It’s Time to Meet The Petrova Experience!
Today marks one of the big milestones in my life. This is the day I am officially choosing to live my dream. We are launching The Petrova Experience, a customer experience consulting, coaching and membership organization. I remember the day I fell in love with Customer Experience. On that day I saw first hand how better customer experience impacts employees, customers, and businesses. This was the first time in my life that I not only saw the end product of my work, but I also had a real-time impact on our customers and bottom line. I knew that day, that I had found my professional home.
I have been planning for this defining step since 2008 when I met a woman in Royal Bank of Canada who had gone out on her own to be more available to her little daughter. I do not remember her name, but I do remember the seed she planted in me. So it is possible to be a successful professional and an emotionally available mom?
Customer Experience Consulting Roots
A name I do remember is Mike Taunton. He was the one who told me that my career should consist of series of roles that are in very different parts of an organization. He was the first finance guy I have ever known who had run a marketing team. I think I may be the second. It took me two years in Marketing to realize I AM creative.
Unleashing that side of me is the most valuable gift of my career. Without it, I could have never pushed the design to perfection for the experiences that we built. Respecting brand management and marketing is a real skill that is not as common as we think. Customer experience design is one of my favorite parts of the customer experience business and I can do it now, because of my marketing experience.
Customer Experience Consulting Inspiration
Customer experience also made finance fun for the first time in my life. I have a pretty long tenure in finance and never particularly enjoyed those years. Building business cases and proving the ROI of customer experience brought purpose to my finance background. It is particularly invigorating because it is hard to prove. If it was easy, there would be no need for The Petrova Experience.
Why membership? I get asked this every time I pitch. Because I care. Because in JetBlue I got more than 30 awards for passion. As leaders we all have the responsibility to build that missing pipeline of customer experience skills, jobs, qualifications, trajectories so young people today can enter the field although they have never heard about it in the classroom. The industry is still misunderstood. Senior professionals are still not sure where to begin or what to do to have real impact. Membership means community and support. And that is what The Petrova Experience is all about. We empower people to reach their potential. That is our reward and purpose.
Creating a Community and a Legacy
This post is quite emotional for me, but there is a reason for it. Going on your own with an 8 month old baby is not the most common career move you will encounter. That is why I wanted to write about it. I hope to inspire more people to listen to their inner voice, believe in themselves, and when they feel it is right (regardless of the circumstances) to just GO FOR IT. Opening your own business is exactly like having a baby. You are NEVER really ready. You do it anyways. Because you know deep in you that there is no higher purpose. And living with purpose is what life is all about.
Liliana
P.S. Become a founding member and get to know our five values: Integrity, Empathy, Innovation, Passion, and Empowerment. Enjoy all the benefits that we are building for you, including monthly networking events in Manhattan!
Diversity is more than difference of color
Yesterday I had the privilege to join a panel on how to develop diversity and inclusion on your teams at Developer Week in Brooklyn. I was really excited to learn that diversity made it onto the event agenda. The panel was made of 5 women…
Are You Thinking Strategically?
Today, we are elevating our conversation to thinking strategically. The Petrova Experience is in the strategy creation business. So, we frequently encounter the difficulty businesses have anticipating, let alone defining, the tangible outcomes of a strategy engagement. Before the start of the engagement stakeholders want…
CX Skills Builders: You May Have a CX Job and Not Know It
Last week we talked about the identity crisis of CX professionals and we urged you to fix any small problem or seam on the customer journey in order to build internal brand equity and buy in.
What is Customer Experience Transformation?
