The Clear Brick: Customer Experience Domination #2

Lesson #2: Define the Customer Experience Vision

In lesson #1, we discussed the steps that are necessary to develop a compelling customer experience strategy that can deliver meaningful and lasting results. In this lesson, we’ll begin to translate those ideas into action. At the end of the day, we all know that actions speak louder than words. In order to get results, you must put your ideas into action.

As business professionals, most of us are good at coming up with new ideas. The problem, however, is that an idea is just a dream, a wishful thought, or a passing fancy without putting it into action. Even a mediocre strategy can generate real results if it is implemented properly. A great strategy that sits on the shelf, however, will undoubtedly do nothing more than collect dust and die. That is why we turn our attention now to getting the ball rolling.

In this lesson, we cover the basics of defining the customer experience vision; a vision that is specific, measurable, and actionable. We begin by defining a specific and common goal. Then, we discuss how to define the specific key metrics that will help you measure the results. And finally, we discuss how to get your executive team on board to support the initiative going forward.

Step 1: Develop a Common Customer Experience Goal

We’ll begin by defining a common goal for your customer experience project. At ClearBrick, our approach to customer experience is process-centric. We believe that the underlying goal of any customer experience initiative should be to optimize your overall customer experience process; not just one element or touch point, but the entire end-to-end process. The specific details of what that means for your business may depend on your industry or specific marketplace. But make no mistake, establishing a common goal for your project is critical.

Let me explain; even if you’re not a fan of international soccer, you’ve probably heard the emphatic cry from the Univision sports announcer when a football club scores a ‘gooooooaaaaaal.’ You see, setting and achieving goals (pun intended) is just plain exciting. Everyone gets into it. Everyone is focused on the goal and contributes in any way possible to achieve it.

That’s the power of a good goal. It can get your organization focused and moving in the right direction. More importantly, it can get your organization moving in the same direction. A clear goal can be a powerful motivator that gets people to contribute to the goal – even if it may not be in their own best short-term interest. Being part of a group or organization that has a clear goal can also contribute to employee satisfaction – because they feel like a member of a team that is out to achieve great things. Nobody wants to let his or her teammates down. Ultimately, achieving the goal is celebrated and rewarded, it re-enforces good behavior, and provides the team with a sense of accomplishment.

“You can’t expect your business to get on board unless you can tell them where you are going.”
There have been countless business discussions and books on goal setting. Let’s review a few of the basics of good goal setting:

Goals need to be measurable: A broad or generic goal just won’t rally the troops. Make your goal something that is measurable or tangible. For example, the goal of ‘Improving the Customer Experience’ is not a measurable goal. Whereas, increasing your customer retention rates by 10% or more is measurable.
Goals should make them stretch: Goals should be inspirational. They should challenge your team and they should perceive it as worth the effort. Simply put, cutting office supply expenses by 5% is not inspiring. Whereas, providing the best value in the industry is inspirational because it represents a goal to be the undisputed leader. That is something the team can rally around – no matter how large the gap.
Goals should be achievable: Goals should also be achievable. A stretch goal that is not perceived to be achievable by the team won’t be adopted wholly. Too many people may have the tendency to give up
Goals should clearly connect the dots: Goals should clearly identify the cause and effect relationships necessary to achieve the goal. For example, delivering the fastest service in the industry may mean streamlining the order entry, order fulfillment, and order delivery processes. Go ahead and connect the dots. Don’t assume that the team will figure it out.

For your customer experience project, make sure that you establish a clear goal. Communicate and test the goal with your team. Make sure that the goal is in line with your overall corporate strategy and align your entire organization to the goal. It’s also ok to set a generic goal up front, as long as you define it in more detailed and measurable terms once the initial analysis and business case are complete.

Goal setting can be an important part of any business culture. There is a distinct difference, however, between good and bad goals. A bad goal is one that is vague, unclear, or not easily measured. A good goal follows the SMART principle; they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Getting results with your customer experience project will rely heavily on your ability to set SMART goals for your business and your team. Setting SMART goals begins with focusing on the right key metric for your business.

Step 2: Focus on the Key Metric

Regardless of your business industry or marketplace, success or failure is defined by your results. Understandably, results can mean a lot of different things to different organizations, but often every business relies on a very short list of key metrics that define success or failure.

In my experience, I’ve found that many large organizations jump to the seemingly obvious conclusion that any customer experience project must measure customer satisfaction, advocacy, and/or loyalty. Those metrics are the ultimate measure of the success of your customer experience project. However, these metrics won’t reveal what aspects of the customer experience contribute or detract from customer satisfaction. To truly understand how to improve customer satisfaction, you will need to focus on a more telling metric:

Focus on your conversion rates.

