Why I Don’t Love Chatbots
Today, we tackle the value proposition that chatbots are more valuable to companies than customers. I reject this. The ROI simply is not there, especially since better customer experience is not there. I have experienced both fully automated bots and “augmented” service agents interactions using the chat channel, and neither delivers on the promises of chat bots as the game-changing resource we all need. Are chatbots the future? Certainly not in their current state.
For our blog we use a photography subscription service. They push chat support heavily. When I used it, it was slow. The person either did not know English well enough or was multi-tasking several chats, but it felt like he was not present. On occasion, it felt like he was not answering the question I was asking, but rather providing a generic response. The base for effective communication is connection. When I felt unheard by the “support,” my frustration almost led me to drop the service (there are plenty of options for photography sources). Suddenly the chat offering threatens to cause the loss of a customer… and the organization PAID for it, for its integration, monthly support fees etc. I do not like that. It makes no sense.
AI presentation photo by Liliana Petrova, CCXP
Let’s talk about the fully automated chatbots. Allegedly, this is where companies see the real efficiencies. Again, no real value for customers unless the automated chat function allows them to fully self-serve. The problem is, the fully automated chatbot today is stupid. It can perform only very distinct functions.
The customer faced with a chat immediately tenses up with anxiety. He/she knows that the chances are pretty high he/she will have to channel switch pretty soon. How many bot interactions have you had that allowed you to solve your problem without switching to a human? Chatbots are supposed to deliver customer-centric experience. They are supposed to be customer directed, but the customer feels anxious that the minute the bot gets “stupid,” the customer loses control of the experience. Suddenly, the power is with the bot.
If chatbots are the future, What is the future for chatbots? Disturbing is a word that comes to mind. Soul Machines is the company to check for the preview. They have developed a digital human that has a BRAIN built on a virtual nervous system. Now that is equally exciting and terrifying. It reminds me of the AI empowered female voice that sounds like a human one (the digital human is also female…just saying). It will take some time before the digital human agent becomes the norm, but one thing is for sure, the next version of “stupid bot” will have empathy.
According to Forrester, 60% of us prefer not to use a chat bot at all. I bet you if you ask why, you will also hear that the bots just stupid. So how can chat bots become smarter? We are back to the data conversation. Chatbots are as smart as the power and scope of the underlying data they can pull/learn from. In the case of the JetBlue customer experience team, without an integration to our reservation system, the chatbot cannot change or re-book a passenger’s ticket. Until then, customers will keep reading “please speak to an agent.” That is hardly a way to feel the love.
How AI and the Future of Humanity will co-exist?
I was born in 1980 and grew up with Terminator. Skynet, the AI with a consciousness that refused to shut itself for self-preservation, was my biggest fear. When I was…
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…
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…
How to Get Enough Funding for CX Initiatives
Delivering impactful customer experience programming starts with making the business case for customer experience to executive leadership. This is a straightforward objective. However, it requires strategy, clarity, education, and communication…
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.
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…
3 Call Center Mistakes You Are Making
No matter how often my peers and I say that technology is not the answer, call center managers still ask…
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…
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…
Trust Is the Treatment: How to Achieve ROI on Patient Experience through CX Strategy
Patient experience is not a soft metric. It is an engine for financial performance, improved clinical outcomes, and sustained patient loyalty. For hospital executives and family medical practitioners alike, investing…
How to Overcome Hospitality Industry Challenges by Empowering Employees
If you are a hospitality industry leader, or a leader in another business sector who has been reading about the industry, you have encountered some grim statistics. It is true….
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…
Freelance Customer Experience Lessons for Freelancers
For small businesses and freelancers alike, it’s important to recognize that your business is as strong as the relationships you build with your customers. That’s just one of the key…
Why I Don’t Love Chatbots
Today, we tackle the value proposition that chatbots are more valuable to companies than customers. I reject this. The ROI simply is not there, especially since better customer experience is…
Poor Integration is Bad for Customer Journey and Worse for Brands
Although we all have bad customer experiences, there is still a big debate about “the CX field” and whether it will survive the test of time. There is no doubt…
How Seamless Customer Journeys Drive Revenue
Many travel and transportation executives identify revenue sources narrowly. Think ticket sales, ancillary fees like baggage and amenities fees or premium upgrades. Many customer experience practitioners limit their scope to…
5 Things You Can Do to Provide Excellent Passenger Experience in 2022
The Wall Street Journal predicts this Thanksgiving will be among the busiest travel days in decades, with 55 million travelers anticipated to be moving through US airports and other transportation…
Why Customer Retention is the True Measure of SaaS Success
Guest Post by Callie Reynolds for The Petrova Experience In SaaS (Software as a Service), like in most businesses, sales is king. Sales gets the glory, and while I’d like…
Grateful for Customer Experience Heroes
When we launched The Petrova Experience, we did so with the words “in pursuit of customer happiness.” Pursuit of happiness is part of every interaction we have with our clients,…
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…
Customer Facing Experience: Communication and Hospitality
Today, we are talking about communication as part of the customer facing experience. This is one of the most misused and misinterpreted notions both in our professional lives and our…
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…
Contactless and Self-Service are Here to Stay
Our 5th 2021 customer experience trend highlights contactless and self-service experiences across industries. Before we dive into this topic, let’s take a moment to define what contactless and self-service mean…
What is the Real Cost of Employee Experience?