To meet the needs of the empowered 21st Century consumer, most companies, especially larger enterprises, need to embark on a customer experience transformation. Imagine a car manufacturer that does not allow any vehicle customization, or a retail bank with no app-based self-service. Customer experience transformation…
How to Build a Customer-Centric Culture for Highly Effective Teams
When we look at how to build a customer-centric culture, we must look inside the organization first. True customer centricity happens when an organization masters group dynamics to harnesses the power of strong teams that collaborate on the common goal of meeting and exceeding customer…
Brand and Customer Experience – Make the Customer Know Who You Are
Now that we have helped you become experts in the design of space and function and the design of feelings, it is time to turn our attention to aesthetics, and to connect customer experience design to brand identity. T5 is an expression of the JetBlue brand. When customers enter…
Healthcare Experience Horror Story
We talk about good vs bad customer experiences. And we give examples of organizations that do things well or poorly. But we rarely are able to shine the light on a truly horrific experience. We found one in our latest healthcare experience. Complexity is Not…
What is Missing in Customer Experience Today?
Customer Experience is failing. According to Forrester, US Consumer Perceptions of CX quality are at an historic low. Post-COVID the quality of customer experience eroded every year across the three Forrester categories: effectiveness, ease, and emotion. That means organizations operate inefficiently, underutilize technology, and fail…
How to Scale a High Trust Health Service Without Breaking Patient Confidence
When a healthcare technology company begins to scale, the pressure can feel punishing. The patient can get lost in the momentum of growth. And quickly, profit projections can stumble into loss. From a leadership and operations point of view, your plate is full during the…
How to Prepare for AI: Dispatches from CR Summit, Charleston
On the eve of the #CRSummit in Charleston, customer experience leaders from various industries held the first AI Committee meeting. AI is a challenging topic to cover because it has varied customer experience applications, depending on a brand’s growth cycle, customer base and business challenges….
Healthcare Whitepaper: Impact of Patient ‘I Wants’ in Healthcare
Rachel Dreyfus joins The Petrova Experience with a guest blog about patient experience. Background A culture of positive patient experience is increasingly important in Healthcare, affecting patient outcomes and satisfaction. Yet in America, this industry is challenged with time-consuming processes and requirements coupled with high…
Customer Experience Plan is More Important than Ever
Last week we published eight Customer Experience Trends to look out for in 2021. Today we are diving deeper into the first one: Customer Experience is more important than ever to consumers. What does that mean to you? It is time to design your customer experience…
Is Covid19 What We Needed to Build Seamless End-to-End Travel Experience?
On January 10th, we published an article called The Future of Travel We Deserve. In it, we laid out the foundation necessary to implement innovation at scale. Four months later, in the face of Covid19, the urgency to apply technology at scale has grown exponentially….
What Holiday Parties Teach about Hospitality
Last week The Petrova Experience, like many companies, hosted our holiday party. In good customer experience fashion, we put significant effort into finding the perfect location. We agonized over the details of choosing the perfect food. And we made it an imperative to find a…
Liliana Petrova Talks Patient Experience in Healthcare Podcast
Recently, we recorded a podcast on patient experience in healthcare with Stacey Richter. Today, we are excited to share it with you. On the episode, we discuss travel and healthcare industry parallels. And I talk about applying customer experience design principles to improving patient experience….
Why Your Employee Experience Journey Matters
This week, Andy Newman wrote a great article in The New York Times about the life of a retail sales agent. He used the example of an Old Navy sales associate’s employee experience in Manhattan. And he walked the reader through the retail worker’s use…
Create Your Tribe: How Great CX Makes a Lifestyle Brand
Newcomers to the market realize that their business is only as strong as the growth of their customer base. With that in mind, senior leaders work hard to shorten the distance between them and the customer.
Think Strategically about Telehealth in 2021
Today, we examine telehealth strategy for an in-depth look at this 2021 customer experience trend. As we continue our conversation about why telehealth is here to stay in 2021, we look at how thinking strategically empowers providers and health systems to put the patient at…
Airport Experience – Are You Letting Down Your Precious 2021 Travelers?
A month and a half ago, as part of our ongoing conversation about airport experience, we introduced the concept of revenge travel. We pleaded with the public to trust us aviation professionals and airport experience designers and fly again… SOON. Now is the Time…
Extend Your Travel Experience Value Proposition
Last December the Ladders published a piece that discusses business travelers who extend travel beyond the timeline of the business trip. The article says, “[a]ccording to a new study by La Quinta by Wyndham, nearly two-thirds (64%) of business travelers who have extended a trip have…
How to make work at home work?
