The customer journey is the outcome of a well-thought-out plan with the customer at the centre. Seeing that we are dealing with a busy market it is necessary that our delivery is beyond average. We must focus on ensuring that customers feel valued and are able to discern with little effort the fact that their service from us is primed to make them feel special.
How we do this as a business is critical to our ability to deliver and sustain service levels and even seek to further improve however well we think we are doing. The impact of our best efforts will be felt by the customer whose judgement of how well we are doing outweighs what we think of ourselves.
Sustaining this drive to keep your customers happy is iterative. It requires a consistent mix of thinking and acting through, ensuring that every step taken has been meticulously planned prior to any execution. In today’s world we are faced with a very volatile business environment with intense pressure which demands smart responses from us.
Being smart means that not only should we have capabilities to deliver value but also, we must be aware of the needs of the customer we are serving. To achieve this effectively, we must ensure that our quest to keep the customer satisfied is realised unhindered, being careful not to falter at any stage in their journey. Two things we must note here are:
First, the journey is by no means a linear one – therefore, the interactions would normally take place randomly from any of the points of interaction. Second, if at any point in the journey your business falters in any dealings with the customer, in their eyes you have failed at all the touch-points.
Consider this example, a customer comes to your store and meets a very friendly customer service representative, leaves with a positive impression from the nice experience and then later phones in at your call centre to verify a piece of information regarding the product or service – but this time round has a spat with your call agent.
In the eyes of the customer, that unfortunate encounter will negate the initial positive experience. Managing your customer’s experience is therefore a delicate process as much as it is a key business requirement to ensure that your business derives value, ultimately as a function of how well the customer is cared for.
Our goal therefore must be to aim at and sustain exceptional services that will keep the customer aligned to our brand. Exceptional customer service will foster loyalty, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive business success.
In our business playbook we must not lose sight of the following. Physical deliverables are easy to measure, however emotional experience resonates with the customer for an extended period of time. This requires consistency in ensuring that every engagement results in a “useful” outcome.
Useful meaning that whether the encounter is positive or negative we must ensure that we navigate the engagement to an outcome that is satisfying to the customer. Why am I emphasizing this? The brutal truth is this, that one blip in service delivery overrides all the positives in your customer engagement.
It is about establishing a comprehensive roadmap that aligns organizational goals with customer expectations. This includes defining a model that guides decision-making and prioritizes customer-centricity.
Here are a few pointers on ensuring that we can initiate, drive and sustain a customer-centric culture to facilitate a customer-focused campaign. First, your CX programme must secure executive buy-in to prioritize and allocate necessary resources for the CX agenda. Second, assign a dedicated team to drive internal initiatives and educate stakeholders, define strategies, and formalize customer feedback mechanisms.
Third, elevate CX as a strategic priority and assign a dedicated team to disseminate insights and drive improvements. Fourth, build scalability by utilizing insights systematically to enhance experiences across the organization, ensuring that all employees are aligned with CX initiatives. Fifth, be intentional about embedding CX skills throughout the organization, triggering rapid responses and adaptation to market changes and continuous learning.
Top-Level Buy-in is Essential
Three key elements underscore the necessity of executive buy-in for successful CX management. Accessing resources to drive CX programmes require executive approval for a sustained effective campaign. Know that driving a result-oriented CX campaign internally is very different from announcing ambitious CX projects without the needed resources to drive your initiatives forward.
Research indicates that 70% of projects fail globally, with a lack of clear goals being a primary reason for these failures. Securing executive approval can significantly enhance project credibility and completion rates, as evidenced by studies depicting that 62% of successful projects had supportive sponsors.
Top level executives prioritize long-term success and organizational objectives. Years ago, in my role as IT lead in my organization I found myself at cross purposes with my Finance Director because as technical person my immediate solution to hardware faults was to recommend new replacements, having very little regard for the budget implications of my purported solution [sic].
I had lost sight at the time, of the need to consider how the demands for new assets needed to align with business goals. This was my hard lesson as I observed growing wiser over the years every proposed solution must hinge on a business case. Aligning with business goals is essential for gaining top-level support.
It requires that we present clear metrics that show how improved customer experiences can directly impact profitability and growth. It is about starting small and building momentum by Initiating pilot projects and aiming at achieving quick wins in CX improvements. Successful outcomes from smaller initiatives will help build credibility and encourage buy-in across the organization.
This reminds me of a cue from facilitator of a programme I attended where he kept emphasizing the need to “earn the right to continue”. It is about understand the specific interests and priorities of each stakeholder and consistently presenting data and metrics that resonate with their concerns.
Assigning a Dedicated Team
Every change journey needs full commitment. To achieve high commitment kevels we must assign a dedicated team whose role will be to ensure that stakeholders are well-educated about CX and their role in ensuring that success is guaranteed. It will involve identifying different stakeholder groups and defining strategies to engage them once you have understood their needs intuitively.
It includes formalizing customer feedback mechanisms and building the tools and skillsets needed to develop and sustain the out of world experiences for customers. A good example of this is Apple who have established dedicated teams focused on enhancing customer experience (CX) as part of their organizational strategy.
To plan the customer journey effectively we must be ‘outside-in’, driven by our understanding of the customer’s needs to trigger a process wherein we carefully map the customer journey during all interactions from the customer’s viewpoint. One blip in a customer’s journey can negate the positive impact of all the other touch-points.
The customer journey planning process must be managed as an organization-wide activity to facilitate knowledge-sharing, thus ensuring that the entire business has a common understanding of the customer’s needs. The value to both parties is mutual: the customer enjoys the relationship with your business and becomes an advocate thus enhancing your reputation.
