Sprint's Palm Pre Experience

On June 6, 2009, Sprint proudly launched their latest flagship product - the Palm Pre. While numerous reports have lauded the success of the launch and the phone itself, a more important storyline is the strides that Sprint has made in their overall customer experience. Sprint's customer experience problems have been well documented. Their ability to effectively address those problems may be the one thing that will make or break the company. Although Sprint's recent performance with the Palm Pre had its pro's and con's, Sprint appears to have done this one right.

Sprint obviously has a lot riding on the Palm Pre. Over the past few years, Sprint's customer satisfaction woes have been well documented and new CEO Dan Hesse has made it clear that improving customer satisfaction is priority number one. While Sprint has been making strides on fixing their problems, no one seemed to notice. Sprint needed to grab the stage - even if for just a short period - to demonstrate that things had changed. The Palm Pre has provided that stage and Sprint's performance is sure to be closely scrutinized. Dan Hesse went so far as to refer to last weekend's launch as a "coming out party" for Sprint.

THE TOTAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

While some may look only at the launch day to determine if Sprint is truly different, a more important barometer should be the overall customer experience. The experience began when Palm and Sprint unveiled the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. There had obviously been a lot of pre-work done (pun intended); Sprint had established an exclusive arrangement with Palm to create the most innovative new device since the iPhone. This exclusive partnership alone highlighted Sprint's innovative roots and placed it squarely in the spotlight to deliver something special.

The pre-launch buzz began to build from that point forward. Special blogs were created, tweeters were tweeting, and rumors abound. If Sprint and Palm wanted the spotlight, they surely got it.

How Sprint and Palm would perform in the spotlight would be an important part of the overall customer experience. Fortunately for Sprint and Palm, they performed admirably.

ATTRACT

Building upon the success of the CES event and the subsequent interest in the Palm Pre, Sprint and Palm responded by launching special web pages to try and quench a seemingly unending thirst for Palm Pre news. While Sprint and Palm web sites offered little to any additional information regarding the Pre, the blogosphere was kicking into overdrive.

Hundreds of smart phone enthusiasts began to sleuth every possible angle to learn more about the Palm Pre and its eventual launch date. It became almost a game; the dearth of information from Sprint and Palm only fueled more speculation about pricing, features, and availability. Most companies would pay dearly for such successful viral marketing.

Eventually Sprint launched its own series of 'Now Network' ads that seemed to tease the audience even more by showcasing the Palm Pre at the end of each ad. Even though the phone had not yet been released, the ads whipped up even more anticipation for the eventual launch.

QUALIFY

With the bait firmly set, it was now up to Sprint to determine how to best land as many prospects as possible. In a very smart move, Sprint launched a Palm Pre landing page that contained a simple prompt: "Sign up to be notified when the Palm Pre is available."

It was a simple and brilliant way to allow prospective customers to self qualify themselves for Sprint. As a result, Sprint was able to collect a highly qualified list of prospects that could be used for target marketing to ensure that the prospects were converted to customers when the Pre became available.

That's exactly what they did.

INTERACT

Prospects that self-qualified themselves, as well as existing Sprint customers, received regular email newsletters that informed them of special offers, accessories, new plans, and other products. This simple but effective interaction helped to keep prospects engaged during the waiting period between the CES product announcement and the eventual product launch on June 6.

Unfortunately, the majority of these email newsletters provided few additional details about the Palm Pre. Perhaps the lack of Palm Pre related information was part of their strategy of secrecy, but this is one big opportunity that Sprint may have missed. If they had provided more juicy tidbits through this channel, perhaps they could have significantly grown their prospect list as more and more people were clamoring for information.

Although many people get annoyed with companies that overload their email inboxes, this is a case where I believe that additional and more timely communications would have been welcomed.

SPECIAL TREATMENT

As part of Sprint's drive to improve customer satisfaction, they also have begun to more actively utilize a loyalty program called Sprint Premier, which rolled out in February of this year. Once again, Sprint did this right. Long time Sprint customers were automatically enrolled in the program and notified via email and or direct mail that they were being recognized for their loyalty.

The loyalty program includes perks and privileges like most programs of its kind. For example, one direct mailing included a special $25.00 coupon that could be used to purchase any accessory. Unfortunately, this excluded Palm Pre accessories - at least during the launch weekend.

Perhaps most important to the customer experience, Sprint sent a special notification to Premier members that invited them into stores one hour before opening time on launch day to demo and purchase the Palm Pre. While others were planning overnight camp-outs to be the first in line to get the Pre, Premier customers got special treatment.

Overall, it was a nice touch and a great way to reward some of Sprint's most loyal customers.

BUY

June 6th was an anxious day for everyone. Sprint and Palm were nervous for obvious reasons. Prospective customers were also anxious in light of the rumored short supplies of the Palm Pre. Although some out of stock situations were reported, the supply situation over the launch weekend did not appear to rain on the parade.

Personally, I arrived at a local Sprint store around 10:30am, nearly 2 and a half hours into the launch day feeding frenzy. I arrived with low expectations; I had resigned myself to the fact that I would probably be greeted by long lines and news of inventory outages.

However, my experience was surprising. Upon arriving at the store, I entered my name into a customer waiting queue. If you haven't been in a Sprint store in a while, they've revamped the store environment as well, capped with a large flat screen monitor that shows your place in the waiting queue in real time.

Overall, the in-store experience was good. I waited only 20 minutes to be greeted by a Retail Consultant, who quickly started the purchase and activation process. While the activation process was underway, he successfully up-sold me on a few accessories for my new Pre. The sales and activation process was lengthy, but largely overshadowed by the anticipation of getting my hands on the shiny new Palm Pre.

SUMMARY

The new phone has worked almost flawlessly on the Sprint Network. Although I have experienced a few glitches, the overall experience has been fantastic. The experience started with growing anticipation since the January 8th introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show and has culminated with the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6th. Daily usage of the Palm Pre, which so far has been great, will only expand upon the overall experience.

While many people will look only at the launch day or even certain characteristics of the phone itself to gauge the experience, Sprint and Palm have done a great job of managing the total customer experience over the past 6 months. Although not everything went perfectly, I give the overall customer experience at grade of 3.75 out of a possible 4.0 experience.

The Right Way to Measure Your Customer Experience

Attempting to measure the customer experience with a single metric such as customer satisfaction or customer advocacy is overly simplistic and risky. Instead, companies should dig deeper and establish a portfolio of measures that can determine how each touch point contributes to the overall experience.

The Total Customer Experience is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

The customer experience is a complex process that can consist of multiple touch points; a process that can be broad, long-running, span multiple channels, and can be influenced by any combination of internal and external factors. Effectively measuring the total customer experience requires a more acute understanding of its individual parts.

The customer experience process does not begin and end at a store, sales representatives, web site or call center. It extends from the moment the customer becomes aware of your company and is comprised of multiple independent interactions, transactions, and contacts along the way.

Each customer experience is made up of any number of touch points and customer encounters, each of which should be measured independently to determine their contribution to the overall experience. An issue encountered at any one of these points can dramatically influence the overall experience.

For example, the quality of an automobile is an aggregate measurement of the quality of the individual parts combined with the integrity of the overall design and assembly process. If any one part fails to perform properly, the overall perception of quality is diminished. Likewise, even if every part is perfectly manufactured but isn’t arranged or assembled in a useable manner – the perception of quality will suffer. Only when quality manufacturing is guided by quality design will the experience truly be maximized.

Although overarching metrics such as customer satisfaction and customer advocacy are quickly becoming standard metrics in today’s companies, attempting to measure the customer experience with a single metric can be overly simplistic and risky. Effectively managing the customer experience requires effective measurement and management of a portfolio of metrics that will provide insights into what is - or is not - working.

Identify Your Touch Points

The customer experience is a collection of touch points encountered by the customer that includes the attraction, interaction, and cultivation of customer relationships. Touch points may include advertisements or promotions, online and in-store shopping experiences, transaction and bill processing, and post-purchase delivery, usage, and support.

The total number of touch points that the customer encounters goes well beyond the point of sale. Establishing an accurate inventory of all of your company’s touch points – both intentional and unintentional - can mean the difference between success and failure.

Defining when and where the customer experience begins and ends is perhaps the most difficult task facing any business. Too often, companies define the lifecycle and customer touch points too narrowly, leaving critical elements of the customer experience to chance.

A touch point is defined as any customer interaction or encounter that can influence the customer’s perception of your product, service, or brand. A touch point can be intentional (an advertisement) or unintentional (an unsolicited customer referral). In this era of broad customer skepticism, the unintentional touch points often matter the most. Which would you trust more: a company’s ad pitch or your best friend’s personal referral for a product? Both are touch points, but one carries much more value than the other.

When your business interacts with a customer, it’s often easy to overlook what is really going on; you are touching them in many, perhaps subtle, ways. When it comes to customer experience management, the right touch can make all the difference. To do it right, you must first identify all of your potential touch points and then work to measure and optimize each one.

Measure Individual Touch Point Effectiveness

Each customer touch point is typically designed for a specific operational purpose. An advertising touch point may be designed to build brand awareness or to identify prospects. A point of sale touch point may be designed to execute transactions. A call center touch point is designed to resolve customer issues. Each touch point is unique and contributes to the overall customer experience in different ways.

Effectively measuring each touch point requires a holistic approach to understand the contribution to both operational and customer relationship objectives. For example, the operational side of an advertising touch point may be measured in terms of a conversion rate. The customer relationship side of the same touch point may be intended to influence the customer’s perception or awareness of the company’s brand.

Measuring the effectiveness of each touch point should balance both operational and customer experience objectives. Operational metrics are typically easily identified, while customer relationship metrics can be elusive. Ideally, timely and recurring customer feedback is collected and compared to operational results to provide a more complete picture. In doing so, companies can obtain a better understanding of how each individual touch point is contributing to the overall experience.

For example, let’s say a business establishes a goal to achieve a 5% click-through-rate (CTR) with their pay-per-click campaign. If the actual campaign achieves 100% of that goal, they might consider it a success. However, customer perceptions might not be so rosy if the ad promised a product, promotion, or discount that isn’t readily available or is difficult to obtain. As a result of customer confusion and aggravation, the company may achieve only 50% of their revenue goals for the campaign.

Measure the Overall Customer Experience

In order to effectively measure the overall customer experience, companies must accurately measure the contribution of each individual touch point as well as the overall level of customer satisfaction and advocacy. At times, the results of one touch point may have an unanticipated affect on other aspects of the experience.

Consider how the individual touch points associated with a fictitious product launch might impact the experience at an electronics store:

1. Product Innovation: A key manufacturer is developing a leading-edge product that will be innovative in the marketplace. The media learns of these developments and publishes reports that an amazing new product is coming soon. Consumer excitement and anticipation is driven to extremely high levels, although actual ship dates remain unknown. (Score: 10/10)
2. Electronics Store: Employees at the store and call center are inundated with inquiries about the pending new product but are unable to provide any additional information regarding availability nor can they accept pre-orders. (Score: 3/10)
3. Marketing: The product launch date is set and marketing begins to actively promote the new product and its innovative features. Consumer anticipation is again driven to new highs as the launch date approaches. (Score: 10/10)
4. Product Purchase: On launch day, consumers flood the store and web site to get the new product. Those customers that are fortunate enough to purchase one are extremely satisfied. (Score: 10/10)
5. Out of Stock: Initial euphoria quickly turns sour as the store runs out of stock and thousands of customers are turned away without one of the highly coveted and heavily promoted products. Customers are told to check back again in a few weeks. (Score: 1/10)

For a handful of customers who were able to purchase the product, they are extremely satisfied with their experience and are willing to tell all of their friends about their latest purchase. Conversely, however, many other customers who were turned away empty-handed are now frustrated and highly dissatisfied with the experience.

Relying solely on customer satisfaction or customer advocacy measures may not illuminate how each touch point contributed to the overall experience. Simplistic customer satisfaction and advocacy scores may mask the underlying factors that either contribute to or detract from an exceptional customer experience.

Evaluating how each individual touch point contributes to the overall experience in this scenario can help to identify specific areas for improvement. While touch points 1, 3 and 4 scored high, touch points 2 and 5 clearly have room for improvement.

Focusing only on an aggregate metric without understanding or managing the contributing factors can yield unpredictable results. Companies seeking to improve their overall customer experience should establish customer experience measures that correlate individual touch point results to overall customer experience measures.

END NOTES:
“How Do I Touch Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.”, The Clear Brick Blog, April 16, 2008.

Cultivate Relationships to Increase Margins

A critical component of customer relationship management (CRM) - and yet often overlooked - is the cultivation of existing customers. We’ve seen it all too often; companies spend nearly all of their time and scarce resources trying to attract new customers - while existing customers are largely ignored. This practice can be costly in terms of lower profitability and higher customer turnover rates. Companies seeking to improve their CRM practices should look no further than cultivating existing customer relationships.

