What does my customer want? Can I anticipate? Is enough what I’m doing?
Technology has handed customers unprecedented control over the experience of purchasing goods and services. Just position yourself as a customer: Don’t you expect the levels of satisfaction you receive from leaders such as Amazon? Most companies operate in complex, highly unsettled business environments; customers dictate the rules. Many companies already understand that it’s no longer enough to compete on products or services. How an organization delivers for customers is as important as what it delivers. The best will adapt their processes, cultures and mindsets to manage the entire customer experience skillfully; which benefits not only customers but also employees and the bottom line.
Other companies, for many reasons, fail to deliver a compelling customer experience. A lot of managers think about it in very narrow terms, focusing only on individual topics and forgetting about the overall system for delivering value. Some excel at specific kinds of interactions with customers but ignore the fuller experience, both before and after the purchase. Others concentrate on fixing their operations but forget to look at them through the eyes of the customer. And most organizations still tend to underestimate the importance of the internal cultural changes needed to achieve and sustain a new approach to the customer experience.
Companies must reinvent themselves and focus on identifying, understanding, and mastering the customer journey: The complete end-to-end experience customers have with a company from their perspective. That journey has a clearly defined beginning and end spanning the progression of touchpoints. Customers don’t know or care who in a company owns the individual experience of billing, onboarding, service calls, and so forth. From their perspective, these are all part of one and the same journey.
How are you doing?
Have you defined a clear customer experience aspiration and common purpose?
Have you developed a deep understanding of what matters to customers?
Are you using behavioral psychology to manage the customer’s expectations?
Are you reinventing customer journeys using digital technologies?
Are you using customer journeys to empower the front line?
Are you improving constantly, establish metrics and a governance system?
Full-time teams carry out their day-to-day work in the existing organization because to succeed, the transformation must take place within normal operations. To foster understanding and conviction, leaders at all levels must role model the behavior they expect from their teams, constantly communicating the changes needed. Formal reinforcement mechanisms and skill-building activities at multiple levels of the organization support the transformation as well.
Mastering the concept and execution of an exceptional great customer experience is a daunting challenge, but an essential one in today’s rapidly changing environment.
We can help you find what really matters!