Let me explain; for each phase of the customer experience lifecycle, we may deal with slightly different metrics. During the Customer Attraction phase, we may focus on the click-through-rate (CTR) of our on-line ads, the response rate of a direct marketing campaign, or the amount of exposure provided by one of our free articles. Those are all interesting metrics and may very well provide us with some insights where our customer experience may be breaking down. Perhaps the ad doesn’t resonate with our target customers, or the direct marketing campaign didn’t effectively fulfill the customer’s needs. Those are important aspects to consider but they are not the most important. The most important metric should be conversion.

In lesson #1 we taught you how to define the customer experience lifecycle as an end-to-end process. The end-to-end process will demonstrate how the customer traverses various touch points in your business. Each transition from touch point to touch point represents the potential for conversion – or defection. Successfully moving your customers from one touch point to the next is called conversion.

“You get what you measure.”

You may measure conversion at a number of different points in the customer lifecycle. From a pay-per-click standpoint, measure conversion as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions (or click-through-rate). Once customers visit your landing page, then you must measure the rate at which they convert into a product purchase or download. If a customer downloads a free product, you want to measure the rate that you can convert them into a paying customer.

For example, you can measure the conversion rate as the number of product purchases (free or for a fee) divided by the number of total visitors for a given time frame. For example, if 2,000 people visit your site in a given month and 100 people obtained one of your products, then you achieved a conversion rate of 5%. As you might expect, the conversion rate will differ between free products and for-fee products.

Focusing on this key metric provides you with several benefits. First, it provides you with a benchmark from which you can improve. In our example, improving on a 5% conversion rate is an easy metric to focus on. Secondly, you can begin to identify the touch points of your customer experience process that may be contributing, or detracting, from this key metric. For example, you may determine that you do fine in getting customers to your web site, but if they flee at a high rate (also called the bounce rate), then you know that you are missing the mark with some aspect of the landing page. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can calculate the per-customer acquisition cost and customer profitability. For example, in our example, only 10 out of every 2,000 visitors actually bought a product. If acquiring those 2,000 visitors cost us $1,000, then the average sale per customer must be $100 just to cover the acquisition costs. We may determine that we’re spending money to acquire the wrong customers; customers that aren’t serious buyers of our products and services.

Ultimately, focusing on customer conversion can provide a very real and tangible measure of your customer experience process efficiency and effectiveness. Streamlining your customer experience process to optimize customer conversion will directly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. If you can attract the right customers and deliver what they want and need in an efficient manner, customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics will soar.

Step 3: Get Executive Alignment

You can’t fix your customer experience in a vacuum. The customer experience process, by nature, will span nearly every department and function in your organization. To achieve meaningful and lasting results, it is paramount that you get the executive team, and your project team, on board and aligned with the customer experience vision. Without executive alignment, your customer experience efforts will lack the support, funding, and resources necessary to achieve meaningful results.

“Get the head moving in the right direction - and the body will follow.”

Getting executive alignment doesn’t have to be difficult. We’ve found that there are five key ingredients that can help to get your executives on board, many of which we covered in Lesson #1:

Identify and overcome the key customer experience pitfalls: Be prepared for your executive pitch by identifying and understanding how to overcome some of the most common customer experience project pitfalls.
Develop a common understanding of the customer experience process: Define a process model that demonstrates in clear terms what customer experience means to your company.
Identify a compelling strategy: Identify and define a compelling strategy and vision. When done right, a provocative strategy can sell itself.
Identify compelling results: Numbers can speak louder than words. Do the math to demonstrate the value of delivering a better customer experience.
Focus on key metrics: As we discussed earlier in this lesson, dig down to understand how conversion rates can tell the story of what people like, or dislike, about your customer experience process.

By using these five key ingredients, you should now have the attention of your executive team. Ideally, you should seek to identify an executive sponsor for your customer experience project; an individual that posesses the authority and responsibility to navigate the intricacies of any cross-functional project. The executive sponsor will serve as the primary customer experience advocate. Getting the commitment of the executive team is critical due to the nature and makeup of a typical customer experience project.

You can kick start the executive alignment process by getting the Customer Experience 101 on-demand seminar here.

Don’t take executive alignment for granted. This is not a one-time exercise. Rather, executive alignment requires a real and ongoing commitment on the part of executive and customer experience leaders to continually discuss, adapt, and reiterate their support throughout the project lifecycle. As with any project, issues will undoubtedly arise. Maintaining strong executive alignment and support is the only way to effectively navigate those issues and keep your customer experience efforts on track.

That wraps up Lesson #2. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included: