Who invited a Customer to our Annual Planning Meeting?

Using a Customer-Centric Lens prioritizing investments…

We’re in the home stretch for 2015 with an eye on plans for 2016!  Many are in the midst of evaluating competing priorities, analyzing the expected cost benefit of potential projects, and considering the possible return on investment for new systems.  Constrained resources means juggling limited time, money, and resources each year.

Organizations use varying criteria for prioritizing annual initiatives around technology, training, business process improvement, and analytics. What drives how your organization prioritizes the investment of its resources? Short term profit? Innovation & First-to-Market? Customer demands?

Sometimes the approach for ranking possible initiatives is as straightforward as perceived relative value of a project (or improvement) and the level of difficulty as compared to other initiatives. If there is a project that is low difficulty and high value, it soars to the top of the list.

How does your organization approach prioritizing new initiatives? Does your customer’s perspective factor into your prioritization process?

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS:

• Who are your customers?
• What do they value?
• What do they value most?
• Are you investing in those areas?

Priorities should consider your customer’s goals and reflect your brand promise to ensure your people, processes, and technology are aligned, trained and equipped to deliver a consistent experience?

Putting on the Customer Lens before every decision

From a Customer Service policy change, a hiring decision on your sales team, a decision to post on social media, shipping vendor changes, new technology strategies, or a decision about other companies to partner with or acquire…

• Do your recent decisions reflect your customer focus?

• What criteria are you using when making decisions?

• Is the potential impact on customer experience evaluated before every decision?

A branded, consistently-delivered customer experience requires putting every decision under the customer lens.

• Will it improve people (employees, vendors, partners, suppliers) providing the experience?
• Will it improve a business process supporting the customer experience (transaction or interaction)?
• Will it improve technology enabling the people and/or the process delivering the experience?

More companies are beginning to think about is the entire journey their customers experience from beginning to end.  If any aspect of your organization (team or channel) is delivering an inconsistent experience, you risk undermining the great experience provided elsewhere and losing valuable customers!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Living in San Diego, I am the Customer Experience Practice Leader at Tribridge, headquartered in Tampa, FL. With a background in Sales, Product Management, CRM, and CX consulting, I am passionate about working alongside customers to transform their organizations and realize their unique CX goals. Connect with me on LinkedIn or join me on Twitter @JessicaJNoble.