The Clear Brick

1. In lesson #1, we discussed the steps that are necessary to develop a compelling customer experience strategy that can deliver meaningful and lasting results.
2. In lesson #2, we showed you how to translate those ideas into a customer experience action plan.
3. In lesson #3, we taught you how to look for customer experience opportunities in your business.
4. In lesson #4, we showed you how to develop the customer experience business case.
5. In lesson #5, we taught you the basics of customer experience project management.
6. In this lesson, we’ll describe some of the specific methods that you can use to improve your own customer experience.

Customer experience management can mean different things to different businesses. How you achieve customer experience domination will likely be different than your peers or competitors. Ultimately, you will have to decide the right strategy and methods that fits your business. In this lesson, we’ll describe some of the specific methods that you can use to achieve customer experience domination.

We discuss dozens of customer experience tips and strategies in our Customer Experience Solution Kit. However, for the purposes of this lesson, we will discuss four critical steps that can help you to achieve customer experience domination for your business.

Step 1: Create and Reinforce Your Unique Value Proposition

In today’s economy, there seems to be an oversupply of everything. Regardless of your industry or marketplace, you will undoubtedly face multiple competitors that are offering a similar product or service. Within a few miles of the ClearBrick offices, for example, there are at least 4 coffee shops, 4 convenience stores, two grocery stores, and three elementary schools. Needless to say, we have a lot of options when shopping for any of these products or services. In this environment of ultra competition, being average just won’t cut it. You need to be able to clearly stand out from the crowd.

Improving your customer experience should begin by identifying your unique value proposition; a position in the marketplace that can make you the obvious choice when the customer is seeking your product or service.

Don’t let yourself get lulled into a false sense of confidence. Many companies may poll their customers and find that overall customer satisfaction is good. The problem, however, is the next time that customer is in the market for your product or service, ‘good’ may not be good enough to keep them from shopping your competitors. Customers may have a positive image of your business, but if your customer experience isn’t clearly better, the competition stands a good chance of stealing them from you sooner or later.

That’s why it’s important to clearly identify the value proposition that makes you unique. Let me give you a simple example. As consumers, we are all very concerned about the ever-increasing price of gasoline. In the area where I work and live, there are at least 4 convenience stores that I could visit to get gas for my car. One store, however, has a unique value proposition that stands out from the rest; they always have the best price. After visiting many of the other stations, I’ve found their stores to be clean and the service to be impeccable. But in a crowded market, a ‘me-too’ approach just isn’t good enough. One convenience store has established themselves as clearly different by establishing a reputation as the price leader in the market, something that has benefited them well; the pumps always seem to be two-cars deep!

I would add, however, that competing on price alone can be a tenuous strategy. The next competitor that makes a better offer will often steal customers away. To keep your customers loyal, it is also important to establish an emotional connection with your customer that is meaningful and long lasting. A strong emotional connection will often result in higher loyalty – even when there are lower-cost alternatives in the market.

For your business, make sure that you define a value proposition that is clear and unique in your marketplace. This is the time to use words that define the extremes: ‘best’, ‘fastest’, ‘cheapest’, ‘highest quality’, or ‘the-one-and-only’. This is not time to be shy or introverted. Your business should establish a clear and differentiated position in the marketplace and in the consumer’s mind. Your customer experience should then reinforce that value proposition at every step of the customer experience process.

Step 2: Re-engineer the Customer Experience Process

Take a process-centric approach to improving your customer experience. As we covered in earlier lessons, customer experience is a process and it is critical that you take an end-to-end perspective when undertaking any customer experience improvement effort.

By taking a process-centric approach, you will be able to model, simulate, optimize, and measure the performance of your process. You will also be able to take advantage of proven process re-engineering methods to diagnose, refine, and optimize the process for efficiency and effectiveness.

Here are some examples of how you can improve your customer experience process:

1. Model and Simulate the Customer Experience Process: There are two approaches that you should consider for your customer experience re-engineering effort. The first approach entails ‘Clean-Sheet’ re-engineering. This approach implies that you design an entirely new process from the ground up. This approach is the equivalent of starting your process design with a blank sheet of paper.

   The second approach involves developing a deep understanding of the current process to understand key issues. Any re-engineering efforts are then focused on those areas could benefit from re-engineering.

   Regardless of which approach you take, you will learn a tremendous amount about your customer experience by simply modeling the process from beginning to end. By doing so, you will be able to identify the potential bottlenecks, conflicts, or disconnects that may occur. Knowing where your potential problems lie is an important first step towards improving your customer experience process. For example, a hospital may take basic customer information at a registration desk (touch point) and then take basic vital signs at another station. This process can be re-engineered so that the steps can be combined (by taking some vital signs at check-in) which streamlines the overall customer experience process.

