Customer satisfaction is low. What’s worse, we can’t just blame COVID for the problem. Sure, COVID is part of it, but, surprisingly, this problem has other causes.

Not only that, but a recent report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) suggests that only 30 percent of companies tracked by ACSI improved their score—since 2011. That means that 70 percent of companies either had flat results or saw a decline in customer satisfaction.

It’s time to stop making excuses and turn things around.

In this episode, we talk with the Managing Director of the ACSI, David VanAmburg about what has been going on over the past ten years in Customer Experience. Like usual, the problem, has a few different influences. We discuss them and what we can do to fix them in 2022.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

I have experienced many waves of change in my career. When I was starting out it was all about Total Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering. Then, following that was Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Starting in the 90s and over the last 20 years, it has been Customer Experience. It surprised me to see that in a time when more organizations were addressing Customer Experience that the ACSI scores were mostly flat or declining. We discussed a few things that might be part of the problem.

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

04:22 VanAmburg gives us his take on the things that are affecting the low scores we see of late on the ACSI.
08:18. Colin asks why VanAmburg thinks that only 30 percent of companies improved their customer satisfaction scores in the last ten years covered by the report.
10:20 VanAmburg explains the problems of too much focus on the smaller picture and not enough of the bigger picture when analyzing data from a CRM.
12:58 Colin talks about how some companies jump into things without understanding them or committing to them, including CRM.
17:04 VanAmburg explains how retail banking faired through the pandemic, and what other companies could learn from it.
18:31 Ryan summarizes the discussion and teaches us all about medium maximization and how that can affect results.
24:07 Colin and VanAmburg discuss the influence of customer expectations and how those changed during the pandemic and affected scores during the pandemic.
27:31 Colin asks what VanAmburg thinks will happen in 2022, and his answer probably won’t satisfy you.

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.

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