The truth is, focusing on the customer doesn’t work if you don’t ensure the right foundations are in place to support long-term success of a CX programme, and by extension the customer-centric culture you want to build in your organisation.
As a customer experience professional, it seems counter-productive to suggest you shouldn’t focus on CX. I admit I’m being slightly facetious with this title but in the context of so many Voice of the Customer programmes failing to deliver, it’s important to take a step back and analyse why customer centricity in itself doesn’t guarantee results.
For companies starting out on their CX journey, we often say that a leap of faith is required, that CX will deliver if they do it right. At that stage they rarely have the data required to build the kind of business case that more CX-mature organisations can boast about. Therefore hypothesis, extrapolation, and yes, a certain dose of faith that improving CX is the right thing to do for customers, employees and the business at large – all this definitely helps to get the programme ignited. Provided executive stakeholders are invested (not just involved) and the CEO is passionate about the ultimate goal.
After the initial stage, when more data is available to build stronger business cases for customer-centric improvements, CX programmes should be flourishing, right? And for those with a really mature programme backed by an organisation-wide culture of driving change, surely, success is all but assured! Except it isn’t, and a surprising number of CX programmes have failed (losing investment or simply being cancelled) in the last 5 years.
So why is this happening? When common sense (and case studies of companies doing it right) dictates that happier customers leads to increased retention, share of wallet, re-purchase, upsell, positive word of mouth, etc.
The truth is, focusing on the customer doesn’t work if you don’t ensure the right foundations are in place to support long-term success of a CX programme, and by extension the customer-centric culture you want to build in your organisation.
In my experience, the five foundational ideals I list below often lack in companies with failing CX programmes.
1. Without employees, you can’t serve customers right
I strongly believe that the industry motto shouldn’t be “Customers First”, but “Employees First”. Start a strong team of colleagues:
focused on the right values
empowered to deliver the right experiences
encouraged to help rather than compete with each other
rewarded on the right metrics.
… Then you can think of the best ways to serve your customers.
2. Without technology, you can’t deliver consistent experiences
I have a strong background in customer experience management technology, so you might say I’m biased. But that’s not the case. The right technology will help you:
get feedback at the right time from your customers, using the right channel
reinforce consistency in your brand strategy
deliver powerful insights, tailored to different stakeholders in the organisation so they’re empowered to take [the right] actions
ensure the voice of the customer is embedded throughout the decision-making process, not just confined to the CX function
calculate the ROI of your programme along the journey
3. Without money, you can’t invest in customer-centric initiatives
Customer centricity needs to be fuelled by investments to work. Otherwise it is just lip service and fluffy values. Focus on:
linking CX metrics to business metrics, and re-adjust as needed along the journey (financial linkage is a fickle friend!)
ensuring you prioritise the right customer-centric improvements based on the strongest business cases. Success breeds success!
embedding customer feedback across the organisation. The more it’s used to feed actions by all functions, the more value will naturally get attached to it
4. Without processes, you can’t drive systemic improvements
An often-forgotten foundation piece. You can’t expect long-lasting results and a consistent ROI if you’re operating on an ad-hoc basis. CX programmes shouldn’t solely rely on business cases for customer-centric improvements. So think about how you:
set up the right governance from the start
feed CX insights into the right organisational processes in a systematic way
automate where you can, to minimise resources used to analyse and re-direct them to drive change
5. Without communication, you can’t share success
You do need to communicate about your successes, how your CX programme has driven the right improvements, what value it generated. Don’t assume it’s obvious, don’t prioritise more action over communication, even if it seems to make more sense. Instead:
build an internal and external communication strategy that you adhere to, no matter what
invest in producing quality material
show humility. Describe your successes with modesty, share credit easily, talk about failure too and how you’re planning to improve
make everyone (customers, employees, partners…) feel part of your customer-centric culture
In my experience, the foundations I’ve mentioned above tend to be present at different levels as part of an organisation’s journey. But as CX programmes build momentum, they also breed complacency. These two aspects seem to go hand-in-hand, and not only in the CX world.
Re-assessing your strategy, tactics, and deliverables with regards to these five foundational elements might not guarantee success, but not doing so is a sure path to failure. Along the way, you’re bound to wane on external communications, a new organisation-wide systems update might require your processes to undergo some re-wiring. Whatever it is, make sure you put in place a structured, transparent, thorough plan for evaluating the health of your programme on a regular basis. I’ve not seen many CX programmes with this type of scrutiny in place, but the ones I know about are thriving and showing industry-leading results.
Focus on customers should be a given, the purpose of your business, and a logical way to drive sustainable growth. But putting customers first often becomes an excuse to let a CX programme fail. So get the foundations right first: employees, processes, technology, route to ROI and communication strategy. They will ensure your customer-centric strategy can deliver results in the long-term and rise above any crisis.
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