The Importance of Cultivation

All too often, businesses large and small become focused on one simple thing: attracting new customers. While this is an important dynamic for real business growth, it can become toxic if it is overemphasized and becomes the ONLY focal point for the business.

Customer acquisition is often the most costly and least profitable component of the overall customer experience. Companies throw promotions, price discounts, or free products and services at potential new customers - all of which can quickly hike up acquisition costs and squeeze profitability.

Don’t Make a Loss Leader be a Total Loss

We see examples of high acquisition costs every day. Grocery stores and other retailers are famous for offering loss leaders - popular products or commodities at an unprofitable price - in order to get customers in the door. Mobile phone companies subsidize new phone sales - again unprofitably - in order to land more subscribers. Even car dealers often sell new cars at very narrow margins in an attempt to land longer-term service relationships.

High-cost acquisition programs can be effective in landing new customers. However, in order to make the practice profitable, companies must focus more attention on taking care of existing customers and building meaningful and lasting relationships. Simply put, incremental revenue generated from an existing customer can be achieved at nominal costs. As a result, the cultivation phase - or back end - of the customer experience process can often be the most profitable.

Customer cultivation is important for one very important reason; it can significantly improve the customer lifetime value for your company. Customer lifetime value - simply put - represents the total revenue collected from a customer less any costs to acquire, serve and support the customer over the life of their relationship with your company.

Cultivate Your Relationships to Improve Your Margins

For example, if we commit $140.00 to acquire a customer that buys a $150.00 MP3 music player, we have made a margin of only $10.00. However, if we can develop and nurture the customer relationship at a nominal cost of only $50.00, they may turn around and spend $300.00 dollars on music downloads, gifts for friends, and related products over the next year - a respectable margin of $250.00.

If a meaningful customer relationship was never established after the initial transaction, then the lifetime value of the customer is a measly $10.00. However, by cultivating the relationship and obtaining additional follow-on revenue in our example, we increase the customer lifetime value to $260.00 from $10.00 - a healthy increase of 2600%!

How to Cultivate

Every new customer transaction plants a seed. What your company does with that seed can make a significant impact on future profitability. Will the seed lay there and be forgotten? Or will it be fed, watered, and nourished into a lush asset that bears fruit on a regular basis?

In order to get the most out of your customer relationships, you need to cultivate what you sow:

1. Relate: Relate with your customers through regular and meaningful contact, observations, and ongoing interactions.
2. Retain: Retain your customers by creating barriers to switching to a competitor and create an atmosphere of exclusivity.
3. Expand: Expand your relationship with your customers by offering complimentary products and services on an ongoing basis.
4. Innovate: Keep your customers excited and engaged by surprising them with new product innovations or special bundles that are tailored just for them.
5. Analyze: Analyze your customer behaviors and cultivation activities to predict and anticipate future wants and needs.

Very few companies get customer cultivation right the first time. Doing it effectively can take strong leadership, a clear vision, and an effective measurement system to continuously evaluate customer lifetime value. However, those companies that do it right can reap significant rewards.

The Customer Experience Process

Companies seeking to become more customer-centric should define the customer experience as a formal end-to-end process in their organization.

Business leaders that subscribe to the process-centric approach to business improvement understand the importance of having well-defined end-to-end processes. Typical end-to-end processes that are well-defined and optimized in businesses today include:

• Plan to Profits (Budgeting & Finance)
• Order to Cash (Operations/Order Fulfillment)
• Procure to Pay (Procurement)
• Recruit to Retain (Human Resources)
• Idea to Market (New Product Innovation)
• Forecast to Delivery (Manufacturing & Distribution)
• Market to Sale (Sales & Marketing)

For those organizations that have formally adopted a process-centric approach to business, the process is often formally defined, measured, monitored, and continually optimized. This level of discipline is critical to deliver a process that is high performing, predictable, efficient, effective, and error-free.

In order to become more customer-centric, businesses should add the customer experience end-to-end process to their portfolio of strategically important processes. The customer experience is a process. Like any process, the customer experience process can work perfectly (or go horribly wrong), may contain numerous scenarios, and it can be analyzed, re-engineered and optimized.

The customer experience process does not begin and end at the store, sales representatives, web site or call-center. It extends from the moment the customer becomes aware of a company and may last until they die, move, or leave for a competitor. In short, the customer experience process is broad, deep, iterative, and (hopefully) long running.

The customer experience process is comprised of three distinct phases:

1. Customer Attraction (before): Customer attraction represents all of the touchpoints and interactions encountered by your customer during initial sales and marketing activities.
2. Customer Interaction (during): Customer interaction represents all of the touchpoints and interactions encountered by your customer during payment, service, and delivery activities.
3. Customer Cultivation (after): Customer cultivation represents all of the touchpoints and interactions encountered by your customer after a purchase or transaction that includes loyalty, reward, and ongoing communications management.

Great customer experiences don’t happen by accident. They require a keen attention to detail, a focus on every touch point, and an orchestration of all customer encounters regardless of how each customer may navigate the company. Mastering the customer experience must begin with mastering the end-to-end customer experience process.

At any time that a customer is involved in the process, the ultimate goal is to deliver a customer experience process that sells more, increases buying frequency, and broadens the relationship. A critical first step to improve any customer experience should be to map the entire customer experience end-to-end process. By doing so, companies can develop a deeper appreciation for how the business interacts with their customers.

To achieve the focus and discipline that the customer experience process deserves, businesses should add a new end-to-end process to its portfolio of strategic processes. By defining the customer experience as a strategic end-to-end process, the customer experience process can be studied, measured, monitored, refined, re-engineered, optimized, and improved. The process will become much more disciplined and receive the attention it deserves in the organization.

Get PAID: A Unique Approach to Customer Experience Design

Customer experience management can be a complex animal. In order to deliver a holistic solution that works, businesses must effectively align people, process, and technology dimensions across geographies, markets, and channels.

Experienced project managers know that aligning people, process and technology is critical. There have been many business methods, tools, and techniques for aligning these dimensions, but some fall short in tying them together.

A relatively new and straightforward approach for designing holistic and comprehensive customer experience solutions is PAID Diagramming. While the elements of PAID Diagramming are relatively straight forward, the single illustrated view that it provides represents an innovative and holistic approach to customer experience solution design.

The exact origins of PAID Diagramming are not known, but I’ve formalized and refined the technique with numerous clients and projects. P.A.I.D. is an acronym that stands for Process, Application, Integration, and Data:

1. Process Layer: Identifies the high-level business process that enables the customer experience. This layer may also be utilized to represent the customer experience process from the customer’s perspective.
2. Application Layer: The application layer identifies the set of applications that are utilized to support the process layer. Simple lines are utilized to represent which application enables each discrete process step.
3. Integration Layer: The integration layer identifies the major information subject areas and illustrates the linkage between applications and data sources.
4. Data Layer: The data layer identifies the various physical or logical data sources and illustrates how data is integrated with various applications.

A PAID Diagram combines these layers in a series of swim-lanes to provide an architectural view of how processes are enabled by information technology:

THE PAID DIAGRAM MODEL

While the PAID Diagram approach may appear simplistic and straightforward, the approach provides numerous benefits when dealing with complex processes such as customer experience management:

1. Creates a Holistic View: The PAID Diagram combines process and discrete technology enablers in a single view. This provides a clear linkage between process and technology that is typically overlooked in process modeling or technology-based data flow or use-case modeling.
2. Enforces a Process Centric Approach: The PAID diagram starts with the process-layer; an approach that establishes and reinforces a process-centric viewpoint for solution design.
3. Enables Detailed Analysis: Current State PIAD Diagrams provide a holistic view of potential ‘pain points’ in the customer experience process. For example, the process layer can illustrate bottlenecks or disconnect, the application layer can illustrate capability gaps or unnecessary redundancy, and the integration and data layers can illustrate where duplicate and disconnected customer data may reside.
4. Clarifies Future State Visions: PAID Diagrams can be created to reflect the current or future state environment. A future state PAID Diagram provides a single view of how a proposed solution would enhance the customer experience process or specific capability areas.
5. Provides an Architectural Viewpoint: The holistic nature of the PAID diagram provides business and technical architects with a modeling tool necessary to align the various dimensions of the business. When applied across multiple functional areas, PAID Diagrams can be combined to create an enterprise-wide customer experience blueprint that can help to drive customer relationship management, operations, and information technology strategies.

Like most solution modeling methods, PAID Diagrams work best when the appropriate level of structure and discipline is applied to the model. To get the most out of the PAID Diagramming method, businesses should follow some basic best practices:

• Create a Process Hierarchy: PAID diagrams are based on processes. If your company doesn’t have a formal process model, create one. A more formal process model will help to drive the PAID diagramming exercise.
• Keep It Simple: Don’t try to map all processes on a single PAID diagram. Instead, break your processes and diagrams into a hierarchy so that additional levels of detail can be illustrated on a separate PAID Diagram, as appropriate.
• Don’t Over Think Technology: Don’t over think the exact structure or location of physical technology assets or databases. The intent of the PAID diagram is to illustrate enabling relationships. The PAID Diagram is not intended to be a formal IT Architecture Model (but it can help in that regard too.)
• Annotate the Diagram: The more details you can provide with each link, the more meaningful the diagram will become. For example, showing the specific data elements that are being pulled from a database will help identify potential issues or opportunities.
• Use a Standard Modeling Tool Like Visio: For Windows-based computing environments, businesses should utilize a standard business-modeling tool such as Microsoft Visio to create and maintain your PAID Diagrams.

Having helped to design, develop, and implement countless business strategies and solutions in my career, I can honestly say that the PAID Diagram is one of the most useful tools in my toolbox. In businesses where I have used this technique, nearly every one of them have adopted the method as part of their stand solution design methodology.

It just goes to show you that often the simplest of techniques are often the most effective.

Customer Experience Wars: Wireless Edition

The wireless telecommunication industry continues to be highly competitive as the major carriers slug it out to compete for an increasingly elusive and fickle customer. While major players such as Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless and U.S. Cellular were once content to compete on value, call quality, or network coverage – there has been a noticeable shift to a new competitive battleground: the customer experience.

The shift in strategy is due to a changing wireless industry landscape. The maturing industry is being characterized by increasing market saturation, industry consolidation, flat or declining revenue per customer, and generalized commoditization of products & services. As a result, the traditional “Five P’s” of Marketing (Price, Product, Place, Promotion, and People) are becoming less effective as the major players seek ways to gain a strategic advantage.

To respond to these new challenges, major wireless carriers are doubling their efforts to create a meaningful emotional connection with their existing customers while (hopefully) attracting new customers. In some cases, the shift in focus towards a differentiated customer experience has been subtle. For other companies, the change in messaging is in stark contrast from previous marketing efforts.

Sprint

Old: Sprint became well known for their ‘pin drop’ commercials that promised the best possible call quality.

New: Sprint’s more recent ads are clearly focused on the customer experience. Helping customers get the most out of their smart phones is a clear shift to a more customer-centric focus.

T-Mobile

Old: In several of T-Mobile’s early ads, the clear focus was on value as they featured their ‘whenever’ minutes and emphasized price.

New: T-Mobile has made a clear shift to a more customer-centric approach; In their latest adds, they emphasize individual and family needs while showcasing real-time account personalization.

U.S. Cellular

Old: U.S. Cellular has always been an industry leader in customer service. Many of their early ads followed the industry, however, and focused primarily on the value element of free incoming calls.

New: U.S. Cellular’s latest efforts have introduced a new brand promise; “Believe in Something Better.” Their ads clear shift the focus away from the handset or network and focus on a more rich and emotional experience.

Verizon

Old: Verizon’s early advertisements hammered home that the focus was on the network. Their “Can You Hear Me Now?” campaigns have been very effective in hammering home their network-focused strategy.

New: Verizon’s current advertisements continue to focus on the network. However, we see a shift from the straight forward ‘Can you hear me now?’ to more engaging situations that attempt to explain how the network can help customers avoid a bad experience – or dead zone.

AT&T Wireless

Old: AT&T (previously Cingular), like other wireless carriers focused their early advertising efforts on value with no roaming or long distance charges.

New: The latest AT&T Wireless commercials paint different customer scenarios that could be avoided if they had AT&T’s service. Although still product-centric, these ads seek to paint the picture of a better customer experience.

Summary

The wireless industry customer experience wars will likely become more pronounced in the coming years as the market become more saturated and increasingly commoditized. Although recent economic factors will prompt consumers to place greater emphasis on price and value, expect the major wireless carriers to continue their battle to differentiate based on customer experience.