Post-COVID employee experience is a top priority of every HR executive. Most executives I know are losing sleep over this piece of organizational culture. Their challenge is to design the optimal way to bring employees back to the office and/or keep remote work employees engaged….
Bad Customer Experience
Doing the right thing when things go wrong is not exactly a good business case. But many do it anyway. Why? Because brands want to protect (and grow) their brand equity through human-centered customer experience design of their products and services. In that sense, the…
When Not To Invest In Self-Service Technology?
What is self-service? It is something every progressive brand aspires to have more of. Few implement it successfully. Self-service is a new tool to optimize a company’s workforce by removing transactions from the system. All industries are looking at it as a strategy of the…
Extend the Customer Journey with AI
Superior customer experience hinges on seamless customer journeys. We build strategies around this, design CX programs, and map the journeys of customer personas, all with the aim to meet customer expectations and provide wow moments along that journey. But what happens when the customer journey…
Customer Understanding for Airport Customer Experience: Theory vs Practice
One of the (many!) interesting things about working in airport customer experience for as long as our team has, is watching how the language around customer experience changes as ideas about how to centralize passenger needs and expectations evolve. Trade association Airports Council International (ACI),…
Why Bt2B Businesses Must Think Like B2C in the Next Decade
B2B vs B2B thinking makes a real difference when it comes to customer experience. According to Gartner at least 80% of B2B buyers now expect the same buying experience as B2C customers in 2019. Gone are the days when B2B organizations did not need to…
Web Experience is Having a Comeback
In the third quarter of 2020 US e-commerce sales went up 36.7% compared with the same period in 2019. Websites have come back to center stage. However, we are not seeing an equivalent shift in web experience that matches the shift in today’s consumer behavior. Retailers…
#CXTHUS Exchange Insights – winners and losers?
Attending a customer experience conference is a significant investment of time and money. Even if you are speaker at the conference, like I was last week, the time away from your non-stop email flow can bring more stress than pleasure to your days. Once we…
What is Taxing Your Customer Experience?
In our customer experience consulting engagements with organizations from travel and transportation to corporate environments, we see the same six challenges to delivering seamless customer experiences. The struggle to deliver experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations across these six fronts threaten the CX-ROI connection…
How a Personal Interaction builds Repeat Customers
A customer-centric methodology is key to the successful outcome of my interaction with Hello Spud. It is the reason this story appears here, and not among the CX Big Fails! The company did not send an automated response. It did not deliver a message stating “sorry we couldn’t help you, would you like something else.” Instead, the company co-founder reached out to me personally across multiple channels (a handwritten note, followed by personal emails).
Empathy in Customer Experience
As customer experience and hospitality professionals, we use the word empathy all the time. It is the baseline of experience design. Yet, few of us truly understand it, or how it fits in to organizational culture. Last month, a client said to me “In order…
Customer Experience ROI. Is It Worth Doing?
The business case for Customer Service is complex. Gone are the days when we bought a piece of hardware that depreciates over 5 or 10 year on the balance sheet. CX does not even show up on our assets list. At least not with that name.
Would You Pitch In To Save Toys “R” Us For Your Children To Experience? #ToysRUsGoFundMe
Last week we laid out the big moves that the leadership of Toys ‘R’ Us failed to take to evolve with customer needs and thus joins other brands as examples of bad customer experience. This week, billionaire Isaac Larian set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise…
The ROI of Customer Experience Programs
What customer experience is, and how well brands think they are executing customer experience, and how well they are actually doing it are often at odds. According to Bain, 80% of CEOs believe they deliver superior customer experience while, 8% of their customers agree. PatientPop…
Lessons Learned at the Forrester Conference: “Data is the New Sexy”
Once a year I look for an event to attend where I can learn something new and get better at what I do. This year, I attended an event hosted by customer experience research organization Forrester – the Forrester Global Council Meeting and the CXNYC2018…
It’s Time to Meet The Petrova Experience!
