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The 6 Keys to Delivering Exceptional Mobile Customer Service Experiences in Tourism

mobile customer service

Today’s travelers increasingly expect on-demand, mobile-first service from tourism brands when planning or during trips.  In fact, 83% of travelers will do research on a mobile device before committing to a trip. The mobile experience and customer service you provide travelers and tourists is vital in securing their business.

However, offering seamless mobile customer support across multiple touchpoints presents challenges for destination marketers and travel providers. The difficulty in providing such a seamless customer service on mobile devices is matched only by the travelers’ expectation that your destination can do just that.

This article explores six proven strategies and best practices tourism executives should adopt to deliver responsive, personalized mobile customer service experiences that meet modern traveler expectations.  As you are reading this article, take notes and think about how your destination or attraction is utilizing each of these steps. If you aren’t utilizing any of these strategies yet, then you have a chance to make a very positive impact on your destination’s customer support, especially from a mobile perspective. If you are already utilizing some or many of these strategies, focus on the areas that aren’t being utilized, as they could be the missing piece that optimizes and improves your entire mobile customer service strategy.

Conduct Journey Mapping from a Mobile Lens

Journey mapping is the process of visualizing how a customer would perform a certain task. For instance, if a potential traveler in say Utah, wanted to book a tour of your attraction in Greenville, South Carolina, what would that process look like? What steps would the traveler have to take in order to book a tour? Now think about the process that this same traveler would have to go through in order to book a tour using only mobile devices:

  • Map key travel journeys from research to booking to the trip itself from a mobile perspective to uncover friction points. For an added perspective, first conduct the journey on a desktop or laptop, then follow the same steps on a mobile device. Note any differences in the experience, such as load times, display of information.
  • Conduct interviews and shadowing research focused on mobile usage and needs throughout the travel journey to gather insights directly from travelers. Have customers follow a set path on a desktop or laptop, then have then execute the same journey on a mobile device. As they complete the process, note any provided feedback on where the journey with the mobile device is better or worse versus the experience on the desktop or laptop.
  • Comprehensively audit mobile metrics – platform usage, traffic sources, booking conversion rates, transactions, service case resolution speed/quality and satisfaction scores. Compare and contrast all metrics to the experience on other channels to note potential bottlenecks and churn points.
  • Analyze mobile service case topics and types to identify knowledge gaps to address in self-help resources. Flag topics that are consistently mentioned by CS agents. These indicate potential problem areas that should be addressed to ensure a better mobile customer service experience for travelers and tourists.

Analyzing the customer journey from a mobile perspective can help you optimize the experience for travelers.

Expand Mobile App Capabilities

A branded mobile app is a wonderful way to deliver customized customer service experiences to travelers. Make sure your mobile app offers the following features:

  • Your mobile app should allow booking, chat support, and self-service options to handle needs during the shopping journey. Traveling can be a spontaneous adventure for many people, make sure your mobile app gives travelers the convenience to book a trip when they are ready, on their schedule.
  • Provides location services, travel guides, and destination recommendations accessible in-trip. Research will be a critical part of any successful trip. Make sure travelers have destination-specific information available at their fingertips at all times.
  • Share itinerary, loyalty program, and payment details for in-app access throughout travels. This provides an added benefit to the traveler by helping them keep organized and focused on trip details. By linking loyalty program information, it also helps the traveler stay up to date on possible rewards that could be claimed during the trip.
  • Send proactive notifications for flight/event updates, special offers etc. based on context. Allow travelers to store and synch flight and hotel information in app, and keep travelers abreast of any changes in itinerary.
  • Offer a mobile concierge or chatbot to handle common requests on-the-go. Leveraging AI, you can offer a chat assistant that can answer common questions about the travel process as well as answer questions related to the locations and destinations that the traveler will be visiting.  Remember, every time you can give a traveler the ability to answer their own support question, that potentially deflects a customer support event (saving you money) and it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Apps that give travelers the information they need at all stages of their journey will lead to higher loyalty levels and greater retention.

Train On-Site Staff to Be Mobile-Ready

Your on-site staff should be trained with using mobile devices to bring added convenience and support to travelers:

  • Provide locations teams with tablets and smartphones to assist guests anywhere on-property with lookups, requests, or issue resolution. This allows your support staff to be more accessible on site, which gives an added level of convenience to travelers.
  • Let travelers summon or locate on-site staff via your mobile app. This gives travelers more control over getting support and assistance with issues and questions.
  • Equip roaming customer service agents to handle needs, answer questions, and queue services digitally. Monitor traffic patterns at your destination to understand where agents should be stationed to maximize effectiveness.
  • Set up self-service kiosks around sites for quick lookups or appointment scheduling without staff. Give travelers the ability to quickly print out their itinerary as well as brief travel guides and coupons from the kiosk. Also give travelers the ability to summon an agent if additional support is needed.

Mobile-empowered on-site staff enable personalized support, which leads to higher levels of satisfaction.

Adopt Emerging Mobile Technologies

Continually assess feedback from travelers to identify emerging tech that can enhance the mobile customer service experience for tourists:

  • Robots and drones can be utilized to deliver small packages to tourists poolside, or hikers on a trail. This can address customer support and possibly even safety issues.
  • Implement virtual/augmented reality to provide immersive property tours and destination previews. AR and VR can be provided both on-site, as well as demos given online or at your travel agency. Providing a more immersive experience for the traveler can increase satisfaction in the trip.
  • Leverage geofencing and GPS for hyper-localized, contextual push notifications. This technology can ensure that travelers have location-specific information that adds an additional layer of convenience.

Cutting-edge mobile tech can delight and satisfy guests and improve satisfaction.

Monitor Mobile Analytics Closely

One you have a robust mobile customer service experience in place, make sure you are tracking the correct analytics associated with your mobile experience:

  • Track satisfaction scores, NPS and sentiment specifically for mobile touchpoints. Compare and contrast scores for the same metrics among desktop users to help identify areas for improvement in both areas.
  • Monitor usage and adoption rates for mobile apps, messaging, and on-site technology. Note any areas that are seeing rapid adoption and growth, and try to identify why. If travelers aren’t using a particular mobile tech at certain parts of the customer journey, drill down and see if there are ways to increase adoption. If not, consider abandoning that touchpoint and investing in more promising areas.
  • Measure mobile booking and transaction conversion rates vs. desktop. This will help you identify customer behavior patterns, so you can further customize the overall support experience to deliver higher levels of support.
  • Analyze mobile traffic sources, on-site usage heatmaps and popular device types. Also focus on traffic patterns and tie that to mobile usage. Once hotspots are identified, make it easier for travelers to engage with your mobile tech at those locations.
  • Identify service gaps between mobile and traditional channels. Additionally, if travelers are positively responding to your mobile tech on-site, see if there are opportunities to provide a similar experience via traditional channels. Seek to understand why the mobile experience is resonating with travelers, and incorporate what’s working on-site into the traditional channels.

