Five Things To Do TODAY to Massively Improve your CX in 2025

Hey Crew!

Greetings from sunny Philadelphia. For those who’ve been with me for a hot minute, you already know I’m a sucker for a few things outside of Retention and great CX:

• A good old-fashioned deal.

• Traveling for free with points and miles.

So, to keep this newsletter 120% me, I’ll be sprinkling in some cash-saving secrets and travel tips going forward. You’ll find them at the end of the newsletter in a fresh new section—and trust me, they’ll be GOOD. 

I’m spilling the tricks that have saved me a ton of $ and allowed me to travel to 36 countries, staying in some of the world’s best hotels—for free. Excited to hear your thoughts on this addition!

Lastly, I’ve got two advertising slots available in this newsie in Q4. Reaches 15k folks. Reply to this email if you want in.

Now, onto business.

Last week, we got your CX team ready for BFCM. This week, I want to dig into something that’s just as important (maybe even more): 

How to use the next few months to prep your CX team for 2025.

I know it’s hectic as hell, but trust me, it takes more awareness than anything else. Today, I’ll talk about the metrics to look at and things to consider as you head into the end of 2024. 

Alright, let’s dive in.

This week’s newsie is brought to you by Syncly – your new AI companion for the CX department and beyond.

With Q4 in full swing and 2025 planning in the air, now is the time to consider which tools will help your team stay ahead of the game and reduce churn next year.

At the recent CX Leadership Summit in Chicago, Syncly surveyed 25 CX leaders about their plans for adopting AI solutions in 2025. The results were pretty telling:

• 76% of CX leaders said they’re either considering or definitely adopting AI next year.

• 84% are specifically looking at customer feedback and sentiment analysis tools to help optimize their CX efforts.

• The top concern? Finding the right tool that fits their team’s needs (79%), followed by budget constraints and ROI.

Syncly solves these problems easily, providing real-time insights from daily customer feedback across every channel you can think of. It offers full visibility into your customers' journey, helping you take proactive actions before a little frustration turns into a lost customer.

Here are just a few features that make Syncly a must-have for 2025:

• All your feedback in one place: Syncly integrates seamlessly with Gorgias, Zendesk, Intercom, Front, and more—plus aggregates reviews from Google, Reddit, Facebook, and beyond. No more piecing things together. You get a complete, clear view of what’s really going on with your customers.

• Negative Sentiment Alerts: Don’t wait for bad CSAT scores to surprise you. Syncly flags negative sentiment early, triggering alerts so you can jump in with swift action to retain your customers.

• AI-powered VoC Reports: Say goodbye to manual tagging and those Excel marathons. With Syncly, AI auto-completes 80% of your VoC Reports, so your team can focus on streamlining the customer experience.

• AI Search for Data Accessibility: Have a question about your customers? Ask Syncly AI, and it will pull up detailed insights by brand, SKU, channel, and more. Every team member can get actionable insights instantly.

Syncly is offering an extended free trial to my readers. Just schedule a 30-minute demo call with the founders, and you’re in!

Laying the Groundwork for a CX-Driven 2025

We’re deep into Q4. Some brand operators are being snarky on Twitter, SaaS folks are being ignored on their outbound messages, and the pumpkin spice latte is nearing the end of the pot. 

If you’ve not started considering making CX a priority in ‘25, there’s no better time than now. It’s easy to get caught up in year-end chaos, but trust me—taking a step back to review this year’s CX performance is the key to making next year even better. 

I want to give you some practical tips to set your CX team up for success as we move into the new year.

1. Conduct a Comprehensive Review of Key Metrics

Before you set a bunch of new goals, you’ve got to dive into your numbers. Metrics tell the story of what went right, what went wrong, and where there’s room to improve. 

Here are the big ones to focus on:

• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score): What’s the trend when it comes to customer happiness? Did satisfaction levels dip during certain periods, or did you have a spike when you launched something new? Understand where things clicked and where you missed the mark, and what could have perhaps driven the increase or decrease. 

• NPS (Net Promoter Score): Were customers promoting your brand this yeao or detracting? Pinpoint the moments that led to higher advocacy and where it started to drop. NPS trends can give you significant clues into how customers feel about your overall brand experience (and even tell you a full actionable story if you ask secondary questions.)

