CX News
Forrester: Where should CX sit? It depends
Principal Analyst Judy Weaver details some of the findings of Forrester’s new report, “Where Your CX Function Should Sit”:
- Reporting to the CEO can backfire if the CEO doesn’t have bandwidth for another report or isn’t on board with CX
- “Soft power” comes from building advocates and allies but having information, funding, and staffing can lead to real outcomes
- CX may need to shuffle who it reports to depending on the strategy and executives in place
Getting an “it depends” answer can be a little frustrating, but it’s the reality of CX. Different organizations at different sizes and industries have unique needs.
The key thing that applies to all CX leaders: work with different executive sponsors to help you get what your team needs to deliver better customer experiences.
Washington state latest to focus on CX
The governor of Washington state launches the “Your Washington” customer experience hub, with investigative and consumer journalist Jesse Jones as its director. The plans include:
- Giving state six months to implement a Customer Experience Improvement Plan
- State agencies filing quarterly reports
- Expanding the state’s online portal to state services, programs, and information
- Launching a hotline for residents to share experiences with state agencies
I reported on Maryland and New York focusing on customer experience back in April; it’s awesome to see another state making this a focus!
UK grocer partners with Instacart for AI-powered shopping carts
Morrisons is teaming up with Instacart to deploy Casper AI-powered shopping carts, one of the first deployments of this technology in the UK.
Funnily enough, my local grocery store has a few of these carts. I’ve never used them (I don’t want to make yet another account for something), and I’ve only seen a few customers use them. On a busy day, I once saw a woman review the Caper cart as the only option left and she declined to use it.
It’ll be interesting to see if consumers adopt this tech uniformly or not across different geographies.
‘A lack of care’: how big companies still fail bereaved customers
This is a tougher read: The Guardian profiles how consumers face truly appalling treatment when reporting to organizations that a loved one has passed and try to resolve accounts and purchases.
If you’ve never had to go through this as a consumer, it’s frustrating to navigate each brand’s policies. The time adds up when you’re working through numerous accounts plus other logistics for the situation - not to mention the emotional toll.
It’s tough on your agents, too. I’ll never forget the customer service call I had where someone called in for their partner’s passing, trying to cancel an order they no longer needed and direct the refund to something other than a credit card that had already been cancelled, to avoid a probate situation. I hadn’t been trained on this; I had no idea what the protocol was, and felt awful that I couldn’t provide better service. Logistically, there was little I could do to just resolve it, and the worst part was the order was a low dollar amount, especially for our brand’s AOV. Nine years later, I can still remember it was a roughly $40 order for candles.
It’s a reminder to review your organization’s policies for how to handle accounts or purchases from deceased customers - or create them if you don’t have any yet, and include it as a training exercise.
AI Headlines
Anthropic Economic Index report: Uneven geographic and enterprise AI adoption - AI adoption is following a similar pattern of tech adoption though with shorter timelines and with greater intensity than technologies in the 20th century.
xAI lays off 500 Grok trainers - about one-third of the division, all generalist members of the data annotation team.
Marriott checks out AI agents amid technology transformation - the first two focuses are automating high-cost processes and improving experiences, with the goal of shifting human associates away from manual, repetitive tasks so they can focus on better serving guests.
Carvana launches “Shaqbot” - Want to buy a car with advice from Shaquille O’Neill? Now’s your chance. But with AI, of course.
Tune In
Next week is the Kustomer Quarterly: Fall webinar.
Discover how the latest updates to Kustomer improve admin usability, strengthen authentication, and deliver richer insights while making it easier than ever to unlock the full power of our AI Agents.
We’re offering it at two times for added convenience! Tune in Thursday September 25th at 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time.
