Heart of the Customer, LLC

Customer experience is at a crossroads. In an interview with CX Network, our CEO, Jim Tincher, CCXP, breaks down the challenges CX professionals face today and outlines a roadmap for staying relevant in a growth-driven business world. Jim discusses: ➡️ Why CX struggles to show its impact on growth—and what to do about it. ➡️ The power of Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as the ultimate CX metric. ➡️ How integrating CX and operations can make or break your program. One of Jim’s key insights? "Great CX is simply great operations." By connecting customer outcomes to operational and financial goals, CX leaders can bridge the gap between the boardroom and the customer journey. Read the full interview to learn how to reposition CX as a critical driver of business success: https://hubs.la/Q02-C-Kk0 #CustomerExperience #CXLeadership #NetRevenueRetention #HeartOfTheCustomer #BusinessGrowth

What is the purpose of your CX program? To drive real impact, it’s essential to be specific and focused. Driving overall revenue is too general. Instead, narrow your CX goal down to high-value targets like cross-selling or order velocity. What are the behaviors your operations are trying to elicit? What sentiments are necessary to motivate those behaviors? By building CX Chain of Values that integrate CX data with operations and financial metrics, you can create experiences that increase customer engagement and organizational profitability. Read more on how to prioritize your CX efforts for maximum impact: https://hubs.la/Q02YPRRw0

For any organization, a customer journey map is a key tool for seeing your operations through your customers' eyes. But what does that look like, and how does it work? In the webinar linked below, we walk you through the customer journey map essentials: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform team decision making. We show you how to identify customer needs, spot pain points, and optimize operations to increase loyalty with customers who buy more, more often, and cost less to serve. Watch here: https://hubs.la/Q02YfSmj0 #customerjourneymapping #customerjourneymaps #customerexperiencestrategy #customerexperienceconsulting #voiceofthecustomer

CX is experiencing a major shift as organizations eliminate their customer experience teams. To survive, you have to prove value. Meaning, customer experience leaders MUST drive enterprise impacts and connect to financial goals. It begins with three key steps: 1. Identify your source of value (which sales or cost-related metrics are impacted by customer behaviors and sentiment) 2. Connect operational data to the customer sentiment you've observed. 3. Shift your reporting to impact on business outcomes rather than on sentiment only Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02YfPQv0 #customerexperiencestrategy #customerexperienceconsulting #valuechains #customersuccess

Heart of the Customer’s Roxie Strohmenger, CCXP, is featured on the latest episode of The Delighted Customers Podcast, where she shares how CX professionals can leverage data to drive strategic impact. In this episode, Roxie—our principal strategist and the Board Chair-Elect of the CXPA—introduces the “web of data” framework, offering practical ways to harness diverse data sources for real-time, executive-ready insights. Here are three key takeaways: 1. What is the “web of data”: Roxie explains how CX leaders can use this approach to deliver real-time, actionable insights that align with strategic business goals. 2. Repercussions of limited data access: Limited data often confines CX to a cost center role. Roxie discusses how to overcome these challenges by collaborating with IT and data teams and tackling technical and regulatory barriers to streamline integration. 3. Aligning CX metrics with business goals: Roxie highlights the importance of aligning CX metrics with operational and financial KPIs, helping CX professionals communicate value effectively to executives and elevate CX as a strategic asset. Listen in for these insights and more: https://hubs.la/Q02X8MtG0

Today, Jim Tincher, CCXP shared powerful insights from the Advanced Manufacturing Customer Experience (AMCX) consortium—a group of 50+ global manufacturers. AMCX’s recent survey of over 7,200 B2B customers across 15 companies revealed an eye-opening trend: Only 36% of customers plan to grow with their current provider, while just 5% intend to scale back. According to Gartner research, CEOs’ top goal is growth. Unfortunately, according to XM Institute, only 11% of CX programs can make that connection. This research helps bridge that gap. Key Findings: The top factor driving growth wasn’t an effortless experience but an emotional connection. Customers with high trust in their provider were far more likely to report plans to grow. In fact, emotional drivers like trust consistently outperformed ease in predicting growth. And while Net Promoter Score (NPS) across customers was 31, the strongest drivers of NPS also focused on emotional factors, with effort ranking further behind. What This Means for CX Leaders: To drive growth, B2B brands need to focus on building emotional connections, aligning CX initiatives with trust and other key emotional drivers. This approach closes the gap between customer satisfaction and real business impact. Curious about applying these insights to your CX strategy? Reach out, or visit our website for more information: https://hubs.la/Q02WPSpP0

