An international certificate for customer experience management professionals

CXPA provides global recognition for your customer experience management competence. You can now become a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). The content and availability requirements of this international certificate was introduced to the participants by Sirte Pihlaja, CEO, Customer Experience Optimiser from Shirute, who heads the activities of CXPA in Finland. During this fall, Shirute will start a new training program that supports your preparation for the certificate. The new certificate was published in CXPA Finland’s spring meeting at Microsoft.

Sirte Pihlaja also told the audience about the fast growth of CXPA: the association has already 2 700 members from 68 countries. Membership is open to all customer experience management professionals. You can read more about CCXP and register as a member of CXPA at www.ccxp.org.

The international Customer Experience Day will be celebrated again on Oct 7th, 2014. CXPA Finland will organise its next meeting to mark this date at the lates, so mark your calendars! We will invite all CXPA Finland newsletter subscribers personally. You can subscribe to our newsletter at www.cxpa.fi.

Companies need engaged personnel at the core of their customer service

Microsoft, the winner of last years customer experience management study, introduced the event participants to its way of work: how its CX concept is planned and how it works.

“The goal of Microsoft is to make people tell their friends about the brand: according to research, 89% of customers don’t believe in brand messages.”Microsoft Finland’s CEO Ari Rahkonen introduced us to this theme through his keynote speech “New way of work – Microsoft’s journey”. According to Rahkonen, Hänen mukaansa companies need engaged personnel at the core of their customer service. That is why his company tries to make people tell their friends about the brand. Rahkonen also told that 89% of customers don’t believe in brand messages., but 79% do believe a customer or a friend, who recommends a brand.

A total of 61% of Finns do already knowledge-intensive work with their smartphones or computers, and they work where they can access the net; today’s society has freed itself from work that is tied to buildings.

“Companies need engaged personnel at the core of their customer service. Good atmosphere, comfortable surroundings and a fair and energising boss motivate people to work.”In order to motivate your personnel, you need to ask: What motivates us to work? The answer is a good atmosphere, comfortable surroundings and a fair and energising boss. Microsoft has made this possible with presence work, which is based on trust. This type of work ables employees to concentrate on their work, as the biggest challenges of knowledge work are the constant interruptions, which happen, according to recent studies, every minute on the average. Having to interrupt your work also leads to work-related stress, as people worry about the work that they have not been able to finish. It is important to set goals and keep regular feedback discussions and checkpoints.

Customer satisfaction correlates with the company life span

Belinda Gerdt, Business Group Lead, Business Solutions, talked to us about creating a good customer experience online. She pointed out that the customers have moved to the web. Company activities need to be much more transparent to the customer, and they can also affect the process outcomes much more than before.

“Customer satisfaction correlates with the company life span. In the age of customers, 75% of currently existing companies will die before 2020.”We have moved on from industrial economy to customer economy. Gerdt also mentioned a study that proves that customer satisfaction correlates with the company life span. The researchers had forecasted that 75% of currently existing companies will die before 2020ä – some incentive to improve your customer satisfaction!

Customer experience design has four components in the online world: data, analytics, emotions and automation. Companies need to integrate marketing and customer services, because 65% of customer service dialogue will be digitalised by 2015.

“Over half of Finns have bought a 30% more expensive product in the hope of a better customer experience.”Finnish companies are currently using mostly the phone, their online services, and email, to communicate with their customers. Web chat provides excellent opportunities for interacting with customers. Chat has also been proven to directly affect sales and increase profits. It was good to hear that 56% of Finns have bought a 30% more expensive product in the hope of a better customer experience.

Microsoft creates added value to its customers by networking in their inspiring working facilities

The director responsible for customer and partner satisfaction, Jari Aromäki, introduced the audience to the working practices of customer experience management inside Microsoft Finland. According to him, the best results can be reached by focusing on the factors that provide most added value to the customers.

“The most important areas of management are training, process, benefiting from best practices, being present and proactive.”You need to make the goals concrete and measure how close you are to reaching them. Personnel compensations should be based on achieved results. The most important areas of management are training, process, benefiting from best practices, being present and proactive. Furthermore, also stories that help drive the desired results are useful. We have moved from measuring results to measuring activities, ”Excellence in execution”.

After the presentations, it was time to make a tour of the Microsoft premises. They are both inspiring and make it possible for employees to concentrate on their work and network with co-workers as needed.

Thank you for all our partners for making the event happen: Microsoft, Etuma, Questback, Shirute.