2. Simplify or Optimize Touch Points: Your customer experience process will undoubtedly be comprised of multiple discrete touch points along the way. While process re-engineering may focus on the flow or hand-offs between touch points, don’t forget to re-evaluate each touch point. For example, a tire repair shop learns that they are losing customers because they don’t clearly list prices or service packages on their web site. By identifying and resolving this deficiency, they could realize immediate results. In short, optimizing or refining the attributes of certain touch points can have dramatic results.
3. Scenario Management Optimization: While there may be a baseline customer experience process for your business, don’t forget to optimize the process for different customer scenarios that may occur. Once you have a baseline customer experience process defined, it can be helpful to conduct a ‘what-if’ analysis to determine what might happen given different customer scenarios or circumstances. What happens if the customer has to leave in the middle of checking out online? How should you respond if a customer has a unique product customization request? What should your employees do if the customer returns a product? Thinking through these scenarios will make you and your company better prepared for the unique situations that inevitably arise in nearly every customer experience situation.
4. Eliminate Handoffs: Perhaps the biggest issue facing any customer experience is the dreaded hand-off. Typically, a discrete individual, team, or system performs each touch point. At some point, the customer and their information must be handed-off to the next touch point in the process. Sometimes, this is where customer experience breakdowns occur. For example, a home improvement store may provide a price quote to a customer for new carpeting. But when the customer never returns – the handoff to the ordering and purchasing process has obviously broken down. Think about how to eliminate these handoffs, or establish controls to ensure that the handoffs occur without issue on a consistent basis.
5. Integrate Channels: In today’s business world, every business must operate across multiple channels in a seamless manner. Often, businesses treat each channel as a discrete entity that can cause problems when customers try to switch channels. For example, a customer may be browsing your web site when they pick up the phone and call the customer service center or drop by your brick-and-mortar store. Make sure that you have optimized your customer experience process to work seamlessly and consistently across your various channels.
6. Manage the Customer Experience as your Top End-to-End Process: No business process should be left alone to run itself. Customer experience is no different. In order to achieve customer experience domination, you must manage the customer experience as your most important end-to-end process. By defining the customer experience as a core end-to-end process, the customer experience process can be studied, measured, monitored, refined, reengineered, optimized, and improved. By doing so, the customer experience process will become much more disciplined and receive the attention it deserves in your organization.

Step 3: Fix your product or service

Your sales representatives always smile. Your account executives are professional and knowledgeable. Your cashiers, tellers, doctors, nurses or consultants are polite and professional. Despite excelling at the basics of good customer service, your customer experience can still fall flat if your product or service doesn’t deliver as promised. On your quest for customer experience domination, don’t overlook your product or service.

Customers are often lured to your company by provocative ad campaigns or word-of-mouth referrals. Their interaction with your employees can be extremely positive. But after the party, the real customer experience test begins; did the product or service deliver on its promise?

• If you sell automobiles with an extended warranty, make sure that your customer experience process will take care of any problems quickly and efficiently.
• If you are a hospital that promises a personal touch, make sure that your customer experience process reinforces that promise by providing a deep level of caring and compassion.
• If you are a consulting firm that promises experienced professionals, make sure that your consulting engagements incorporate best practices or lessons learned throughout the process.
• If you are a home improvement contractor that prides itself on quality workmanship, make sure that your finished product is always perfect.
• If you are a restaurant that prides itself on great food, make sure that you always deliver your food hot and fresh.

When you are improving your customer experience, it can be extremely helpful and insightful to step back and review the product or service that you are providing. This is a time to be brutally honest; does your product or service really live up to the hype? If there is reason for concern, this is the time to take steps to fix your product or service. After all, the finished product or service often creates a lasting impression that extends well beyond the initial customer experience process.

Get it right, and you are well on your way to customer experience domination.

Step 4: Cultivate Your Relationships

Too often businesses will spend a lot of time and effort to acquire a customer, but then ignore them completely once the transaction is complete. Businesses that understand the power of customer cultivation, however, can reap real rewards by keeping their customers coming back from more.

It’s simple math really. The cost of acquiring new customers is often the most costly activity for any business. Let’s say a dentist office spends $10,000 on a new advertising campaign that yields only 100 new customers. That equates to an acquisition cost of $1,000 per customer. Obviously, the office will need to generate at least $1,000 per customer to turn a profit. Let’s say that each visit yields $500 in revenue for this dental practice. It is obviously of paramount importance to keep those customers coming back. At two visits, the dentist breaks even. Any visits beyond that can mean real profit for the practice since no further acquisition costs are required. Simply put, customer cultivation pays.

Unfortunately, not enough businesses practice customer cultivation. I’ve worked with numerous businesses over the years that have never followed up with me after the work is complete or the product was sold. Even though I may have additional wants and needs, I hear nothing from them – leaving me with the impression that they don’t care. As a result, I may shop elsewhere the next time I need that product or service.

Improve your customer experience by adding or enhancing how you cultivate your customer relationships after acquisition. Doing so can mean real results for your business.

You can get more tips and advice on how to improve your customer cultivation capabilities in our strategy booklet titled ‘Cultivate What You Sow.’

That wraps up Lesson #6. You are now one step closer to customer experience domination. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included:

1. Create and Reinforce your unique value proposition
2. Re-Engineer Your Customer Experience Process
3. Fix Your Product or Service
4. Cultivate Your Relationships

Stay tuned for Lesson #7, where we’ll discuss how to measure your results.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:09 am and is filed under 7 Steps to Customer Experience Domination, customer experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.