Traveler data can provide opportunities to enhance and optimize mobile offerings and experiences.

Continuously Optimize the Mobile Experience

The mobile environment evolves quickly. Continually improve by:

  • A/B testing new mobile app features and self-service functionality. Remember that travelers are increasingly expecting to be able to self-diagnose support issues. Give travelers the ability to solve their own problems, especially when they are on the go and on-site.
  • Study your competitors and other destinations to spot opportunities. See how other locations and destinations are leveraging emerging mobile technologies to enhance the customer support experience.
  • Seeking direct traveler feedback on mobile pain points and desired improvements. Compare and contrast this feedback with the same feedback from travelers who book and research trip on their laptop or desktop. Figure out what travelers prefer about the experience on their desktop, and see how you can incorporate a similar experience into mobile.
  • Journey mapping the mobile process for travelers to identify friction and pain points. Find the bottlenecks for travelers and address them.
  • Piloting enhancements, measuring impact on satisfaction and usage, and iterating. Utilize traveler feedback to incorporate improvements, test, then test some more. Rollout your winners and scrap the losers and try again.

Optimization never ends as mobile technology and traveler expectations continue to evolve.

Achieving Mobile Customer Service Excellence

Providing seamless mobile customer service is challenging yet critical in travel. The strategies explored in this guide equip tourism brands to effectively meet rising expectations.

Emerging mobile technologies can greatly enhance the support experience for travelers, but only if properly utilized. Adopting a proactive versus reactive mindset can set your destination up to be the case study that others in your industry learn from.

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Introducing the Twitter Power Lists!

When I started my first standalone blog in 2006 (I began blogging in 2005 as writer/editor for an advertising recruitment firm in Atlanta), one of the first things I did was create a list of marketing blogs that I read daily. This was in the days before Twitter and Facebook hadn’t really broken past campuses at this point. I created a list of marketing blogs to read because I wanted to keep up to date on the space, but I also wanted to help develop community on my own blog.

At first, I started out with the big names at the time like Seth Godin, Kathy Sierra and Guy Kawasaki. But I quickly discovered dozens of really good, but lesser-known marketing blogs. My list of favorite marketing blogs grew longer and longer, and over time I realized that I was spending more time reading the ‘lesser known’ blogs than I was the ‘popular’ ones.

And this began to irritate me. It began to irritate me because I knew that so many people would just read the ‘popular’ blogs and wouldn’t make an effort to find the really good blogs that weren’t quite as popular, but that were often just as good, sometimes even better!  I began to think about ways that I could help these lesser-known blogs build awareness.

Around this same time, the college football season was about to start. I noticed the polls started releasing there Preseason Top 25 polls. An idea hit me: What if I did my own poll of the Top 25 marketing blogs? That would be a great way to drive exposure to many lesser known marketing blogs, and it would also be a fun way to keep up with the space and build engagement with my readers.

So a few days later, The Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs was born.

The Top 25 Marketing Blogs went on for several years and became quite popular, driving a lot of traffic and awareness to a lot of deserving blogs.

I wanted to try something similar now with Twitter accounts. There are four main industries I write about here: Technology, Retail, Tourism and Restaurant. I also keep up with professionals in these 4 industries on Twitter. If you regularly use Twitter, you know how hard it is to build a following. If you also work in the corporate world, it’s doubly hard because you have even less time to devote to building a brand and following on Twitter.

I wanted to see if I could help with that, and at the same time give others a good list of solid professionals to follow in each of those 4 industries.

So starting next week, I will start the Twitter Power Lists for each of those four industries; Technology, Retail, Tourism and Restaurant.  Each week there will be a different industry, and I will rank the Top 10 Twitter accounts in each space. Technology will be first, and it will debut next Tuesday.

Over time, the methodology for who is or is not included will be altered, and it’s very possible that I will expand the list to a Top 20 or maybe even Top 25. The goal of each list is to drive exposure and followers for the people on the list, and to give people that want to follow those industries a good list of professionals to keep up with.

If You Work in the Technology, Retail, Tourism or Restaurant Industries and Want to Be on the Twitter Power List, Here’s What You Do:

1 – First, follow me on Twitter.

2 – Please clearly list in your Twitter bio the position you hold and the company you work for. That lets me know which list you should be on.

3 – If you don’t have that info in your Twitter bio, after you follow me, please tweet me and let me know your position.

 

That’s it! If you work in one of those 4 industries, you will be added to the appropriate Twitter list for your industry.  Here’s the lists so you can go ahead and start subbing to them now:

Technology

Retail

Tourism

Restaurants

 

So please, follow me on Twitter so I can get you added to the appropriate Twitter Power List.  Even if you don’t make the Power List here, simply being on those lists on Twitter will bring more exposure to your Twitter account, and will help you build your following.

So What’s the Criteria for Being Ranked on the Power List for My Industry?

Good question! So the rankings, at least at first, will most be a judgment call on my part.  As the lists grow, I may move to a more formal ranking system.

For now, here’s some of the areas I will look at:

  • How active are you on Twitter? If your last tweet is from December 2022, you probably won’t make the list.
  • How ‘interesting’ is your content? Mix it up a bit, don’t use your Twitter account to simply reblast press releases
  • When you promote your work, are you giving us unique content we can’t get anywhere else? For instance I just saw a tweet from one of the members of one of the above lists who tweeted out a picture of their work desk. I like seeing content like that, and so do others.
  • The Twitter Power lists are only for professionals working IN these industries. If you work in media or consulting and cover or service these industries, you won’t be on these lists. Only people who are working for companies and organizations in these industries.

Now there is one important caveat to these lists: Insanely popular accounts will NOT be included in the rankings. For instance, Elon Musk will never make the technology list. There’s a couple of reasons why: First, if he was added, he would start at #1 and stay there for as long as I did the list.  Second, the goal of these lists is to drive exposure to accounts that need to build awareness.  Everyone is already following Elon, he doesn’t need any more exposure. Many people would suggest he needs less!

Each industry Power List will be updated once a month.  Any changes in rankings from the previous list will be noted (For example, if an account moves up or down 2 spots on the list, that will be noted).  The main goal is to drive exposure to professionals that make the list.  But along the way, everyone will be able to pick up some tips and strategies for building their own following on Twitter.

So if you want to be considered for the Twitter Power Lists, please follow me on Twitter! Then let me know which industry you work in, and your position.  Good luck!

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: AI’s Impact on Marketing Jobs, Elon’s Product Demo, Video Use in Social

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are ready to have an amazing productive week! So after temps that flirted with 100 for several days last week, we are temps mostly in the 80s this week, as we could be dealing with some rain from Idalia(?) in the gulf. Hopefully, last week was the last truly hot week we will have this year.  Temps here usually peak around the last week of Aug and first week of Sept.  It will still be hot for most of Sept, but humidity should start to fall soon, making the heat a lot more bearable. Fingers crossed!