• First Response Time: How fast did your team respond to customers, especially during the crazier times like holiday peaks? If you notice things slowing down, start thinking about how to tighten up for 2025.

• Resolution Time: Responding quickly is one thing, but actually resolving the issue is the real goal. Look at how long it took to fully solve customer problems, and see if there are any patterns or bottlenecks to address. The biggest customer nightmare is speedy response times that are clueless and don’t address the issue they reached out with. 

2. Identify Recurring Customer Pain Points

What’s frustrating your customers? Every recurring issue offers insight into a potential CX improvement, even if it’s not 100% in your wheelhouse to fix. 

I’ve found that CX teams can often be very “uninvolved” in anything outside the inbox as they feel it is out of their world or they are not in control to fix it.

A good CX team and environment come when two things happen:

A. CX teams (and the rest of their peers around them) understand that the job of a great CX team is proactive and encompasses every part of the customer’s experience, not just answering tickets. 

B. CX teams understand how to properly relay issues and work with other teams to resolve them, not just pass along qualitative complaints.

Whether it’s a clunky return process or product hiccups, figuring out where you can make life easier for customers will help reduce friction in 2025.

For instance, if many people ask about a product feature, ensure the answer is clearly highlighted on your website or FAQs next time. Or, if shipping was a common pain point, communicate better upfront about any potential delays.

It feels simple, but you’d be shocked at how few brands do this well.

3. Look Beyond Numbers: Assess Qualitative Feedback

Numbers give you a solid foundation, but real insights often come from customer comments, reviews, and feedback on social media. Dig into what customers are saying beyond the surveys.

Tools like Syncly can automate the process, helping you categorize feedback by sentiment or specific topics. This will let you focus on the bigger picture instead of getting bogged down in individual comments. Would rec you check them out. 

4. Set Data-Driven Goals for 2025

With your 2024 performance reviewed, it’s time to set clear goals for the next year. Vague goals won’t get you anywhere—this is where SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) come into play.

For example, instead of “improve customer satisfaction,” set a goal like “increase CSAT by 5% by the end of Q1 through quicker response times and personalized follow-ups.” This makes it measurable and actionable for your team.

Here are some tips:

• Align CX goals with company objectives: If your company is focusing on increasing retention, make sure your goals reflect that. You might aim to reduce churn by 10% or increase customer loyalty through proactive engagement.

• Break down your goals: Don’t think of 2025 as one big year. Break your goals down into quarters so you can track progress. If you hit a roadblock in Q1, you’ll have time to adjust before year-end.

5. Communicate Your Strategy to the Team

Once you’ve locked in your goals, get the team on board. 

Call me dramatic, but the worst CX team to work on is where you feel clueless about the overall strategy and where your boss kinda sorta tells you to “shut up and work.”

I’ve found that by cluing your CX team into the why behind the goals and giving proper heads up on changes (like please don’t change your helpdesk from one day to the next without giving your team notice,) you make it a pleasant place to work and keep your team excited and engaged. 

As a CX leader, I can’t tell you how often I’ve had to navigate eating a sh!t sandwich. Instead of just passing along a mess, I communicated the why, explained steps we would take to ensure it does not happen again, and rolled up my sleeves and jumped in to help clean it up. 

This obviously extends beyond specific issues and beyond your CX team to the rest of the folks around you.  

When the people around you understand the why behind these goals and how they fit into the broader strategy, you’ll be shocked at how much more engaged they will be. 

On good deals:

1. Use Shop Pay wherever available, and then check out Shop Pay offers. I have not paid a cent for coffee beans in 6+ months now by combining my credit and their offers. It’s silly free money in exchange for what you already buy online. 

2. I know we had a Flip Shop moment in the zeitgeist where everyone was getting free stuff for referring friends, and while lots of that is over, they are giving 30-50% off per order when using flip credits you can get by just scrolling through the feed. They have some sensational skincare and makeup brands, home goods, baby items, clothing, and even OLIPOP. How much I have saved in the last few months of shopping there is silly. Sorry. 

Points & Miles:

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That’s it for this week!

Any topics you'd like to see me cover in the future?

Just shoot me a DM or an email!

Cheers, 

Eli 💛

P.S. Looking for inspo on your next email/sms campaign?

I know you will love this.