/ Page 2 - Articles by Kristen Bialik

Everyone is talking about blockchain, and the savviest small-business owners are wondering: "Am I falling behind by not jumping on the bandwagon?" Gartner defines blockchain as a "type of distributed ledger in which value exchange transactions are sequentially grouped into blocks. Each block is chained to the previous block and immutably recorded across a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, using cryptographic trust and assurance mechanisms."

A majority of U.S. customers now prefer to shop online, according to a recent Capterra survey. Overall, 60% of U.S. customers who completed an online or in-store purchase in the past 12 months say they prefer to shop online, versus 22% who prefer to shop in-store and 18% who have no preference.

In the past year, how have your customers engaged with customer service, either yours or your competitors'? About four-in-ten (42%) U.S. customers who made an online or in-store purchase in the past 12 months had a customer service interaction via phone call during that time, according to a recent Capterra survey. Yet only half as many (21%) say that phone calls are their preferred mode of customer service interactions.

I've got good news and bad news for customer experience (CX) professionals. The good news: In a recent Capterra survey of Americans who've made an in-store or online purchase in the past year, 91% of respondents report having a positive customer experience.

"Engage!" Captain Jean-Luc Picard's oft-heard command doesn't just apply to the USS Enterprise crew. Businesses need to engage their customers. So, grab a cup of tea (earl grey, hot) from your nearest replicator while we set a course for customer engagement, warp six.

Have you ever stopped, closed your eyes, and listened deeply to your surroundings? When you really focus, you notice more and more sounds the longer you pay attention, sounds that build on each other to create a mini symphony.

Welcome to the final post in our customer experience pillars series. We've covered how to better understand your customer, how to consciously create great experiences, and how to build a customer-focused culture.

"The customer comes first." "The customer is always right." "We live to serve our customers." These sayings feel so trite and cliche, it's easy to think businesses are obviously putting their customer first. We've all heard this a million times, right? We must be doing it. But sayings like this are easy in theory, and hard in practice.

Gartner defines customer experience (CX) as “the customer's perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier's employees, systems, channels, or products." (Full article available to Gartner clients.)