Back to business, here’s a few news stories that caught my eye…

 

Kelly always shares such interesting content. I thought this survey of how AI will impact marketing and communication jobs was interesting. Note that AI is expected to have a positive impact across the board, until you get to team culture and number of jobs. So basically, we are expecting AI to be a boon for individual productivity, but we also think it will hurt collaboration and team culture. I’m wondering if this could lead to a scenario where AI becomes almost a surrogate for a team member, and is designed to facilitate interaction and engagement between team members. It’s such early days in AI’s development and implementation. What will see in just a year’s time will be miles from where we are now.

 

So this isn’t really ‘news’, but I enjoyed this demo that Elon did for Tesla’s autopilot driving, which if I understood correctly, is powered by AI. As Elon was driving, he explained that AI was used to train the cars on how to drive. In fact, only video of real people driving was used, not code. Basically, Elon just picked points on the car’s map, and let the car drive him to that location.

For the most part, the car did very well, but I did see a couple of hiccups in the 10 mins or so I watched (The video was interesting but not THAT interesting). Early on, Elon went through an area that was under construction, and he remarked that the construction hadn’t been there the last time he drove through the area. The lanes at one point shifted over to accomodate the construction, and Elon remarked that the car had picked the wrong lane, but just as he said that, it corrected and pulled into the correct lane as dictated by the construction. Another instance was where the car came to a red light where the turn lane next to the car was green. Elon yelled ‘Intervention!’ and had to take control as the car started to attempt to cross the intersection, even though it had a red light. Elon explained that they would have to give the car more video of navigating intersections like this so that it knows what to do.

As I was seeing the two hiccups and corrections, I was recalling how Robert Scoble would video programmers working at their computers years ago when he worked at Microsoft. He said sometimes Windows would crash and he would video it. These imperfections actually made the content more credible, as it recorded what would happen in real life. I think the couple of hiccups Elon videoed that I saw work the same way, because we know there will be issues, but only seeing a couple means it performed very well 99% of the time.  Video content is big right now, as we will see in the next news item, and it still pays for you to develop a personal brand on social media, even if you work for a company.  More on this in tomorrow’s post.

 

This really shouldn’t be news to any of you, but people love video content in their social media streams. In fact, by 2025, 60% of our time on social networking sites will be spend consuming video content. While our time spent with video continues to increase, it’s worth noting that the growth rate seems to have plateaued over the last year or so.  Usage will continue to grow, but only marginally, after seeing nearly 20% yearly growth less than 5 years ago.

 

So that’s it for this Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have a great week, as I alluded to earlier, I will have a fun announcement tomorrow about a new weekly series I will be running from now on, something I first started waaaaaay back in 2006. See you then, have a great week!

 

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Your Guide to Delivering Consistent Omnichannel Customer Service Experiences in Retail

retail omnichannel customer service

Today’s consumers expect seamless shopping and service engaging with retail brands across devices, channels, and touchpoints. Orchestrating unified omnichannel customer service presents immense challenges for retailers. However, the rewards can be sizeable when done correctly. Research has found that companies who have a strong omnichannel strategy realize a 89% customer retention rate, compared to a lowly 33% for companies with a weak omnichannel strategy.

This article will explore several proven strategies and best practices retail executives should leverage to optimize omnichannel customer service experiences across stores, ecommerce, mobile apps, and new emerging channels. If you have questions about optimizing or improving your retail omnichannel customer service strategy, feel free to leave a comment, or you can email Mack directly for private feedback.

Conduct In-Depth Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is the process of visualizing the steps that a potential customer goes through in order to complete a purchase. Here’s some of the ways that customer journey mapping can be helpful:

  • Identifying friction points from the user perspective. By visualizing the purchase process, you can see the flow that the customer goes through on the way to a purchase.  And it SHOULD be a flow, if not, the customer could get ‘stuck’ in one stage, and that could easily lead to frustration and abandoning the purchase.
  • Conducting shadowing research and customer interviews to uncover unmet needs and grievances. This allows you to hear directly from the retail customer and learn how the purchase process worked for them.
  • Auditing support metrics across channels; such as wait times, resolution speed/quality, CSAT, NPS, and sentiment. This will further help identify areas for improvement in the process.
  • Analyzing contact topics and types to identify knowledge gaps to address. This helps suggests information that can be provided to the customer to help them self-diagnosis and possibly even resolve issues themselves.

These insights help inform an omnichannel optimization roadmap tailored to your customers’ needs.

Architect Seamless Cross-Channel Experiences

Today, customers expect unified service across in-store, web, mobile, kiosks, chat, social and more. A consistent experience across all touchpoints is expected. You can deliver this by:

  • Defining optimal channel roles based on their strengths to simplify choice. This helps direct the customer to the channels that are best suited to provide the experience the customer needs at that stage of their purchase journey.
  • Enabling tight integrations between channels, such as store finders, click and collect etc. Also pay attention to how customers will use channels differently. For instance, when on your app, customers are often away from home, and looking to complete or pick up a purchase. When at home, they are more likely to be on a laptop and doing research before deciding on a purchase. Factor customer intent into the integration of your retail omnichannel customer service experience.
  • Allowing pick-up purchases and returns across any channel. This should be a priority for mobile devices and apps in particular.
  • Transferring customer context and histories between channels/agents. There should always be a way to track the history of a support issue so that a handoff improves the experience, instead of resetting it.

Contextual, personalized omnichannel experiences satisfy customers and improve efficiency and increase customer loyalty among retail customers.

Equip Employees with Mobile Technology

Allowing retail employees to have mobile devices while interacting with customers allows them to give a higher level of service and support. Here’s some examples:

  • Retail employees can access customer purchase history and loyalty profiles anywhere to personalize interactions.  This allows employees to immediately get up to speed on the customer’s purchase and support history.
  • Assist customers with inventory lookups, pricing, recommendations on the salesfloor. This allows the employee to stay present and engaged with the customer, while also speeding up the support process.
  • Check in customers remotely via mobile POS to reduce lines.  This gives the customer more control over initiating the support process and it creates more speed and efficiency.
  • Resolve issues, answer questions, and schedule appointments on the go.  By letting employees have mobile access to customers, they can interact with customers in a way that’s convenient for both parties, which speeds up the overall process and increases satisfaction for the customer, and productivity for the retail employee.

Giving retail employees the right technology to deliver mobile support ensures a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Expand and Enhance Self-Service Options

Let’s be honest: Many customers would rather handle a support issue themselves, if they can. So it pays to give customers the resources to self-diagnose problems and potentially solve on their own. In addition, it take stress off your CS team, and also creates a cost-savings. Invest in channels like:

  • Intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants on website, apps and messaging. Chatbots in particular are having a revival of interest due to the rise of easy-to-use AI tools. Look for use to expand over the coming years.
  • Interactive kiosks in stores for product research. These should be placed as close to the actual product as possible. Give customers a way to do last-minute research as a way to make the final determination on which product to purchase.
  • Enhanced help centers with improved search, content, and community forums. These are more frequently used by customers who are still in the consideration phase of the customer journey, so feel free to give them access to more in depth product information.
  • Allow access to customer ratings and reviews. This ties in with the previous point, as customers are doing research, they are narrowing down the list of products they are interested in. Once they have narrowed their consideration pool down to an acceptable number of products, they will want to check customer reviews for each product. This will help them narrow their list down even further, or it could convince the customer which product they should purchase.

