Exposing the Farce of Superficial Customer Experience Maturity Assessments

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When my friend Kevin hit the big 5-0, we threw him an unusual party. While many would treat this milestone with delicate care and tasteful memories, we chose to commemorate his colonoscopy with a feast featuring pork butt and poop emoji cookies.

And why not celebrate taking care of our health? Early detection can save lives, particularly in cases of cancer, heart disease, and other life-threatening conditions.

When it comes to diagnosing customer experience maturity, we’re doing a pretty ??shitty job as a practice. The current landscape resembles a flawed medical practice - a half-hearted attempt that falls short of truly understanding the pulse of an organization's CX capabilities.

A Customer Experience Maturity Assessment is our diagnostic tool to understand the current state of the organization’s CX capabilities. It serves as a benchmark. And it’s the first thing that should be done when embarking on a CX transformation effort.

When it comes to evaluating the health of an organization's CX, we're doing a disservice to the very practice we aim to improve. A quick Google search will reveal hundreds of assessments, some of which can be taken online in as little as 3 minutes! The Customer Experience Maturity Assessment, considered the starting point of CX transformation efforts, is often a mere checklist, lacking the essential components that make a diagnosis truly comprehensive. It's time to unveil the inadequacies, starting with the glaring omissions that plague today's assessment frameworks.

• Listening: Picture a cardiologist diagnosing a heart condition without ever bothering to listen to the patient's heartbeat. Like a medical stethoscope, the initial step should involve real conversations with individuals spanning the organizational hierarchy. From the C-suite to managers and frontline performers, these conversations serve as more than just data collection exercises; they are vital learning opportunities. Insights into organizational culture, challenges, and alignment gaps lie dormant in the unexplored corridors of individual experiences, waiting to be brought to light.
• Looking: An assessment should involve a thorough examination of the organization's artifacts, rituals, routines, and data – the visual cues that often reveal more than words can express. Current assessments fall short of recognizing the power of observation, merely scratching the surface without delving into the company’s ecosystem. Taking a look at what’s hanging on the walls, what’s celebrated on the intranet, what dashboards are reviewed in the c-suite – these are all clues, telltale signs of the organization’s health, a tool that not only reveals the hidden tumors within the corporate body but sets the stage for a comprehensive and transformative CX journey.
• Concrete Analysis: When reviewing the assessment results, the air is often thick with buzzwords like "enlighten," "activate," and "realize." Yet, behind the veil of conceptual grandeur, organizations are left grappling with the stark reality that these assessments frequently lack substance. That makes it impossible to identify gaps or determine an action plan. Current assessments miss the mark by not translating lofty concepts into tangible and practical steps for improvement. As CX practitioners, we must be direct with our findings and resulting actions. It's time to abandon the comfort of the conceptual balcony and descend to the dance floor where real change happens. Let's illustrate this shift with a tangible example.Consider the Voice of Customer (VOC) evaluation within the assessment. In the LoyaltyCraft model, we focus on seven key items:

1) Quantitative and Qualitative Feedback: Customers provide both numerical ratings and qualitative feedback about their interactions with your company.

2) Unstructured Data Analysis: Unstructured data, such as comments, call transcripts, and social media posts, is meticulously analyzed for sentiment and insight into customers' values, needs, and expectations.

3) Customer Analytics for Behavior Patterns: Advanced analytics are employed to identify patterns and trends in customer behavior and predict future actions.

4) Integration with Operational Data: Customer feedback data is seamlessly integrated and viewed alongside operational data within Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

5) Formal Diagnosis and Resolution Process: A structured process is in place for diagnosing and resolving customer concerns, incorporating root cause analysis and action planning.

6) Closed-Loop Feedback Process: A closed-loop process ensures that all customer feedback is shared, communicated, and acted upon within the organization.

7) Customer Insights Driving Continuous Improvement: Insights gained from customer feedback directly inform ongoing efforts for continuous improvement.

Each item in the VOC evaluation is scored on a 1-5 scale, culminating in a total of 35 points. This quantitative approach provides a clear snapshot of a company's maturity in understanding and responding to customer voices. For instance, if a company scores 15 out of 35 in this section, the gaps become glaringly apparent, guiding the prioritization of actions in the roadmap.

• Creating a Strategic Roadmap: Now imagine harnessing the rich insights gathered from the 'dance floor' across six pivotal areas of customer experience: strategy, design, employee experience and culture, VOC, metrics, and organizational accountability.

The tangible scores and identified gaps serve as the building blocks for crafting a strategic roadmap that steers the organization toward transformative CX enhancement. This needs to serve as a pragmatic guide to bridge identified gaps and elevate customer experience maturity.

It isn’t enough to say, “We want to move from a 2 out of 5 to a 4 out of 5 in the next year.” It’s an intentional strategy that declares, "In the next year, we plan on maturing in these areas for these specific reasons. By taking these actions, we will drive retention, spur growth, enhance profitability, and/or achieve cost savings – and here's precisely how." Every choice made is grounded in a strategic rationale, ensuring that the journey towards CX maturity is not just a pursuit of numbers but a purposeful and impactful expedition.

• Frequent checkups to sustain the pulse of CX maturity: To maintain our health, we must commit to frequent checkups. Much like routine health checkups that safeguard our well-being, revisiting the Customer Experience Maturity Assessment every six months becomes a pivotal practice. The landscape of customer expectations, market dynamics, and internal capabilities is in a constant state of flux. Frequent checkups act as the compass, guiding organizations to recalibrate their CX strategies, refine their actions, and stay attuned to the pulse of their customers.

CX transformation doesn’t happen overnight. These regular assessments are not merely a formality but a dynamic process of refinement. They provide the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of implemented changes, identify emerging gaps, and adjust the strategic roadmap accordingly. It's not about a one-time transformation; it's about nurturing an ongoing commitment to maturity.

Like celebrating a colonoscopy, we need to confront the uncomfortable truth that the organizational health of CX requires better diagnostic tools.

Listening, looking, and concrete analysis serve as our instruments, elevating us beyond checklist-like assessments into the realms of genuine understanding. We must descend from the comfort of the balcony to the transformative dance floor where real change happens.

Yet, true CX maturity is not a destination; it's a continuous expedition. Frequent checkups, akin to health assessments, become our compass in the ever-changing landscape of customer expectations and market dynamics. These regular evaluations aren't mere formalities; they are dynamic refinements, opportunities to assess changes, identify emerging gaps, and adjust our strategic course.

Ready to transcend the superficial and embark on a genuine journey toward Customer Experience (CX) maturity? Ditch the one-size-fits-all approach and explore LoyaltyCraft's CX Maturity Framework for a tailored journey. Interested in a personalized walkthrough? Connect with me to discuss how it can elevate your CX journey.

LoyaltyCraft was built out of a passion for helping companies create meaningful customer experiences. Founded in 2016 by Lauren Feehrer CCXP, we focus on strategy, qualitative research, customer design, and employee engagement to help mid-market companies open the door to new customers and keep existing ones from leaving out the backdoor.