While research has proven that a focus on improving customer experience directly impacts the bottom line, achieving the organizational and cultural change required to become fully customer-centric is not an easy process. It is critical to get all key departments aligned on your customer experience strategy.
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suitecx Thought Leadership: Balancing Customer Needs
1. 1. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 Customer Journey Mapping: Balancing customer and company needs to drive business outcomes In 2013 Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine at Forrester Research released the book Outside In: The Power of Puttng Customers at the Center of your Business. Turning the focus of customer experience from an internal view based in processes, resources and efficiencies to an outside view grounded in customer needs and preferences was a radical approach to business strategy. Now many companies are scrambling to catch up. While research has proven that a focus on improving customer experience directly impacts the bottom line, achieving the organizational and cultural change required to become fully customer -centric is not an easy process. It is critical to get all key departments aligned on your customer experience strategy. The most effective method to achieve this alignment is to conduct a Customer Journey Mapping exercise. Seeing your customer’s perspective at every touch point with your company is often a powerful motivator for change. However, each department head who participates in the exercise will bring his or her own biases and agenda to the table. They will have distinct assumptions about what customers are doing, thinking and feeling at any stage of the relationship regardless of the reality. It is all too easy to slide into complacency when it comes to relying on internal data and assumptions to guess at the current state customer experience. However, unless you engage with your customers directly, you can never be sure whether that data is the right data or whether those assumptions are correct. In fact, despite today’s digital focus, up to 70% of your customers’ interactions may not even be tracked or visible to your company! The customer experience is built on all aspects of your business. Factors include : product/service quality, reliability, desirability, availability, trustability and brand reputation, are all which are variable factors in determining the success or failure of a given interaction. As the customer interacts with your brand, there are needs Thought Leadership “When you’re in [a] retail location, tell a fellow customer that you’re an employee—as well as a customer– and that you’d love to know if they found what they needed on that visit, and how easy or hard [it] was. Asking might feel awkward at first, and some customers might refuse. But many will welcome the opportunity to provide feedback.” -‐-‐ Excerpt from Outside In that are not necessarily directly expressed, which can have a big impact on customers’ satisfaction with the outcome. For example, you could have the most responsive call center in your industry, but the customer might prefer if your product performed so well that they never had to place a call into the call center in the first place. It is critical that you find a balance between what you know to be internal challenges and what customers are indicaMng are their prioriMes. The only way to achieve this balance is to ask the customer directly what they need and value most from your company. This may sound like a scary prospect, since usually when customers provide feedback they expect you to act on it.
2. 2. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 About suitecx® Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulting, suitecx is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-‐centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision marketing are all components of this groundbreaking software. Customer Journey Mapping: Balancing customer and company needs to drive business outcomes What Businesses Want: Efficiency & Effectiveness Thought Leadership There are several ways to understand what your customers really think about you. You can observe customers as they engage with you – online, in person or over the phone. You can conduct Voice of Customer surveys intended to highlight moments of truth and points of pain. You can even put on the customer hat yourself and engage with your own company the way an average customer would. Most often, customers are quite happy to tell you exactly how they feel about doing business with you and what they would like to experience in the future. You need to invest your valuable human and financial capital in improvements that are meaningful to your customers and beneficial to your bottom line. Use customer and employee facing input to fuel your journey map at each phase of the customer lifecycle. Be sure to look across the enterprise to include everyone who impacts the customer: supply chain, legal, training, HR, billing, delivery, service, etc. Each needs to be involved in creating a better customer engagement plan. Customers want what they want, when they want it and via their preferred channel. Moreover they want it to be easy to do business with you. They expect to be treated as valuable individuals regardless of actual spend. It’s important to ensure that you engage with your customers in a coordinated, thoughtful and organized fashion, with the intent to act on their feedback. Doing this regularly enables you to walk the walk and help transform your enterprise into a truly customer-‐centric culture. Supply Chain Product Delivery Analy6cs Security & Fraud BUSINESS VALUE LURE AEracFve Desirable High Quality OPPORTUNITY Ease of Purchase Price/Value Reliability SERVICE Hassle Free Simple Painless VISCERAL IntuiFve DelighRul Habitual CUSTOMER NEEDS What Customers Want: L.O.V.E.
