Customer Experience

What do customers really want? Link to complete article on Substack.

Complexity arising from multi-segment, device and channel interactions with an organisation

Customer Experience

A few?enlightened businesses will say they have a purpose and that their purpose comes before specifying who their customers?are?and?what?their?customer’s?specific 'jobs to be done'?are?

On the surface this makes sense.?The reality however is that before an?organisation?can have a transcendent purpose it has to be in ‘service’?of a specific?group of people that first 'buy-in' to the way your organisation helps them to complete their jobs?to be done?before?deciding whether?your organisational purpose?aligns to their values in the long-term.

Purpose-led?first organisations?may?go?astray due to them not fulfilling?their?customer’s?jobs?to be done despite having?noble purposes.

Businesses exist to fulfill?specific customer?'jobs to be done’, this includes unmet needs or desires'.

The ‘jobs to done’ phrasing is an old one?and has been developed and refined over the years by various practitioners. For the remainder of this article I will be using the?jobs to be done?phrasing in the context of Outcome Driven Innovation.

One common factor most?enduring businesses have is that they have a relentless focus on the customers they serve?and their experience. Jeff Bezos?whilst at Amazon mentioned that Amazon has a relentless Customer Obsession?not just a customer-focus or customer-centric?orientation.

For those of you that might not want to be?seen to be?as a fanatical as Amazon can consider alternative phrases like Customer Experience?to capture how your customer experiences your organisation.

If you look across most non-digital native organisations you will find that no single business function or business department has end to end (e-2-e) responsibility for owning and managing the customer experience across the various journeys a customer can take across a range of device and channel touch points over time.

So how can you evaluate the CX in your organisation?

One way to start understanding CX is to research how your customers evaluate their experience with your brand in totality?today through Voice of the Customer Surveys. This is an important approach but in our times more is required. Depending on how mature your organisation is and if you you have well defined data dictionaries, taxonomies, event catalogues etc., one of the emerging fit for purpose approaches for measuring CX is to understand what your customers are actually doing and experiencing on your touch points?through Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) and Orchestration aka Real-Time Interaction Management (RTIM) tooling.

To get a sense of how CX evolves we can?consider?the following example. Overtime what starts off as a ‘simple’?customer job?to be done?e.g. listening to music on some device like a gramophone can evolve?over time?into a complex solution where a customer has multiple devices and channels available?to them?to complete the same job.?The core job to be done of listening to music has stayed stable through time, the things that have changed are the modalities for being able to consume that music.?

A great example of this in action is the integrated ecosystem of devices, channels and modalities Apple has created for their customers to consume media, i.e. Apple hardware like iPhones, iPads, iMacs, earpods, software for Apple Music etc. The touchpoints that Apple enable allow their customers to fulfill their jobs to be done for informational, educative and entertainment content at the click or press or swipe of a button.

Apple have almost perfected their CX but there is still room for improvement?especially when considering the perspective of Don Norman,?one of the elder statesman of User Experience (UX) and Human Computer Interaction?(HCI).

Finally there is no universal CX framework and?specific approach to addressing CX. Your approach has to be contextually relevant to your use case and organisation.

?Some practical steps to get a handle on CX:

1. Identify customer jobs to be done.
2. Map the current experience via a customer journey map or user story map. A user story map captures all the different steps and high-level jobs that your customers are trying to complete and where your products and services can contribute to those jobs being done.
3. Identify opportunities for an improved experience from understanding current user experience discontinuity gaps.
4. Figure out the business capabilities required to meet the improved experience by creating a business process map that captures the key business domains a customer is interacting with and the underlying processes that enable a particular customer experience.
5. Consolidate this information into a Service Design Blue Print which captures the overall front of house and back stage activities and systems leveraged to deliver a product or service experience.
6. You can capture your effort into a value stream map that can be used to develop process KPIs measuring how well a process or activity is performing in delivering value you have created.
7. A user story map can be developed to inform the development of your product portfolio, the timing and sequencing of the product backlog and finally the specific product or service increments to be delivered by the product development teams. In this context, I am referencing a dedicated cross-functional development team that has all the necessary skills in order to own an end to end product or service solution. Some or all of the members of the team would have contributed from the beginning on the prior above steps.

Link to complete article on Substack.