- Driving holistic change from design to implementation and adoption
A burning question that begs answers is whether Customer Experience (CX) and Organizational Change Management (OCM) are a suitable pair in not only delivering on customer expectations but also exceeding them. According to experts, there is no secret about influencing change. Instead, it is a skill and this is something that we all have whether we are aware of it or not. For example, to lead organizational Change a skill that will be helpful in your journey is empathy.
As empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of others you need empathy to understand both your internal (Team) and external customers. When implementing change, you need to care about its impact on others by putting yourself in their shoes and imagining what the experience for them will be. To make the journey easier you need to meet them where they are and do what you can for them. This is what makes organizational transformation and customer experience perfect bedfellows.
Let’s take this scenario: you are at a point where you have realized that you want (or need) to build a customer-centric organization. Your challenge at the inception of your journey is where to start from. A few likely actions on your part will include attending presentations, reading articles, case studies, and books, talking to some stakeholders, and a lot more. Whatever conclusions you draw from this process you will end up at a decision point hopefully with a clear understanding of what the gaps are and what needs doing to address them.
Be that as it may, the quest to implement any form of change is not an easy one. Deborah Rowland, a leading proponent of organizational change and business improvement has this to say, “change is the disturbance of repeating patterns.” By definition, it is a disturbing process that usually involves resistance due to known or unknown loyalties. Simply put change is not easy, if it were easy the shift from “how we stand now” to “how we want to stand” is something we will all pursue effortlessly. Therefore, in the words of Spiros Milonas of KRATATION Consulting, for change to happen we need to boldly face situations to betray and abandon all those patterns.
Following Spiros’ line of thinking if we have the boldness to deal with these disturbing patterns then we need to develop a process that will make our effort at tackling them worthwhile. He proposes the following tips to enable us to build a meaningful structure as we pursue the change journey. First, you start by acknowledging the need for change. Second, you acknowledge what is. Third, plan for change. Fourth, roll out the change and, fifth, embed (or install) the change.
Acknowledge the need for Change
As we have harped on continuously Customer Experience is something we must all be intentional about if we want our customers to remember how we made them feel when they encountered our brand. A customer-centric organization or business is very determined to ensure that it has a good understanding of the customer’s needs and is committed to doing everything within its power to ensure that the customer leaves satisfied. This is where we must stop and reflect on our current status of customer centricity. Are we “outside-in” or “inside-out” thinkers?
Note that the process of influencing a customer-focused mindset is an evolving one. It is iterative and needs attention now and then. This is why Change or Change Management is so helpful. The inception of your change journey must focus on what triggers your need for change. Determining this need must be a collaborative effort involving founders (parents), leadership (guardians), and employees (majority of the family). This is necessary to ensure that there is clarity, acceptance, and motivation to fuel an organizational shift.
These changes could be caused by industry disruptions such as new regulations or external triggers such as the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic requiring changes to business processes and applications. For example, the introduction of self-service tills in the UK led to a new regime where customers were required to do the job of a shop assistant by checking out groceries on their own at self-checkout points. How you manage this transition and others like it is crucial to the customer experience. Internally this has an equally significant effect on employees.
Experts advise that when it comes to customer experience there you must ensure that there is a “critical mass” desiring and acknowledging the need for change. It is imperative when planning this change that you factor in the values of the organization and link that with the change. if the organization values profits talk about ROI and CX. If it values public image and PR talk about its effect on CX in creating and sharing stories. Look at what the organization truly values rather than what it says it values. Looking at it this way helps to strengthen the case for Change. In other words, do not impose change. Be as democratic about it as possible!
Acknowledge what is (as is)
Change has become a normality in today’s volatile world. Experts describe change today as an inescapable reality of the modern workplace. According to Spiros, the change journey must begin with a diagnosis of the current state of the organization to identify the whole picture (including blind spots) of what you are TRULY dealing with. To do this effectively Customer Experience, you can use a range of methods. For example, internal questionnaires to the whole team and one or more questions to customers to help identify potential perception gaps.
Your goal is to find ways to map the “as is” based on different perspectives. Often we are tempted to begin important organizational change efforts by looking ahead to the desired future state. However, crucially we should not underestimate the need to understand and agree upon the current state before embarking on a change initiative. A recent survey by McKinsey Global Survey pinpointed “Completing a comprehensive, fact-based assessment of the business to identify opportunities for improvement” as one of the most important steps to take because it sets the tone.
An accurate, systemic, and agreed-upon picture of the current state will better inform us to be more creative and make more impactful decisions around the desired future state. This way you free yourself of entanglement in systems and organizational issues that threaten change. For example, the question of whether you should have a formerly appointed CX lead to satisfy a handful of people who feel strongly about it and are quite vocal. The result here could be that the need for a formal CX role may not be fully acknowledged across the organization.