Myth #5: CRM Software = Customer Experience Solution

As CRM concepts have matured, the hype-engines have been thrust into overdrive. The resulting marketing noise can make it difficult to differentiate between CRM and CEM. But make no mistake; Customer Experience Management is much different that Customer Relationship Management. Choosing a CRM software solution to solve your customer experience issues can miss the mark. Here’s why:

1. CRM software is typically more functional (rather than process-centric) in nature. Many CRM systems are designed to provide specific point solutions to support CRM functions such as call center support, eCommerce, marketing automation, or loyalty reward management. While each point solution often works well, CRM software solutions alone won’t enable or help to manage the end-to-end nature of the customer experience process.
2. CRM software is limited to the reach of its technology and can’t support or influence all touch points. While CRM software has come a long way over the past decade, there are still customer experience touch points that can’t be directly influenced or managed by CRM software. Touch points such as employee interactions, aspects of direct marketing, and third-party touch points may have a significant impact on the customer experience but may not be supported by CRM software.
3. CRM software is often implemented as a best-of-breed solution and lacks the level of enterprise-wide integration necessary to develop and manage a true 360-degree view of the customer. CRM software solutions are great at managing customer information. The view of the customer can limited, however, if a complete set of customer interactions, behaviors, or preferences aren’t properly captured and analyzed. Interactions such as inbound and outbound communications, campaigns, or customer care interactions are often not tracked and managed by CRM solutions. CRM solution alone won’t solve this problem; businesses must take the steps to engrain CEM concepts throughout all touch points in their enterprise.
4. CRM solutions provide a limited set of customer experience metrics. While CRM solutions often provide key functional metrics, they are often transaction in nature and won’t provide a comprehensive set of metrics necessary to analyze, measure, and manage the end-to-end customer experience.

While CRM software is an important first step for any business seeking to improve their customer relationships, it is not a surrogate for Customer Experience Management. Companies that are seeking to establish or improve their total customer experience should look beyond CRM software solutions and seek customer experience solutions that augment CRM software. CEM specific capabilities include business process management, sophisticated customer experience analytics, and enterprise-wide visibility to customer interactions that can span the total customer experience.

Myth #4: A Centralized Customer Database Provides a 360-degree View of the Customer

Establishing a 360-degree view of the customer has long been the holy grail of any CRM program. Many companies consolidate their multiple customer databases into a centralized customer database and declare victory. Although establishing a single customer database is foundational to a 360-degree view of the customer, a customer database alone often won’t provide your company with a complete view of the customer. Here’s why:

1. A centralized customer database often contains only basic or static data including name, address, account number, demographic and profile information. Although this core information is critical, it often won’t provide historical information regarding transactions or changes to address, account, or profile information. Without historical information, it’s difficult to get a complete picture of the customer.
2. Customer interactions can take place in many forms, at multiple locations, and across multiple channels. Unless the customer database is specifically designed to store interactions, you’ll be missing an important element of your customer’s behaviors.
3. Customer databases are often designed to support operational activities such as transaction processing, order management, and billing. Operational databases often lack robust customer analytics that are necessary to unlock the secrets of the customer experience.
4. Customer feedback is often collected and managed separately from customer information. As a result, correlating customer sentiment to specific customers or customer segments can be difficult.

Although a centralized customer database is foundational to a 360-degree view of the customer, a database alone won’t provide the complete picture. Companies that are seeking to establish or improve their total customer experience should look beyond customer databases to more robust data warehousing capabilities that include a view of historical changes, transactions, interactions, and feedback that can provide a complete 360-degree view of the customer.

Myth #3: Each Channel Should Have a Unique Customer Experience

Thanks to technology and multiple points of presence, business just keeps getting more complex. Innovations in technology have brought new channels such as the call center, Internet, and now mobile channels in many industries. Many businesses, anxious to stay in the game, jump in with new channel offerings without an integrated view of the customer.

Granted, each channel has unique characteristics and can be used in different ways and for different purposes by the customer. Treating each channel experience as unique and independent, however, is a recipe for disaster. Each channel may indeed be different; the customer experience shouldn’t be.

Ever since the day that Ray Kroc began expanding the McDonald’s empire, he set the standard for consistency across each and every location. No matter where you are in the world, the McDonald’s experience is the same. Ray Kroc’s formula for consistency should be a blueprint for any business operating in a multi-channel environment today. Managing each channel as unique and different shouldn’t be. Here’s why:

1. Customers are increasingly expecting multiple channel options. According to a Sterling Commerce Study, 80% of customers surveyed feel it is important to have a choice of shopping across multiple channels when choosing a retailer. Businesses with only a single channel option, or channels which are discrete and disconnected, will likely miss the boat.
2. Customers expect the customer experience to be the same across channels. According to a survey conducted by Tealeaf, 85% of adults expect their online service levels to be the same as offline, an increase of 3% from the prior year. Providing inconsistency across channels will only contribute to customer frustration or confusion.
3. Customers will likely switch channels. As the number of channels available to the customer continues to grow, so too does the challenge of providing seamless cross-channel integration. A customer experience that begins in one channel should transfer seamlessly and be continued in another without interruption. Lack of consistency across channels will only detract from the overall customer experience.

While each business channel has unique characteristics and can be used in different ways and for different purposes by the customer, each channel experience should not be designed or managed independently. Companies that are seeking to establish or improve their total customer experience should focus on cross-channel consistency and seamless channel handoffs regardless of the customer experience scenario. Simply put, maintaining discrete channels with separate customer experiences won’t cut it for today’s demanding customers.

Myth #2: Customer Experience Is Just A New Term For Customer Service

Make no mistake, customer service is as important as ever; delivering great customer service is one of the most tangible and visible methods for improving customer satisfaction. Customer service, however, represents only a small fraction of the overall customer experience. Companies that talk themselves into a false sense of accomplishment by focusing only on customer service are missing the bigger picture; customer experience encompasses much more that just customer service.

While customer service is important, focusing solely on customer service misses the mark on the bigger picture. Here’s why:

1. Customer service often represents only a subset of potential touch points: a receptionist, a call center representative, or a restaurant waiter or waitress. Each touch point does provide a significant contribution to how each customer is treated. Even the best customer service, however, won't rectify an otherwise flawed customer experience. In contrast, the customer experience is broad, encompassing all customer service touch points that can extend from the customer's first impression to their ultimate defection.
2. Customer service often refers to human interaction with the customer. While human interaction is critical, consumers are increasingly utilizing self-service alternatives via the internet, telephone response, and kiosk. According to a study by Pew Internet Study, 73% of adult Americans use the internet, a number that continues to grow steadily. Customer experience initiatives must consider all touch points and channels in order to grasp the end-to-end scope of the customer experience process.

While customer service is an important component of the overall customer experience, companies that are looking to establish or improve their customer experience capabilities should define their customer experience more broadly; the customer experience should be defined as an end-to-end process that begins with customer attraction, flows through interaction, and ends with cultivation – where the process starts over.

5 Customer Experience Management Myths

As customer experience management (CEM) continues to gain importance in the minds of today’s CEO’s, more and more companies are taking on customer experience management projects to improve customer satisfaction, develop better customer insights, nurture customer loyalty and advocacy, and improve customer lifetime value. The rapid rise to the top echelons of strategic priority has brought an unfortunate side affect; numerous customer experience management myths have begun to form due to a flood of conflicting definitions, perspectives and over-hyped promises.

For any company seeking to establish or improve its customer experience management capabilities, it’s important to dispel these myths once and for all.

Myth #1: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the only metric you need

The customer experience can be broad, long running, it can span channels, and is influenced by any combination of internal and external factors. Attempting to measure it effectively with a single metric such as customer satisfaction or net promoter score is overly simplistic and risky. Effectively managing the customer experience requires effective measurement and management of a portfolio of metrics that will provide a true measure of what is – or is not - working.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of customer advocacy that was the centerpiece of Fred Reichheld’s 2006 book titled ‘The Ultimate Question.’ The net promoter score is calculated by taking the percent of customers who are promoters less the percent of customer who are detractors. Obviously, the higher the resulting number - the better.

While the net promoter score is an effective measure of overall customer advocacy, it will not address all of your potential customer experience management questions. Here’s why:

1. Customer advocacy – or net promoter score - measures only one dimension of the customer experience. Focusing only on a single metric such as net promoter score means ignoring equally important dimensions such as customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. An effective and comprehensive customer experience program must take all of these dimensions into consideration.
2. The net promoter score is only an aggregated measure of the total customer experience. However, the number of factors and touch points that contribute to the overall customer experience can be numerous. Focusing only on an aggregate metric without understanding or managing the contributing factors can yield unpredictable results. Companies seeking to improve their overall customer experience must focus on managing and measuring the underlying events that contribute to an exceptional customer experience.
3. The net promoter score does not necessarily equate to customer action. For example, for every customer that says they would ‘definitely recommend’ the company in a customer survey may not make any actual recommendations. Companies seeking to realize tangible results will need to correlate their NPS ratings with other key business metrics such as new customer additions, increase in profitability, or changes in market share.

While NPS is an important customer experience metric, companies that are looking to establish or improve their customer experience capabilities will need to identify a more robust set of metrics that will measure all dimensions of the customer experience life cycle.

The other myths:

Myth #2 Customer Experience is Just A New Term for Customer Service

Myth #3 Each Channel Should Have a Unique Customer Experience

Myth #4 A Centralized Customer Database Provides a 360-degree View of the Customer

Myth #5 CRM Software = Customer Experience Solution

6 Laws of Customer Experience

Customer Experience Management - like any new exciting business concept - tends to attract a lot of attention. Unfortunately, too much attention can lead to excess noise and confusion as different people and organizations publish different - and sometimes conflicting - perspectives.

To help you cut through the clutter of customer experience management, I recommend that you download and read Bruce Temkin's free eBook titled "The 6 Laws of Customer Experience" that he published on his blog this week.

In "The 6 Laws of Customer Experience," Mr. Temkin identifies 6 fundamental truths about customer experience management which I think you'll find both enlightening and provocative:

1. Every interaction creates a personal reaction.
2. People are instinctively self-centered.
3. Customer familiarity breeds alignment.
4. Unengaged employees don't create engaged customers.
5. Employees do what is measured, incented, and celebrated.
6. You can't fake it.

Download a free copy of "The 6 Laws of Customer Experience."

Got Blueprint?

Customer Experience: Fine Architecture or House of Horrors?

Imagine what would happen if you had dozens of architects and hundreds of contractors all working on your business. Now image if there was no master plan and each individual spoke his or her own unique language. It’s not hard to imagine that you would have something that would resemble the Winchester House - the now-famous 160-room house that was cobbled together over a 38-year span with no master plan. The house is notorious for stairs that go nowhere, doors that open to a 2-story drop, and a maze of rooms, hallways and doorways that can perplex even the most seasoned of navigators.

Losing site of the big picture can happen to even the best of businesses. When short-term business challenges inevitably arise, decisions can be made in haste to address them. Without a master plan, those seemingly innocent decisions can begin to create a burden for the company in the long run. Independent and uncoordinated business initiatives can result in processes that don’t connect, systems that don’t play well with others, and departments that develop their own unique business lingo that is not universally understood by others.

Like the Winchester house, each individual project may seem like the right solution at the time. However, the compound affect of numerous independent and uncoordinated projects and solutions can result in an Achilles heal for the company: True change becomes increasingly hard to accomplish; integration and sharing of key business data slows to a crawl; and enabling cross-functional processes (aka end-to-end processes) becomes nearly impossible to accomplish. Each function may seem content, but the business as a whole can begin to suffer due to inflexibility, knowledge hoarding, and turf wars.

Indicators that your business may suffer from the ‘Winchester House’ syndrome:

1. Process Indicators: Business processes are not well defined or understood and each function prides itself on simply doing whatever is necessary to ‘get the job done,’ even if it requires winging it now and then. Each functional area designs, develops, and manages its own unique processes with little or no sharing of best practices across functional areas.


2. Technology Indicators: Each functional area has its own set of business applications and data. Applications often don’t work well with others and data is not consistent across departments. Key business information is fragmented and stored in multiple locations and collecting data to conduct company-wide analysis is a long, difficult, and largely a manual process.


3. People Indicators: Individual functional areas have very specialized people, and it takes years to train new employees to ‘learn the ropes’ of the business. Employees care only about their functional area, have their own set of performance goals and metrics, and don’t understand how or why other functional areas get things done.

Unfortunately, when companies lose sight of the bigger picture and become a victim of the ‘Winchester House’ syndrome, the customer experience invariably suffers. Customers can be inconvenienced by inconsistencies between touch points, lack of integration between channels, and absence of a meaningful relationship between customer and company. The company’s internal processes, policies, and infrastructure often ‘get in the way’ of providing the customer with what they want; an emotional connection to the company powered by great service.


See the Forest Through the Trees

Businesses that want to avoid this fate can and should establish, adopt, and diligently adhere to an enterprise customer experience blueprint; a holistic model that defines how every component of the company should work together in a seamless and consistent manner to enable and optimize the customer experience. Furthermore, the enterprise blueprint can help a business to develop a detailed master plan for where the business is today and where it is going.

