The Customer Experience (CX) field is growing, and companies are realizing that it makes clear business sense. For companies that practice CX, MarketsandMarkets.com predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% from 2014 to 2019. But how do you ensure the investment you place in CX will be well spent?
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Six Steps to Best-in-Class Customer Experience
1. 1. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 Six Steps to Best-‐In-‐Class Customer Experience Creating and Executing a top CX Program Yields Real Business Results The Customer Experience (CX) field is growing, and companies are realizing that it makes clear business sense. For companies that practice CX, MarketsandMarkets.com predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% from 2014 to 2019. But how do you ensure the investment you place in CX will be well spent? After 20 years of experience in Customer Experience Management consulting, we have determined that there are six key steps to deliver a best-‐in-‐class customer experience. These steps should ideally be executed in sequence so as to realize maximum value. Step 1: Start by understanding how your brand promise actually works for your CUSTOMER. The brand promise is the commitment a company makes to its partners and customers. It's not a description of what a company does in a literal sense, but rather an insight into the company's character. To some extent, it's a mission; it's the way in which the company creates and delivers relevant value. The brand promise is where trust and commitment – just like all human relationships – is built. You need to understand your brand and how it delivers value to your customers. Great examples of brand promises are: • Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. • Jaguar: With a customer experience as good as our cars. • Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. What does your brand stand for? Are you delivering on the promise? Are you reinforcing your value in everything you do? Have you defined what the customer should expect at each customer touch-‐point? Step 2: Develop a customer experience strategy. What is the customer experience you need to deliver to be competitive? How do you ensure that it is delivered consistently across all your delivery channels? Have you defined what a high quality experience is so that employees know how to deliver it? Your customer experience strategy should impact whom you hire, how you train people. Thought Leadership A study by Forrester Research and Watermark Consulting tracked the six-‐year stock performance of companies on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index. Even during the recession years of 2007-‐2012, customer experience leaders averaged double-‐digit gains in stock performance, beating customer experience laggards by an impressive margin. -‐-‐Customer Strategist October 2014 and how you empower them. To begin to understand your current state, survey your customer facing employees as well as your customers get their feedback on where the gaps and opportunities are. Make plans to fix what is broken and empower your staff to take part in the process Step 3: Know yourself – and the experience you are delivering – across the customer lifecycle. Different customers have different needs at different points in the customer lifecycle. At the beginning when prospects are researching you need to be sure you land in their consideraAon set. Make sure you place yourself in the right spots to make it easy to learn about you and understand your value. What is your reputaAon? What do other customers like and dislike? In the purchase cycle customers are comparing product features and prices to see if you are the best fit. Once purchased, if the product or service doesn’t live up to customer expectaAons, you will know it either by complaints or by customer churn.
2. 2. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 About suitecx® Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulAng, suitecx is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-‐centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision markeAng are all components of this groundbreaking soTware. Six Steps to Best-‐In-‐Class Customer Experience Crea?ng and Execu?ng a top CX Program Yields Real Business Results Thought Leadership Comfortable customers already in a relationship want you to remember them and communicate with them with relevance, using that knowledge. Use evidence, such as behavioral and lifecycle data, to engage and interact with your customers intelligently and value their connection to your brand. Mapping the customer journey allows you to see the different challenges unique to each lifecycle stage. Make sure to gather data from all departments to provide an evidence-‐based approach to making recommendations for change. Step 4: Plan for different customer segments. Different groups of customers have different value and needs, and it is up to you to plan your customer experience by the needs of each customer segment. Knowing what each segment wants and what they consider to be a good experience is crucial to success. Some customers may prefer self-‐service while others want a high touch experience, for example. Some customers prefer to take away and others want to eat in. Match the customer experience to the different groups to be sure they get what they expect and desire. Step 5: Prioritize your improvement plan. Once you have completed your surveys, journey mapping, mystery shopping etc., you will have a long list of required improvements. In order to make progress you will need to group the improvements into categories and then get your team together to prioritize these. Key considerations for prioritization include: cost to implement, ease or difficulty of implementaAon, the expected impact on the customer, and the impact on your organizaAon. The prioritization exercise leads to a longer-‐term improvement roadmap that can be funded and managed by your resources over a multi-‐year cycle. Be sure to assign specific individuals to run each project and provide them with a project charter, defined deliverables and a budget. Step 6: Review and improve. Nothing is static. You will always be gathering more information and your channels will morph and change. In order to innovate your CX to match, you will need to constantly innovate, test and measure. Never be satisfied that you are finished improving your customer experience. Continue to look at other industries for best practices, bring in outside perspectives to be sure you aren’t overlooking something, and consider yourself a student of customer experience who is always learning and improving. Why invest in CX? The bottom line is that what’s good for the customer is good for the company. Retained customers are 4X more profitable. Acquisition by referral and social sharing costs almost half of tradiAonal acquisiAon spend. Companies who lead in CX are 15X more profitable through reduced costs and higher profit margins. While it may not be easy to get there, doing the right thing by your customers will yield a guaranteed payoff.