Having a dedicated team in place will encourage collaboration between the CX team and other departments, such as marketing, sales, and product development. This will keep all aligned in their understanding of customer needs and promote collaborative working to enhance the overall customer experience.
A dedicated team will develop capabilities for gathering regular feedback from both customers and internal stakeholders. This feedback will be used to continuously to refine processes and strategies, ensuring that the CX team and the rest of the organization remain responsive to changing customer needs. Steve Jobs of blessed memory epitomizes the importance of customer engagement “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around”.
CX as a Strategic Priority
Many organizations are content with keeping the customer at arm’s length. Their focus is more on delivering the product with very little regard for the sentiments of the recipient if their product or service. Consequently the function and processes needed to drive customer experience are confined to the backend. Unfortunately, this mindset in today’s world is not helpful for either the business or the customer.
What makes this a matter of concern is that our emergent ecosystem has placed the customer at the pinnacle of the business equation holding a banner that says you can’t ignore me, you do so at your peril. Hence the axiom “Customer is King”. Say no mer.
According to recent research, consumer expectations are at an all-time high, with many customers willing to switch brands after a poor experience. For example, nearly 89% of consumers have changed to a competitor following a negative interaction, and 82% have ceased business with a brand due to dissatisfaction.
This underscores the delicate nature of customer relationships. Consequently, it has become necessary for organizations to prioritize CX as a strategic function rather than merely an aspect of marketing or customer service. The need to establish clear customer service standards is imperative to ensure that the subject of customer is understood by all and can be implemented with consistency.
Even though there is a a growing acknowledgment of CX’s importance, organizations face significant challenges in implementing effective strategies. One major hurdle is the lack of seamless integration across various customer touchpoints, which can lead to fragmented experiences.
It is therefore imperative that we establish a culture that prioritizes customer needs and a conscious effort to align their needs with organizational values and behaviors which support positive sentiments and a deliberate endeavour to address customer expectations, driven from the top down by leadership. Being strategic about CX is a must and not optional.
Build Scalability
There is a very popular phrase from Professor Eddie Obeng of Pentacle which says “chunk it, or junk it”. In saying that he simply means that when implementing new initiatives within your organization do not be in a hurry to take on too much as your internal resources may not have the capacity to cope with the challenge of big projects alongside your daily operations.
It is important to consider how well-resourced you are prioir to any major implementations. Implementing in manageable chunks is the advice here. To create a Customer-Centric environment you need to assess your internal capacity and move at a pace that is manageable within your resources constraints without compromising on achieving excellence.
Ensure that employees are empowered by equipping them with the necessary training, tools, and authority to deliver exceptional service. Empowerment fosters accountability and encourages employees to take ownership of the customer experience.
Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration to build synergies that will enable you break down silos between departments to create a unified approach to customer experience. Cross-functional collaboration enhances communication and allows for better alignment of CX initiatives with overall business objectives. Employee insights are valuable in the design of CX initiatives as they directly interact with customers and understand their needs and expectations.
Running scales operations enhance your capacity to implement feedback mechanisms through established channels for collecting employee feedback on customer interactions, such as surveys or suggestion boxes. Act on this feedback to improve processes and enhance customer experiences.
The goal is to build capabilities progressively and implement a system of consistent reviews and adjust CX strategies based on employee insights, market trends, and performance metrics to ensure ongoing alignment with business goals. This progressive approach will keep things under control and enable you scale up at a reasonable pace.
Embed CX Skills
No rational thinking there! Not all interactions are equal in terms of its impact on us as customers, therefore every encounter with the customer must be a learning experience and must be captured for knowledge purposes to help us improve our service offerings with regularity and consistency.
To successfully embed customer experience (CX) skills within an organization, requires a multifaceted approach. It involves not only training and development but also strategic alignment and cultural transformation. A few core skills are necessary in this regard. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
Empathy is fundamental for understanding customer needs and emotions.
Being able to relate to customers, acknowledging their feelings and frustrations, fosters loyalty and satisfaction. Also critical in proactive engagement with customers is the ability to Communicate and tell stories.
It is about being able to convey complex information in an easily digestible manner. Storytelling can be a powerful tool to illustrate how data impacts the organization and enhances customer experiences. Effective problem-solving skills requires anticipating customer needs and providing proactive solutions. This skill is crucial in addressing issues before they escalate, enhancing the overall customer experience.
I couldn’t help noticing a customer review for one of our leading hotels recently. According to this customer “The hotel provides great services for guests with children. In Africa this can be daunting, but after experiencing issues at other establishments, I noticed this hotel is a game-changer with exceptional service.
Also reassuring is the pool’s cleanliness. Our children enjoyed the pool without any issues, and we have been impressed with the consistent service. Special thanks to the Terrace Bar supervisor, for her warm hospitality. this Hotel comes highly recommended.
The future of customer relations is likely to be influenced in a large part by how well we manage the customer’s interactions with our business and much less on how we place price and product as a differentiator.
This means that the task of engaging the customer must take precedence over what we perceive as important business variables. Our deliberate actions must therefore include a conscious effort to understand where the points of inflexion are – where the customer has a high expectation and emotional engagement. It means for example that if a customer seeks preferential treatment citing a history of loyalty with your brand this is not to be taken lightly.
The Writer is A Consultant in Organizational Development and Customer Experience, and the Head of Training at the Service Excellence Foundation. He can be reached at 059 175 7205
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The Customer Experience (CXP) Annual Conference Takes place on Friday 11 October 2024 at the Labadi Beach Hotel. The theme of this year’s conference is “Citizen Experience – we are customers’
