increasingly undifferentiated competitive offerings. Now, as services are in their turn becoming commoditized, companies are looking for the next higher value in an economic offering. Leading-edge companies are finding that it lies in staging experiences. To reach this higher level of competition, companies will have to learn how to design, sell, and deliver experiences that customers will readily pay for. An experience occurs when a company uses services as the stage--and goods as props--for engaging individuals in a way that creates a memorable event. And while experiences have always been at the heart of the entertainment business, any company stages an experience when it engages customers in a personal, memorable way. The lessons of pioneering experience providers, including the Walt Disney Company, can help companies learn how to compete in the experience economy. The authors offer five design principles that drive the creation of memorable experiences. First, create a consistent theme, one that resonates throughout the entire experience. Second, layer the theme with positive cues--for example, easy-to-follow signs. Third, eliminate negative cues, those visual or aural messages that distract or contradict the theme. Fourth, offer memorabilia that commemorate the experience for the user. Finally, engage all five senses--through sights, sounds, and so on--to heighten the experience and thus make it more memorable. 

Read on HBR here


2002 - Harvard Business Review - The One Number You Need to Grow

Companies spend lots of time and money on complex tools to assess customer satisfaction. But they're measuring the wrong thing. The best predictor of top-line growth can usually be captured in a single survey question: Would you recommend this company to a friend? This finding is based on two years of research in which a variety of survey questions were tested by linking the responses with actual customer behavior--purchasing patterns and referrals--and ultimately with company growth. Surprisingly, the most effective question wasn't about customer satisfaction or even loyalty per se. In most of the industries studied, the percentage of customers enthusiastic enough about a company to refer it to a friend or colleague directly correlated with growth rates among competitors. Willingness to talk up a company or product to friends, family, and colleagues is one of the best indicators of loyalty because of the customer's sacrifice in making the recommendation. When customers act as references, they do more than indicate they've received good economic value from a company; they put their own reputations on the line. And they will risk their reputations only if they feel intense loyalty. The findings point to a new, simpler approach to customer research, one directly linked to a company's results. By substituting a single question--blunt tool though it may appear to be--for the complex black box of the customer satisfaction survey, companies can actually put consumer survey results to use and focus employees on the task of stimulating growth. 

Read on HBR here


2007 - Harvard Business Review - Understanding Customer Experience

The article discusses the importance of monitoring customer experience. Several examples are presented demonstrating customer dissatisfaction in a variety of situations. Customer experience is defined, and several methods for measuring it are discussed. The results of a recent Bain & Company survey of customers of 362 companies is presented. Methods of collecting customer data at "touch points," instances of direct contact either with the product or service itself or with representations of it, are detailed.

Read on HBR here


2016 - McKinsey - Customer Experiences

Collection of ideas, articles, thoughts and interviews about Customer Experience. Currently 2 entire collections examining how companies can create competitive advantage by putting customers first and managing their journeys.

Read on McKinsey here


2016 - PWC - 10 Principles of Customer Strategy

It’s no longer enough to target your chosen customers. To stay ahead, you need to create distinctive value and experiences for them.

Read on Strategy-Business here


2017 - Altimeter - The Customer Experience of AI

This report explores the impact of AI on the customer experience, lays out a set of operating principles, and includes insight from technology users, developers, academics, designers, and other experts on how to design customer-centric experiences in the age of AI. More than anything, business leaders today should begin to treat AI as fundamental to the customer experience. This means thinking about the values it perpetuates as an essential and eventually indistinguishable expression of product, services and the brand experience.

Read on Altimeter here


Recommended Videos

Joe Pine introduces the Progression of Economic Value, the foundational model for understanding the role of Experiences in the history of economics.
Brian Solis, award-winning author, prominent blogger/writer and principal analyst at Altimeter Group, helps people understand and define the role we play in the evolution of technology and its impact. In this first talk of the session The Wild Promises of the Digital Customer Experience at Lift16, Brian Solis shows us how brands are focusing their designs on customer experience and why it matters, especially in the digital world.

This is a full keynote based on the story of my latest book 'when digital becomes human'. Presented this on the biggest retail conference in Istanbul. Enjoy! More about Steven Steven is an expert in customer focus in a digital world.