Customer experience initiatives can take a number of forms and knowing where to focus time, effort and resources can often be a challenge. With that in mind, we gathered the thoughts of 6 customer experience thought leaders, to give us their take on how best to proceed with a customer experience strategy.
Marcio Rodrigues, Vizolution's SVP Sales, Northern Europe & LATAM, and CXPA Board Ambassador questions whether organisations have been investing in the right initiatives and from the correct perspective.
“Despite billions being invested in digital transformation in recent years, all with the aim of delivering better customer experiences at reduced costs, efforts have really failed to deliver a return on investment. The results show the difficulties of scaling siloed initiatives.
Customers are buying experiences and outcomes. Enterprises therefore need to start designing human-first journeys that customers want to use and tell their friends about.”
Jeanne Bliss, five-time Chief Customer Officer and president of Customer Bliss, suggests that organisations should spend more time focusing on purpose, rather than process.
“Too often in business and customer experience, we focus on the mechanics of our work, rather than its meaning – what we are here to do.
The true meaning of “experience” is starting with a purpose and the leadership clarity to know exactly what you will and will not do – to grow.”
President of CTS Service Solutions, Adam Toporek believes that aiming for perfection in all areas your customer experience strategy will only lead to failure, and that you should focus on the actions that will deliver the greatest impact for you and your customers.
“Too many customer experience strategies fail due to overreach, trying to do too much at once and, as a result, spending valuable resources on less valuable improvements.
A customer experience strategy should continually have a Pareto (80/20) lens applied to it. What are the investments and actions that will yield the greatest impact on creating a profitable, best-in-class customer experience?
Trying to create the perfect experience is a recipe for disaster; trying to create a hassle-free experience with moments of positive emotional resonances is a recipe for winning with experience.”
Ian Golding, Author of ‘Customer What? The Honest and Practical Guide to Customer Experience’ explains that balancing both the needs of the business and of the customer are critical for developing a winning customer experience strategy, that will also improve employee experience.
“Strategy needs to be a balance between what the business wants and what the customer wants. Creating that balance would mean that the strategy does not just focus on business-driven metrics (revenue, profit, cost etc..), but also customer-driven ones (loyalty, satisfaction, effort etc....).
The better able a business is to create that balance, the more likely it is that it will not just deliver a better customer experience – it will also deliver a better employee experience.”
Annette Franz, CEO of CX Journey Inc, emphasises that to successfully embed a customer experience transformation across an entire organisation, the right culture must be put in place from the leadership down.
“A customer experience transformation is a lot of work. Most folks have no idea what it all entails. The best advice I can offer is to make sure the right foundation is in place for success. That foundation must start with the right culture and a leadership team that is committed and aligned to the work that lies ahead.
Beyond that, customer understanding and employee understanding efforts must be established and operationalised. The employee experience – customer experience connection is real. Don’t underestimate the power of a great employee experience to the success of the business!”
The author of Punk CX, Adrian Swinscoe, asks if businesses are actually aligning their customer experience initiatives with their overall business strategy and objectives.
“Many customer experience initiatives and projects are failing to meet their objectives. One of the primary reasons behind this is that these initiatives are not really aligned with the business’ overall objectives and strategy.
Therefore, as you are developing your experience strategy ask yourself this: How does my experience strategy support or enable the achievement of the business’ overall strategy and objectives?
If it doesn’t, then stop right there and start again as continuing down that road without that level of alignment is likely to be a short and bumpy road.”
In summary, those 6 key insights given by our customer experience thought leaders are:
- Invest in the right initiatives from the right perspective
- Start by looking at purpose, and not process
- Focus on the areas that will deliver the greatest impact
- Balance both the needs of the customer and the business
- Embed the right culture across the entire organisation
- Align customer experience initiatives with business objectives
Implement these suggestions to begin building a customer experience strategy that will set your organisation up for long-term success!
The content of this blog was taken from our new customer experience ebook: "The Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience Management in 2020", click here to download your free copy.
