The Key to being a CX Leader: Empathy and Action

Companies are getting serious about their customer experience (CX) efforts. CEOs address customer experience in their annual reports as a key priority. Take JetBlue Airways for example. In their 2018 annual report, CEO Robin Hayes cited customer experience as one of their key achievements and future priorities. By investing in and deploying customer experience technology in airports, JetBlue drove higher customer satisfaction while lowering operational costs. We see this prioritization of customer experience across industries. Companies like Aritzia, Levi Strauss & Co, and Shell all cite customer experience as a cornerstone to business success.

At SAP, and through our recent acquisition of Qualtrics, I also see increasing demand for solutions to improve CX. The reason for this increased focus is easy to explain: CX is becoming a critical factor in all purchasing decisions for consumers, and most importantly it is a key ingredient in ensuring consumers remain loyal to a brand. Bruce Temkin, Head of the Qualtrics XM Institute and author of Experience Matters, argues that how customers feel about an interaction with a brand can have a significant impact on long-term customer loyalty. In an era where customers who have a positive experience with a brand are 11 times more likely to buy than those who have a negative experience, delivering a great customer experience is largely dependent not only on understanding your customers’ emotions, but knowing when and how to react to their feedback.    

As often happens when it comes to initiatives within enterprises, CX programs suffer when they operate in silos instead of functioning as enterprise-wide initiatives. What is often missing is a simple framework that ties “CX programs” holistically to the operations of the business.

Here is a simple model to consider: Listen, Understand, Act. Think of it is a constant loop. 

Listen - means the ability to measure your customers' experience. You want to be in touch with your customers' feelings and emotions. Listening to your customers also requires empathy. Empathy allows you to understand your customers' feelings so you can react to their feedback quickly and efficiently.

Understand - means that you can make sense of your customers' feedback in the context of your business and your operational data. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) by itself can be insightful, but it pales in comparison if you have operational insights on what your business can improve to create a better NPS. Imagine having the data to understand in the moment how to improve a customer’s experience or whether they would recommend your company. 

Act - measuring experience is not enough. To thrive in the experience economy, companies must take action at every touchpoint – whether it be through your customer service department, your digital commerce site, or through your marketing or sales reps. By listening to your customer and understanding the relationship between their experience (X-data) and your businesses’ operations (O-data) you can focus on taking action that drives impact and be very specific on how to improve each touchpoint.  Let me give you an example from the world of customer service. Everyone knows what it’s like to schedule a service for a broken-down washing machine. If you’re lucky, you make one call. If you’re not, you make many calls. The “solution” is that a technician will show up at your doorstep, forcing you to build your day around someone else’s schedule. Most consumers want real-time solutions and exact delivery times. Or take Commerce, if a customer abandons your site, you don’t just want to know why the potential buyer left, you also want to improve your site's experience for that shopper and the next customer like him or her. 

This is why the combination of SAP and Qualtrics is so powerful. While a lot of this process can be automated and supported by technology, CX leaders understand how to leverage digital solutions while also making employee and customer feedback part of the process. Companies that want to lead in today’s Experience Economy need to master the ability to listen, understand, and very importantly act on their customer’s unique needs. Actions truly speak louder than words.