Today marks one of the big milestones in my life. This is the day I am officially choosing to live my dream. We are launching The Petrova Experience, a customer experience consulting, coaching and membership organization. I remember the day I fell in love with…
Are You Ready to Go Exclusive with Jane, Your Digital Concierge?
In 2015 JetBlue introduced bag fees. Seven years after the competition. The media exploded. Many publications were negative. They blamed the airline for “selling out.” One headline read “A New Era has begun for JetBlue, and travelers will hate it.” For me, one journalist stood…
Center of Excellence: The Antidote to Failed Customer Experience Programs
It’s no secret that even good CX programs fail. Back in 2018, Bob Thompson of CustomerThink shared the “inconvenient truth” that “93% of customer experience programs are failing.” Gartner echoed this two years ago. It found “most Customer Experience Programs are not delivering on the…
Is AI Really The Answer?
Earlier this week we shared some of the pitfalls of implementing self-service and highlighted the importance of strategic and empathetic implementation. AI (artificial intelligence) is one of the self-service tools in the customer service professional toolbox today. It is also one of the new buzzwords,…
Employee Centric Culture – Culture is King
In 2017 we introduced our ROI series recognizing the challenges all customer experience professionals have to obtain funding for CX initiatives and to prove their positive returns. Our second ROI post covered how a well built customer experience can increase revenue and customer growth of…
What’s the Scope
Launched by CXPA (the Customer Experience Professional Association) in 2013, and held annually on the first Tuesday of October, CX Day aims to “advance customer experience as a professional role and business discipline.” This year’s CXDay theme is “good CX delivers better outcomes for customers,…
A Lot of Data, Not Enough Insight
A month ago I saw a Forrester presentation on Customer Experience measurement that began with a great quote from the Global Bank: “We are drowning in data and starving for insight.” In other words, they do not have data management strategy. Aren’t we all? Most…
Airports of the Future: Trends and Innovations
Every year since we founded The Petrova Experience, we write about travel around the holiday season. It has become something of a tradition for us. This year, I will not start by updating you on 2024 holiday season travel numbers. Or how current volume stacks…
No Pass During Construction: Why Airports Must Rethink Customer Experience in the Era of Capital Programs
Throughout the US, airports are entering one of the most consequential decades of infrastructure development in the history of modern aviation. According to Airports Council International–North America (ACI‑NA), US airports are facing more than $151 billion in necessary infrastructure projects between 2023 and 2027. That…
Why Millennial Investors are Abandoning You
It’s time to talk about the Millennial investor, a critical market for financial services firms in the next five years. For the past decade, the media talked about the impact of Millennials in the workforce, changing purchasing behaviors, and culture shifts. What we don’t see…
5 Ways to Leverage OpenAI for Customer Experience
Back in 2017 when we served on the AI Advisory Committee for Execs In the Know, we wrote an article about the role of artificial intelligence in the future of business. Our article called out, rather presciently, the need for governance, standards, and the human…
What Can Casino Consulting Firms Learn from Airlines?
Today we’re talking about casino experience. Casinos and airlines are similar in their operational complexity and sense of wonder. They also are similar in the way they can implement technology to improve their guest experience design. For some reason though, Las Vegas still has not…
How Does Social Media Affect Customer Experience?
Social Media is the only real-time channel for successful brands to manage customer experience and brand management.
How Do You Know You Are Making The Right Big Bet?