An enterprise blueprint can help any business to avoid the ‘Winchester House’ syndrome by serving as a detailed model for how the customer experience is influenced and enabled by the compilation of people, process, and technology assets. A comprehensive enterprise blueprint will consist of a detailed definition and model for each major component that comprise the business. This model can be invaluable for identifying any current deficiencies as well as charting a future course for the business.

A comprehensive enterprise customer experience blueprint includes several key dimensions:

1. Customer Experience Lifecycle (Customer): A formal definition of the customer experience lifecycle process from the customer’s perspective. The process includes a complete end-to-end view of how customers are attracted, acquired, facilitated, served, and cultivated well after the point of purchase.


2. Enterprise Business Process (Process): A formal and detailed enterprise process model that defines all major processes, sub-processes, and activities that comprise the enterprise. Ideally, the process model should be defined as a hierarchy to allow both low-level analysis and optimization as well as executive-level roll-up of detailed activities into larger process areas.


3. Enterprise Systems Architecture (Technology): A complete information technology model that identifies and defines key IT capabilities, applications, data, and infrastructure. Ideally, the components of the IT architecture model should be expressly linked to the customer, process, and people dimensions of the blueprint.


4. Enterprise Organization Chart (People): An enterprise-wide organization chart that includes an up-to-date definition of the reporting structure, roles, and responsibilities.


5. Enterprise Business Metrics (Value): A standardized definition of all key business metrics that includes a definition of how the metric is calculated and where key data is sourced from in the enterprise.


6. Corporate Strategy (Strategy): A clear and well-defined strategy that sets the long-term goals and directions for the company. The corporate strategy should include components to define specific strategies for areas such as the brand, market, product, service, price, promotion, channel, and customer experience.

Enterprise Blueprint – It Does Your Business Good

Businesses that are seeking clarity to their current and future business environment can develop their own enterprise customer experience blueprint by identifying and analyzing their key business assets:

1. Assemble available business artifacts: Gather all available customer experience processes, business processes, technology architectures, organization structures, business metrics, and strategies that are available for the business.


2. Identify gaps and inconsistencies: Evaluate the existing business artifacts to identify what is missing, where inconsistencies or duplications occur, or where additional detail is lacking for each of the major dimensions (customer, process, people, technology, value, and strategy).


3. Create standard definitions and assemble the blueprint: Create and agree to a common set of standards to accurately define and describe each dimension of the blueprint and close any gaps that are identified. Consolidate and summarize all artifacts into a comprehensive enterprise customer experience blueprint and keep them up to date. Use the blueprint as a management tool to guide the business going forward.

Developing and using a comprehensive blueprint has its benefits; businesses that define and maintain a comprehensive enterprise customer experience blueprint can improve their return on investments, increase productivity, and improve the customer experience:

• Improved ROI: Initiatives that are better aligned with the enterprise blueprint can result in fewer conflicts and duplication of efforts. Furthermore, short-term efforts can be better aligned with long-term goals so that all resources are rowing in the same direction.


• Increased Productivity: Business can run more smoothly and produce more for the same or less effort by leveraging common resources, speaking the same process and business metric language, and by using a common and consistent set of information. Furthermore, businesses can make better decisions based on a more holistic and consistent view of enterprise-wide capabilities, issues, risks, and opportunities.


• Improved Customer Experience: Businesses that have aligned their people, process, and technology components are better equipped to provide meaningful customer experiences. When aligned and consistent, the business infrastructure can serve as a true enabler – rather than a hindrance – to powerful customer experiences.

Executive Summary

Over the course of the lifetime of a business various business challenges, opportunities, and issues will arise and be solved by numerous and seemingly innocent business decisions; decisions that result in new processes, organizational structures, and systems. Without an overarching blueprint to guide these decisions, however, the legacy of various and uncoordinated initiatives can be crippling. As more and more independent decisions are made, the weight of inconsistent processes, duplication of duties, and incompatible systems can burden both the company and the customer.

Business that want to avoid this fate can and should establish, adopt, and diligently adhere to an enterprise customer experience blueprint; a holistic model that defines how every component of the company should work together in a seamless and consistent manner to enable and optimize the customer experience. A comprehensive enterprise customer experience blueprint includes several key dimensions including a 1) Customer Experience Lifecycle Process (Customer), 2) an Enterprise Business Process Model(Process), 3) an Enterprise Systems Architecture (Technology, 4) an Enterprise Organization Chart (People), 5) Enterprise Business Metrics (Value), and 6) a Corporate Strategy (Strategy).

If your business were a house or building, what would it look like to your employees and customers? Would it be structurally sound, open, and inviting? Or would it be cluttered, broken up and difficult to navigate?

Having the right blueprint can make all the difference.

Why Customer Experience Matters Most

Companies have long competed on manufacturing capabilities, innovation, or traditional customer service. But finding new ways to create a differentiated offering in those areas are increasingly difficult to find. As a result, customer experience has emerged as the new battleground to create long, broad and deep customer relationships; relationships which can differentiate your company and deliver significant value to the bottom line.

Strategically, a unique customer experience can differentiate your company in the marketplace. In a marketplace where competitive parity and/or commoditization have set in, customer experience becomes one of the few alternatives for strategic differentiation. Perhaps an over-cited example is Starbuck’s, where they have converted coffee from a commodity into a destination site that plays to customer’s emotions, tastes, and a feeling of prestige – mostly based on a unique customer experience (and some pretty good coffee, too.)

Optimizing the customer experience may sound like another noble cause, but the results can be real. Let’s take a simple example of two truck stops along a major interstate highway that both sell gasoline at the same price. The first station is clean, well lit, and has a pay-at-the-pump features. The second station has paint chipping, a broken sign, and requires that you pre-pay for gasoline. It’s pretty easy to guess that while the second station may have an occasional customer wander in, the first station has more repeat customers and customers who are willing to buy other products and services. Simply put, that means more revenue (more customers for longer) and higher profits (selling more products and services to the same customer for the same attraction costs).

Achieving real results from an improved customer experience is as straight forward as a-b-c. The revenue that you realize from each customer is determined by a) depth, b) breadth, and c) duration of your relationship. Improve upon any of these key factors and you can realize significant results.

The depth of your customer experience is the level of commitment, loyalty, and meaningfulness of your customer relationships. Customer relationship depth can be measured in several ways, but perhaps the most obvious is the frequency of customer visits or transactions. For example, a customer may get his hardware supplies at a local hardware store for smaller items, but shop the big-box hardware store for larger items. Increasing the depth of the relationship means converting those transactions from the other store to yours by delivering a substantially better customer experience.

The breadth of your customer experience is the number of reasons that your customers transact with your company. Customer breadth can be measured by the total portfolio of products or services purchased by each individual customer. For example, the big box retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, and K-mart have all added product lines, such as groceries, to expand the breadth of their relationship with their customers. Their intent: To be the one-stop shop for everything.

The duration of your customer experience is the total time, from first recognition to final defection, that your customer has a relationship with your company. Customer duration can be measured by the total time that a customer has interacted with your company. The value of increasing customer duration is clear; serving your existing customers is almost always more profitable than attracting new ones. In one example during my consulting career, we spent nearly as much on getting the sale than the total sale was worth. Obviously, expensive customer attraction activities are not profitable for your company. Keep the customers you have.

During the initial incubation stages of your project, you shouldn’t expect to have a complete, detailed and final business case. We address that activity in depth in the following chapter. However, establishing the intent of your project based on the potential value gains can help to formulate the vision, goals, and objectives for the project and properly align your executive sponsors’ expectations and support.

We focus on the value associated with improved customer experiences because it matters. It matters to your customers that make a conscious decision every time they choose to spend their dollars. It matters to your company as you seek to increase revenues and profit margin. And it matters to your stakeholders to know that your company has an unbeatable competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Focus on the value of the customer experience – because it matters more than anything.

Taming the Customer Data Beast

Your business is growing; more products & services are being sold to more customers at more locations and across more channels. Behind the scenes, your customer data challenge is growing too; customer data becomes scattered across departments, divisions and locations; your employees can’t access the right information at the right time; and few – if any – data standards exist.

“Let’s build a massive
customer data warehouse
to solve all of our problems,”
shouts your CIO.

On the surface, his approach sounds reasonable. A single centralized database sure would be nice; create a common data repository where anyone in the company could get the most up-t0-date and accurate customer information. By doing so, you could provide better customer service, improve retention, and up-sell or cross-sell more products.

Does it sound too good to be true? It just might be.

Beware The Tar Baby

Building a comprehensive customer data warehouse for any company can be a daunting task. Don’t make the same mistake as Br’er Rabbit in the classic children’s story of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Underestimating the challenges of a customer data warehouse can be a real tar baby; once you stick your hands in it, it’s not easy to get out:

• The existing customer data will likely be in multiple formats that require significant cleansing and standardization.
• Different stakeholders will likely have unique data needs that will need to be reconciled.
• The number, type, and complexity of the customer data attributes that your employees would ‘really like to have’ will grow exponentially.
• Data warehouse solutions often require highly specialized technicians to design, build and maintain the monster on an ongoing basis.
• Your existing customer facing solutions likely won’t play well with a 3rd party data warehouse.
• Once you get the data into the data warehouse, it may be difficult to get it out in an easy, useful, or timely manner.

Despite the inevitable and oft-times obvious challenges with such an endeavor, many companies take on the tar baby and get stuck. Companies can spend a mountain of money to create their own holy grail of customer data. They buy expensive technology and hire highly specialized technicians to nurture and maintain it. The customer data warehouse takes on a life of its own and they lose sight of why they were building it in the first place.

Perhaps you turn to your CIO and ask,
“Now that we’ve built it,
what do we do with it?”

Taming the Beast

To effectively tame the customer data beast, companies must be able to develop and maintain an unrelenting focus on the customer experience. The ultimate customer experience is the ends while customer data is simply the means. Too often, companies can lose sight of the true goal when they’re in the midst of a building a comprehensive customer data warehouse.

To overcome this pitfall, companies should first develop a compelling customer experience strategy and define and optimize their end-to-end customer experience processes. By doing so, any customer data requirements will be framed by how they enable the customer experience strategy and process.

For example, you may all agree that you need to collect and maintain customer demographic information. But before you go through the effort of finding, dissecting, cleansing, migrating, and storing that information, make sure you know how, when and where that information will be utilized throughout your customer experience process.

In order to tame the customer data beast, you must use your customer experience strategy and process as your guide. Building the customer data warehouse without framing it around your customer experience process is a risky endeavor. Instead, your company’s customer experience process requirements should drive your customer data needs, not visa-versa.

Integration is the Key

Perhaps your company already has a customer data warehouse and you are looking for ways to use it more effectively. The key is data integration.

Since the early stages of the computer age, data has been king. Database management systems fetched top dollar and were in high demand. Remember the meteoric rise of Oracle, Sybase, and Informix in the 1990’s? Database administrators were also in high demand, and any individual with this highly specialized skill often fetched a top salary.

But the king has been dethroned.

Move over data, there is a new king and his name is integration. Having timely and accurate data continues to be very important. However, getting the right customer data in the right place and in the right context is how companies today are looking to make a difference:

Data is just data.
Data in context is information.
Information with relevance is knowledge.
And knowledge is power.

Today, companies must consider how to effectively share, move, and synchronize their customer data. Data quality and quantity are table stakes; the real differentiator is how you use it.

Realistically, you can’t have a conversation about customer care, customer service, or customer relationship management without talking about customer data. If you’re serious about becoming more customer centric, you will likely find yourself building a customer data warehouse (if you haven’t already). Before you begin, be aware of the complexities and make sure that you have a clear plan for using the data to effectively enable your end-to-end customer experience.

Secrets To Success In A Soft Economy

Businesses finding it difficult to compete on product, price, placement, or promotion can turn to customer experience management for differentiation.

Lenexa, Kansas – May 1, 2008… With a continuing bleak economic outlook and weakening consumer sentiment, business are looking for an edge anywhere they can get one. Businesses that are finding it difficult to compete on product, price, placement, or promotion in this environment can now turn to customer experience management for differentiation.

Robert G. Howard and ClearBrick LLC introduced today 7 Steps to Customer Experience Domination; a step-by-step guide to help any company to develop and implement a compelling customer experience differentiation strategy. The newly released business solution outlines seven clear steps that can help any business to develop a compelling customer experience strategy, identify opportunities, and translate ideas into actionable results.

In today’s economy, businesses are competing hard to gain any competitive advantage. “By establishing an emotional connection with the customer, businesses can improve loyalty, increase wallet share, improve advocacy, and grow revenue and profits,” said Robert G. Howard, Founder & Chief Executive of ClearBrick LLC. With so much at stake, customer experience management is quickly becoming the new competitive battleground for businesses seeking an edge.