1. 1. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 Six Steps to Best-‐In-‐Class Customer Experience Creating and Executing a top CX Program Yields Real Business Results The Customer Experience (CX) field is growing, and companies are realizing that it makes clear business sense. For companies that practice CX, MarketsandMarkets.com predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% from 2014 to 2019. But how do you ensure the investment you place in CX will be well spent? After 20 years of experience in Customer Experience Management consulting, we have determined that there are six key steps to deliver a best-‐in-‐class customer experience. These steps should ideally be executed in sequence so as to realize maximum value. Step 1: Start by understanding how your brand promise actually works for your CUSTOMER. The brand promise is the commitment a company makes to its partners and customers. It's not a description of what a company does in a literal sense, but rather an insight into the company's character. To some extent, it's a mission; it's the way in which the company creates and delivers relevant value. The brand promise is where trust and commitment – just like all human relationships – is built. You need to understand your brand and how it delivers value to your customers. Great examples of brand promises are: • Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. • Jaguar: With a customer experience as good as our cars. • Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. What does your brand stand for? Are you delivering on the promise? Are you reinforcing your value in everything you do? Have you defined what the customer should expect at each customer touch-‐point? Step 2: Develop a customer experience strategy. What is the customer experience you need to deliver to be competitive? How do you ensure that it is delivered consistently across all your delivery channels? Have you defined what a high quality experience is so that employees know how to deliver it? Your customer experience strategy should impact whom you hire, how you train people. Thought Leadership A study by Forrester Research and Watermark Consulting tracked the six-‐year stock performance of companies on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index. Even during the recession years of 2007-‐2012, customer experience leaders averaged double-‐digit gains in stock performance, beating customer experience laggards by an impressive margin. -‐-‐Customer Strategist October 2014 and how you empower them. To begin to understand your current state, survey your customer facing employees as well as your customers get their feedback on where the gaps and opportunities are. Make plans to fix what is broken and empower your staff to take part in the process Step 3: Know yourself – and the experience you are delivering – across the customer lifecycle. Different customers have different needs at different points in the customer lifecycle. At the beginning when prospects are researching you need to be sure you land in their consideraAon set. Make sure you place yourself in the right spots to make it easy to learn about you and understand your value. What is your reputaAon? What do other customers like and dislike? In the purchase cycle customers are comparing product features and prices to see if you are the best fit. Once purchased, if the product or service doesn’t live up to customer expectaAons, you will know it either by complaints or by customer churn.
2. 2. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 About suitecx® Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulAng, suitecx is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-‐centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision markeAng are all components of this groundbreaking soTware. Six Steps to Best-‐In-‐Class Customer Experience Crea?ng and Execu?ng a top CX Program Yields Real Business Results Thought Leadership Comfortable customers already in a relationship want you to remember them and communicate with them with relevance, using that knowledge. Use evidence, such as behavioral and lifecycle data, to engage and interact with your customers intelligently and value their connection to your brand. Mapping the customer journey allows you to see the different challenges unique to each lifecycle stage. Make sure to gather data from all departments to provide an evidence-‐based approach to making recommendations for change. Step 4: Plan for different customer segments. Different groups of customers have different value and needs, and it is up to you to plan your customer experience by the needs of each customer segment. Knowing what each segment wants and what they consider to be a good experience is crucial to success. Some customers may prefer self-‐service while others want a high touch experience, for example. Some customers prefer to take away and others want to eat in. Match the customer experience to the different groups to be sure they get what they expect and desire. Step 5: Prioritize your improvement plan. Once you have completed your surveys, journey mapping, mystery shopping etc., you will have a long list of required improvements. In order to make progress you will need to group the improvements into categories and then get your team together to prioritize these. Key considerations for prioritization include: cost to implement, ease or difficulty of implementaAon, the expected impact on the customer, and the impact on your organizaAon. The prioritization exercise leads to a longer-‐term improvement roadmap that can be funded and managed by your resources over a multi-‐year cycle. Be sure to assign specific individuals to run each project and provide them with a project charter, defined deliverables and a budget. Step 6: Review and improve. Nothing is static. You will always be gathering more information and your channels will morph and change. In order to innovate your CX to match, you will need to constantly innovate, test and measure. Never be satisfied that you are finished improving your customer experience. Continue to look at other industries for best practices, bring in outside perspectives to be sure you aren’t overlooking something, and consider yourself a student of customer experience who is always learning and improving. Why invest in CX? The bottom line is that what’s good for the customer is good for the company. Retained customers are 4X more profitable. Acquisition by referral and social sharing costs almost half of tradiAonal acquisiAon spend. Companies who lead in CX are 15X more profitable through reduced costs and higher profit margins. While it may not be easy to get there, doing the right thing by your customers will yield a guaranteed payoff.