While there is data showing how some industries, like airlines, continue to increase profits while continuing to disappoint customers with surly staff members (who aren’t necessarily being treated well themselves), the “secret” to any great customer experience is the people who deliver it.

Profits go up in those industries because there is not enough competition or disruption.

Make no mistake. When the challenger comes along, it does take market share from the companies who don’t get it. Southwest Airlines, Zappos and Amazon were all the disruptors of their day, and they all focused on delivering exceptional customer service. Companies that figure out how to hire the right people win.

But it starts earlier.

Know what your mission is.

It’s easy to say “we hire the right employees” but how can you measure it? How do you know you’re hiring right if you don’t know truly what you’re hiring for? If a great customer experience is your goal, then you better have a customer experience mission. If a candidate says they can deliver on skills but falls short on mission, then it’s time to find another candidate.

If people understand what they should do, great. If people understand why they should do it, better.

Scale to fit.

As organizations grow, the mission and hiring to it becomes even more critical.

Google often comes under fire for taking actions not representative of their well-known corporate motto of “Don’t be evil.” As Google grew and grew, they took this motto to be a mission of sorts, even including it in their founder’s letter for their IPO.

The company has changed course after criticism of actions not fitting this motto, including blocking search results in China. Really this is about taking action based on who they are, not necessarily what they do. The leaders know this is a long-term strategy and they might miss out on short-term gains. Getting the right people involved who can innovate and support these ideals trumps hiring based on resume credentials.

When China’s government attempted to block Google results for politically sensitive topics, Google China redirected users to Google’s Hong Kong results. China recently blocked Google completely and appears to be shutting down the service for millions of users. The way Google attempted to release free information is about the users, not the government, and their motto stays true to that.

There are so many tricky situations we simply can’t anticipate when we develop interview questions or write training manuals. Finding who you are and the people who live those ideals is the best way to truly deliver on a superior customer experience.

Customer Experience   CXREFRESH   CX      CX Strategy          Global CX      Southwest Airlines

Value creation makes the world go ’round. It stimulates revenue, engagement, and productivity. Value is the secret to customer experience excellence, and that’s why value is secret to sustainable growth. But beware: sometimes value is created selfishly, for the benefit of one party at the expense of the other. This is counterproductive to customer experience and to growth. Mutual value benefits both parties when upside for customers and the company outweighs downside for either party.

What is Customer Experience Innovation?

The first question to get clear on: Who is your customer? Make a note of anyone who has a role in the decision or action to obtain what you offer, as well as anyone who uses what is obtained. Opportunities to create value can be stimulated by thinking of your customers more holistically. Help everyone help you.

The second question to get clear on: What is customer experience? All interactions people have with or about a solution: messages, people, processes, policies, price, products, and services. Collectively, these things are intertwined in a customer’s experience with a solution.

The third question: What do customers buy? Capabilities, pure and simple. Whatever someone buys is a capability to relax, be entertained, remember, grow, live, avoid pain, and so forth. The capability to do something via your solution is also known as the customer’s “job-to-be-done“.

Almost always, your solution is consumed in concert with other products, services, people, technologies, and/or processes. This integration provides essential clues to customers’ expectations. It provides context that’s necessary to create optimal mutual value. Car manufacturers, for example, are going beyond the car basics, to create new value by: making it easy to add accessories for biking or off-roading, making it easy to open the trunk without using hands, entertaining people sitting in the back seat, making it safe to access GPS or cell phones while driving, making it easy to trade-in and finance a car, simplifying maintenance, and so forth. To get crystal-clear on what customers value, focus on what your solution is integrated with to serve the customer’s job-to-be-done.

Customer experience innovation creates mutual value for anyone in the holistic definition of “customer”, regarding any aspect of their experience with a solution, with a focus on the customer’s jobs-to-be-done.

Customer Experience Innovation Insights

Some engineers and managers have become frustrated after asking customers about hypothetical products and features, and their likelihood to buy them. Often, this research is doomed from the beginning, because the wrong questions are being asked. As a solution provider, you may be the expert in what’s possible: do not require your customer to do your job. Ask customers about their world — not yours.

Your customer is expert in knowing what they’re trying to get done. This can be asked in terms such as: “In a perfect world, what would you be able to do about X?” Or “In your wildest dreams, what would you be able to do about X?” Or better yet, let customers communicate to you through non-verbal means: pictures, metaphors, diagrams. Let them borrow scenarios from other parts of their life that convey what they’re trying to get done regarding your solution topic. Your aim is to see their world clearly: what capability are they seeking, and what is this capability integrated with?

When you ask the right questions, the thinking of your employees, suppliers, and alliance partners can be stimulated to suggest new ways of helping customers help you — creating mutual value. Adobe and Intuit are two companies that encourage everyone, regardless of job title, to suggest innovation ideas. Using agile techniques, ideas are rapidly tested with customers in an iterative process, streamlining investment for all involved, and maximizing the chances of “getting it right” from the beginning.