Without a compelling and differentiated customer experience, consumers tend to revert to commodity buying behaviors; the consumer will tend to wait for the next sale or promotion and buy from the lowest bidder with little or no loyalty to any single business. Conversely, customers are willing to pay a premium for goods and services that are emotionally important to them; a phenomenon that was covered in depth in the best selling book Trading Up by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske. To compete in a soft economy, businesses are turning to customer experience management to create that increasingly important emotional connection with their customers.

ClearBrick’s latest business solution helps companies to navigate the complexities associated with customer experience management. 7 Steps to Customer Experience Domination incorporates proven methods into clear and pragmatic recommendations to help businesses to succeed with customer experience management. The solution is highly adaptable and configurable to meet the unique needs of any business. “ClearBrick has the perfect solution for the do-it-yourself project manager trying to resolve a company’s Customer Experience dilemma,” said Jack Bowerman of Bowerman Consulting LLC.

Robert G. Howard is the Founder and Chief Executive of ClearBrick LLC. ClearBrick blends field-proven business experience with timely and relevant market research to create pragmatic solutions that are packaged for execution. ClearBrick can be found online at www.clearbrick.com.

About ClearBrick LLC: ClearBrick was founded by Robert G. Howard in 2006. Mr. Howard is an experienced business advisor and management consultant with over 20 years of experience. ClearBrick is committed to providing quality products and services for the do-it-yourself business professional. ClearBrick is headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas and is supported by business professionals across the United States.

Airlines Miss The Point Of Loyalty

If you’ve picked up any newspaper or business magazine over the past several years, then you know the pain and suffering that the airline industry has been experiencing. Rising fuel costs, aging fleets, employee strikes, price wars, and most recently - maintenance controversies – make for turbulent times. Just ask any of the airlines that have filed for bankruptcy recently.

In the midst of this ugly environment, airlines must do everything in their power to attract and retain customers. Their primary weapon in this never-ending battle for the customer is the embattled frequent flier rewards program. Every airline has one, and each has it’s own set of advantages and fatal flaws.

Apparently, airlines believe that the mere presence of a reward program is enough to get customers to stick around – even when the next price war wages around them. Certainly it works for some customers; there are those neurotic frequent fliers that will schedule their entire lives around their ability to keep their reward miles climbing with their favorite airline. However, I would argue that betting the health of your business on a group of neurotic customers is a shaky strategy.

Airlines simply miss the point of customer loyalty. They do a poor job of attracting the next generation of frequent fliers and do a poor job of catering to former frequent fliers.

New to our airline? Go to the back of the plane please.

First, most airline rewards programs penalize new fliers. If you are a young professional just joining the throngs of frequent fliers – then you have no preferred status with the airlines. That often means loading last, sitting in the back of the plane, and often being relegated to a middle seat that always seems to situated between two unpleasant individuals (feel free to use your imagination here).

“Just keep flying with us for about 25 more segments and you’ll get preferred status,” a smiling airline representative would say to these newbies. After surviving several experiences like that, it’s a wonder that people stick around to get their preferred status at all.

Haven’t flown with us for a while? Go to the back of the plane please.

Being on the other end of the frequent flier spectrum doesn’t work all that well either. I was a notorious frequent flier for nearly 20 years. During that time, I racked up miles and achieved preferred status on several of the major airlines. Specifically, I attained ‘Platinum’ status on American Airlines and was a proud card caring member for most of that time.

I learned recently, however, that my loyalty to American is not reciprocal.
Let me explain. I recently had to travel to Chicago on business and, as a loyal American Airlines customer, I booked a flight on American. But guess what? Despite being a great and loyal customer for years – I now have no preferred status. None. Apparently, since I quit traveling to start up ClearBrick over the past 2 years, I am no longer a loyal customer. American’s rewards program seems to be based on the ‘what have you done for me lately?’ principle. So it’s back to square one for me; back of the plane, last to load, middle seat misery.

“Just keep flying with us for about 25 more segments and you’ll get elite status,” a smiling airline representative would say to me.

Nurturing Commodity Behavior

What most airlines don’t realize is that the rewards programs that are intended to instill loyalty are having an unexpected side effect; they breed commodity behavior. Customers with no preferred status with any airline will tend to exhibit commodity behaviors; they’ll look for the lowest price or wait for the next promotion, then choose the lowest bidder.

As we’ve learned, attaining and retaining elite status with an airline can be difficult and fleeting. Take the rewards programs out of the picture and the customer is left to decide which airline to fly based on a number of very commodity-like attributes. Most airlines fly to and from the same cities, operate the same aircraft, and serve the same snacks and soft drinks. In addition, more and more airlines are merging to attain operating efficiencies, leaving the customer with fewer differentiated alternatives.

Why wouldn’t the customer simply choose the lowest cost option and continue to exhibit commodity behavior?

Breaking the Cycle

Certainly a few airlines have been able to break away from the crowd. Southwest tries to make flying ‘fun’, JetBlue adds amenities, and MidWest offers all first-class seats and a warm chocolate chip cookie. These few outliers seem to get the fact that they need a differentiated experience in order to compete for the ever-important customer.

A truly loyal customer base is not built on elaborate rewards programs or hard to attain preferred status. That’s a point that many airlines seem to miss. Rather, true customer loyalty is built over time – by delivering a unique customer experience.

With no preferred airline status anymore, I guess I’m free to choose any airline for my next flight.

First class seat and a warm chocolate chip cookie anyone?

How Do I Touch Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

Customers come, they buy, and they go. Often, the only lasting impression they leave with your company is a record of the financial transaction. Sure, it would be easy to say that they had a good customer experience. They bought something didn’t they?

But hold on big fellow.

The total number of touch points that the customer encountered goes well beyond the point of sale. Getting your head around all of your company’s touch points – and how your customers navigate them – can mean the difference between customer joy and dispair.

So, how do you touch your customers?



Defining when and where the customer experience begins and ends is perhaps the most difficult task facing any business. Too often, companies define the lifecycle and customer touch points too narrowly, leaving critical elements of the customer experience to chance. Consider a carpet cleaning company who focuses only on the transactions; did the carpet get cleaned or not? They are missing the more important elements of the product (cleaners), service (servicemen), customer contact, appointment scheduling, flexibility, timeliness, and payment options. The carpets may have been cleaned, but the customer could be disgruntled due to a number of these other factors.

So what exactly is a touch point? We define a touch point as any customer interaction or encounter that can influence the customer’s perception of your product, service, or brand. A touch point can be intentional (an advertisement) or unintentional (an unsolicited customer referral). In this era of customer skepticism, often the unintentional touch points matter the most. Which would you trust more: a company’s ad pitch or your best friend’s personal referral for a product? Both are touch points, but one carries much more value than the other.

When your business interacts with a customer, it’s often easy to overlook what is really going on; you are touching them in many, perhaps subtle, ways. When it comes to customer experience management, the right touch can make all the difference. To do it right, you must first identify all of your potential touch points, then work to optimize each one (if possible).

Consider this (short) collection of potential touch points:

Customer Attraction Phase

Touch Point	Description
On-Line Ads	Whether you are using display ads or pay-per-click (PPC) text ads, what you say and how you say it can have a lasting impression on your customers.
Radio Ads	Radio ads, often only 15 to 30 seconds in length, must engage the listener and leave them with a compelling call to action.
Television Ads	Television advertising, which has traditionally been reserved for only the heftiest of advertising budgets, is now becoming more affordable to small & medium sized businesses through firms such as SpotRunner.com.
Print Ads	A tried and true ad approach, print advertising can be an effective – but sometimes costly – approach for promoting your business or products & services.
Direct Mail	Direct mail continues to be a popular way to reach your target customers. When done right, direct mail can be an effective and efficient touch point for attracting customers to your business.
Signage	For brick & mortar businesses, external and internal signage can be an important touch point to cast the right impression and attract customers to your store or office location.
Press Release	The press release is tried and true publicity tool that can represent a highly effective touch point to inform customers about your business.
Sales Representative	Field, floor, door-to-door, or telephone sales representatives all touch your customers in different ways. Understanding and managing this important touch point can have a dramatic impact on customer conversion.

Customer Interaction Phase

Touch Point	Description
Facilities	Whether you are a retail store, bank, hospital, certified public account, or auto repair shop, your facilities will say more about your business than you might think. Don’t just think about your physical building. Consider all factors such as parking, ingress & egress, and signage to your building.
Employees	Each time one of your in-store employees and customer service representatives engages in a dialog, your customers have been touched. As you might expect, not all encounters are the same. Depending on the training, experience, mood, and emotion, each discrete touch point encounter can leave dramatically different impressions.
Product Presentation	Product presentation is often a critical factor in the customers buying process. If the product looks cheap, it probably is. Keep in mind that product packaging can leave an impression well beyond the point of sale.
Store Layout	In the case of retailers or wholesale businesses, the layout of the aisles and checkout lanes can have a dramatic impact on the shopping flow and experience.
On-Line Landing Page	In the on-line world, the landing page is perhaps the most important of all touch points. It represents a major opportunity to engage the customer, inform them of the benefits of your product or service, and convince them to take action.
On-Line Shopping Cart	Not all on-line shopping experiences are created the same. Consider the steps that are necessary for a typical customer to select, pay, and receive their product on-line. Too many steps can leave them with a poor impression.
Point of Sale/Point of Service	For bricks and mortar business, the point of sale gets all the attention. It represents the most tangible touch point where the customer completes the transaction. Loyalty points or rewards can be redeemed, and payment is received. Although it is an important step in the customer experience process, it represents only a small fraction of the total experience.
Point of Service	For service companies, the point of service is typically where the service is performed. For physicians and hospitals, this may be the examing room. For in-home services, it may be the customer’s home. For professional services, it may be the client’s office location. In all cases, the point of service represents a major touch point.
Invoice	For non-cash businesses, the often overlooked invoice can represent an important touch point in the overall customer experience. Does it provide adequate supporting details? Are payment instructions well defined?

Customer Cultivation Phase

Touch Point	Description
Customer Support	When your customer calls, or writes, how will your business respond? The customer support touch point can be influenced by responsiveness, and the degree to which the customer’s problem is quickly – and definitively – resolved.
Alumni Relations	For colleges & universities, alumni relations are critical. Businesses should pay attention. How businesses interact with former employees is also important. Don’t overlook this important touch point.
Newsletter	Newsletters, both print and on-line, can represent an effective way to maintain a dialog with your customers, well after the original transaction.
Blog	Blogs (formerly known as web-logs), are a growing method for individuals and businesses to establish an open dialog with their customers.
Customer Testimonials	What your customers are saying about your product or service is an important touch point. Often these unintentional touch points can have a much greater impact on customer perception that any other.

A typical customer encounter with your company may include numerous interrelated conversations, referrals, or advertisements that influence the customer experience. Each encounter, observation, or influencer touches the customer is some way and contributes to the quality of the customer experience.

Together, the collection of touch points represents the individual notes in your customer experience song. Some touch points may add significant value while others detract from the overall customer experience. Identifying the touch points and understanding their role and contribution to the overarching customer experience process is an important step in mastering the customer experience.

Obviously, you can get significant benefits by optimizing each touch point. Touch points may include different stakeholders or representatives of your company and span all channels. The objective should be to improve the overall ease, convenience, and quality of each customer touch point. By optimizing your touch points, you can increase the transaction amounts of your existing customers, improve customer loyalty, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Touch points, when understood and coordinated effectively, can make a sweet symphony for your customers.

Now go make some music.

Learn how to compete with Customer Experience

More and more businesses every day are recognizing this simple truth: Customer experience management is the next big thing for business. And the stakes are high. Those companies that gain an early customer experience advantage build a strong bond between their business and their customers; a bond that is extremely difficult to break. When it comes to customer experience, the first-mover advantage can be significant. Loyal and happy customers will stay longer, spend more, and remain loyal to companies that emotionally engage them.

Businesses around the world are making customer experience the new competitive battleground! Don’t get left behind. In order to compete - and win - you will need to know why customer experience should become your new #1 business priority.

Learn how to compete with customer experience in this innovative seminar developed by field-proven business experts:

• Learn why companies are making customer experience the new competitive battleground,
• Learn how to develop a process-centric view of the customer experience,
• Learn how to improve your customer value,
• Learn how to avoid key customer experience project pitfalls, and
• Get your questions answered by our panel of experts.
  

This multimedia seminar includes practical strategies and advice that will help you learn how to compete with customer experience management.

This seminar is available for immediate download so that you can participate when and where you want.

*** BONUS OFFER! ***

Purchase the Customer Experience 101 Seminar today and you will receive a complimentary report that teaches you ‘How to Overcome the Top 5 Customer Experience Project Pitfalls.’ This amazing report sells for USD $35.00, but we’ll include it for free when you purchase the Customer Experience 101 Seminar.

We've packed the customer experience 101 seminar with insights, strategies, and advice to help you to learn how to compete with customer experience management.

Get it today and take your first step towards customer experience dominance!