You can also drive utilization through promotions, associate referrals and in-journey prompts.

Continuously Improve Through Testing and Innovation

Omnichannel retail customer service must continually adapt and improve. Recommended approaches include:

  • A/B test new features and channel integrations to optimize performance. Test internally, and also offer testing to select customers. This can be offered as a perk to loyalty program or community forum members.
  • Monitor service innovations from leading competitors and brands. Always keep up to date on the latest news and case studies to identify opportunities to improve your own retail customer service.
  • Survey customers directly on desired improvements. Ask customers what is working for them, and where the problems are. Over time, you can identify trends and isolate areas for improvement.
  • Pilot enhancements, measure impact, and iterate. Leverage customer feedback to roll out new features, and make sure customers know they helped contribute to the improvement. This will encourage customers to become even more engaged in the feedback process.

There are always opportunities to optimize and evolve your omnichannel customer service experience.

Achieving Omnichannel Customer Service Excellence

Orchestrating seamless retail customer service across expanding digital and offline touchpoints is challenging yet invaluable. Brands that have achieved successful omnichannel customer engagement have realized a 9.5% growth in annual revenue.  Additionally, a solid retail omnichannel customer service experience can result in a 7.5% decrease in cost per contact.

With the right strategy and planning, the payoff of a focus on retail omnichannel customer service can be immense.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Erratic Behavior, Money Troubles for ChatGPT, Social Media’s Age Divide

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and ready for another productive week! Temps here in the Heart of Dixie this week are expected to approach 100 on multiple days. I am hoping this will be summer’s last gasp, as temps, or at least the humidity, normally starts to fall after Labor Day. Here’s a few business and marketing stories that caught my eye!

 

Elon Musk is making it super hard to defend him these days, and I reallllly want to see him turn Twitter around. It seems like every decision he makes either seems amazing, or totally insane. His latest, is he wants to remove the Block feature from Twitter/X. He may not even be able to do that, as it seems Community Notes has flagged some of his tweets saying that Apple and the Google Play app store require that the mobile app for Twitter offer a block feature.  But I just don’t understand why he thinks that’s a smart move.  Unless he is simply saying something provocative to get people to engage with him.  If so, that hints at far more problems. But taking away basic features then mocking users for losing those features OR that they will have to pay if they want them back is simply not good business on any level.

 

So this story made the rounds a few days ago, claiming ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI could go bankrupt by the end of 2024. The article contends that it costs the company $700k a day to keep ChatGPT running, thus the financial calculations. Many have since chimed in that this probably wouldn’t happen anyway. The cynic in me wonders if this story wasn’t planted by OpenAI as a way to drive more investor interest in the company. Having said all that, it’s true that the userbase for ChatGPT is indeed leveling out. I suspect that will continue to be the case as other players in the AI space enter the game.

 

This chart forecasting social media usage by age group was a bit interesting. The only age group that’s forecast to see solid growth in social media usage over the next 5 years is Gen Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012.  So they would be age 11-26 today. Millennials will see very slight growth, but Gen X and Baby Boomers will actually continue to leave social media over the coming 5 years. I am playing this out as a Gen Xer myself.  The only social media channels I am active on these days are Twitter and LinkedIn, and I spend maybe 15 mins a day on Twitter and maybe an hour a week on LinkedIn. Actually I probably spend a total of 30 mins a week scanning my Facebook feed for any important announcements from friends, but that’s about it. Ten years ago, I was on social media channels for at least 5 hours a day during the week.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have a wonderful week!

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Your Guide to Optimizing Online Customer Service in the Technology Industry

online customer serviceProviding exceptional online customer service is now essential for technology companies (really all companies in all industries) to satisfy and retain users in an increasingly digital world. However, delivering seamless support across websites, mobile apps, social media, webchat, help centers and emerging channels is complex. Yet at the same time, it is demanded by hyper-connected customers.

With customer expectations rising and new technologies advancing rapidly, support organizations are struggling to keep pace. Those that can, are reaping the rewards of higher levels of customer loyalty and profitability, while reducing customer service costs. While companies that aren’t reacting as quickly are being punished. As customers become more accustomed to using digital and online tools, they appreciate the speed and delivery of information and experiences. That expectation will extend to all elements of the online experience, including customer service and support.

This comprehensive guide explores proven strategies and best practices for technology companies to optimize online customer service delivery in today’s omnichannel environment.

Conduct In-Depth Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping involves mapping out the path that a customer takes from first becoming aware of your product, to purchasing it. This link gives you a good breakdown and definition of customer journey mapping. The advantage of mapping the customer journey from a support perspective is it helps you identify potential pain points in the purchase process for the customer. Once the potential problem areas are known, they can be addressed and responses can be proactively created. Considerations include:

  • Creating detailed journey maps for key processes including onboarding, adoption, training, troubleshooting and escalation. This helps you identify friction points at each step from the user perspective. Knowing those potential pain points makes it much easier to address them, leading to higher levels of customer loyalty.
  • Conducting extensive ethnographic research through surveys, interviews and observations to uncover unmet needs and grievances directly from customers. Customer feedback is vital to optimizing and improving support processes.
  • Completing comprehensive audits examining support metrics across platforms – response times, wait times, resolution quality, customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) and more. Tracking metrics throughout the customer journey allows your technology company to identify strengths and weaknesses throughout the process.  Once identified, weaknesses can be corrected and strengths magnified.
  • Analyzing support case topics and types to reveal knowledge gaps. Expand help content to address common questions. This is where tracking satisfaction with support as well as time spent with agents can reveal potential problem areas. Consistent problems could point to a need to invest in training and/or the hiring of SMEs.

If leveraged correctly, these insights will inform an omnichannel customer service optimization roadmap tailored to your customers’ needs.

Design Integrated Omnichannel Experiences

Today’s consumers expect unified support experiences across the web, mobile apps, social media, email, chat, and emerging channels. Eliminate friction through thoughtful omnichannel design:

  • Define optimal roles for each channel based on strengths. Chat for convenience, phone for urgent issues, forums for troubleshooting. This also helps you consider the needs of the customer, for instance forums should have access to SMEs who can answer questions that are often involving a more complex issue. One answer from a SME could potentially deflect multiple CS calls, which would be a cost savings that would continue to be realized as long as the answer appeared on the forum.
  • Craft tight channel integration, such as website support forms prefilled with user data for contextual experiences. Make sure to collect only the data that customers have consented for collction, and carefully explain to customers which data will be collected. This helps address privacy concerns and works to establish trust.
  • Enable smooth cross-channel transitions, such as handing off conversations between agents without repetitive explanations. Remember that the customer assumes the entire interaction with CS is being conducted by a team that’s on the same page, not disjointed employees.  The customer doesn’t expect to have to start over with a fresh explanation of the problem every time a new agent is involved.
  • Connect steps into one seamless, consistent and personalized cross-channel customer journey.

