Customer Experience Strategy:

A Deliberate Path to Excellence

THE VALUE OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

“Strategy is about competitive advantage. Without Competitors, there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable

the company to gain –as effectively as possible– a sustainable edge over its competitors.”

-Kenichi Ohmae

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THE VALUE OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

The single most important focus a company can have is the unrelenting pursuit of a superior customer experience supported by a crystal clear strategy and transparent performance accountability at every level of the organization.

How do you get there? It starts with a customer experience leader who drives the creation of strategy that defines future targets required to be successful, followed by unwavering, flawless execution. Customer experience strategy enables companies of every size to live up to their brand image, maximize their revenues and optimize costs.

This presentation covers seven key elements of successful customer experience strategy and a few examples of companies who are getting it done.

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SENIOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LEADER AND STRATEGIST

This executive has the authority and responsibility to create and ensure customer success both as an individual and in partnership with their peers, which, in turn:

• Creates a service culture that supports performance accountability and proven profitability across the organization

• Provides organizational transformation that disrupts chronic service issues, drives customer profitability and establishes competitive advantage

• Leads the development and implementation of strategic direction and tactical execution of initiatives across the organization

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HOW IT’S BEING USED: In this video, Jeb Dasteel, SVP and Chief Customer Officer at Oracle, highlights how customer feedback is used to enhance products, services and relationships.

MISSION, VISION, AND ANNUAL PLANNING

Defining a mission, vision, and annual planning process helps firms achieve the benchmark success they aim to provide through their service offering. To achieve this,

• The Mission is in place to clearly describe the reason why your company exists

• The Vision is used to detail the longer-term future objectives required to drive the superior customer experience. The Vision makes priorities clear to everyone, presents a clear picture of what success looks like, and identifies which individuals are accountable

• Finally, Annual Planning sets clear near-term objectives within every department. Yearly Plans are used to support the achievement of longer-term Vision objectives.

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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE JOURNEY MAPPING

Customer Experience Journey Maps are designed to:

• Detailed journey maps of the customers’ end-to-end service experience and analyzing them cross functionally to understand customer frustration and service complexity sets the stage for service simplification

• Mapping a customer’s complete journey with an organization’s people, process, policies, technology and key intersections in mind can make customers issues crystal clear

• These outside-in maps track the customer experience lifecycle within every service channel, from phone and self-service to online and social media, providing a comprehensive picture

• Journey maps set the stage to layer in key performance metrics and most accountable responsibility around the entire customer experience, working to ensure internal clarity, accountability and performance at every stage of the customer journey

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HOW IT’S BEING USED: This video explores how to use customer journey mapping to build an extraordinary home delivery customer experience. Michelle Gloder, the head of customer experience at UK's Comet, a leading appliance retailer, talks about how she increased the loyalty of her customers, their satisfaction, and precious word of mouth by providing the "Father Christmas moment”.

SERVICE SIMPLICITY: SIMPLY PUT

Simplified processes eliminate complicated methods that create an environment of increased errors and mistakes, which ultimately creates dissatisfaction for both employees and customers.

• Simplicity enables a faster, more direct one-time quality experience at a lower cost

• Less complex systems and processes enable better compliance and reduce exposure

• Easy channel access—especially when using self-service and social media, makes customers happy and reduces support costs

• Customers need, want, and deserve to have an easy experience when doing business with you. No exceptions!

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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CAPABILITY MATURITY MODELING

Customer Experience Capability Maturity Modeling (CEMM) uses a structured set of levels to describe how well the practices, processes and technology of an organization can reliably and sustainably produce required outcomes in the customer experience process.

• With deeper customer insight into capabilities, CEMM results can be used to understand and compare a company’s customer experience maturity with leaderboard companies within or outside their own industry

• Capabilities – when used effectively within a strategy – significantly improve a company’s competitive advantage through the development and execution of short and long-term initiative roadmaps to increase performance in specific areas

• Using a roadmap approach, iterative capability improvement will produce steady, long-term gains while leapfrog improvement produces breakthrough results

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SWIM LANE ACCOUNTABILITY

Responsibility and accountability for the customer experience needs to be shared by leaders and staff across the entire organization.

• Customer experience is impacted positively or negatively across different functions including product, branding, pricing, sales, billing, and service, as well as across processes, policies, and technology

• Shared responsibility establishes partnership between departments for shared results: a powerful prescription that increases teamwork, effectiveness and performance

• Journey maps can be used to layer performance responsibility and metrics over the mapped experience and to assign a most accountable owner for each area

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VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER

Effective Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs are designed to employ an ongoing and systemic process that captures customer perspective over time but also includes continuous listening, for example, via social networks, call centers, forums, blogs and other venues.

• VoC focus is to listen to customers, interpret and analyze their feedback cross functionally and to take action to eradicate dis-satisfiers across all customer channels

• Avoid silo creation by sharing customer data and developing solutions cross functionally when appropriate

• Mature VoC organizations reserve a budget used to specifically address prioritized issues as they arise

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HOW IT’S BEING USED: Watch this video of EMC Vice President of Customer Quality, Jim Bampos, talking about VoC programs that drive billions of dollars of revenue, and how listening generates innovation and market awareness deep into the organization. EMC executives focus on what customers really value to ensure competitive advantage, and VoC helped them to recognize that they didn't understand the entire lifecycle of the customer. "CE matters to the company today and in the future. I'll share an example of how one small communication change within professional services led to a 30 point increase in NPS within 18 months and a 20% increase in revenues."

A MESSAGE FROM LORI CARR

I am excited to see the powerful impact as the importance of customer experience emerges, expands and finally proves its value within companies of every size. The ability to champion the customer experience and anchor it as

part of an integrated organizational strategy has always been crucial to retaining, expanding and acquiring profitable revenue.

Having been responsible for leadership, strategy and change within customer service and sales organizations in both medium and large size firms for my entire career, I’m delighted to share my experience and invite you to call me

for a complimentary consultation.- Lori Carr

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YOU HAVE QUESTIONS. WE HAVE ANSWERS.

You CAN grow revenues and increase loyalty by implementing a customer

experience strategy.

Call today to schedule a complimentary 30-minute customer experience strategy consultation

with LCA’s President Lori Carr

+1 617.879.0793lori@loricarrassociates.com

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ADDENDUM: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Lori Carr & Associates

• Forrester Research

• Thrive Analytics

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