A fashionable concept at the moment is Total Customer Experience (TCE). It might sound like the kind of business jargon which will induce a coma within 2 minutes, but bear with me! TCE is linked in with the idea of running Customer Experience Management (CEM) programs. Sorry, that's the last of the acronyms.



The main idea is to extract a bunch of key metrics from as many customer interaction points as possible and then use this to experiment and innovate on tactics to keep customers happier, for longer. Sounds a little like common sense and traditional best practice?
The interesting bit is the focus on metrics and experimentation – there are frequently many useful insights sat lurking undiscovered in the data. Taking a more analytical approach is a helpful compliment to the anecdotal, story-based way we, as humans, typically try to understand things.

So, how could your current or future TCE efforts work with the segment of your customers which are expats? The good news is that they should help. The bad news is you will probably need to look at the data another way. Specific factors such as the following may skew the figures:

• Language barriers may favor one channel over others
• Attrition in online processes may differ massively from native populations
• Customer retention strategies may have different effects on this segment
• Customer churn is likely to be above average as expats are internationally more mobile