Contextual, continuous omnichannel experiences satisfy users and improve efficiency while increasing loyalty.

Evaluate and Adopt New Service Channels

The digital service landscape evolves quickly. Continuously evaluate and pilot new channels and innovations such as:

  • Artificial Intelligence powered chatbots equipped with natural language capabilities, sentiment analysis and escalation for automated conversations.  This post has a detailed breakdown of how technology companies can leverage AI in customer support. AI can be used to deliver customer support directly, and it can also be leveraged to analyze customer data to enhance the support experience.
  • Augmented reality that allows remote visual issue diagnosis through overlays and annotations. This is especially useful in the field service spac, where a remote worker can use AR to diagnose and fix a problem directly, or be connected to a SME (Subject Matter Expert) who can help the technician deliver support on site, saving time for both the customer and service vendor.
  • In-product communications via embedded commentary forms or help widgets. QR are a useful example of this, allowing both the customer and the service technician to get relevant product information at the site.
  • Proactive assistance powered by machine learning models that predict issues. This ties into the first point about AI, machine-learning can also be utilized to predict potential problems, turning costly repairs into preventative maintenance.

Assess new technologies based on your capabilities and customers’ evolving needs. Adopt channels that provide high value.

Incentivize Use of Self-Service Options

Deflecting common inquiries to self-help resources reduces human support costs. Boost adoption by:

  • Identifying key opportunities to augment or replace live service, such as leveraging virtual agents or community forums.  Pro-Tip: Publish some of the most engaging forum answers on your website’s homepage. This is a great way to promote the availability of the forum as a way for the user to self-troubleshoot problems. Remember that one answer from a SME on a forum could help countless users solve the same problem. Every time a user can solve their own problem via a forum, that deflects a call or chat with a CS agent. Which saves you money.
  • Designing stellar help centers, FAQs, chat bots, online communities, and in-product self-service. Make sure every level of service is provided for the user. If the user needs 101-level help, provide FAQs, if they need a bit more instruction, give them easy access to chat bots and forums.
  • Driving awareness through promotions, in-product prompts, and informational content. Users can’t access help if they don’t know it’s available. Providing exceptional online customer service is about giving customers the ability to choose the type of experience that’s most helpful and convenient for them.
  • Continuously optimizing self-service content and functionality based on analytics and user feedback. Constantly monitor for roadblocks and bottlenecks in the process. Survey users post-ticket to identify areas for improvement.

Giving customers self-service options that work leads to higher customer loyalty and satisfaction, as well as reduces costs for your technology company.

Experiment, Iterate and Innovate

Customer service cannot remain stagnant as user expectations rapidly evolve. Continually optimize by:

  • A/B testing new features and support processes to improve key metrics. Leverage community forums and give the most active participants the chance to test new features. You will often find that frequent contributors to forums will jump at such an opportunity.
  • Monitoring emerging innovations in service delivery from competitors. Be aware of what the competition is doing, and what is working for them. This can give you ideas for improvement in your own CS processes.
  • Interviewing users to identify desired improvements and pain points. Lean on feedback from users throughout the customer support process. You will often find that users will be happy to provide feedback and stay in contact with your CS team to help implement their suggestions.
  • Proactively journey mapping to uncover friction opportunities. Find and identify pain points for users along the CS journey, and eliminate them.
  • Piloting enhancements, measuring impact based on data, and iterating. Pro-tip: Rollout changes first to your forum members or loyalty program members. If you will be providing a new features in your customer support efforts, give limited advance access to certain user segments. This will be viewed as a perk by the group, and will result in better feedback and higher levels of satisfaction and loyalty as a result.

The best brands continually and proactively adapt based on customer needs and feedback.

Achieving Excellent Online Customer Service

Providing superior omnichannel customer service is challenging yet invaluable. Applying the strategies outlined equips technology companies to meet, and even exceed, rising user expectations.

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How to Leverage Online Platforms to Earn Sustainable Customer Loyalty in the Restaurant Industry

customer loyalty in the restaurant industry

Happy, loyal customers are the lifeblood of every business. They are especially important in more crowded and competitive marketplaces such as the restaurant industry. Customer loyalty is defined as a willingness of a person to continue to do business with your brand over competitors. Loyal customers will spend more, they will promote your restaurant to other customers, and they are far more likely to continue to do business with you. Whether its fine-dining, fast food or fast casual, achieving customer loyalty in the restaurant industry should be a priority for each and every segment.

In today’s hyper-connected world, the key is strategically engaging customers across digital platforms; from review sites to social media and beyond. If done correctly, restaurants can foster meaningful connections, demonstrate value, and inspire guests to return again and again through targeted digital loyalty strategies.

Let’s explore 7 powerful ways restaurant marketers can utilize online platforms to boost sustainable customer loyalty, backed by examples and expert insights:

#1) Monitor and Manage Your Online Reputation Proactively

Your online reputation has immense power to shape brand perceptions. Review sites such as Yelp, Google and Facebook are used often by potential patrons to learn more about a restaurant before visiting.

Experts recommend putting processes in place to:

  • Proactively monitor online review platforms and social media for brand mentions using tools like Hootsuite. You must be aware at all times of what is being said about your business, positive and negative. This applies to all businesses, not just those in the restaurant industry.
  • Move quickly to address negative reviews and comments constructively and with care. Here’s a pro tip: If the negative review or comment is specific to an individual visit, the person leaving the comment is likely a customer. If the review or comment is vague and focuses on your business with little specifics, it is more likely to simply be a troll. Focus more attention on negative feedback that is specific to one or more visits or purchases with your restaurant.
  • When it comes to positive mentions, many experts will simply suggest that you use those positive comments in your own marketing material and communications. That’s smart, but we want to go a step beyond that and make your customer loyalty strategy brilliant. Whenever you see a customer leaving a positive mention or review for your restaurant ALWAYS contact them and say THANK YOU.  You would be amazed at how happy you can make someone by simply showing appreciation for them. Always thank every customer for any positive mention. Often, the customer will be thrilled at your response and will continue to engage with your restaurant. When this happens, you can encourage them to continue to leave positive mentions online, you can ask them to take a survey, or perhaps even join your customer loyalty program. When you find a happy customer who is creating positive content for your restaurant, you want to connect with that customer, thank them, then encourage them to create more content. Keep in mind that more positive content about your restaurant posted on social media and review sites helps dilute any negative content.
  • Analyze trends in sentiments, locations, and issues to identify systemic problems requiring attention. This is especially important if you have multiple locations, each location should be delivering the same, exceptional experience to its customers. If one particular location is responsible for more complaints and negative content, its imperative to investigate the cause.  Likewise, if one location is responsible for more positive reviews than other locations, you want to determine what that one location is doing differently, and can it be replicated across other locations.
  • Establish internal protocols and guidelines for responding to complaints and feedback. Keep in mind that if a customer leaves a comment or feedback during business hours, they will likely expect a response as soon as possible. For instance, if a customer has an issue with an order placed at lunch today, they may go to your restaurant’s Facebook page and leave a comment expecting a CS agent to respond while they are still at the restaurant. If your CS team doesn’t see the response till the next day, one bad experience along with a slow response could result in a lost customer. Time is of the essence when delivering customer support via digital channels.

