In part 1 of the blog, we looked at the foundations of building a robust Customer Experience (CX), starting with contact centers. In this part, we will look at a some of the fundamentals on CX and how to roll it out to your organization.
Everyone is excited about CX, given the direct correlation with revenue and margins. But it quickly becomes challenging; companies are often lost on where to start and how to improve CX.
Here are a few basic aspects to consider as you look at your CX initiative:
CX is a company-wide and process-driven initiative
A successful CX organization tries to build a centralized view of CX; aligning different groups — marketing, sales, service, and beyond. It is never a silo-ed operation, it is a team sport.
The CX processes tend to be more customer-focused rather than internal-focused, embracing key methodologies like Lean/Six Sigma, value stream mapping, and others.
Employee experience and voice of the employee get as much priority as customer experience and voice of the customer when the synergies are well understood. Some companies make huge strides and invest in dedicated CX personnel, driving cross-organizational CX initiatives.
CX demands a broad and wide technology
A successful CX toolset is not just one which is customer facing with omnichannel and always-on service. It is extremely important to look at employee tools, ones that can provide enough and more information about the customer, knowledge base and the likes.
Voice of the customer, analytics and AI-driven technologies are important add-on pieces in addition to core contact center and CRM systems.
The most mature ones are open cloud platforms that provide unlimited options to build personalized and customized experiences for every single customer.
CX metrics are not your operational KPIs
While there are metrics around efficiencies like average handle time, call resolution rates and the likes, a CX-obsessed company really looks at the end customer metrics like customer effort, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and even larger business metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
CX is a marathon, not a sprint
CX is a multi-stage iterative process, it is never a one-and-done approach. Companies have to look at where they are in the CX maturity level as of today.
Learn more on a 5-stage CX maturity model and look where your company falls. Move one level at a time. As CX becomes a corporate imperative and people start thinking of everything as CX, it can quickly become nothing. Set a goal, measure, iterate, and improve.
Stay tuned for part 3 of the blog where I will explore an assessment framework for CX maturity model and provide a path to moving up the maturity curve.