Customer Experience Domination #7

Lesson #7: Measure, Measure, Measure.

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 lesson #6, we described some of the specific methods that you can use to improve your own customer experience.
7. In this lesson, we’ll discuss how to measure the results of your customer experience efforts.
   

In business, you get what you measure. That mantra is true for customer experience management as well; if you want to achieve customer experience domination – you need to know what to measure. In this lesson, we’ll cover some of the most common customer experience performance metrics such as customer satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty.

These customer-centric metrics should be an important part of any business’s key performance indicators. However, for those businesses that want to dig deeper, there are additional performance metrics that you should consider. In this lesson, we’ll discuss some additional metrics and factors that you should consider to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your customer experience process.

The ability to measure your progress and results is the single most important tool for your customer experience efforts. Discover the fundamentals of measuring your customer experience in our latest lesson.

So let's get started...

You’ve heard me rant about the strategic importance of customer experience management. Those companies that get it right will find themselves in the driver’s seat of the new economy. Those that don’t will languish.

Since I began publishing reports, podcasts, and solutions on the subject of customer experience management, I’ve seen a groundswell of interest from businesses around the globe. More and more businesses get it; winning with customer experience can yield significant results! In case you’ve missed some of my earlier rants, here’s just a short list of benefits that your business can achieve by making ecstatic customers by delivering an emotionally engaging customer experience:

• Revenue Enhancement: Satisfied customers will return more often and spend more money with your business. Simply put, happy customers will put more money in your pocket.
• Growth: Emotionally connected customers will tell others about your business, which can help your business to reach new customers and potentially new markets. Happy customers will also give you a better opportunity to try new products and services to expand you potential business offerings. In short, emotionally connected customers can ignite growth.
• Cost Reduction: Very satisfied customers continue to come back and spend their money. They don’t need much prodding – they simply love doing business with you. As a result, your business benefits by getting a greater return on your marketing dollar; less prodding and less reliance on profit-draining promotions means more contributions to your bottom line.
• Customer Retention (Churn): It's a competitive world out there. Chances are, your competition is trying to woo your customers as you read this. Truly happy customers are more likely to stay, thus reducing their potential departure from your business to your competition (aka churn). It costs a lot of money to attract customers. Keeping them happy just makes business sense.
  

With so much at stake, why doesn’t every business commit to a customer-centric business strategy? The answer is simple; most companies don’t know how to measure the attributes of the customer experience in order to make it a tangible asset. As a result, processes that can’t be effectively measured fail to gain strategic importance. Learning to measure the right metrics of your customer experience process can make all the difference.

Step 1: Know What to Measure

Let us start at the highest level. Most often companies will tend to measure the overall customer experience with a handful of overarching metrics. The most common metrics that you should become intimately familiar with include satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty:

• Customer Satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is the degree to which your customers enjoyed their overall customer experience. This measure will often encompass the degree to which your customers were pleased by their perception of, or interaction with, your product, service, value, quality, brand, innovation, support, and overall business relationship. Customer satisfaction is the ultimate customer experience metric, but using just this one overarching metric can mask the individual attributes of the customer experience that dramatically add or detract from an outstanding customer experience.
• Customer Advocacy: Customer advocacy is the degree to which your customers are willing to recommend your business to a friend or colleague. Customer advocacy is often an indication of how willing your customers are to say something positive about your business. As with any business, there will be both supporters and detractors, but the goal should always be to push the overall advocacy scores into increasingly higher territory.
• Customer Loyalty: Customer loyalty is the degree to which your customers will continue to come back to your business on a regular basis. Customer loyalty can be difficult to measure because it can often be interpreted in multiple ways. For example, loyalty can be measured as the total duration that a customer sticks with your business. However, total duration won’t always tell you when or how often your customers may continue to shop your competition. For example, a florist may fill 50% of a customer’s annual flower orders every year. The customer’s loyalty may not be 100% since 50% of their annual floral spend is going somewhere else.
  

If you are just getting started with customer experience management, measuring customer satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty is a great place to start. These customer-centric metrics should be an important part of any business’s key performance indicators. However, for those businesses that want to dig deeper, there are additional performance metrics that you should consider.

To fine-tune your customer experience process, you must dig deeper into each phase of your process to measure what is working well and what needs improving.

Step 2: Dig Deeper into the Key Metrics of Customer Experience

Measuring customer experience doesn't have to be as complicated as a scientific experiment on quantum physics. The trick is to develop an understanding of the key metrics at each point in the customer experience lifecycle:

Attraction: Attraction is the first phase of the customer experience lifecycle. This phase can represent the first time a prospective customer hears about your company. It can also represent the immediate recognition of a physical storefront or product as they pass by. Attraction is that first set of impressions that trigger an emotion in the customer. How do you measure your business' attraction effectiveness? Here are just a few performance metrics that you should consider:

• Impressions: Did your marketing efforts reach the intended audience? With this metric, you should measure the total number of times that your brand or ad messages were presented to prospective customers.
  
  
• Action Rate: The rate at which your prospects actually took action in response to your marketing efforts. Often, you can measure this as the ration of action to impressions. For example, a highway billboard may be seen by 10,000 people each day and yields 100 walk-in customers, representing an action rate of 1%. In the on-line world, this metric is often called the click-through-rate (CTR).
• Conversion Rate: The rate ate which your prospects actually reached a desired goal in your sales process. This may be conversion to a lead, or ultimately conversion to a sale.

Interaction: The interaction phase is you and your customers 'time in the box' together. This is the time when the customer browses your products & services, asks questions, selects products, and checks out. It is your best opportunity to make a great impression. Here are a few performance metrics that you should consider:

• Transaction Amount: This metric is the measure of how much revenue that you realized from each customer.
• Transaction Frequency: The rate at which customers bought from you over a given time period. A coffee shop, for example, would strive to see their customers visit them daily.
• Transaction Efficiency: The overall efficiency of the transaction process as measured in process steps, touch points, and overall duration. In simple terms, this is the measure of how easy it is to do business with you.
  

Cultivation: The cultivation phase is time after your customers experience you and your business. It is the time that they reflect on their experience, tell their friends and family about it, and hopefully, come back again and again. Here are a few performance metrics that you should consider:

• Service Rate: The rate at which your entire customer base utilized your customer service capabilities during a given time frame. For example, if 1 out of every 100 customers contacted customer service, your service rate would be 1%. An increasing service rate would indicate that there is some issue with your customer experience process.
• Resolution Closure Rate: The rate at which any customer question, inquiry, or problem is resolved. For example, if 8 out of every 10 new customer service calls is resolved immediately, the closure rate would be 80%.
• Resolution Efficiency: A measure of the overall efficiency of the problem resolution process. The efficiency rate can be measured in terms of steps, touch points, and duration. For example, a customer question that is answered immediately online is very efficient, whereas, a customer issue that requires multiple phone calls, emails, or service calls would receive a low efficiency rating.
  

Step 3: Look at the Big Picture

So far, we’ve discussed the overall customer experience metrics to consider, as well as additional metrics to measure customer attraction, interaction, and cultivation performance attributes. To get a complete picture of your customer experience landscape, you should also consider digging deeper into your customer’s background, needs, and individual behaviors:

• Customers (who): Dig into your customer base by developing a better understanding of their basic demographic and socio-economic attributes. Not all segments of your customer population may react to your customer experience in the same way. For example, a mother visiting your business with kids in tow will have a different experience than your working professional.
• Wants and Needs (why): Develop a deeper understanding of why your customer came to your business in the first place. For businesses with a broad product or service offering, each individual customer want or need can vary widely. For example, each customer visiting a hardware store may have a unique want or need.
• Channels (where): If your business operates in multiple markets or channels, make sure that you establish metrics to measure how well your customer experience performs across multiple locations or channels. For example, your customer experience may be very different from one location to the next.
• Behaviors (how): Each customer may navigate your touch points in a different manner. Make sure that you establish a mechanism for measuring how well your customer experience rates given different customer scenarios.
  

Now that we’ve discussed a variety of customer experience metrics that you should consider for your business, it’s time to put them to work. In order to be able to measure your progress, we recommend that you benchmark your performance metrics before you begin your customer experience project. This will provide you with a baseline from which you can show improvement.

Once you implement any new customer experience processes or capabilities, you should re-measure and compare the results to the original benchmarks. Make this a habit. The practice of continually measuring where you are and where you’ve been will instill the every-important desire for continual improvement.

There is an old saying in business that you get what you measure. I’ve found this saying to hold true in nearly every instance. If you want customer experience improvement; measure it. If you want to find out where your current process is breaking down, measure it. If you want to achieve customer experience domination, measure it!

That wraps up Lesson #7. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included:

1. Know What to Measure
2. Dig Deeper into the Key Metrics of Customer Experience
3. Look at the Big Picture
   

Congratulations, you’ve now completed our 7 Steps to Customer Experience Domination!

In our 7 Steps to Customer Experience Domination, we covered a lot of ground. We walked through the steps that are necessary to develop a compelling customer experiences strategy. We showed you how to translate those ideas into an action plan and we taught you how to look for customer experience opportunities in your business. We discussed some of the methods for improving your own customer experience capabilities and we’ve taught you about the key metrics from measuring the results of your customer experience efforts.

If you followed each step carefully, then you and your business are well on your way to customer experience domination in your respective industry or market.

If you’ve had success by following our program, we’d love to hear about it!

You can get more ideas, methods, and advice to support your customer experience improvement efforts in our Customer Experience Solution Kit. In our comprehensive solution kit, we provide you with everything you need to get started with your customer experience project. The Customer Experience Solution Kit can help you to:

• Identify key customer experience strategies
• Establish a foundation for your customer experience process
• Identify key touch points
• Diagnose overall customer experience capabilities
• Identify key improvement projects
• Determine project scope and approach
• Plan your customer experience project
• Develop a customer experience business case
• Manage your customer experience improvement project
• Establish a methodology for customer experience management

Learn more about our comprehensive Customer Experience Solution Kit now!

Customer Experience Domination #6

Lesson #6: Improve Your Customer Experience

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.

“Your customer experience should reinforce
your unique value proposition.”

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.

“If your value proposition doesn’t clearly explain why you are better than the competition, you have work to do.”

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.

Customer Experience Domination #5

Lesson #5: Managing Your Customer Experience Project

• 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 lesson #2, we showed you how to translate those ideas into a customer experience action plan.
• In lesson #3, we taught you how to look for customer experience opportunities in your business.
• In lesson #4, we showed you how to develop the customer experience business case.
• In this lesson, we’ll teach you the basics of customer experience project management.

As a business professional, you know that getting results requires vision, discipline, and paying attention to details. Improving your customer experience is no different. Realizing the significant benefits associated with customer experience domination requires sound project management fundamentals.

Project management may not be sexy, exciting, or inspirational, but it is a discipline that when executed effectively can make all the difference between success and failure. I’ve seen far too many companies throw millions of dollars down the drain due to the lack of project management discipline. Customer experience projects are no different; to get the results you desire you will need to master the fundamentals of project management.

In this lesson, I will share with you the basic elements of project management discipline. Incorporate these elements into your customer experience project and you will be well on your way to achieving customer experience domination.

Step 1: Create the Project Workplan

The key management tool for any project is the project workplan. The workplan is a comprehensive plan that identifies the activities that will be conducted over the course of the project and identifies the sequence, timing, interdependencies, and individuals responsible for each activity or task. The workplan should represent the scope of work to be conducted as part of the project.

A common tool for defining, modeling and managing the project workplan is the Gantt chart, which is a graphical representation of the tasks, interdependencies, responsible parties, and progress over time. Additional methods include the PERT chart (Program Evolution Review Technique) and the Critical Path Method (CPM), both of which depict the tasks and interdependencies as a network model.

There are numerous commercially available workplan tools that support the various planning methods. We recommend using one of the available tools to create and manage your project workplan. Perhaps the mostly widely used workplan tool is Microsoft Project. However, an initial project workplan can also be created using simple spreadsheet or flowcharting tools, although they will not provide the built-in project reporting and analysis capabilities that come with most tools.

Get started on your workplan by creating a work breakdown structure (WBS) for your project. The work breakdown structure represents a hierarchical structure for the phases, steps, activities and tasks that make up the project. If you’d like more information on project management techniques, you can get additional resources at the Project Management Institute.

How to Avoid the Top 5 Customer Experience Project Pitfalls

Customer Experience differentiation can generate significant benefits for any company. Unfortunately, many companies fall victim to a common set of customer experience pitfalls and fail to capitalize on their customer experience potential. Successful companies overcome these project pitfalls and are far more likely to realize meaningful and lasting results from their customer experience projects. In our report, 'How to Overcome the Top 5 Customer Experience Project Pifalls', we've assembled the top 5 mistakes that companies make when taking on a customer experience project. We clearly explain each potential pitfall and provide pragmatic advice that will help you to overcome these customer experience project pitfalls. Get your copy today and take a step closer to customer experience domination

Once you define the basic phases, steps, and activities of your workplan, you will need to estimate how long each element will take to complete. Estimating an appropriate timeline for your project can be the most vexing part of the process; despite the best intentions and a heavy dose of scientific forecasting, it seems that often the intangibles will ultimately dictate the project timeline. As a result, it’s often best to define the timeline as a range, rather than an absolute number of weeks or months.