Proactive online reputation management turns critics into advocates. But executing effectively requires commitment, savvy communication skills, and analytics. With guidance, restaurants can safeguard and promote brand equity through an optimized online presence and integrated customer support response.

#2) Produce Engaging Social Media Content

Today’s consumers expect restaurants to maintain active, interesting social media channels. Developing a strong library of creative, branded content that engages followers in your brand story is essential.

Experts emphasize that effective social content strategies require:

  • Conducting social media audits assessing current performance and benchmarks. Social media audits should be done at least yearly.  Twice a year is even better.
  • Crafting content calendars tailored to your brand identity, audience interests, and key marketing initiatives. Take into account audience activity and which days and times they prefer to engage with your content.
  • Hiring professional photographers and content creators who understand how to create compelling content in all forms that is also branded consistently across all social channels.
  • Increasing community engagement through contests, UGC campaigns, holiday tie-ins, and time-bound festivals or events.
  • Tracking performance metrics constantly and optimizing based on insights. Strategy direction should evolve based on changes in data, and this should also factor into your regular social media audits.

This expertise in strategically leveraging social platforms helps restaurants earn loyalty through value-added content vs endless promos. In short, create content that’s focused on how your restaurant fits into the lives of your customers versus content that’s simply self-promotional.

#3) Optimize Digital Experience Across Channels

Customers engage with restaurant brands across an array of online and offline touchpoints – your website, app, social media, review sites, in-person visits, and more. Offering a consistent, frictionless experience across channels is vital for loyalty. Just as customers want the same level of service regardless of which of your locations they dine in, they also want to know that the same level of support they get on Twitter will me matched if they email or call support.

Consultants recommend:

  • Journey mapping exercises to identify pain points and areas for experience optimization across channels. Aggressive monitoring and surveys post support can greatly help identify bottlenecks and problem areas in the support process that should be addressed and corrected.
  • Improving personalization consistency through data integration and smart UX design across web, app, loyalty program experiences. Also, focus on the data that customers are comfortable sharing when you personalize shopping experiences.
  • Tight integration of data, order information, and customization across platforms to transition customers seamlessly. This is especially important for customers who order on a mobile app then pick up the order at a location.
  • Optimizing online ordering and booking based on mobile-first convenience. Offer easy pickup and delivery options. Perhaps one of the only benefits of dealing with covid in 2020 is that it forced companies in the restaurant industry to focus on contactless or ‘curbside pickup’ options. This provides a new level of convenience and safety for customers and is the expected norm. If your restaurant isn’t providing contactless pickup, it’s past time to add that to your customer experience.
  • Ensuring your website and apps offer optimal responsive design tailored to user needs vs company-centric content. Always consider how your customers use each device. For instance, customers on a mobile device are likely away from home, traveling, and only interested in using your mobile app to complete an immediate purchase. So deliver the content these users want, ie help them facilitate a transaction as quickly as possible.

With guidance optimizing every digital touchpoint, restaurants can craft cohesive customer experiences driving retention.

#4) Leverage Email Marketing for Targeted Outreach

Email marketing is quite valuable because while not everyone checks their social media feed every day, almost all of us do check our inbox. If you have a customer’s email address, that’s quite valuable, as it gives you direct access to that customer, either at home or on the go via their smartphones and mobile devices. Using email marketing to develop customer loyalty in the restaurant industry requires strategic list segmentation and messaging personalization based on rich customer data.

Experts emphasize that effective loyalty-focused email marketing requires:

  • Segmenting your subscriber list based on key factors like customer lifetime value, order frequency, purchase recency, demographics and preferences. Sugmentation allows you to customize the content and experience you deliver to your email subscribers.
  • Paying close attention to email engagement trends to identify the optimal send times and days for each segmented list. Track metrics such as open rate and clicks to determine when is the best time to send emails to your subscribers.
  • Developing campaigns targeted to customer needs, like re-engagement offers for lapsed patrons. Understanding subscriber behavior helps you deliver the email experience that’s most valuable to them.
  • Tracking email performance diligently to optimize your approach and improve deliverability. It’s vital to aggressive track email performance to identify what’s working, and what isn’t.  Double-down on what works, and work to correct the bottlenecks in your email campaigns.

Proper list segmentation, timely messaging, and perpetual optimization based on data is crucial for email marketing success. Leverage digital marketing experts to maximize this channel.

#5) Set Up an App-Based Loyalty Program

Loyalty programs are proven to boost retention when implemented correctly and marketed well. Consultants recommend:

  • Conducting analysis of customer data and pain points to determine the right loyalty program features and benefits to incentivize repeat visits. The focus of the app’s customer loyalty program should be rewards but keep in mind that rewards can extend beyond the purchase. Rewards should also be tied to experiences as well. If rewards are simply tied to the purchase, then you risk having users stop using the app once a reward for purchase has been redeemed.  Always remember that the goal of any customer loyalty program is to build loyalty to the brand, not the offer.
  • Building a customized branded mobile app tailored to house your loyalty program for easy access. The totality of the experience of participating in your loyalty program should be accessible from your mobile app. This encourages customers to purchase at your restaurant, and it also helps facilitate on-site feedback of the dining experience.
  • Tightly integrating app-based features like mobile wallet loyalty cards, specials, and rewards into your POS systems. Consistent branding experiences are vital. There needs to be a seamless transition from the app experience to the POS experience. A disconnect can lead to confusion and irritation by the customer if they can initiate a transaction easily via the mobile app, but cannot easily complete it in store.
  • Crafting strategic marketing plans across social media, email, in-store signage to drive membership. Make sure to point out the advantages of participation in your customer loyalty program. Also consider providing incentives to join, keeping in mind to balance the experience between offering products and experiences.  Both are vital to driving true customer loyalty.
  • Providing data dashboards to track key loyalty metrics like enrollments, active users, point redemptions.

The right advisor eliminates guesswork, guiding optimized loyalty program creation from the ground up based on your customers, resources and capabilities.

