As business leaders, we understand: companies exist only if they meet a set of customer needs. The most successful companies today increasingly understand that how their organization delivers for customers is as important as what it delivers.
This orientation has resulted in an increased focus within many organizations on the customer experience. We see many companies creating detailed current journey maps of various customer interactions, identifying customer pain points and launching a series of customer experience improvement projects to address these current headaches. Too often, these activities overwhelm the organization, grind to a halt, and fail to produce meaningful results, either for the organization or its customers. To the point where customer experience is in danger of becoming a diluted concept and not much more than the latest business buzzword.
Bold leaders, which we define as those who think and act beyond the existing organizational limits, and who are driving important changes in their organizations, understand that any movement without considering the customer, is fraught with peril. Bold leaders take customer experience a meaningful step further. They use a deep understanding of the customer to define an ideal experience and work backwards from that ideal in a focused way.
This may sound simple. But it’s harder than you think. It takes a level of confidence in the outcome, the will and perseverance to work through built up resistance, and extreme focus that demands results.
Bold leaders who follow this approach are able to build customer advocacy, achieve faster revenue growth, reduce their cost to serve, and enhance their employee experience as well. For their organizations, customer experience is not a trade-off, it is a driver of future financial performance. Our national research has found that twice as many organizations that begin with customer experience exceed revenue and profit targets as those that do not. Converting to a truly customer-centric operating model takes determination and guts to change an organization’s perspective, decision-making processes, operating disciplines and culture.
To read more about thinking outside in, using critical moments to focus the change, and delivering desired outcomes click here for the full white paper: Bold Leader Guide to Customer Experience.
Ask yourself:
Are you satisfied with the progress you’re making through your customer experience efforts? If not, let’s talk. If yes, but you’d be happier with more significant and/or faster step improvements, let’s talk.
Are you just getting started and a bit overwhelmed with the volume and variety of information and struggling with your first decisions about where and how to start effectively? If so, let’s talk.
Are you underwhelmed with the work on customer experience your organization has done to date? If so, for sure let’s talk.
Are you a bold leader, seeking a partner to help you orchestrate a customer experience centered change in your organization? If so, we’d love to talk with you!