If you want to top your industry in customer experience differentiation and business results, you’ve got to create mutual value on an ongoing basis. Customer experience innovation can become a way of life — part of your company culture. It’s a reciprocal cycle of “help me help you” between a company and customers. Get crystal clear on who your customers are, what customer experience is — from their perspective, and focus your executives, employees, suppliers, and alliances on creative ways to help your customers achieve the capabilities they’re pursuing. This is the mutual value that fosters growth and keeps the world going ’round.

Customer Experience    Customer Experience Excellence      Customer Experience Innovation     Customers Value

No matter what services your company provides or what communication platforms you use, customer experience (CX) needs to be at the core of everything you do. With all the tools that are available to help brands engage with their customers — from social media to artificial intelligence-based resources like product recommendations and chatbots — there are more opportunities than ever to create powerful customer experiences that build loyalty and drive sales.

But these tools aren’t going to use themselves, nor will a CX-focused culture spontaneously arise on its own. Brands need to make CX a priority at every level, from the first moment a consumer decides to explore their products online to the final step of the customer journey to the ongoing relationship that may last for years or even decades.

Great customer experiences are all about the way consumers feel when they interact with your brand. Are their needs met swiftly and effectively? Are they treated like individuals whose concerns and priorities matter? Are your digital channels easy to navigate and fully integrated with one another? When customers answer “yes” to these questions, it means your brand has established a solid CX platform that provides satisfying experiences across the board.

Brands Should Have An Explicit Focus On CX

When it comes to CX, brands should never be complacent. Even customer loyalty that has been cultivated over many years can be severely damaged by unpleasant experiences. According to a 2018 PwC report, 32% of customers say they’ll “walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience” — a reminder that CX needs to be top of mind at all times.

Customer Experience    CX    Customer Journey   CX Platform   Customer Loyalty

A sure recipe to fail in the digital transformation is creating a change management program that revolves around technology instead of taking into account people and their experiences: digitization is a disruption that affects the human experience.

Innovation makes sense if it focused on people and their expectations. Digital transformation becomes more than a buzzword only if it creates a great human experience for all the parties involved in the change process.

Everything else, from processes, to technology, digital strategy, communications, and alignment is to be considered a secondary byproduct of a digitalization strategy that hinges on the human experience.

We often talk about customer experience and user experience. Both are essential components of a digital strategy. At the same time, we also know that transformation is directly linked to a great employee experience.

A lot of companies talk about these concepts in term of efficiency, completely missing the point of what those words represent.

In general, then, technology and change processes target people and their experiences. Therefore, the human experience in general, should be the main focus of transformation.

Digital transformation makes sense only if the processes we optimize lead to a better experience for our customers. At the same time, innovation is sensible if this enhances the experience of people who have to work with the new processes as well.

Some innovation needs to be aimed at improving processes, efficiency, and profitability. But when it comes to digital transformation, changes must revolve around human beings and their expectations.

Let’s go through a quick overview of the steps that companies need to go through in order to start a change management process that leads to the creation of a better human experience.

Step 1: Create Meaningful Employee Experiences

All the rules that apply to a digital customer also apply to employees in the era of digital disruption.

Digitization and digitalization revolve around the concept of creating a great human experience. But we can’t solely focus on the experience of our customers.

If we manage to create meaningful experiences for our employees, they will in turn be more likely to be able to focus on creating a great experience for our customers.

The kind of experience your customers will go through is directly connected to the experience you offer to your employees.

Step 2: Define what Success Is with Your Customers

If you want to create a truly extraordinary human experience, your business must focus on leading customers to success. And the first step is identifying what success actually is.

For some businesses the task is relatively easy (in essence, customers of an ISP are successful when they can be online and receive good customer service) while for others it is more complicated since their product or service can have multiple implementations for different use cases.

That’s why it’s important to fully understand what different customer personas expect based on how they’ll integrate your product or service. For specific accounts it’s also important to have a proper dialogue in which goals and metrics can be decided upon while defining a desired outcome.

As usual, customer success remains the ultimate goal of a great CX centric business strategy and hence also the main focus of change management processes that involve innovation.

Step 3: Define and Map the Customer Journey

Innovation always starts with a thorough analysis of the status quo.

Companies that want to create value for their customers know how to lead customers to success with minimum friction along the way.

This process starts with collecting all the information you can regarding the current touchpoints along the customer journey.

Customer journey mapping means tracking every touchpoint carefully. Such a customer experience mapping process is vital to identify potential sources of frustration so that you immediately get to spot areas in which it’s worth investing in order to create more innovative processes.

The next step obviously involves a thorough customer journey analysis. Every step in the journey that causes delay, friction, frustration, doubt, insecurity, stress, lack of trust, or confusion can be revised and optimized to create a better human experience throughout different phases, from discovery, to awareness, consideration, negotiations, implementation, and support.

Step 4: Identify Capabilities and Pinpoint Pockets of Innovation

Before starting with a proper plan it’s worth checking what resources and capabilities your company can already leverage.

There are skills and resources you can already take advantage of but it’s necessary to collect information and data across all departments.

Knowing what processes, people, resources, tools you’ll be able to rely on can differentiate you from your competitors by helping you create a more organic, natural, and human experience.

