3 simple steps to start Customer Experience journey design in your company
Imagine yourself as Alex, 32-year-old product development manager in the telecommunications company with the task to create new product on very saturated market where all tips and tricks are tried already. In less complex situation, Alex would try to combine services into new service bundles and use marketing promotion to market them as new and wow thing to customers
If Alex is lucky, there will be consumer electronics manufacturer ready to promote its brand and enhance promotion. If the things are great, Alex will be able to enrich bundle by adding partner Bank ready to finance purchases and promote itself.
All these are usual ways to prepare “new” products nowadays. While we are doing so, all of us are searching for “disruption”, something that will shake the markets usual view on the products and services. Disruption is the word used in Board rooms of big companies, Unfortunately, traditional companies are everything but disruptive. And while big ones are only thinking about disruption of their business, new kids on the block are becoming mamas and papas of today’s business. They are doing it because they are small, agile and following something big ones forgot.
There is a thing that most of us forget when we became big and self-confident. That is communication and respect to the world around us, to our customers. While we are learning and growing either as companies or human beings we are agile, humble and very nice to people we are depending on. As soon as we start to feel self-confident we forget this and very soon we are taking care of our efficiency, politics, corporate rules, ways to handle company that is becoming bigger and bigger…we are doing everything except most important thing – communicate and respect our customers.
According to Forrester, 72% of businesses say that improving the customer experience is their top priority, while NewVoiceMedia indicates that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service (https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/01/07/10-customer-service-and-customer-experience-cx-trends-for-2017/#617123b175e5)
Since all of us like to say that customer is the center of our business this statistic should be considered as wake up call to understand and start to actively create Customer Experience. Doing this is easier than you might think. Here are the 3 simple steps that you can undertake immediately:
- Understand what your customers really need and avoid the trap that you know what they want. There is a high probability that you already have lot of data to work on. You should use it and corelate information’s, but do not forget to talk and understand customers in direct contact.
- Design Customer Journey Map, path that your customers will go through while they are using your product or service. Very important is not to do it only once, but to continue evolving design while your customers are evolving.
- When you create Customer Journey Map, stick to it and fine tune organization to deliver the same thing repeatedly. Create CX KPI’s you will track since execution is the most important thing in Customer Experience enhancement initiatives. CX KPI’s should be combination of KPI’s tracking efficiency that you are already measuring combined with things that customers really pay attention on.
By doing this you will reconnect with your customers, learn new and exciting things and support growth of your organization and your professional development.