Customer experience transformation is achievable through embracing market-proven, tried, and tested ideas.
These are techniques people with ongoing projects can use to keep the momentum up and encourage an ever-greater number of team members to participate and adopt new working ways.
In my CX Quick Tips interview with Mike Wittenstein, we addressed the Market-Proven Ideas To Keep Your CX Transformation On Track.
What do you need to improve the customer experience?
What do you need to do as a customer service professional to improve the quality of the customer experience you provide? I often talk about the need for holistic transformation in my contact center training academy Call Center Coach.
You may wonder, what is holistic transformation?
In my Fast Leader Show podcast episode with Nick Jankel, we discuss how you can transform your customer experience by listening to your customers, serving them, seeking to understand them, and have insight into their needs and pains.
I believe that when you make it a habit to serve others, whether professionally or in your personal life, you create authenticity in your customer experience.
To understand and solve your customer’s problem, empathy must be your second nature. Don’t worry, you can build the skill.
Below I discuss how you can achieve it.
Customer Experience Improvement: Stop Using The Wrong Mission Statement
Lots of companies have them. Often they are done too quickly and over alcohol. I’m not talking about some of the prevalent ones from some of the big brands. Most companies have mediocre and vast mission statements.
For example, one that says ‘we are going to be the best people at selling cars in the state.’ That cannot be measured, you cannot know what value that gives to your customers, and it does not show your staff how to get there.
It is these shortfalls that undermine the importance of having a mission statement that connects better with your people.
When it comes to clarity with a mission statement that actually makes a difference in your customer experience, I always encourage people to refer back to Dave Ramsey’s quote.
It says, “Without a mission statement, you may get to the top of the ladder and then realize it was leaning against the wrong building.”
‘Leaning against the wrong building’ means many things, including creating a mission statement that is irrelevant to what you are actually trying to achieve with your customer experience.
This is a market-proven idea that can boost your customer engagement which works better than a mission statement.
Steven Hawking’s translation of system, science, and design thinking into the way you organize your business will create more value for customers on purpose and by design. There are three parts to approaching it;
Customer Experience Modification By Knowing Your Customers
The first part of being is to know who your primary audience is. I say primary audience because every company has several audiences, but you have to pick the one you primarily design for.
Statistics show that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that don’t focus on the customer. According to PWC, 73% of all people point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions.
Clear Indication Of Your Valued Outcome
The second part is that it has to have a clear indication of what your valued outcome is. So, there’s something you produce, it can be a transformation, change, product, service, or a combination of those things, but it has to bring value.
However, the value isn’t to your company or you, but it is your customers’ value. To know that, you have to know your customers; you have to listen in. You have to know that what you produce best is what they want most.
Customer Experience Transformation By Knowing How People Are Going To Use What You Deliver
The third part is about how your customers are going to use what you give them. Using you and your company’s capabilities to create something else.
For example, if I’m selling flour and sugar, the bakery is making a cake, the cake makes the kid happy at the birthday party, the party makes the kid popular, and so on.
You have to know what people are going to be using what you do. Basically, for whom, what value they get out of that, and basically that’s your reason for being, and it works. It works to get things, and it sustains change as well.
The Data Point says that 74% of people are likely to switch brands if they find the purchasing process too difficult.
This is your number one promise to customers. It is what your brand promises and what your business delivers.
Also, it has to be good such that an employee who doesn’t know what to do can look at it and know what is expected of them.
If we don’t have that, your organization’s risk escalates.
Why You Should Stop Measuring the Customer Experience
You cannot have customer experience and not measure. But what and how you measure, in many ways, should probably stop.
In many instances, when executives drive the measurement decisions, the measurements and results are internally focused, or inside out. But to leverage customer experience to drive more sales, what you measure needs to be from the outside in.
Do you want more sales and lower costs? Do you want a higher lifetime value for customers and a low return or refund rate?
A lot of times, the answers to why you are not getting the results you want are burdened by legacy baggage and lots of bias.
Take a good look at those measures, and make sure you have a good mix of those that got you here and the ones that move you forward. Hardwire good customer experience into the way your company operates.
Things Not To Do In Customer Experience Modification
Stop doing measurement for measurement’s sake. It’s not valuable to just do the same things you did before.
Stop doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result, because we know what that is.
If you want to give employees more autonomy, you inherently have to be a development-focused company. Giving autonomy to low-skill people escalates you’re your risk level.
New Conversation Methods In Customer Experience
Leaders spend a lot of time thinking of changing strategy instead of communicating that strategy to your team or board.
Consider how to create new channels because those draw a lot of attention.
84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue. (source)
Please make use of podcasts with different hosts from your various departments so they can talk in their language, who they are, what they are doing, where they are headed, and how things are going.
It’s like a news report from the field. It gives everybody a chance to see that the given circumstances are changing.
Make use of Clubhouse. Click in to listen. You can bring people together who normally cannot speak to each other. It doesn’t have too much formality.
Conclusion
Customer experience transformation is about rethinking and modifying your customer experience strategy.
The strategy should meet the clients’ needs and create value for the customer. Basically, the customer experience ought to be customer-centric.
If you would like to explore this topic further you can read the book by Isabella Villani called Transform Customer Experience: How to achieve customer success and create exceptional CX
Watch My Interview with Mike Wittenstein
Please Comment
- Are the new conversation methods in customer experience effective in your own experience?
- What other things should Marketers stop doing?
- How can you get to know your customers better?
Jim Rembach is the Editor in Chief of the Customer Service Weekly and it’s Podcast host. He is President of CX Global Media and the creator of the Call Center Coach Virtual Leaders Academy. As the host of the Fast Leader Show Podcast, he has interviewed hundreds of experts, authors, academics, researchers, and practitioners on various angles, viewpoints, and perspectives for improving the customer experience. He has held positions in retail operations, contact centers, customer support, customer success, sales, and measured the customer experience. He is a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner, Employee Retention Specialist, and recipient of numerous industry awards.