Customer experience: Change is good…you go first!
While not a new term, the idea of customer experience is very prevalent in the marketplace today - a quick search on Google produces 470 million results. In fact, CMA’s Customer Experience Council put a stake in the ground last year by defining the term as “the sum total of ALL interactions a customer has ever had with a brand: tangible, visual, emotional, read, blogged, consumed, experienced”. The most likely cause of this renewed interest is the adoption of mobile and social technologies which enable customers to have various channels to access information about service and products.
Forrester says “empowered customers have given rise to a new era”, now coined “The Age of the Customer”, which has been defined as: “A 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.”
So, in this new age of the customer, how do businesses change to meet the customer’s expectations? The key word is change and there really are only two types - transformational or incremental. This year’s Customer Experience Council is seeking out examples of each strategy – why one is taken over the other, hopefully, to shed light on the process and rationale for each.
To begin, we’ve formulated definitions of transformation and incremental change:
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Transformational
- Starts with a vision of the future with steps made to make the vision real.
- Could encompass many aspects of the organization, including non-customer facing departments, in the goal of achieving a truly superior experience for the customer.
- Aims to change not only practices, but outcomes, thereby disrupting the status quo.
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The customer (internal and external) would see and be impressed by the change.
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Incremental Change
- Leaves the existing customer experience as a foundation.
- Builds on current structures or processes, but maintains the overall framework.
- These enhancements may happen through continuous improvement with or without a goal to optimize.
- In essence, an adjustment or update but not a replacement - which may or may not include change(s) to some channels but not all.
- Customers should notice the change, but would see it as a subtle but positive improvement from the past interactions.
There are a number of factors that impact how companies decide to proceed with CE changes. Depending on your organization, one approach may make more sense than another.
Factors include:
Ownership: Who owns the Customer Experience in your organization? Do you have a Chief Customer Officer? What is the reporting structure? How does that person interact with operations groups?
Process: When did your organization realize that a change in CE was needed? What was the process your organization went through to develop the format and structure of the CE your organization decided to deliver? Did your organization have any sources of inspiration for the change process?
Execution: What are the impacts of this on your organization? What internal communications mechanisms, if any, do you use to manage the program as implemented?
Measurement: How important was data in the transition? What metrics are being/were used to monitor success? What structure do you have in place to review progress and determine if adjustments need to be made? Have you had to make revisions as the program unfolded?
In upcoming posts we’ll share effective examples of each approach. After all, when it comes to customer experience, one size doesn’t fit all!
