How to Maximise your CX Value

Maximise your Customer Experience Value in the workplace

A well-defined customer experience strategy is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for companies and organisations.

It is mission-critical.

Especially in today’s digitally-driven era of customer experience.

Customers almost dictate what your CX strategy should look like – forcing you to drive an overall brand strategy based on influences beyond your control.

It is no longer a question of simply adopting digital or social channels.

The real question is: What should our multi-channel customer experience strategy look like across touchpoints – and the customer journey?

When defining a strategy – and its required investment – usually a financially-oriented person within your organisation will ask the million-dollar question: What is the ROI on this project’?

For many, the business case is built by looking at employee efficiency gains and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) to the organisation.

You know, the usual efficiency-oriented metrics and models.

The problem is that the customer experience is bigger than this!

Look at Apple, BMW, Ritz Carlton, Starbucks, Harley Davidson and many others.

These are premium brands that typically command a higher price than competitors.

Why?

It’s not just about a better product – although the companies above strive for that – its the way customers experience the brand, and that spans from using products and services to engaging with your people and even interacting with your web site.

If you manage to build a strong customer experience-driven foundation – across channels, touchpoints and departments – you can create a better brand reputation with loyal followers, and, not insignificantly, charge more for your product.

Customer experience is indeed a competitive currency and these 5 tips will help you maximise your CX value in your organisation.

5 tips to maximise your CX Value

1. Understand that Customers are Trying to Get Something Done

It’s not just about handling a single interaction and making the Service Level Agreement.

Your SLA’s are not that interesting to your customers.

Sure, you need to respond quickly, but what’s more important is to respond consistently across all touchpoints, driving the conversation towards the desired outcome of the customer – , not the business.

2. Implement Customer Experience Metrics

CX-oriented metrics, like Net Promoter Score and Customer Effort Score, should be a primary compass to guide your strategy.

So if you want to maximise your CX value you need to have the courage to stop looking at short term results.

Customer experience is not a project with an end date.

It is a continuum.

New company-wide CX metrics also require a cultural change that needs to be driven and encouraged from the top of your organisation.

3. Ditch Your Current Efficiency Metrics

Well, at least stop communicating them to your agents.

Usually, these metrics are not actionable. Focus on coaching your employees so that your CX metrics will improve.

Typically, spending more time on the first interaction with your customer avoids having a second interaction on the same issue – get it right the first time.

Efficiency metrics should only be used for capacity management and strategic workforce planning.

4. Utilise Interaction Analytics

The adoption of digital channels has greatly increased the complexity of managing the customer experience.

You are probably dealing with multiple sources of data to make sense out of what your customers are saying, and how they respond to your agents.

Interaction Analytics across all channels – and across all of your touchpoints – should be part of your customer experience toolkit.

This enables you to immediately know when agents are out of compliance or do not deliver on your quality standards so that you can immediately take action.

5. Manage the End-to-End Customer Journey

If you think that you can simply implement a multi-channel contact centre solution, think again.

Managing customer channels is just part of the mix.

During customer journeys, you may need to do more than just speak to your customer.

You may need to make a change in your customer information, send the customer something, get something approved or looked at by another department.

If the chain of interactions and processes breaks, the customer experience breaks too.

Automating your business processes so that you can drive efficiency across the end-to-end customer journey is a critical factor for success.

Recommended further reading: 4 Common CX Failures being made by businesses

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