The future of customer experience is full of opportunities. However, the technologies of the future are not enough. Adaptive, memorable customer experiences require empathy and innovation. Liliana tackles this in an installment of JetBlue Into the Blue blog series. Along with her guests, Liliana explores…
3 Customer Experience Strategy Lessons for 2023
Customer experience strategy guides exceptional experience and bolsters growth. When executed well, it impacts not only your market share, but the entire industry in which you operate. In fact, a well-crafted, consistently deployed CX strategy built to address customer personas, needs, and wants, and to…
JetBlue Leading Customer Experience
Since I used to lead the JetBlue customer experience, people often ask what is behind the JetBlue experience magic. Or, as one of our clients refers to it, the “JetBlue Simple.” So the fundamentals that went into creating that signature experience are often on my…
Eliminate Customer Stress with Good CX
Good customer experiences design either gives back customer time or alleviates customer anxiety. If a brand’s CX isn’t achieving one of those goals, the customer isn’t getting any real or perceived value. So, how can brands manage stress? Better yet, how can brands build experiences…
Customer Experience Audit: Mobile Provider Eliminates Remote Workforce
How to balance the efficiency call center metric FCR (first call resolution) with wait and talk time? JetBlue promotes human interactions as a brand promise.
How @T4 makes real customer experience impact
Today we share our impressions from visiting our welcoming host Chad at JFK Terminal 4 in NYC. We also celebrate Chad as an effective Customer Experience professional/practitioner. His work is worth sharing on several levels. For those who are given the role of Customer Experience…
Customer Experience Survey: Why Customers Are Not Responding
When you solicit customer feedback sometimes matters more than how you ask the questions. In the case of a survey about new biometrics boarding initiatives my team and I created for JetBlue, we had a list of feedback that was most important for us.
How Smart Do Humans Want AI To Get?
Earlier, we covered the basics of AI and what it is in theory. Today, we talk more about existing practical applications of AI and more examples of artificial intelligence. And we reflect on what that means to the customer experience field. We also share some…
The Wholehearted Traveler and Other 2024 Travel Trends
Back in 2020, we predicted the rise of the Revenge Traveler and the impact it would have on travel and hospitality experience providers. As we approach 2024, we are spotting a new type of traveler on the horizon. And a set of trends that will…
Customer Experience Audit: New York Times Beats Google
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of Customer Experience Audits. In this series we walk you through customer experience examples across industries. We feature brands that made strategic investments in cross channel customer experience and brands that have missed the mark. We…
The Invisible Friction Points Weakening Manufacturer Customer Experience
For years, manufacturers have competed on product quality, operational efficiency, and price. Our current environment of supply chain volatility, talent shortages, and the elevated customer expectations in the “experience economy” means CX is, in many ways, the new QC. Why is customer experience the new…
Customer Experience Tips and Best Practices In 2017?
This is Post 2 of Liliana Petrova’s series on customer experience. She shares customer experience tips, lessons learned, and best practices for the new year. And dives into organizational culture and other customer experience building blocks for brands. In the JetBlue blog article, Ms. Petrova…
Where Should CX Sit at the Table?
Before we begin talking about where CX should sit in the organization, I want to clarify one thing. Customer Experience is not a single person.
What is Customer Experience Strategy?
In our last article we talked about the importance of strategic thinking. Today, we build on this topic and walk you through the nuts and bolts of customer experience strategy. Customer experience strategy is often missing in organizations. However, it is foundational for the creation…
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of [Customer] Happiness
Seven years ago, when we launched The Petrova Experience, the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the United States felt far away. However, its founding principles, particularly the pursuit of happiness, felt immediate and relevant. So much so that when we came up with our…
5 Tips to Create Great Customer Experience Design Strategy
A customer experience design strategy that is sustainable and successful starts by having a vision and knowing who your customer is. This launching point enables you to design customer experiences that connect with your customer and bring to life your vision. To do this, you…
The One CX Goal You Need to Set for 2019
For 2019, I urge you to make only one CX goal – bring about business success with your customer experience work. Don’t just do work in the general sense. Rather, set a CX goal that has a real impact on your customers and their experiences with your brand.
What is Human-Centered Design and how to Leverage it in 2021?
