Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news.
This week, we’re looking at small business attitudes to customer support, what Londoners think of brand loyalty, and the risks of increasing generative AI.
Key news
- The Great Resignation, a period of record-high quit rates that began during the pandemic, may now be over, the BBC reports. Professor Anthony Klotz, who coined the trend in May 2021, now says, “we’re at the tail of it.” New data suggests resignation rates in the UK are normalising to pre-pandemic levels. Experts say economic instability has made workers less likely to quit. Meanwhile, job contentment is at a nearly 40-year high due to improved flexibility, pay and benefits. Though some sectors, like healthcare, still see high turnover, the mass resignation trend seems to have passed.
- Scientists at MIT have developed an AI that can make “very accurate” predictions on current and future house prices. To train the real estate bot, the team fed it pictures of 20,000 houses in addition to data that measured how their prices changed over time.
- Brighton-based sustainable design studio Gomi has created a limited edition range of speakers made out of recycled Barbie and Ken dolls, amid the buzz around the blockbuster film. Sustainable fashion specialist Lydia Brearley said Gomi’s “Childhood Memories” speaker range was a “great example of a business leading the way seeing waste as a valuable resource”.
Commentary share: Barbie teaches us CX
Two weeks from launch and The Barbie Movie has already passed $1billion global grosses and is still topping the charts. Many have heralded the marketing campaign behind the movie as a huge contributing factor to it’s success, with the world turning pink in the run up to launch. It’s clear that there are a lot of lessons that other marketers and CX professionals can learn from its success.
Liz Carter, Reputation CMO shares her key takeaways and looks at how all businesses can can create marketing campaigns for success.
“The Barbie marketing team certainly nailed their goal of driving people to movie theaters this summer, and not just that, people showed up in all the pink! I don’t think I’ve ever seen people this decked out for a movie launch.
“While it’s no secret that the film’s marketing budget was massive, I think what most surprised me is how Barbie became seamlessly interwoven into our daily lives. You couldn’t miss it! Through strategic investment in brand partnerships and appealing to the consumer’s nostalgia for childhood, the Barbie marketing team was able to infuse a small piece of childhood playfulness into the everyday. From Barbie-inspired clothes and home goods to pink burgers and frozen yogurt, Barbie’s brand partnerships made it impossible to miss this very pink moment in time.
“While I may never have a $150 million marketing budget for a single campaign, we can still find learnings from Barbie. My key takeaway: know your customer and understand where they are. Build partnerships that look seamless and make it easy for them to engage with you. Even if your brand isn’t a beloved cultural icon, you can get closer to your consumer by asking for and listening to their feedback, and then taking action from it. Showing customers that you care will also appeal to emotions, no matter your marketing budget.”
Small business owners left drowning in customer enquiries without dedicated support
Data suggests that customer service has taken a backseat for small business owners. Nearly half (48%) admit to having no dedicated support process in place.
Small Business Customer Service in 2023 research from FM Outsource, revealed that more than half (55%) of small business owners don’t see customer service as a high priority. For those that don’t have a dedicated customer service team, the main reason cited is because they think their business is too small (65%). 10% have concerns over the expense.
But frustratingly for small business owners, this lack of support means they must cope with enquiries on their own. 73% of those with no dedicated support deal with all queries themselves. A time-consuming task for busy leaders, with around half (51%) saying they spend up to an hour a week responding to customer queries. A significant 17% have to spend one to five hours a week.
“It’s clear that being a small business owner is challenging, particularly in the current climate as day-to-day costs skyrocket. But sadly, it seems that some have assumed that they’re too small to need support, or perhaps don’t think they have the quantity of enquiries to warrant investing in a dedicated customer service function.
“However, all customer calls or queries need to be handled appropriately to help retain customers and protect business reputation. What’s more, our survey of consumers showed that 82% of people believe that a positive customer experience can change their opinion of a brand or business for the better – even following a poor buying experience – pointing to the commercial value of providing an effective service to customers.”
–Martin Brown, CCO at FM Outsource
Generative AI has become an emerging risk for enterprises
The mass availability of generative AI, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard, became a top concern for enterprise risk executives in the second quarter of 2023, according to Gartner.
In May 2023, Gartner surveyed 249 senior enterprise risk executives to provide leaders with a benchmarked view of 20 emerging risks. The Quarterly Emerging Risk Reports includes detailed information on the possible impact, time frame, level of attention, and perceived opportunities for these risks.
Third-party viability was the top fast-emerging risk that organisations are monitoring most closely in the 2023 survey. Financial planning uncertainty was the third ranked risk, followed by cloud concentration risk. China trade tensions rounded out the top five risks that were split between issues symptomatic of the current broad macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, and technology-related concerns.
Mass Generative AI availability
In terms of managing enterprise risk, three main aspects must be addressed, according to Gartner experts:
- Intellectual Property
“Information entered into a generative AI tool can become part of its training set, meaning that sensitive or confidential information could end up in outputs for other users,” said Xu. “Moreover, using outputs from these tools could well end up inadvertently infringing the intellectual property rights of others who have used it.”
It’s important to educate corporate leadership on the necessity for caution and transparency around the use of such tools so that intellectual property risks can be properly mitigated both in terms of input and output from generative AI tools.
- Data Privacy
Generative AI tools may possibly share user information with third parties, such as vendors or service providers, without prior notice. This has the potential to violate privacy law in many jurisdictions. For example, regulation has already been implemented in China and the EU, with proposed regulations emerging in USA, Canada, India and UK among others.
- Cybersecurity “Hackers are always testing new technologies for ways to subvert it for their own ends, and generative AI is no different,” said Xu. “We’ve seen examples of malware and ransomware code that generative AI has been tricked into producing, as well as ‘prompt injections’ attacks that can trick these tools into giving away information they should not. This is leading to the industrialisation of advanced phishing attacks.”
London in a brand loyalty crisis due to effects of rising costs
Macroeconomic challenges have impacted businesses and consumers alike, spurring changes to purchasing habits. As a result, almost two-thirds (60%) of those living in London say they feel less loyal to brands than they did two years ago. This is according to new research of 2,000 adults in the UK from ServiceNow.
Financial reasons are regarded as the biggest driver behind this. 50% of Londoners spending more now in comparison to 12 months ago, citing rising costs (66%) as the main factor. Those in the capital also express a greater desire to purchase more luxury products (18%), backed by findings on rising retail sales volumes. Many are paying more for products and services as part of a drive to become more sustainable (17%). Only a small number (14%) are spending less, and the majority (62%) are doing so to cut back due to the increased cost of living.
Most (72%) Londoners say they would be more loyal to businesses that they feel understand them as a customer. 63% want organisations to invest in technology that improves their experience. This tech-savviness is reflected in preferences – 73% of those living in London use a fintech bank compared to 58% in the rest of the UK. 54% regard a good chatbot service as a vital requirement for brands, compared to 48% nationally. The majority (55%) in London would also be happy to spend more to guarantee a seamless service, higher than the national average (41%).
Happy employees = happy Londoners
When looking at how brands treat their staff, 71% in London say they would be less likely to engage with a company knowing that their employees were unhapp. This is higher than the national average (63%). However, workplace elements Londoners regard as less important include:
- Salary (important for 47% in London, 63% in the UK)
- Flexible working (36% in London, 45% in the UK)
- Employee benefits (33% in London, 37% in the UK)
- Progression opportunities (27% in London, 32% in the UK)
Other employee aspects that Londoners are more likely to prioritise include optimal technology hardware (21%), good technical support (19%) and workplace perks (19%).
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!