Customer support, customer service, customer experience. What do all these have in common? Well, at least the word ‘customers’ for sure.
Sit back and watch the video for the full interview.
Whether you’re running your own business or you’re employed in an organization, we all serve customers at the end of the day. Some of us are directly in touch with customers, others support teams that serve customers every day. You might think, your role does not have an impact on the customer experience, because you work in finance, HR or a technical role supporting internal systems, but you’re wrong.
Later in this blog, I’ll share 5 starting point ideas to improve your customer experience today. But make no mistake. To improve the whole customer experience you need more than this. It requires a clear definition of strategic goals and a process of detailed analysis, planning with lots of work between different teams.
Let’s start what customer experience is actually about. CX is about improving or creating the overall perception of your company. It’s about having an impact on the way users and customers experience every interaction or touchpoint with your brand. And the main goal of CS is to understand what needs to be improved. It’s about finding new solutions that will improve the customer experience and in the end improve the revenue you generate.
Read this first before getting started
Before you read and try out my 5 favorite ideas, evaluate if you have data or existing processes in place. Because you can have at least two different directions to start mapping out your customer experience improvement ideas. The approach is different because you can either start from improvement or from a blank paper: when you need to create the experience because there is no process, or the area does not exist yet.
Start from data
In the first approach, you start from data and analytics. This is a very structured and proven process to understand which touchpoint performs how and what needs to be improved. In this way the planning part is also predictable; roadmaps can be made and clear project leaders can be assigned to each touchpoint or each customer experience stream. Either a program leader or an assigned head of customer experience can make sure that the solutions are delivered and measured.
Usually, this could be a good starting framework for large organizations where the transformational program has a beginning and an end date and the firm needs a predictable, structured framework.
Why is it important to have an assigned leader to lead the transformational program? If it becomes part of one of the touchpoint head’s responsibilities, the holistic approach can be lost and the improvements might not have the greatest impact on the overall experience.
It is also a good idea to have the program be led by a C-level or head responsible. In this way, there is a bigger chance that different stakeholders don’t start to undermine the importance of the program.
Start from design
The second approach is different in a way that it starts from a whole new aspect. You can start collecting as many ideas about the ideal state of journey and then analyze what can have the biggest impact. The next step is determining what needs to be done to achieve these ideas. After implementation, the measurement can take place to get the best performance.
But here comes the next question. If I don’t start with the measurement, how do I know what performs how? Which idea had a better impact and changed the current situation?
The reality is that things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes you don’t have enough data, the measurement implementation can take too long, you need quick results, or simply, you don’t have anything to compare with.
This could work well in a business environment where there is no “as-is” or there is no time to map out the current situation. Also in cases where the management and the teams are open to start experimenting with new ideas not from the “fixed” aspect of improving a certain process, product or people organization, but for the sake of inventions and unique brand differentiators. This approach can generate breakthrough ideas because it does not start by fixing a certain situation. It starts with inspiration and an ideal way of customer experience and can lead to truly interesting brand experience.
Getting started
Here are my favorite 5 ideas you can use as a starting point today to improve your customer experience without crafting the perfect CX strategy, roadmap and measurement cycles with never-ending stakeholder management meetings. You’ll see that these ideas start from easy tools and a cultural perspective.
- Create your ideal customer persona profiles and start drawing the ideal customer experience journey
- Get everyone involved in CX within the company through regular CX events, sharing feedback and solution mapping workshops
- Foster a learning and innovation culture by organizing innovation idea contests and gamified learning events
- Organize customer days and workshops with no networking goals but valuable content, knowledge sharing and include their ideas in developing new solutions
- Empower client-facing teams with tools and budget to spend on creating exceptional customer experiences and create a success sharing culture.
These ideas might help you get started with improving your customer experience but certainly, there are many other brilliant and unique inspirations you can try out today. One thing you cannot leave out after ideation and implementation: the regular measurements and performance monitoring to make sure that the quality of the experience will be sustained. Creating or improving customer experience can be truly inspirational and unite team silos towards one mission: to serve each other in a better way every day.