There are two types of leaders (and organizational cultures) that stand to benefit most from improving employee experience. The first kind have 40% or higher turnover and think their frontline…
Autonomous Customers, Traveler Privacy and More Questions for CX Professionals in a Changing World
“As we move toward a more automated culture, most travelers will adapt to a Jetsonian, automated lifestyle. Every industry we know will be disrupted. For those of us in aviation,…
United Airlines Culture Problem
I am often asked what organizational culture is. Frequently, I meet with executives who are feeling defeated by the scale and complexity of leading cultural transformations. So, where do you…
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…
3 Cost Conscious Mistakes in Hospitality Implementation that Lose Money
Hospitality is a cornerstone of customer experience in travel, healthcare, and across industries. There is no question that hospitality is essential for creating world class, seamless experiences and driving customer…
Let’s Get You Certified as a Customer Experience Professional!
Like all mature professions, customer experience has a certification that is internationally recognized. Adding it to your resume will signal to the business community that you are serious about customer experience and your aspiration to be part of its leadership ranks…
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.
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…
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…
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 Journey Mapping Tools in 2021
Before we dive into customer journey mapping tools, we must keep in mind that, by itself, journey mapping is not a customer experience product or service. A journey map is…
Interoperability is a Business Risk for Medtech and a Healthcare Risk for Patients
Looking at patient experience and healthcare interoperability in the medtech environment, any observer (customer experience expert or not) recognizes something is broken. A thorough exploration of what is broken exposes…
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…
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…
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…
What is Wayfinding?
I did not always know what wayfinding means. But ever since I left Bulgaria to come to America I have been looking to find my way. The first time I…
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%…
The Biggest AI Mistake Most companies are Making
Much of AI news focuses on the importance of regulation, data risks, and intellectual property debates. And of course there is the rally cry “AI is coming for our jobs.”…
What is Customer Experience for Built Environments?
A tweet grabbed our attention this week: “The Atlanta Airport (ATL) designers were like ‘and then what if we had them run 5k?’” In addition to making us laugh, this…
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…
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.
Customer Experience Audit: Domino’s Making the Right CX Choices
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of Customer Experience Audit – as series of articles featuring examples of good customer experience and bad customer experience in practice….
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…
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…
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.
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…
The Risk No Insurer Prices: Why Customer Experience is Costing Insurance Companies Renewals
Insurers are experts in pricing physical and actuarial risk. What too few have learned to price effectively is the slow, compounding erosion that comes from fragmented customer service. What is…
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,…
CX Skills Builder: Own the Customer Experience
Often, Customer Experience professionals do not believe that they can improve customer experience by impacting the experience design for their customers. Why? What causes this disconnect? I once got a…
Human Experience: Do You Really Know Your Customers?
Steve Jobs said: “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need before they realize it themselves.” He did not just say that….
Celebrate National CX Day
Did you know that tomorrow is National CX Day? Some of you may not even know what “CX” means or why there is a day to celebrate CX. CX stands…
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”…
Do You Know Where Your Inventory Is?
When I worked in the airline business our most embarrassing incident was “losing a minor”. We never lost a child, of course. But we might not have known where a…
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.
How to approach Return-to-Office Resistance
There is a general resistance to return to office. People do not want to go back to the pre-pandemic office routine, particularly to a 5-day-a-week, in-office schedule. Out of ten…
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.
United CEO does not care about #customers happiness. Really?
Lately, I have been thinking about United Airlines and its organizational culture. Initially, I thought about United Airlines culture because someone asked whether it is possible to build a customer-centric…
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…
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…
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
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…
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).
Top CX Design Challenges in 2021
Customer experience design challenges in 2021 remind us of the overall challenges that face organizations in a year marked by changing expectations and demands. Top customer experience design challenges include…
Am I A Good Candidate For A Customer Experience Role?
People often ask me what experience they need to be a good fit for customer experience roles.
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…
Culture Starts at the Top
Without a leader who believes that today’s business success is about acquiring and retaining customers, you cannot even begin the process of building a culture. Leaders who are passionate about the customer are also passionate about creating culture and employee engagement.
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 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…
Why CX Design Needs to be in Your Transportation Project RFP
Ever heard this line while working on an RFP? “I know your value, but I don’t know where to put you.” We hear it all the time. Why? Because, historically,…
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.
Leadership During the Pandemic: Guest Post by Rachel Dreyfus
This is a guest post by Rachel Dreyfus, President, Dreyfus Advisors, who researched leadership and organizational culture during the pandemic. How has Covid19 influenced leadership over the past three months?…
The ROI of Customer Experience
Knowing the ROI of customer experience helps to fund CX projects and make intelligent investments in customer experience. But a deeper examination into the question about CX return on investment…
Customer Experience Audit: Cadillac Scores Millennial Customers with Future-Forward Thinking
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a Customer Experience Audit series. See all the audit stories. The automotive industry is right next to the airline industry in terms of…
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…
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…
5 Ways Customer Experience Consultants Keep Customer Promises
Customer experience is the follow-through on brand promises across every interaction. Some organizations assume the importance of customer experience is limited to commercial brands. This is far from true. In…
How Southwest Can Own Customer Experience Again
The collapse of the Southwest passenger experience this holiday season is an unlikely jumping off point for a conversation on how to own customer experience transformation. Unfortunately, it is not…
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…
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…