#6) Enable Online Ordering and Reservations

Digital convenience factors heavily in earning customer loyalty in the restaurant industry. Experts emphasize that restaurants should:

  • Offer seamless online reservations and waitlisting through your website or platforms like OpenTable or SevenRooms. Allow easy self-service booking. Give customers the convenience they expect.
  • Build your own ordering apps or integrate with major delivery apps to enable effortless to-go and delivery ordering. If your restaurant does integrate with delivery services, promote this on-site so customers will know that’s an option for their next order.
  • Offer order tracking and real-time messaging for delivery orders. Communication and transparency is key, and constant updates and communication helps establish trust with the customer.
  • Provide loyalty members exclusive early booking access or notification of available reservations. Earlier we talked about how your customer loyalty program should focus on providing a better experience to members instead of simply pushing discounts or sales. Giving loyalty members access to more booking options is a great example of giving experience-focused rewards.

Convenience through tech removes friction and earns loyalty. Prioritize digital ordering and booking.

#7) Provide Ongoing Staff Coaching

Your employees make a significant impact on the customer experience delivered. Investing in staff education around hospitality and digital engagement best practices is invaluable.

Consultants advise providing coaching to staff focused on:

  • Customer service techniques to resolve complaints and de-escalate issues. Empower resolution at the front lines. Staff in store and online should be trained to recognize legitimate complaints from real customers. Additionally, if a customer support handoff has to happen from social media channels to the main CS team, make sure staff in both departments are trained to provide a consistent and frictionless experience for the customer.
  • How to identify high-value regulars and personalize treatment accordingly. Simply acknowledging repeat customers communicates appreciation and attentiveness.
  • Maintaining brand standards consistently across digital touchpoints and in-person. Customers will notice if there is a disconnect in their experience.
  • Using systems and tools to capture guest feedback. Staff should be trained to know what feedback options are available, and which customers should be encouraged to participate.
  • Checking in patrons who booked reservations online. Even if your restaurant has on-site kiosks to facilitate or complete transactions, staff will still require training on how to use the kiosks, or how to deal with incoming orders if the kiosk goes down.

Expert-led coaching helps align your team to consistently deliver on digital CX initiatives.

The Path to Building Lasting Customer Loyalty in the Restaurant Industry

Winning sustainable loyalty from restaurant guests in a digital era takes strategy, commitment, and utilizing technology thoughtfully. With abundant diners craving connection and experiences from brands, the opportunity is immense.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Huge Legal Promise, AI Use Grows For All Age Groups, Meta Betting on AI Chatbots

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone is having a great summer and is ready for another productive week! Here’s a few business stories that caught my eye recently, I hope you enjoy!

 

Elon is totally confounding me right now. Almost every day he makes a move that seems incredibly smart on the surface, then 10 mins later he will make another announcement that seems to undercut what he said in the first one. For instance, multiple users are reporting that accounts that they have held for years, were suddenly taken over by Twitter, with zero compensation. Of course that’s Elon’s right, but it is a terrible look and it makes it much harder to defend his future moves.

Then, he turns around and does this: Announces what he claims will be a bottomless defense fund for anyone who has been treated unfairly by their employer due to activity on Twitter.

 

According to eMarketer, AI usage across all age groups will spike roughly 1,000% in 2023 over 2022 levels. It’s not surprising, and given how immature the AI space is, that growth should continue for the next several years at least. If I’m reading the numbers right, it looks like almost half the population will be using AI in some form within 3 years.  I think that number might be low, if anything.

 

Keeping with the AI trend, Meta is looking for integrate personality-based AI chatbots into Instagram and Facebook. As the technology behind AI matures, I think you will see much more use of AI chatbots, I could see going to your favorite rock stars’ website and being greeted with an AI chatbot that lets you ‘chat’ with them.  At first it would be text-based, then add audio, then eventually video.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute, I’ll have a new post up on building customer loyalty in the restaurant industry via digital up tomorrow and….I’m not sure what Thursday’s post will be yet. I want to do a case study post as I haven’t done one in a while, but I will have to find a good one I can share.  Saturday’s Bible study post will feature one of the most amazing stories of faith in the Old Testament, and probably the greatest foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, hundreds of years before His birth.

So that’s what you can expect this week. As I wrote about last week, I am loving Claude as a tool to boost my writing output, here’s where you can learn how I am using it to write more.

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I Do Not Deserve to Suffer Like This…

Hello! In January, I made a commitment to start reading the Bible daily. It’s been a wonderful experience, and every Saturday I write a post sharing some of my thoughts on what I am learning. I hope you enjoy these posts on the teachings of the Bible, and you can read other posts I have written in the category Bible Study. I will return to posts on business, marketing and web3 news on Monday!

I Do Not Deserve to Suffer Like This…

At one point or another, regardless of which religion you do or do not practice, most of us have likely said something very similar to this. I have many times asked why something bad is happening to me.  ‘I am a good person!’, I exclaim. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good people.  You do good things, and you are rewarded for your good deeds.  This is the natural order of things.  Plus…doing good things then being rewarded simply shows to everyone that if you do good things, you will get your just reward.

I’ve mentioned before how much I am enjoying watching The Chosen.  It truly is the best series I’ve watched in years, and my appreciation for it has only grown since I first mentioned it. I am now watching Season 3.  One of Jesus’ disciples is James, or affectionately called Little James in the series. Little James was given his nickname because there is another James among the group of disciples who is much taller.

Little James is lame in the series, and walks with a noticeable limp and has a staff to help him get around. In one scene earlier in the series, Little James confides to another disciple that he is a bit troubled that Jesus keeps healing the sick and disabled, but has never offered to heal him. Little James decides that Jesus must have a reason for not doing so.

But early in Season 3, Jesus tells his 12 disciples, including Little James, that they will be paired up and sent out to spread the word about the coming Kingdom.  Jesus adds that he will give each of them the authority to cast out demons, and to heal the sick.

Little James is visibly shaken by the news that he will be given authority to heal others, while he is still dealing with his own disability. He comes to Jesus and asks Him to help him understand why Jesus would give him the power to heal others, while Jesus wouldn’t heal his own sickness. Which leads to this absolutely wonderful scene:

After watching this scene, I went back to study because I wanted to confirm that this wonderful story and interaction was actually documented in the Bible. I was disappointed to find that it was not.  In fact, little is told of James in the Bible, so little in fact that we aren’t even sure which James he is.  He may have been Jesus’ cousin or even His brother.  Or he may have been another James altogether.

And there is no mention in the Bible of Little James having any affliction or disability. I was quite honestly a bit disappointed in the series to learn this.

But then, I learned that the actor who plays Little James, Jordan Walker Ross, was born with cerebral palsy and scoliosis. As I watched the scene above, I couldn’t help but wonder how surreal it was for Ross to film that scene. I am sure he must have asked some of the same questions that Little James had asked, or at least I could understand if he had. I think the scene was handled absolutely perfectly on all levels.