We are thrilled to announce that Jim Tincher, CCXP, CEO of Heart of the Customer, has been honored with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 ICMI Global Contact Center Awards. Each year, ICMI selects a leader who embodies the spirit of customer service, contributing to the people, organizations, technology, and customers in the industry. “We are honored to recognize Jim for his commitment to the industry and the impacts he’s made on it throughout his career,” said Tara Gibb, Senior Director at ICMI. This award recognizes Jim’s dedication to advancing customer experience (CX) and his substantial contributions, from thought leadership to practical insights that help companies transform how they engage with their customers. As a published author, speaker, and active contributor to the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), Jim has spent his career advocating for customer-centric change. This recognition is a testament to Jim’s vision and to the Heart of the Customer team’s shared dedication to elevating the customer experience profession. Congratulations to all the ICMI Global Contact Center Awards winners, and especially to Jim for his outstanding achievements and lifelong dedication to enhancing customer relationships. Learn more about how Jim and Heart of the Customer help organizations unlock customer loyalty and drive business growth through CX excellence: https://hubs.la/Q02W7l2s0 Learn more about the ICMI awards: https://hubs.la/Q02W7npZ0

What is the CX Chain of Value? At its core, the Chain of CX Value it maps customer experience improvements to operations and financial outcomes. It’s a framework to pinpoint where CX investments drive value—whether that’s increasing revenue, customer retention, reducing service costs, or motivating customers to participate in joint innovation. 🔗 Step 1: Identify What financial metric you want to improve Rather than focusing on broad metrics like overall revenue, zero in on key components that drive financial outcomes—such as cross-selling or order velocity. For example, a customer experience so strong that customers are more willing to explore additional products. 🔗 Step 2: Identity the operational influencers Work with your data and analytics teams to discover the operational processes that improve (or hurt) those financial metrics. As one Heart of the Customer client discovered, improving high-margin product orders wasn’t just about on-time delivery—it was a combination of on-time delivery, correct product, and no defects. 🔗 Step 3: Use CX Programming to link to customer behaviors you want to see Use CX tools like Customer Journey Mapping and Voice of the Customer listening and analytic programs to identify what customer behaviors and emotions you need to achieve your financial metric. This approach mirrors Six Sigma but is customer-focused. Start with eliminating shared pain points between your business and customers, eventually moving into how to drive more of the positive emotions that naturally motivate the desired behaviors. The Chain of CX Value is a powerful tool for driving meaningful customer-focused change and achieving tangible business results. The more you dive into your data, the clearer the link between CX improvements and business outcomes. The big win comes in with a repeatable and shared process that embeds real-time customer insights into business innovation and differentiation to gain competitive advantage. Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02VT4Mr0

In today’s world of overwhelming data and endless options, knowing the right business decision can feel daunting. Yet, there is a way to simplify. Join us October 22 for a transformative workshop led by Jim Tincher, a customer experience leader, author, and speaker who breaks through organizational stagnation and silos to streamline Fortune 500 strategies that give a competitive edge. The key takeaway? To drive business impact, you need to think differently about how you measure CX. In this 3-hr, hands-on session, Jim will walk you through • Why customer emotional data is the surest predictor of business success • How to discover the 1-2 key emotions drive your business value • How to build an emotion-driven value chain • How to use your value chain to focus operational, finance, and product decisions on ways to generate the emotions proven to fuel sales Attendees will learn how to • Identify 7 financial metrics impacted by CX—and 1 to avoid • Understand how customer behaviors are determined by what they feel • Identify the 1-2 emotions that hold the most potential to impact your business • Determine which operational and behavioral data to integrate into your CX reports • Create your own chain of value that differentiates Ready to take your business to the next level? Register here with code SPK400 for a $400 discount on all admissions!

Years ago, Heart of the Customer met Roxie Strohmenger at UKG when she reached out for support to execute a large customer journey mapping project. In an instant, Heart of the Customer CEO Jim Tincher and Roxie formed a mutual respect, bonding over a shared conviction that customer emotions were the surest predictor of operational behaviors and financial outcomes. Over the years, the two colleagues pushed each other and the CX industry into research, data analysis, and process innovation that transformed enterprises and advanced the capabilities and impacts of customer experience. The results have been a series of book, award, keynote, and project collaborations that changed minds and unlocked billions in business. Today, we are thrilled to officially welcome our long-time friend, former client, and award-winning CX leader Roxie Strohmenger to the Heart of the Customer team! As a principal strategist, Roxie’s role is to continue to amplify client profitability and competitive advantage through transformational enterprise strategies. With 15+ years of experience driving multi-billion-dollar growth, Roxie’s specialty lies in discovering emotion-focused CX initiatives and ushering them through leadership alignment, process maturity, and cross-functional sharing to drive transformations. With past roles at large corporations and top consultancies and a background in psychology and decision sciences, Roxie not only makes customer loyalty viable—but profitable. Want to hear more? Click below to learn from Roxie firsthand on who was her catalyst in winning the coveted Customer Experience Leader of the Year competition.