Achievable Customer Experience Resolutions for 2023

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Quick note from Jeannie -- In addition to this newsletter on Linkedin, I also publish a separate series called?The Weekly Win?by email. If you'd like, you can?sign up for access to that series at experienceinvestigators.com (enter your email on the one-question form near the bottom of the website). This week's message is important enough that I want to share a portion with our community on LinkedIn as well. Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

I tend to be pretty optimistic so I can overdo it when it comes to traditional resolutions. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started considering this as just another date.?I map out some goals and aspirations, but I do so with more intention and realism than I have in my past.

For me personally, this approach leads to better outcomes. Instead of just saying a goal like "I want a zillion dollars!"?I now look at behavior, effort, and actions that I need to commit to in order to achieve specific goals.

It’s pretty exciting because it tends to work a lot better than arbitrary or idealistic resolutions.

This is very similar to what I see with customer experience programs.

Customer experience goals are often nice wishes, but don’t have any structure, realistic way to measure, or specific actions associated with them.

And I hate to say it - but a lot of the "wisdom" out there perpetuates this. Saying things like "treat customers how you want to be treated" sounds great. But what does that mean in the day-to-day efforts? If we don’t lead by example and by giving people real goals, it’s easy to simply wish instead of get real outcomes.

So here are?3 (achievable) Customer Experience Resolutions for CX Leaders.

1. Resolve to create real (and realistic) goals.

• Don’t put up with goals that are about something that doesn’t lead to better customer experiences. "Be great" is not a goal. How do you know if you’re achieving it? The same can be said for goals that are actually measured. "Improve customer satisfaction rate" is a way to measure - it’s not an actual goal.
• Need help defining your goal??Try our SMIRC goal framework .

2. Resolve to include customers in process, product, and service decisions.

• Decisions are made every day that impact customers directly, but they are rarely included or even considered in some organizations. Commit to being their voice by asking for ways to include them, whether that’s through leveraging their feedback or inviting them into share what they think. The higher employees go in the org chart, the less likely they are to interact directly with customers. CX leaders must lead by example here.
• Need a tangible way to get started? Try our?Customer Journey Mapping Workbook ?or?Customer Interview Guidebook .

3. Resolve to communicate about customer experience so everyone sees it as their role.

• Share CX wins far and wide throughout your organization. Praise those product engineers who solved a bug that was irritating to customers. Showcase how improving supply chain management brought customers peace of mind. Customer experience is not just about "customer facing" roles, and this is something to talk about CONSTANTLY. Work with your internal communications team and find a slot at the quarterly team meeting just for this. We literally can’t communicate about these ideas enough.
• Need some ideas??Here are 12 of them .

There you go. 3 realistic resolutions for CX leaders like you. 2023 is going to be your year. Better yet, it’s going to be your customers’ year, too.