CX executives need to maintain a delicate balancing act between various and often competing priorities. They need to make critical decisions about their customers, their customer needs and which projects to initiate to address those needs. To make those decisions they need to ask some very difficult questions.
In their CX and CRM primer, Gartner highlights how most CX leaders need ask themselves the following questions:
1: How do I prioritise the competing demands of improving existing experiences and developing new ones?
No organisation has unlimited resources to allocate to CX projects. For most organisations competing objectives and opportunities need to be prioritised and scheduled. Numerous CX projects have failed to deliver ROI due to the wrong priorities being set.
CX leaders need to develop a sound approach and methodology for prioritising projects based on an understanding of what matters most to customers and to the business. If you can identify which areas of the customer journey to improve which deliver the greatest value to the customer and the business, these are the projects you give the highest priority to.
2: How can I estimate the cost of CX ideas and forecast their expected value in order to secure approval and support from key stakeholders?
You won’t be able to get executive buy-in, approval for budget, communicate success and ultimately progress in your career, unless you can estimate and then validate the ROI of CX.
Most CX initiatives ae measured through a metric like NPS or CSAT. For these metrics to resonate with key stakeholders and executives they need to connect with the achievement of a real business goals i.e. increased sales, improved profit, reduced costs, and so on.
3: How can CX and user experience efforts be aligned to improve customer-centric outcomes in all corporate initiatives?
There is considerable overlap between CX and UX (User Experience). CX is about improving the journey and experiences customers have with an organisation. It’s a business centred approach to marketing, customer services and the provision of products and services.
UX is about designing new digital products and services that people want to use. UX and CX teams need to work together to create a seamless experience for customers. Yet in many organisations the two teams are not aligned – often working in isolation across different departments.
4: How do I quantify improvements in customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy?
5: How do I defend and grow my CX budget?
To grow your CX budget typically requires demonstrating how previous money was spent and what the ROI was for the organisation. From there it’s easier to build a business case to ask for more money.
Any CX program needs to align with the overall strategy and objectives of the organisation. You need to be able to present the potential impact of your program and the benefits it will deliver to the entire organisation.
6: How do I motivate and engage my people?
Successful EX (Employee Experience) equals successful CX Though the link between employees and happy customers and therefore business growth, is undeniable, many organisations struggle when it comes to engaging their employees and providing them with an exceptional workplace experience. This in turn impacts the customer experience.
If an employee is unhappy or disengaged, observes Lucia Kelleher a leading Behavioural Neuroscientist, this will impact every interaction they have with a customer. She says, ““Employees can greatly affect the emotional mood of a customer. Customers buy a product or service because it makes them feel good at the time. If something happens that disrupts that feeling, such as a frontline agent being rude or unhelpful, they will become dissatisfied.”
Creating exceptional customer experiences and engagement requires understanding the customer’s journey. Likewise, employee engagement is dependent on creating exceptional experiences based on understanding and mapping the employee’s journey. The above list of questions is not exhaustive there are plenty of others that can be added. But if you can answer these questions successfully you are well on your path to achieving your CX vision.