If this role is formalized the person occupying it may not be fully accepted therefore CX processes will ultimately become idle. It is very important when you are trying to design a CX transformation that you know your organization’s patterns as part of your “as-is”. The apt advice here is to know the different perspectives and look beyond the surface if you want to make a meaningful impact in your CX transformation.
Plan for change
Many of us will remember the overused expression “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” You need clarity as you embark on the necessary actions (measurement, Voice of the Customer, design, and implementation) and interventions (on culture and strategy). To realize change effectively note that to influence customer experience culture you cannot simply delegate change. On the contrary, you will have to co-create it with people who have acknowledged the need for change and are aligned with what you are doing.
As we mentioned earlier the scope of your change will depend on the characteristics of the current state that you need to get right including a common understanding of the current: your plan will therefore need to address broad areas of strategies, organizational structures, cultural and team norms, processes, systems people needs, concerns, challenges, and interests of key stakeholders, the list is endless. To navigate this complexity, you need to plan carefully leveraging your strengths from the synergy of co-creation.
Note also that in implementing change the principle of “less is more” helps determine the scope of your change initiatives. Professor Eddie Obeng of Pentacle UK advises that you implement change in “manageable chunks”. He popularly uses the expression “chunk it or junk it”, derived from his “12 rules for the Real World”, to mean that change is best implemented in bite-size chunks to achieve your goals efficiently.
He advises, breaking your projects into bite-size manageable pieces – chunks – with each module delivering some additional and incremental value – modularize your projects and/or Change initiatives and review frequently. Deborah Roland affirms this, “there is a clear difference between action and movement.” By immersing ourselves in the obvious activities a combination of very impressive training, programmes, etc we get trapped in actions that keep us in our current state. Instead, we must invest in carefully designed interventions followed by observations that will allow the system to shift.
Roll out the change
The operative word here is “observations”. This stage where you are ready to roll out your planned change is very critical. Here, you need to be alert and ready to adapt the plan based on the system’s reaction to what is happening. Most of the organization will naturally want to settle in their comfort zone and what is known. Be ready to adjust the plan and have clarity on what is expressed.
The interventions that follow will create a movement within the system therefore it is crucial to ensure that this movement is not blocked but rather nurtured at the pace that the system can manage. Many organizations put things on hold because other priorities or crises came up. The advice is to hold lightly the plan and be ready to focus on what matters. Building a customer-focused organization cannot be enforced. The plan is there to offer your team a sense of safety while stepping into the unknown.
Your goal is to roll out change without drawing an angry mob. To avoid unnecessary upheavals, you must take time to discuss with key members of the organization what needs to be tracked and approved before making a change. Think about the history of the organization in terms of the changes that have been most visibly painful in the past as a starting point. Note that not all changes are the same. There is no one-size-fits-all. Ensure that the overall process and steps people have to go through are scaled tactfully.
For the simple stuff, come up with a list (these are called Standard Changes. Train everyone that will be submitting changes, so they fully understand the process, and make sure you communicate very clearly the importance of following the process. For Change Management to be effective and give you the benefit you want, everyone has to follow the process. I recall from my experience years ago when implementing a new ERP that mixed signals from the top made the implementation needlessly painful.
Embed the change
There are immense challenges in bringing the customer agenda to the fore in any customer experience initiative. A major lesson to learn early on is to not underestimate the time it takes to win stakeholders around where they have their priorities. Accordingly, perseverance and resilience are essential qualities of the CX practitioner the goal is to “put customers first” and this is not negotiable. It is a valuable and necessary conversation to have with the Marketing team. Bring to life the customer experience as this is at the heart of an effective CX programme and so the more visible it is the better.
Using journey mapping to provide many of the insights will help engage and involve colleagues and make communications clearer. Creating a stronger business by using Customer Experience thinking will not happen without complete engagement right across the business. Engaging not just those who are customer-facing but also those who are back-office or in management roles is a big stretch for many fledgling CX teams.
The key to spreading the message and creating movement from within is to work through CX champions. You will have to find people from all parts of the business who take an interest, want to be part of the movement, and see it as a good development opportunity. They will be the eyes and ears of CX inside and across the organizational silos. Mike Bellis of Pen CX and formerly of Pfizer has this to say.
Anyone who works as a CX professional will know how hard these things are to do. It is therefore reassuring to hear that with persistence they can still make a difference. “In principle, Customer Experience is simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy though”.
The Writer is a Change and CX Management Consultant. He can be reached at 059 175 7205, [email protected],
https://www.linkedin.com/km-13b85717