There are numerous methods for trying to evaluate how long you should expect your project to take. A top-down estimation makes an ‘educated guess’ as to how long the project should take. The underlying steps, activities, and tasks are then scheduled to fit into the timeline. If the activities won’t fit the timeline either the scope or timeline is modified and the process is repeated. This forecast accuracy of this method can be poor, but the ability to quickly generate a high-level timeline estimate makes it a good method for preliminary planning.

A bottom-up estimation looks at the individual underlying tasks, resources and interdependencies that, when taken together, add-up to the total estimated project duration. The bottoms-up method requires that the vast majority of project attributes are well defined and understood. Developing the bottoms up method can be tedious and often results in a timeline estimate that far exceeds original estimates. This method, however, results in a more detailed and fact based forecast that is more accurate than the top-down method. However, developing the bottom-up model can be time consuming and difficult.

Both methods have their flaws. In fact, some professional project managers have adopted an informal rule to double any original project timeline estimate to account for the various intangible factors that inevitably affect any project. Needless to say, take your timeline estimate for what it is – an estimate.

In any case, your own project scope, approach and team culture will determine the timeline that is right for you. As a general rule you should try to avoid estimating a project timeline longer than 12 months in duration. Projects that span longer than a year are prone to changes in scope, goals, requirements, personnel, and funding. In short, the longer your project horizon, the less likely it is that you will realize your original project goals and objects.

A preferred approach is to break your overall project into digestible phases that can be completed within three to six months. By doing so, you will have interim project successes and realize potential benefits along the way, if appropriate. Each subsequent phase can then be defined with the most current information. As a result, project phases are more likely to be completed on time and on budget, which makes everyone happy.

Step 2: Plan for Change

Improving your customer experience capabilities will undoubtedly require a fair amount of things to change in your company: responsibility changes, process changes, technology changes, and behavioral changes. Getting there won’t happen by accident. It also won’t happen if you wait until after your project is nearly complete to try and force the new capabilities onto your unknowing, and potentially unwilling, employees. That’s where change leadership comes into play.

Change Leadership is a discipline that focuses on managing the impacts that new business capabilities may have on your organization, and doing it in a manner to ensure that the change takes place in an orderly, yet effective, fashion. We use the term ‘change leadership’ rather than ‘change management’ because effective change occurs when someone is leading, not pushing. Leading means getting people to buy-in to the new concept, it means making it personal for each individual, and it means motivating and/or creating incentives for people to adopt the new capabilities or roles.

Change leadership is not about buying t-shirts or coffee mugs with the project name on them. Change leadership is a combination of effective communications, education & training, and organizational alignment. Before you start your project, make sure that you have a comprehensive plan to address each of these important aspects of change leadership:

1. Assess Change Readiness. Conduct an assessment of your company’s culture and appetite for change. Typically, an organization’s change readiness can be assessed through a formal survey that measures the pace of historical change, the stakeholder’s willingness of change, and the rate of adoption of change. These factors are then evaluated to determine the overall complexity of the change management effort and provide an important input into the communication, training, and organizational alignment planning efforts.
2. Develop a Communication Plan: Develop a communication plan that will identify the method, style and timing of how you will communicate key project messages and accomplishments. This will include identifying the different audiences and potentially different communication plans for each audience. For example, how and when you communicate to your employees will be different than how you communicate to your executive sponsors.
3. Develop a Training Plan: Develop an initial plan up-front for how you will formally train and support your employees. This may include a combination of classroom, hands-on, and self-service models depending on the nature of change you are planning.
4. Develop an Organizational Alignment Plan: Develop a plan to make sure that your entire organization is aligned with the project. That includes the top executives and executive sponsors, as well as the individuals on the project team.
   

Step 3: Assemble the Project Team

It seems that you can’t pick up a business book today without finding a common piece of advice: Get good people. Assembling the right people for your project team should follow that sage advice. Getting the right people will improve your project’s efficiency, effectiveness, and overall chances for success.

But before you can assemble your team, you should define the team structure, roles, and responsibilities that will be required for your project. These elements will help to guide you in finding the right person for the right role on your project team.

Project team structures can come in just about any shape or size. The trick is to create a structure that will work most effectively for your company and project.

The roles and associated responsibilities for your project team should be well defined and understood. Although not every role will be required for every project, consider each one carefully to determine how well it fits your situation. We’ve provided a few of the more critical roles & responsibilities to help you to get started:

• Steering Committee: The role of the steering committee is to provide guidance and advice to the project and serve as a conduit for communicating project status to executive stakeholders. Effective steering committees are actively, not passively, involved in the project and often take on the ultimate responsibility of the project’s funding, scope, and results. The steering committee should be comprised of individuals with the authority and responsibility to make critical decisions for the project. Its members should be cross-functional in nature that includes the executive sponsor, subject matter experts (customer relationship management, customer service, account management), functional representatives (finance, operations, human resources, marketing, information technology, research & development), and stakeholder representatives (customer liaisons, field personnel, vendors, employees).
• Executive Sponsor: The role of the executive sponsor is to serve as the primary individual that is responsible for the project’s outcome. This individual should have enough authority in the company to help resolve key issues and influence key stakeholders. The executive sponsor is responsible for organizing and leading the steering committee meetings.
• Stakeholders: The role of the stakeholders is to effectively represent the interests and insights of their respective area of responsibility. Stakeholders should represent the area of the business that is affected by the project. For example, a call center consolidation project should include stakeholders that represent the customer service agents that will be affected. The stakeholders should be involved throughout the project to take them on the journey rather than simply surprising them with the final solution at the end of the project.
• Project Manager: The role of the project manager is to provide the day-to-day direction and management of the project. This includes the day-to-day coordination and collaboration with the project team, as well as the status reporting and communication that is required to keep the steering committee, executive sponsor, and advisors up to date with the project. The project manager is responsible for establishing and managing the project management governance including risk, issue, workplan, team, and business case management procedures.
  

You can get a comprehensive list of customer experience project roles & responsibilities in our Customer Experience Field Guide titled ‘How to Make your Customers Sing!’

As you create your project team structure and begin to assign individuals to specific roles, there are several factors that you should consider:

• Full time versus part time: Consider whether each role requires full or part time participation. In most cases, full time participation is preferred. If full time participation is not feasible or possible, make sure that you plan for the potential productivity drain that may result of only part time participation. Some project managers use a rule of 50% for part time resources; plan for part time resource to be productive for only half of their participation rate. For example, a resource that participates only 60% of their time realizes 30% productivity over the course of the project.
• Cross-functional representation: If your project will affect multiple functions and/or stakeholders in your company, make sure that your project team reflects the cross-functional nature of the project.
• Double-Hatting: In some cases, a single individual may be able to take responsibility for multiple roles. This practice is called double-hatting; an individual wears a different ‘hat’ for each role they are filling. For example, one individual may serve in the role of both training and communication specialist.
• Authority: As you assemble your project team, make sure that the collective team possesses the appropriate level of authority to resolve issues and make important project decisions. A project team without the appropriate authority often gets bogged down while waiting for key decisions to be made by outside parties.
• Co-location: If your project team members come from multiple locations or departments, it is important to create a single, common project team environment where they can work together. Despite advances in e-mail, messaging, and audio and video conferencing, the value of having your team co-located in the same room can be significant; issues are identified and resolved more quickly, project communication is more effective, and key design considerations can be discussed, debated, and resolved more efficiently.
• Collaborate with Vendors: If your project team consists of external consultants or contractors, make sure that you develop a healthy relationship with them. Make sure that their goals and incentives are aligned with the project and that they blend seamlessly into the project team environment. Avoid the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mindset that can creep into a mixed team environment; a situation that can breed mistrust and other bad behaviors.
• Time Keeping: Keeping track of what each project team member is working on requires an effective time keeping mechanism. In an environment where project hours count against the project budget, effective timekeeping is critical. Establish your project’s clear time keeping policies and procedures up front.
  

Step 4: Assemble the Project Management Plan

Effective project management requires a lot of discipline to track activities, manage budget expenditures, resolve issues, mitigate risks, and keep everyone informed and happy. But don’t let the tools manage you.

Too often, project managers get inundated with the administrative aspects of project management to the point that the project goals get lost in the flurry of paperwork. Don’t over administer. Instead, find a balance that maintains enough discipline for your situation while letting the project team to move forward with the task at hand – delivering the project.

The most effective project managers find a way to balance the administrative nature of project management with the creative energy that is generated by the project team. That balance can be achieved by following some project management best practices:

1. Make the Destination Clear: The destination for any project should be clearly defined, measurable, and easily understood. At project inception, clearly define the factors that prompted you to take the journey, the tangible results you seek to achieve and how you will measure them, and the course and methods that you plan to use to get you there.
2. Be Persistent: Stay focused on the destination and eliminate any unnecessary distractions by being relentless on achieving the project goals, measuring progress against key performance indicators, and resolving issues quickly.
3. Have a Plan: Winging it rarely works – so have a work plan. A work plan is a detailed representation of the overall project approach and should be defined with enough detail to provide any team member with a clear understanding of the project, where things stand, and who’s doing what.
4. Assemble a Great Team: The value of having great people around you in business has been a proven success factor. Assemble a great team of people for your project, get them committed to the project, and empower the team to collaborate to achieve dramatic results.
5. Measure Progress & Results: You get what you measure. So make sure that you measure the important attributes of your project such as cost and benefits, status, and quality.
6. Kill Issues Dead: Project issues can be a pesky thing. Make sure that you have a mechanism in place to identify and resolve issues quickly and completely.
7. Manage the Change: Change won’t happen by itself. Have a plan and pay close attention to who, how and when change will occur.
   

Take these tips into consideration as you assemble the major project management deliverables into a comprehensive Project Management Plan. The Project Management Plan (PMP) will serve as the master plan for your customer experience project.

Step 5: Kick Off Your Project

You are now ready to start your project. In order to do so, you need to make sure that you have your entire team on board with where you are going (goal), how you are going to get there (approach), and why you’re doing it (business case).

Start by having a project kick-off meeting to communicate and discuss all aspects of the projects with all project stakeholders: Executive sponsors, project team members, contractors, vendors, employees, and customers, as appropriate.

The project kick-off not only serves as an important management meeting to mobilize the troops, it also can serve as the initial change leadership communication to set expectations for the journey. Although the project is just beginning, the kick-off meeting can be a critical event that sets the stage and demonstrates management’s commitment to the effort. It’s a time to rally the team, generate excitement, and answer any questions:

1. Paint the Big Picture: When you kick-off your project, you need to provide an overview of what you are trying to accomplish and how you are going to get there. The Customer Experience 'Made Clear' Process Maps are excellent tools for helping get everyone to understand the business issues being addressed and to explain the expected outcome. The Customer Experience Roadmap serves as a visual representation of the project approach including the sequence and timing of when certain activities will occur. Both documents should be used during the project kick-off, and displayed as a reminder throughout the project of what you are trying to accomplish and how you are going to get there.
2. Get Dirty: The kick-off meeting should also be about getting into the details. Discuss the specific elements of the project work plan, business case, and status reporting processes. The kick-off meeting should provide the appropriate details to make everyone comfortable with how the project will be managed going forward.
3. Create Excitement: Perhaps most importantly, create some excitement. In many cases, the project team is taking on additional responsibilities over and above their day-to-day jobs. So make it worth their while. Generate an excitement and make sure that everyone is on board. If appropriate, establish team or individual incentives for participating and completing the project so people can translate what’s in it for them.
   

That wraps up Lesson #5. You are now one step closer to customer experience domination. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included:

1. Create the Project Workplan
2. Plan for Change
3. Assemble the Project Team
4. Assemble the Project Management Plan
5. Kick Off Your Project

Stay tuned for Lesson #6, where we’ll discuss specific examples of how to improve your customer experience.

Customer Experience Domination #4

Lesson #4: Develop the Customer Experience Business Case

• 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 lesson #2, we showed you how to translate those ideas into an action plan.

• In lesson #3, we taught you how to look for customer experience opportunities in your business.

• In this lesson, we’ll show you how to develop that all important customer experience business case.

If you are reading this, then you know that customer experience is important: Good experiences can increase customer loyalty, profitability, and share of the wallet. However, many companies find that quantifying the customer experience business case can be difficult. As a result, their customer experience projects can fail to get funded, be unpredictable, or fail to realize adequate results.

