Overcoming CX Blindspots

The basis of competition today isn’t about your products or competitors. It’s about how well you fully meet customer expectations, across all channels. That’s it. Pretty simple.

Actually, it’s always been that way but we got sidetracked decades ago with feature-binging, sexed-up product advertising, and mass product variations all in the name of customer choice.??

When the concept of customer experience came on the scene years ago, the discussion started around how to get back to what customers want – a trusted, meaningful relationship without all the bluster and hype.? It was about a need to align strategy, people, process, and technology outward to enable meeting customer expectations. But that discussion got hijacked into a tactical one about how technology can automate the journeys brands want customers to take in order to drive more sales.?

Today, the conversation is coming back around – customer experience is a mindset shift and corporate transformation. The question companies are asking is no longer which technology in the bloated Martech landscape can automate ‘customer delight’ but rather what is the right approach, organization structure, culture, and employee enablement that motivates people to build trusted, meaningful customer relationships. Companies are realizing that technology, yet again, is not a silver bullet, the quick fix, or short cut to the end goal. The role of technology is to institutionalize new behaviors, processes, values, data collection/analysis, and decisioning so employees can rapidly and nimbly understand how to act in ways that fully meet individual customer expectations.?

In our clients, the light bulbs are popping on as they realize the gaps between how well they think they know their customers and what is holding them back from competing on the quality of the relationship.??

There’s a big disconnect. Companies want their business strategies to revolve around the customer and they often have the data they need, yet many of them are either ignoring key sources of customer data altogether or keeping it siloed. Because of this, they’re not getting a holistic view of the customer, which prevents them from offering a truly differentiated customer experience. For example, with multiple communication channels coming into contact centers companies are rich with customer data, but they aren’t sharing these insights organization-wide to improve their customer engagement strategies.

These ‘ah-ha’s gain momentum when supported by an insightful study that reinforces the conclusions leaders are reaching on their own.

Companies of all sizes state their customer is the company’s top priority, over sales and revenue. Senior leadership considered customer experience as critical to differentiating their brand and they measure customer experience success by customer retention.

Customer retention surpassed profit as their highest priority. To enable their organizations to act in ways that lead to retention, customer sentiment and having real-time insights about customer behavior is considered paramount. The ability to analyze behaviors in real time opens a world of new insights, helps instill best practices, and guarantees better outcomes.

And here is where the gaps show up. While companies acknowledge the value of real-time insights, they aren’t capturing them. Brands simply aren’t capturing the real-time customer insights that are at their fingertips. Most companies rely on customer user groups for insight information; methods that are not unbiased, qualitative, or in formats that can be rapidly analyzed and widely disseminated across an organization.

Digging deeper, the study found this gap was tied to ownership. While the customer is the number one priority, ownership is scattered between CMOs, chief customer officers, and CEOs, each with their own limitations in how best to guide the organization through the customer alignment transformation.

The lack of ownership within the C-suite combined with siloed customer data and increasing customer expectations has created tension within many organizations.

Despite countless articles from thought leaders and practitioners stating that CEOs must own the customer experience and customer-alignment transformation, the ownership typically falls to the CMO or chief customer officer. These two roles are not as complimentary as one might like them to be.

The introduction of a chief customer officer sets up a confrontational dynamic in the C-Suite, especially with the CMO, CIO, and Field Sales/Service. It also takes the organization’s eye off the ball – capturing and analyzing real-time data to drive cross-functional decision-making that supports customer expectations. The ‘silver bullet’ technology mindset then creeps back in.?Companies believe they can better align the customer experience across all touchpoints only when technology capabilities improve and many expect artificial intelligence to improve experiences.

There is real opportunity for organizations to capture real-time insights and share them across the organization. Something they can do today, right now.?

Tap into the wealth of information already collected by call centers, field service agents, etc. Use it for sentiment analysis, identify sub-performing touchpoints, journey map, issues that are impacting CSAT, retention, referral/influence, and other scores.

Qualitatively journey map your strategic customer segments and conduct a gap analysis for loyal customers, those that have abandoned you (against your wishes), to learn where your blindspots and gaps are.