Recently we had a prospect call us, “Our customer experience is broken.” They said, “Help us fix it.” Two months later and they are making massive leaps toward transforming their customer experience. But this attitude isn’t the norm. Most companies start their customer experience journey slowly. The following are the four phases we have observed in getting the customer experience work done.
Phase 1: Idea Planters
Sometimes it’s a group, a mid-level manager, or an executive. But someone at some point begins to nurture the idea that focusing on the customer experience could be the way to build a better company. At this early stage we often see a customer experience champion emerge who begins to nudge the organization toward seeing the light. They use secondary data and/or aggregate the haphazard customer data already being collected in their organization to begin building a business case.
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Key Challenge: Build a business case for investing in customer experience improvement
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Resources Needed: Tenacity, evidence, existing customer data
Phase 2: Advice Givers
At some point the individual or team begins to build credibility. The company’s investment in Voice of the Customer software provides a platform from which they can analyze insights. Other departments begin coming to the Advice Giver with the occasional request. At this stage it is crucial to focus on building momentum and creating excitement about fixing the customer experience at various levels and departments in the organization.
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Key Challenge: Build influence and credibility
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Resources Needed: Voice of the Customer software, lateral influence
Phase 3: Change Starters
At this stage there is a team in place. The work here begins to focus the customer experience strategy, aiming to gain alignment on the customer experience vision throughout the organization. The team has the resources it needs to support continuous improvement efforts and managers are taking active responsibility for individual level feedback. With a few small wins under their belt the focus here is demonstrating that this is not a phase, but a real part of the organization.
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Key Challenge: Develop a customer experience strategy
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Resources Needed: Budget, a core team, CX tools, CEO buy-in
Phase 4: Transformers
This is the customer experience dream team with the resources and clout to transform. At this stage, there is an executive at the helm (be it the Chief Customer Officer or the CMO) who can make this happen and make it happen quickly. Faulty internal operations can be quickly adjusted and measurements are in place to track the value of changes both before and after implementation.
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Key Challenge: Change the behaviors of individuals at all levels of the organization
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Resources Needed: Customer-centric mindset, consistent and stable metrics, accountability
~Janessa Lantz
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