Level Up Your Customer Experience Strategy Approach

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The following article contains the first level from?the?CX Maturity Playbook: Customer Experience Strategy , a guide with actionable insight to uplevel your customer experience strategy approach, written in partnership between?GetFeedback ?and Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CEO of?Experience Investigators .

CX Strategy

A?customer experience (CX) strategy?is an actionable plan that guides the activities and resources needed to deliver experiences that meet or exceed customer expectations.?

A mature CX strategy actualizes the organization’s business strategy. It helps fulfill the company’s customer-centric goals and vision by guiding decisions and allocation of resources to enable the necessary change.?

It also helps bridge the gap between what your customers want and what your organization can deliver. This allows you to introduce purposeful planning that empowers leaders to decide what really is important for business success versus what is just a “nice to have.”

Such a state is achievable through strategic action, which you can start taking today with the help of this playbook.?

The level below is defined based on general processes, rules, and expectations of a CX strategy.

ACTIONABLE STEPS

Level 1???

What it looks like?

At this stage, there is no customer experience strategy defined or communicated. Improvements to the customer journey are made ad hoc and when absolutely necessary.?

Customer experience importance is mentioned by some leaders, but not in ways that tie desired outcomes to business operations. Customer feedback is not collected in a consistent way, and leaders don’t have specific objectives around the customer experience. As a result, employees don’t necessarily see their role tied to CX, unless they are dealing directly with customers in Customer Support or other frontline positions.

Because there is no CX strategy, leaders don’t fund or make improvements to employee processes and systems for the sake of improving customer experience.

You might hear employees make statements such as:?

I know customer experience is supposed to be important, but that’s hard to believe when we’re short-staffed for all the service calls we receive and the executive team doesn’t implement any changes. Customer experience feels like a buzzword with no action behind it. —?Contact Center Leader

Priorities to advance to the next level???

Moving from Level 1 to Level 2 happens when leadership loosely defines the key CX strategy for the organization and begins to make improvements to reach business outcomes. These CX efforts, however, are driven by different leaders at the touchpoint level.?

To move forward, focus on:?

• CX effort outcomes?
• CX advantage

How to take action

Step 1: Focus on CX efforts within specific teams that will drive business results

Even at Level 2, leaders are still working in silos when it comes to customer experience—prioritizing customer journey improvements at a touchpoint level—which means introducing a holistic approach to CX may not be realistic.?

But you can start setting the stage for a bigger, more universal approach, by working with leaders to identify at least one CX effort, within their teams, that has a positive impact on the business.??

To do so, invite team leaders to lean into the corporate strategy, whether that’s an annual plan or long-term vision, or a combination of both. Then, look for business outcomes that are directly related to customer experience results.?

For example, if an increase in customer referrals is one of the overall business goals, then make the point that?happier customers are more likely to refer new customers. Therefore, driving CX improvements that will result in happier customers will lead to more referral sales.?

Customer experience improvements can also reduce expenses from serving customers. If Customer Support has identified one touchpoint that causes friction, like delayed product deliveries, then improving that touchpoint will lead to fewer service calls and lower overall costs for the organization.?

Once these business goals are defined by leadership, then the CX strategy starts to take shape with plans to drive those outcomes.?

A Marketing leader may create a plan for asking happy customers for referrals at key moments along their journey. Or the Product Delivery team may generate a task force to identify and address the reasons for product delivery delays.

To help leaders define their team’s strategic CX objectives:

• Know the organizational goals:?Look to the overall business goals to prioritize the CX efforts that will best serve those objectives.?
• Identify what is actionable:?Some things cannot change right away, so choose strategic goals that can impact what is within the leader’s control.
• Get as specific as possible:?It’s important to measure success. That means defining a strategic outcome in specific ways. Instead of defining a goal as “increase referrals,” for example, try “increase referrals by 5%.”?

Step 2: Communicate with leadership how customer experience is a strategic advantage in the marketplace

At Level 1, many leaders don’t see their work and teams as connected to the customer experience. To advance to Level 2, start to demonstrate how defining and acting on a customer experience strategy will result in staying ahead of the competition.?

Ensure team leaders know that CX is not just business jargon. Highlight how customer experience, when truly incorporated as part of the overall strategy and business discipline of an organization, provides real results.?

Here are just a few data points that demonstrate CX drives business success:?

• Nearly a?third of customers (32%) ?report their willingness to leave a brand they love after just one bad experience.
• Leading companies are?twice as likely ?to turn customer data into actions.
• Sixty-nine percent ?of U.S. online adults shop more with retailers that offer consistent customer service both online and offline.

Help leaders understand their team’s advantages in contributing to the customer experience effort by honing in on the metrics that matter the most to them. For example, referral rate is a key metric for Marketing, and we know that happier customers result in higher referral rates. A better customer experience will also lead to a reduced need for inbound customer service, which in turn saves costs for the business, a key success metric for your Finance leader.

Of course, any CX strategic objectives also have to be tied to the overall vision and values of the organization. leaders must feel connected to these and understand why their role supports not just objective goals, like more revenue, but purpose-based goals, like helping customers achieve their goals.

For Levels 2 - 5, visit the full playbook here.

This article contains the first level from?the?CX Maturity Playbook: Customer Experience Strategy , a guide with actionable insight to uplevel your customer experience strategy approach, written in partnership between?GetFeedback ?and Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CEO of?Experience Investigators .