At its core, design is about value creation. In the world of Customer Experience, value-driven design requires CX professionals to use empathy to imagine a future customer experience that is easy, fast, and seamless. When we think of how to design human-centered experience applying customer…
What is the best question for your CX Survey?
As customer experience professionals, we need to factor in this disconnect when we design surveys. And when we react to survey results. Customers have an image of who they want to be. However, their behaviors do not always reflect that image.
Customer Experience Audit: Starbucks Bets On The Physical Experience
Starbucks is opting in for the physical experience in order to become a lifestyle brand while other brands are investing in omni-channel experience.
How Well Do You Understand AI Applications?
In the last week I spoke about AI at the Argyle Forum webinar and at the ConnectID Conference in Washington, DC. Technology is emerging
What is Revenge Travel and Why People Do It
LinkedIn is overflowing with articles and company news in response to COVID-19. We are starting to see renderings of future casino experiences that are anything but human-centric. People are beginning to ideate publicly about what would happen if the middle seat on an airplane is…
Customer Experience Technology View of your Call Center
By 2022 the global cloud based contact center market is growing from USD 6.8Bn in 2017 to 20.93Bn in 2022. This makes for CAGR of 25.2%. If you do not get on this journey, you risk falling behind and becoming irrelevant in less than five…
Journey Mapping to Avoid Travel Horror Stories
Welcome to the busiest week of US summer travel. AAA predicts travel this week across airports, train stations, and roads, will reach higher than pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Nearly six million of those travelers are expected to go through US airports in the…
Customer Experience Trends – 8 Actionable Tactics in 2021
As we begin Q4 of an eventful 2020, it’s time to look out for the 2021 customer experience trends and tactics for creating exceptional experiences in increasingly complex environments. We rounded up Eight 2021 Customer Experience Trends and Tactics to be aware of as we…
Why You Need Culture Not Call Center Training for Customer-Centric CX
If the organization does not understand what customer experience is, you will not get the funding or organizational support you need to build customer-centric experiences.
Beyond the Arena: Transform Local Experience for World Class Events
Let’s get honest about local experience around major events. While it is exciting for the world to show up in your hometown for a major event like the World Cup or the Olympics, it often feels inconvenient and even burdensome to local residents. Visitors take…
Hiring Tips: Who Should I Hire First on My CX Team
The pressure to demonstrate business impact and ROI on your Customer Experience initiatives quickly makes your first hire even more important. As usual, there is no answer that fits all scenarios perfectly. We have some helpful strategies to consider based on the structure of your organization and your goals.
Customer Experience, Self Service, and the Gift of Time
Time is the most precious gift in life. If you think about it, time is the one thing we all want more of. As we get older and busier, time gets even more valuable to us.
Return to Office – how to get it right in 2022?
Last week, the CEO of Better.com, Vishal Gard, made the news again. This time, it was for the executive’s massive blunder of firing 900 people via Zoom. A blunder that would never have happened if Better.com had a return to office plan that defined how…
When There is No Chat in Chat Support
Today we talk about chat support best practices, the customer experience VALUE that it creates, and the ROI of the business case to implement it. Although we are skeptical about the value of chatbots, we are big believers in the value of online chat support…
Autonomous Service Starts at the Top: A CEO To Do List
In a recent article, we explored the controversial news that the customer service agent role as we know it is dead. The AI service agent is taking its place. Granted, this solves multiple problems relating to cost, efficiency, and consistency of customer experience, as we…
What is Customer Experience? What are the Faces of CX?
Each area of CX represents a path for CX professionals to impact business health and build successful careers. One of my favorite CX analogies is that it is like the blood in our bodies. When CX is done well, it touches every aspect of an organization. That’s what makes customer experience so much fun! You will never be bored working in CX.
The One CX Goal You Need to Set for 2019
For 2019, I urge you to make only one CX goal – bring about business success with your customer experience work. Don’t just do work in the general sense. Rather, set a CX goal that has a real impact on your customers and their experiences with your brand.