Step 5: Deal with Internal Weaknesses

After identifying internal capabilities which can be leveraged to support a digital strategy, it’s time to identify those areas in which your company struggles to excel due to the lack of resources, people, or know-how.

Problems connected to know-how can often be addressed by improving recruiting and employee retention processes.

When it comes to issues that involve the lack of technology or capabilities which would take years to develop, it’s always a smart move to look around and:

1. Create new partnerships
2. Acquire businesses that master the processes and the technology you need to strengthen and defend your position
3. Cooperate with startups that lead innovation by including them in your accelerator programs

Digital Strategy   CXREFRESH   Customer Experience     CX    Employee Experience      Human Experience    Digital Transformation      Digital Customer

Customer experience is a term used to categorize and describe the experience a customer receives while interacting with a business’s marketing and sales messages.

Ideally, these interactions will make up a “path to conversion”, also called a customer journey, that facilitates the progression of a potential customer from the introduction to the completed sale and beyond.

In fact, for traditional retailers, like Abercrombie & Fitch, Build A Bear, and Nordstrom, customer experience has been successfully employed to differentiate themselves from their competitors and create a brand synonymous with quality.

This emphasis has also impacted the bottom line for these companies. Forrester reports that improving CX can increase profitability by more than 500%, as well as reducing customer acquisition and employee hiring costs.

CX starts with engaging customers with relevant events well before the sale and continues after the sale with advocacy and brand loyalty.

The secret ingredients for a great CX strategy

Define the right style

Your CX strategy changes depending on the predictability of your market, and to every market, there is a different strategic style. The Harvard Business Review, suggests the four strategic styles below. They include:

• Classical: This style is best for companies that operate in highly predictable industries. Companies utilizing a classical style build a favorable market position by planning well into the future, and remaining with the same strategy for several years. Ask yourself: Can I sustain my customer experience strategy for many years forward?
• Adaptive: This is best for companies in unpredictable industries. Such companies require a more adaptive strategy that can be easily and rapidly changed. Ask yourself: Is my infrastructure one that can change rapidly? Is the decision-making process quick and easily adaptable?
• Shaping: This is one step beyond the adaptive style. While it too changes frequently, it focuses beyond the boundaries of the company to define new markets, standards, and business practices. Ask yourself: Do I leave room for market feedback to power rapid decision making?
• Visionary: This bold and entrepreneurial style can create entirely new markets or visions, and views the environment as a way to be molded to a company’s advantage. But it’s more similar to a classical strategy because companies take calculated steps to reach goals without switching tactics. Ask yourself: What does the future hold for the industry and how can we provide a customer experience that disrupts it?

Create a journey for your strategy

While it doesn’t have to entertain, a good strategy should tell a good story. First, ask yourself what is the correct place to start? Some might start with detailing the goals up front. Some might prefer to opt for a “problem-solution” type of story, which details current challenges and their solutions.

Second, establish a theme by asking what is the main point of your customer experience strategy? Like any good story, your strategy should have a build up to a literary climax. For example, in the “problem-solution” model the climax is reached when presenting suggested solutions and their foreseeable outcomes. Finally, a good strategy brings it all together with a solid conclusion.

Map your customer data

Map out the touchpoints, collect data, and figure out how to optimize the process. We all collect data. However, for your data to effectively fuel decision it should address questions such as:

• How do customers find you?
• Why do they choose you over your competition?
• How easy is it for them to leave reviews?
• What sort of incentives do they receive to purchase again?
• How (often) do they receive customer support?

Go for omnichannel

Striving for an omnichannel experience is an important part of an effective CX strategy. Omnichannel businesses provide customers with a seamless integrated shopping experience

When creating a CX strategy, it’s necessary to keep in mind the omnichannel experiences that most customers will traverse.

Focus on the customer

Always maintain a customer-centric approach. Ask yourself: What do my customers want? And what is the best way I can provide it?

Don’t assume that you know what is best for your customers. Spend time talking to them and collecting data. Find out what is important to them, why they choose the products that they do, and what matters to them when they shop. Focus on their needs. It’s all about them.

The ideal customer

If you are losing customers, find out why. Was the customer ready to buy? Was the customer the right fit? But be sure to also study the profiles of your best customers so you can understand what you are doing right.

Using all the information, come up with a description of your ideal customers, and then create a better customer experience with them in mind.

The ideal journey

Using your customer data to address areas that should be improved, map out the ideal customer journey. Ultimately, it should be an experience that allows your customers to easily find what they are looking for, quickly purchase it, and then return to buy more.

Research assets, cost analysis, and KPIs

What will it take to implement your CX strategy? Make a list of the assets you have and will need to deliver the strategy. Consider what sort of impact the strategy will have on resources, but be sure to show the expected return for these expenditures.

Create a timeline

Customer experience management involves lots of touchpoints and its optimization is a cross-departmental undertaking.

Keep in mind, different departments have different goals, so map out a timeline and prioritize. Is it more important to focus on discovery or retention?

Create a reasonable plan, with the ultimate goal of achieving a truly seamless customer experience that includes everything it should.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE          CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGY     CXREFRESH   CX     GLOBAL CX                         IDEAL CUSTOMER