Is Customer Experience New?
No, not at all. Businesses, governments, associations, not-for-profits have been focused on the “customer experience” for years. From the beginning customer service was paramount to ensuring repeat sales and increased revenues. When customers visited stores and businesses, they appreciated the friendly greeting, expertise and personalized service. If there was ever an issue, businesses which were quick to resolve, retained hard-earned loyalty. When a business decided to get into a new line, offer new products or services or go into new markets, customers followed, sharing their confidence with friends, neighbors and family. Trust was king!
Customer Experience (CX) Today
As technology evolved, and the internet became “oxygen” for all of us, a paradigm revealed itself; the customer was now in charge. Over the past 10 years, companies and organizations struggled to keep up with the demands of the new empowered consumer. Shoppers, new more about a retailer’s products than sales associates, they also new more about the competition’s products. Policy holders were now one-click away to breaking with hundred year old family traditions, governments found themselves with thousands of websites that were not “mobile friendly”, social media was expected to be more than, well…social! Buzz words made speakers, sales teams and marketing leaders sound smarter. “Multi-channel”, “Omni-channel” were terms used loosely and companies claimed to be able to deliver on the omnichannel promise (I’m still not even sure if you spell it with a hyphen or without!?!
Bottomline is that people, prospects, customers, citizens want to interact with your brand the way THEY want to! And, they want to traverse multiple channels or touch-points (think desktop, mobile, phone, in person), whichever, whenever and however it’s convenient for them. They EXPECT this! If they can’t, they become unhappy, disgruntled or just pissed-off.
There’s the challenge! We have all heard about “the customer journey” and it’s all about the journey. What that means is, screw up in just one of these channels or touch-points and you risk losing your customer(s)…possibly forever! If you’re in government and don’t deliver a great experience online (especially mobile), then people will be In Line at service centers across the country or on hold creating cost and downtime for ALL of us.
Getting CX Right
OK, so Customer Experience or CX can be defined as all interactions, expectations and emotions a customer has during their entire journey with an organization.
A good friend I worked with for nearly 10 years used to say, “Understanding the customer is not rocket science…it’s harder!”
There is some truth to that statement. Think of the customers you have. They’re not all the same right? Different demographics, needs, wants, and with the right now world we live in today, customers’ expectations truly are higher than ever.
But, if you do it right, you will reap the rewards. Great CX is NOT about survey length, NPS or SAT score. It’s more about a mindset, a framework of strategy, technologies, methodologies, empathetic humans with skin in the game, true understanding of behaviors and attitudes and a 1000% focus on OUTCOMES…RESULTS. For your business and your customers. It truly is not easy to get right, but there are steps you can take to get closer.
CX Disciplines to Get CX Right
Below are 6 key disciplines your organization should be working on today. Putting the customer in the middle of every decision doesn’t happen overnight. Just like other key areas of business it takes time create the vision, plan, design, execute, measure and repeat. Delivering great customer experiences, doesn’t come from one champion, department or team. It takes the entire village!
If you’re in the middle of a CX project or program, keep the momentum going. If you’re just starting out, use these disciplines to ensure success. If you need help, I can offer expertise, experience and a very objective point-of-view to get you better at CX; to drive better results!
CX Strategy
Getting off to the Right Start Fundamentally, all organizations want to attract and acquire new customers while retaining and maximizing the value of its current (customers, members etc.). [I’m using customers in general terms. In your case, you may be speaking of members or users of a particular channel ie. digital v. contact center]. There is a causal relationship…
CX Intelligence
CX is not “one size fits all” It is key to understand your different customer types and serve them the way they want to be served. It doesn’t work when you put all customers/visitors/prospects in the same bucket.
CX Design
The Art of the Possible When the strategy is set and we have broad and deep knowledge of our prospective and current customers, the CX design phase will start to bring it all together. It’s time to focus on the current v. ideal technology ecosystem, improving the technology stack, journey orchestration, including in-channel best-practices, channel…
CX Measurement
Focus on the Outcomes The objectives of the CX Measurement and Metrics Phase is to establish and define a customer experience quality framework that evaluates what the visitor/prospect/customer experienced, customer perception of that experience satisfaction and most importantly, driving the desired outcome: what the customer will do as a result of her experience. Pragmatic Measurement – Specific…
CX Connect
It’s not only what you say, but how you say it. Socializing CX data, getting the word out, is by far one of the most challenging steps towards doing CX Right. During this decade organizations have struggled to bring customers “into the room” and make sense of the feedback provided from them. Even after executives…
CX Live!
When Delivering Great CX is Part of the Organization DNA CX Live is about employee engagement and cultural transformation. This level of CX Maturity is all about the creation of a shared value system to encourage, empower and enable all employees to deliver optimal customer experiences throughout the organization. At this level, HR departments leverage…
Ready to get in the details. Let’s talk.
Dave Lewan 