1. 1. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 Customer Journey Mapping: Balancing customer and company needs to drive business outcomes In 2013 Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine at Forrester Research released the book Outside In: The Power of Puttng Customers at the Center of your Business. Turning the focus of customer experience from an internal view based in processes, resources and efficiencies to an outside view grounded in customer needs and preferences was a radical approach to business strategy. Now many companies are scrambling to catch up. While research has proven that a focus on improving customer experience directly impacts the bottom line, achieving the organizational and cultural change required to become fully customer -centric is not an easy process. It is critical to get all key departments aligned on your customer experience strategy. The most effective method to achieve this alignment is to conduct a Customer Journey Mapping exercise. Seeing your customer’s perspective at every touch point with your company is often a powerful motivator for change. However, each department head who participates in the exercise will bring his or her own biases and agenda to the table. They will have distinct assumptions about what customers are doing, thinking and feeling at any stage of the relationship regardless of the reality. It is all too easy to slide into complacency when it comes to relying on internal data and assumptions to guess at the current state customer experience. However, unless you engage with your customers directly, you can never be sure whether that data is the right data or whether those assumptions are correct. In fact, despite today’s digital focus, up to 70% of your customers’ interactions may not even be tracked or visible to your company! The customer experience is built on all aspects of your business. Factors include : product/service quality, reliability, desirability, availability, trustability and brand reputation, are all which are variable factors in determining the success or failure of a given interaction. As the customer interacts with your brand, there are needs Thought Leadership “When you’re in [a] retail location, tell a fellow customer that you’re an employee—as well as a customer– and that you’d love to know if they found what they needed on that visit, and how easy or hard [it] was. Asking might feel awkward at first, and some customers might refuse. But many will welcome the opportunity to provide feedback.” -‐-‐ Excerpt from Outside In that are not necessarily directly expressed, which can have a big impact on customers’ satisfaction with the outcome. For example, you could have the most responsive call center in your industry, but the customer might prefer if your product performed so well that they never had to place a call into the call center in the first place. It is critical that you find a balance between what you know to be internal challenges and what customers are indicaMng are their prioriMes. The only way to achieve this balance is to ask the customer directly what they need and value most from your company. This may sound like a scary prospect, since usually when customers provide feedback they expect you to act on it.
2. 2. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. September 23, 2015 About suitecx® Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulting, suitecx is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-‐centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision marketing are all components of this groundbreaking software. Customer Journey Mapping: Balancing customer and company needs to drive business outcomes What Businesses Want: Efficiency & Effectiveness Thought Leadership There are several ways to understand what your customers really think about you. You can observe customers as they engage with you – online, in person or over the phone. You can conduct Voice of Customer surveys intended to highlight moments of truth and points of pain. You can even put on the customer hat yourself and engage with your own company the way an average customer would. Most often, customers are quite happy to tell you exactly how they feel about doing business with you and what they would like to experience in the future. You need to invest your valuable human and financial capital in improvements that are meaningful to your customers and beneficial to your bottom line. Use customer and employee facing input to fuel your journey map at each phase of the customer lifecycle. Be sure to look across the enterprise to include everyone who impacts the customer: supply chain, legal, training, HR, billing, delivery, service, etc. Each needs to be involved in creating a better customer engagement plan. Customers want what they want, when they want it and via their preferred channel. Moreover they want it to be easy to do business with you. They expect to be treated as valuable individuals regardless of actual spend. It’s important to ensure that you engage with your customers in a coordinated, thoughtful and organized fashion, with the intent to act on their feedback. Doing this regularly enables you to walk the walk and help transform your enterprise into a truly customer-‐centric culture. Supply Chain Product Delivery Analy6cs Security & Fraud BUSINESS VALUE LURE AEracFve Desirable High Quality OPPORTUNITY Ease of Purchase Price/Value Reliability SERVICE Hassle Free Simple Painless VISCERAL IntuiFve DelighRul Habitual CUSTOMER NEEDS What Customers Want: L.O.V.E.