One of the common themes I am finding as I am reading the Bible is how the believer is constantly reminded to focus on themselves, and their own path. We are reminded that we can’t judge what we do or don’t have in comparison to someone else. When we see that someone else has more than us, we aren’t supposed to envy their possessions.  When we see that someone has less, we are supposed to help them as best we can.

Suffering is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. I will suffer even though I do good works.  So shall you. Yet we often add to our own suffering via our assumptions. Or our misconceptions about why something is happening to us.  And why is it that someone else seems to have all the good fortune, while I am struggling? I do good works that seem to go unnoticed, while this person seems to get rewards that their works don’t seem to justify!

We are operating at all times on incomplete information. We don’t know what is happening to someone else, we don’t even know what is happening to ourselves. Perhaps a struggle we are dealing with today was given to us so that we would become strong enough to deal with a far greater struggle that will come our way in a year.

This again, is why God tells us to be faithful. Because worry and faith cannot exist in the same space. Our worry robs us of our happiness, our faith fills the space in our heart and mind where worry wants to dwell.

Suffering is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. Let’s not add to our own suffering by worrying.

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This is My Favorite AI Tool, and It’s Not ChatGPT or Bard

using claude to create content

So I’ve been using and loving a new AI tool the last few weeks. Before I get into what the tool is and how I use it, I wanted to talk about how I am using artificial intelligence tools to help me with content creation.

First, I am different from most content creators. When you talk to most content creators who blog, they will tell you they have plenty of ideas for blog posts, but no time to write them all.

I am the exact opposite. And I always have been. I have always struggled with coming up with ideas for posts. Once I have the idea, the actual writing of the post typically takes me an hour or so.  But I just cannot come up with enough post ideas to consistently post in anything resembling a consistent posting pattern. It’s one reason why I love writing Monday’s Marketing Minute: The format picks the ‘topic’ for me, and it’s much easier to write a weekly post summarizing a few news stories I have read that I feel will be relevant to share here.

A big part of my problem is I feel like if I have ever written about a topic before, then it would be repetitive to cover it again. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds to say that I can’t blog about the same topic twice on a blog that’s almost 15 years old, but that’s where my mind goes. I feel like covering the same topic twice is doing a disservice to the reader, so I try to find a new angle on each topic, a new case study, example, etc. And those don’t always readily present themselves.

So prior to a few weeks ago, I’d always struggled come up with post ideas. But all that changed when I discovered Claude. Claude is somewhat similar to ChatGPT, but where it excels is analyzing text. This is where it has been immensely helpful for me.

When I first started using Claude, I told it to analyze my website, tell me what it saw.  It would point out my perceived strengths and weaknesses based on the content I was creating.  Then I said go through my content, and tell me which industries I should be focusing on, based on my content, my services and my experience. And it gave me a list of several industries that were a good ‘fit’ for me, I whittled that list down to a few that I thought were the best fit for me, and that was my focus list. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last couple of weeks, you can make a good guess at what industries are on that list.

Once I had my list of industries I would be focusing my content on, I needed to drill down on the type of content I create for those industries. I went back to Claude and asked it to give me the top concerns facing decision-makers in those industries. It gave me 5 or so concerns for each industry. Some of those concerns overlapped with the type of services I offer, and some did not.

So I went back to Claude and told it to give me the top concerns for these industries BUT restrict those concerns to areas that overlap with my services. Then in seconds, Claude gave me a list of dozens of pain points that industry professionals are dealing with, that perfectly overlap with my skillsets and services.

Each pain point was a blog post idea. Prior to working with Claude, I had never planned out my editorial calendar more than a week or two in advance. In fact, if I had anything scheduled ahead of time, I felt accomplished.

Thanks to Claude, I now have my editorial calendar here full for the rest of the year. This would have been all but impossible on my own, but thanks to Claude, my content creation is set for months.

Here’s How I Am Using Claude to Create Content

So here’s where the rubber meets the road. I’ve talked about the potential perils of AI for content creators before. One of my main fears is that content creators simply let an AI tool write content for them.

And it’s insanely easy to do just that. It took Claude just seconds to give me dozens of post ideas.  For each post idea, all I have to do is ask Claude to write me a post on that topic, and it will spit out the post in seconds.

Of course the potential problems with this approach are obvious. You lose any sense of ‘your voice’ in your content. Your content could be inaccurate, believe it or not all AI tools commonly used today are quite prone to sharing false information (called ‘hallucinations’). And it’s simply not very ethical at all to pass off the work of an AI tool as being your content.

My stance has always been that you shouldn’t view AI tools as the content creator for you, but rather the content editor. Here’s an example:

For this post on the technology industry, I asked Claude to give me a 1,000 word post on the topic. Which it did in seconds. I then used the post that Claude gave me as the outline for the post I would eventually write. Instead of publishing the post as Claude gave it to me, I basically stripped all its guts out and rebuilt it from the ground up. I did keep the structure of the post more or less in tact. But almost all of the content ended up being changed.

The post that Claude gave me was around 900 words. The finished post I published was 2,500 words. And I ended up removing at least half of the words that Claude gave me.  And the few sentences I did keep were left alone because I read it and thought “Ok that’s similar to what I would have said here anyway.”

But what Claude gave me was the structure for the post. That was immensely helpful to me. I learn by observing, if you give me an example of how something works, I can quickly understand it. By writing a post for me, Claude helps me easily see the type of post I want to write. If I had started out on my own to write the same post without Claude, and only had the post topic, I could have done it, but it would have taken much longer. And I’m not sure the content itself would have been any better. It might have been worse.

So How Does Claude Compare to Other AI Tools Like ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the AI tool that most people are familiar with if they have been using any AI tools. I have been using it a lot this year, and while I do still use it and find it useful, I prefer Claude’s ability to analyze text. Especially large amounts of text, I believe Claude’s current version can analyze up to 100,000 words of text at a time.

ChatGPT I use more in a ‘conversational’ way to help me work out ideas in my head. It helps with ideation for me. And I still use it regularly for that purpose.

Bard.  Bless its heart, but Bard is just bad. So I was writing a post on loyalty programs with Claude, but I decided to do some research with Bard for the post. I asked Bard to give me the average ROI for a loyalty program. Bard told me it was 25-30%. That figure sounded impossibly high, so I asked for a source. Which Bard said it couldn’t give me. I kept asking in different ways and Bard finally admitted that it made up that 25-30% figure for the ROI of loyalty programs. Bard said the REAL figure is 10.4%. I said great, what’s the source for that figure, and Bard cited a 2022 study from the Aberdeen Group.  I googled it, and sure enough, that study doesn’t exist.

Bard is from Google, but Google also purchased a 10% stake in the company behind Claude earlier this year. I suspect we will see a massive upgrade to Bard soon, I mean it’s so bad now we almost have to. And since Google is now investing in Anthropic, the company behind Claude, I have to wonder if some of the same technology that powers Claude might find its way to Bard in some form.

So my advice for content creators when it comes to AI remains the same: Learn how to use these tools but use them for ideation and editing of your content, not for content creation.