Five Reasons Organizations Fail at Customer Experience Delivery
Customer Experience is the New IP
In our discussions with business leaders around the world, we continue to be impressed with the growing recognition of Customer Experience as an engine of sustainable growth.
Well–conceived, well–designed, and well–delivered customer experiences are a core foundation for achieving the sort of market leadership that has become the hallmark of businesses like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Southwest Airlines, and Zappos. Their relentless pursuit of great customer experience has been one of the key factors that has propelled them to the forefront of their respective markets and yielded significantly higher margins than their competitors — especially those who've chosen to compete on other bases – particularly that of cost.
In his book The Curve Ahead: Discovering the Path to Unlimited Growth, author Dave Power goes so far as to state “Customer Experience Is the New IP”.
And yet, far too many organizations struggle with how to conceive, design, and deliver really great customer experiences. It's no wonder it seems like such an elusive out–of–reach mystery to so many. But it doesn't have to be.
The following are five very important reasons we've seen that organizations fail to deliver meaningfully differentiating customer experiences — and in each case what to do about it.
A Primer on CX Design
As a brief primer to those new to this area, the points highlighted below derive from the practices known as Customer Experience Design (CXD) and Customer Experience Management (CXM). In the way of analogy, one can think of delivering an experience as not unlike staging a theatrical performance – specifically one intended to deliver delight. As such, there are front–stage actors and backstage supporters, and their combined efforts must be choreographed (designed) and subsequently managed if they are to in fact succeed at creating the intended delight.
CX Design builds on the field of psychology known as experience psychology — understanding the thoughts and emotions customers are experiencing at each touchpoint, which often arise out of the extent to which their needs and expectations are being met, exceeded, unmet, or grossly unmet. Understanding – and shaping – those thoughts and emotions – and their corresponding actions – is crucially important if the organization is to deliver a delightful experience.
CX Design is facilitated by (amongst other tools) a method known as Customer Experience Journey Mapping (CXJM), or sometimes just Customer Journey Mapping. CXJM seeks to map out the touchpoints between the customer and the artifacts of the experience, capturing the critical thoughts, actions, and emotions of the experience at each touchpoint.
Failure Number One — No Design
Organizations fail to be intentional about Customer Experience by not investing the time and effort needed to explicitly design the experience. This is akin to relying on ‘improv’, which some are good at, but most aren't.
If organizations want to ensure they are delivering a truly differentiating experience — as seen from the perspective of the customer — then they will be very intentional about so designing those experiences. Quite often this is the launching point for organizations to become truly customer–centric.
Fortunately there is a relatively strong body of knowledge and toolset available today for designing customer experiences. Most of these have evolved from Design Methods — the tools associated with Design Thinking.
Failure Number Two — Limited or No Insights
Organizations fail to collect and integrate the right customer insights when designing their experiences.
Customer insights come into play in a number of ways. First, for each touchpoint, one needs to understand the needs and expectations of the customer, so that they can design to those needs and expectations. Secondly, and very importantly, for existing (or surrogate) experiences, one needs to understand two things… which of the many touchpoints are the most important to the customer (and why), and which have the highest levels of pain / frustration / roadblocks associated with them.
This latter information — specifically identifying which of the touchpoints have the highest combination of importance and pain — allows the organization to prioritize their efforts to deliver the optimal experience by dialing in the most critical touchpoints.
Failure Number Three — Missing Stakeholders
Organizations fail to involve all the stakeholders in the design of the experience.
The delivery of any given experience is the culmination of many efforts by many different parties both inside and outside the organization. We call these the stakeholders, and each such stakeholder has certain ‘levers’ they must pull – some harder than others – to deliver the intended experience. Some stakeholders are acting backstage (for example, IT), while others are acting up front on stage (for example, Sales or Customer Service staff) — but all are important and all have to work in harmony if they are to deliver the intended experience.
Therefore, when designing the experience, it is crucially important to have the entire cross–functional team involved in the process — because each function has to sign up to deliver on their part of the experience. Full involvement and commitment are an absolute must for success here.
Failure Number Four — Missing the Business Side
Organizations fail to capture the business side of Customer Experience.
This actually has two parts to it — what's in it for the business, and what does the business need to have in order to deliver the experience. This first part is very important, as there has to be tangible and measurable business outcomes, results, and impacts associated with delivering the experience so that the whole effort has a positive ROI for the organization. The second part is just as important, and is about the organization's ability to deliver a particular experience.
As mentioned previously, an organization's ability to deliver a given experience requires a number of ‘levers’ to be pulled by a number of different stakeholders. If the organization does not understand all of these levers, and the extent to which each must be pulled, along with how that does or does not fit with their existing processes, then they are likely to stumble. After all, anyone can put down on paper a great experience design, but not anyone can deliver that particular experience. Doing so requires having the right people, processes, infrastructures, and business ecosystems in place and operational. If those things aren't present, and orchestrated such that they are in the right place at the right time, then the organization will be unable to deliver the experience they otherwise painstakingly designed. Ensuring the right supporting systems and processes are in place is thus a go or no-go for successful CX delivery.
One rather intentional way to address this failing is to undertake the mirrored flip side of CX Design, which is Employee Experience (EX) Design. This means looking at the design from the inside–out rather than from the outside–in. When both the CX Design and the EX Design are aligned with each other, there can be high confidence in the organization's ability to deliver it (and do so well). This also segues into CX Management, which is focused on, amongst other things, ensuring that these ecosystems and processes continue to function as intended over time so as to deliver the experience consistently time after time.
Failure Number Five — Missing the Attribute Translation
Organizations fail to translate touchpoint attributes into corresponding product attributes — a necessity wherever products are a part of the experience.
For whatever reason, this tends to be a particularly problematic area. It may be failing to consider the product experience, an organizational divide between Experience Designers and Product Designers, or some other reason. Regardless, Product Designers need the CX Design information in order to ensure the product itself delivers on its part of the overall customer experience (and, indeed, they should be considered as stakeholders in the CX design process).
To address and overcome this, we suggest an approach to Product Design known as the Desired Experience Model. In this approach, delivering a desired product experience is part and parcel to the Product Design process itself, and consequently Product Design cannot proceed, let alone be considered ‘finished’, without first incorporating those considerations. The Desired Experience Model is thus an overarching mentality that inherently forces these two worlds to work together.
Synopsis
These are the five reasons we've seen organizations fail to deliver meaningfully differentiating customer experiences, and in each case, what to do about it.
When these are properly and adequately addressed, organizations can in fact deliver the sort of game–changing experiences that have made companies like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Southwest Airlines, and Zappos the outlying winners in their markets.
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