We recommend that you develop a formal customer experience business case that links the project activities to specific value drivers. Then, use the business case as a management tool, not as another pretty document that collects dust on the shelf.

Step 1: Identify Your Value Levers

Before you begin your customer experience project, establish a clear path for how you plan to improve your customer value. Then, align all related stakeholders and other projects to achieving this common goal. By doing so, you can get your organization moving in the same direction.

A clear understanding of customer value can be a powerful motivator and can spur people to contribute to the goal – even if it may not be in their own best short-term interest. In the end, aligning your customer experience project to tangible customer value metrics can help you find your way to customer experience domination.

Finding your customer value involves identifying which direction that you want to take and what results you want to achieve. Sometimes choosing the right direction can be difficult. The tool that we’ve found to be very helpful in connecting the dots between customer experience strategies and business returns is the ClearBrick Customer Value Compass. This tool provides a clear representation of the customer centric revenue-generating and cost-reduction levers that can contribute to total business returns.

Although we’ll cover the basics here, you can get the complete step-by-step explanation of ClearBrick Customer Value Compass in our report called ‘How to Find Your Customer Value’, which you can get here.

Here’s how the value compass can help you to identify your customer value levers. At the center of any customer experience project should be total returns, which represents the net benefit that is realized by your customer experience project. How you achieve those results is accomplished by pulling (or pushing) on one or more of your customer value levers.

Value levers can represent multiple dimension of business value, but for simplicity purposes we have defined two categories of value levers; revenue-generating levers, and cost-reduction levers. For this lesson, we’ll focus on the revenue-generating levers.

For example, there are three major customer value levers that can influence top-line revenue in your business:

1. Increase DEPTH of Relationships: Increasing the depth of your customer relationships equates to increasing your share of the customer’s wallet. That means that the customer will visit you more often, avoid competitive offers, and go out of their way to work with your company. Establishing deeper relationships with your company can be accomplished by improving customer loyalty and by working more closely with your customer to better serve their needs.
2. Increase BREADTH of Relationships: Increasing the breadth of the customer relationship means expanding your customer base or expanding the portfolio of products or services that you sell to your current customers.
3. Increase DURATION of Relationships: Increasing the duration of the customer relationship equates to retaining your existing customers for a longer period of time, resulting in an increase of total transactions over the lifetime of the customer relationship. This can be accomplished by either enhancing customer care or improving overall retention factors.

Clearly identifying your customer value levers and choosing which ones to target is an important step for any customer experience project. Too often, companies miss the mark with their customer experience projects because their customer value goals aren’t clearly defined, well understood, or aligned with other business initiatives. You can avoid this common pitfall by clearly identifying the value levers that will form the foundation of your customer experience project.

Identify which value drivers make the most sense for your business and take one step closer to customer experience domination.

Step 2: Assemble the Business Case

You should now begin to assemble your customer experience business case. The business case is a cash flow model that reflects the project costs and benefits over time. The business case is often used as a litmus test to determine if the project’s return on investment (ROI) is acceptable in light of the potential risks.

The business case should include both tangible and intangible costs and benefits to be achieved by the project. Remember the value levers that we identified in step 1 – they will be used to create the foundation of your business case.

Often, the more details that you can incorporate into the business case, the more accurate the model will be. Value levers can get you started. Value levers can be defined in more detail by outlining the value ‘drivers’ that influence each lever. Value drivers can also be defined in more detail by identifying value activities, and so on, until you get to the lowest level metric that contributes to customer value. Also consider creating business case scenarios such as best case, expected case, and worst case to model potential variances in both cost and benefit factors.

To learn more, get our complete report titled ‘How to Build Your Customer Experience Business Case' now.

As you develop your business case, take into consideration the core factors that will impact the overall value potential for your project:

• Time & Approach: Your project approach will often determine the pace at which resources and funding are consumed. For example, a more aggressive approach may require more resources and funding.
• Resources: Executing projects require resources to get the job done. The primary and most critical resource is often people, but resources may also include the utilization and availability of property, equipment, and systems. Often, but not always, the more resources deployed on the project, the quicker that it can be completed. More resources, however, also equates to more funding.
• Funding: Funding is a key to the other factors of the business case. Funding can determine how many resources can be utilized on the project.

Establishing your business case typically means finding an acceptable balance between time, resources, funding, and scope. It is important to identify up front which of these factors can be flexed, if necessary, once the project is underway. For example, a project that has a hard and fixed timeline must be willing to flex funding and resources to get the job done. Conversely, a project with fixed funding will most likely need to flex the timeline and resources to fit within the budget.

The business case should identify the specific costs and benefits associated with your customer experience project. All estimated costs and benefits should be updated with actual amounts once they are realized. As such, the business case should become a living model that is updated throughout the project.

The purpose of the business case is to weigh the project costs against the anticipated project benefits. Ideally, you want the cumulative project benefits to exceed the costs. Obviously, your goal should be to deliver a profitable project.

A simple and proven method for evaluating the value of your project is to model the cost and benefit cash flows over time. Then calculate the net present value of the net cash flows to determine the Net Present Value (NPV). A higher NPV represents a more profitable project. If the NPV is close to zero, or negative, then you should go back to step 1 to identify additional value levers that could potentially yield better benefits.

Step 3: Use the Business Case as a Management Tool

Many companies realize that the business case is a critical tool to help identify, model, and measure the results of any project. However, many companies fall into a fatal trap; they develop the business case only for project approval – then set it on the shelf to collect dust during the project. Along the way, they may make management decisions that are inconsistent with the business case – and the results are either not measured, or vary significantly from what was planned.

ClearBrick recommends that companies use the business case as a management tool. Keep the business case up to date and review the status of costs and benefits at every project status meeting. By doing so, you can review and gauge your progress against the business case and make the proper adjustments along the way. After all, achieving the results of your business case is a clear way to measure whether or not you’ve reached your goal.

Using the business case as a management tool should be a common practice for all customer experience projects. Companies can use the business case as a management tool by following a few simple tips:

• Align your stakeholders to a common measurable goal. Without a common goal, seemingly unrelated efforts can dilute the potential results of your efforts. Make sure that everyone is aligned to achieving the same goal.
• Modify or expand on the customer value drivers provided. Use the list of customer value drivers provided in the Customer Value Compass to get started. Then expand or customize them to fit your own company’s unique needs and opportunities.
• Create a detailed business case that incorporates tangible customer value benefits. Use the customer value drivers as the foundation of a detailed business case, then measure progress against your business case as a key management tool.

As simple as it sounds, too often customer experience projects miss the mark on improving customer value. If customer value goals either aren’t clearly defined, well understood, or aligned with other business initiatives, customer experience projects can get off track and fail to fully realize their intended results. Improve your results by establishing a clear and common understanding of how you plan to improve your customer value.

That wraps up Lesson #4. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included:

1. Identify Your Value Levers
2. Assemble the Business Case
3. Use the Business Case as a Management Tool

Stay tuned for Lesson #5, where we’ll cover the basics of effective customer experience project management.

Customer Experience Domination #3

Lesson #3: Identify Customer Experience Opportunities

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 lesson #2, we showed you how to translate those ideas into an action plan.

In this lesson, we’ll show you how to look for specific customer experience opportunities in your business. After all, it’s hard to fix it if you don’t know what’s broken.

Step 1: Give Your Customers Some Personality

Whether you’ve just started your company or have been in business for a while, you know that establishing and maintaining a clear value proposition is critical. When your company launched its products and services, there was probably a very clear value proposition that matched the product or service with a specific customer want or need.

Unfortunately, things can change; competing products are introduced, competitors reposition, and customer perceptions shift. Over time, these changes can blur your company’s value proposition to the point that there is no clear value proposition at all. If you ignore these changes, you can find yourself chasing the competitor’s tail or wondering why your sales are flat or declining.

Staying abreast of the ever-changing conditions of the market requires continuous exploration. That means creating a capability to identify and anticipate emerging customer needs more accurately and more quickly than your competitors. Your company will benefit by having more profitable products and services. Your customers will love you for anticipating their wants and needs and being a market leader.

The best way to identify potential opportunities is to develop a more meaningful definition of your ideal customer. A proven and effective way of doing this is to create a detailed set of customer profiles for your business.

Customer profiling can be a powerful tool to help your company better understand and anticipate the needs, actions and preferences of your target customers. This begins by creating a customer profile with enough details to provide your company with the information and insight necessary to become more empathetic with what your customer really wants. Customer profiling is a method for putting a personal touch to major customer segments that you are targeting.

An effective customer profile contains several elements: a) key customer demographic attributes, b) socio-economic attributes, and c) a description of the customer’s perceptions and behaviors. It is also useful to name each profile and attach a representative image, as appropriate, to give each profile a more personal identity. These profiles can then be used to tailor specific products, services, and marketing messages for the unique needs of each profile.

Each customer profile should represent a unique customer dynamic. Evaluate how well your products or services deliver on your brand promise and fulfill their want or need. This is the time to be honest; any gaps that you identify are important to close.
Developing your own customer profiles doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Here’s what I recommend if you are new to customer segmentation:

1. Assemble a master list of customers. Begin by assembling a master list of customers from the appropriate sources in your company. If possible, include transaction or revenue information by customer.
2. Sort your customers into logical groups. Sort your customers into discrete groups based on logical attributes for your business. To keep it manageable, seek to identify 3-5 major groups that represent the majority of your target customer base. For example, you may group by sex, age group, income level, ethnicity, and/or basic needs.
3. Give your segments a personality. For each discrete group, assign a name and short description that describes their typical perceptions and behaviors. This will give each segment a unique personality that will help you to focus specific product & service attributes and marketing messages.

By identifying key segments and assigning a more personal profile to each one, the segments begin to take on their own personality. For example, Segment A may consist of elderly women in the middle income bracket who have an average of 3.5 grandchildren. Not very personal is it? Now, let’s give this segment a personality. We’ll call her Elsie, and describe her as a conservative grandmother who is on a fixed budget but is willing to spend money on unique toys and gifts for her grandchildren.

Now you can begin to incorporate these personalities into your business. How well does your marketing material speak to Elsie? Are your products and services tailored to Elsie? What else can you do to improve Elsie’s customer experience? What is the best channel and medium to stay in contact with Elsie? Answering these questions for each discrete customer profile can be a powerful tool for identifying customer experience improvement opportunities.

Step 2: Identify Where It Hurts

In the software industry, a defect or problem in the software is called a ‘bug’. The quality of any software solution is often judged by the total number of ‘bugs’ encountered by the customer.

The same is true for customer experience quality. Customer experience is adversely affected when things don’t go as planned; when the process doesn’t work as planned, customers get frustrated, confused, or simply give up altogether.

The answer: Apply six sigma principles to your customer experience process.

What is a Six Sigma Customer Experience? Six Sigma is a measure of quality that represents near perfection. Statistically speaking, it means that your customer experience process encounters no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Practically speaking, it means that your customer experience works (nearly) perfectly. Things just work, problems rarely happen, and your customers are very, very happy.

Let’s face it: All too often, we have bad customer experiences. With touch points scattered across channels, new or untrained employees, and geographic separation, too many things can go horribly wrong. It doesn’t have to be that way. The customer experience is a process, so treat it like one.

Great customer experiences don’t happen by accident. Make it intentional. Model it. Redesign it. Optimize it. Measure it. Minimize unexpected variations. Continually improve its quality. By taking a process-centric approach to customer experience, you can be in control of your customer experience process and eliminate the root cause of problems.

You can begin to identify your own customer experience issues and opportunities by clearly defining and analyzing the touch points and scenarios that make up your customer experience:

1. For each stage in the customer experience process, identify the distinct customer facing events or interactions that occur with your customers. Each descrete point of encounter is a touch point.
2. Describe each touch point in detail (who, what, how, where, when).
3. Identify the key stakeholders that may participate in each touch point.
4. Define the touch point characteristics including attributes such as quality, relevance, timeliness, performance, and convenience.
5. Analyze the touch point portfolio to evaluate quality, complexity, and performance. Do certain touch points meet their objective better than others? Which touch points contribute, or detract, from the customer experience?
6. Review or research the target customer group’s buying behaviors, criteria and touch point navigation preferences. Do different customer segments prefer to navigate your touch points differently? Think about the profiles that we developed in Step 1 of this lesson.
7. Define each distinct touch point path as a unique scenario. Does each scenario pose different challenges for your company?
8. Describe the scenario’s characteristics including attributes such as efficiency, convenience, timeliness, consistency, transitions, and simplicity. Are there points in the scenario that break down or are bottlenecks?

Discretely defining your customer touch points and customer scenarios will enable you to take an important step towards becoming more disciplined in customer experience management. Think about which touch points are causing problems; which ones can be eliminated to streamline the process; and which ones are duplicated across multiple locations. Consider which scenarios are preferred most by you customers; and which scenarios often result in lower customer satisfaction. By analyzing the various customer touch points and scenarios, you should begin to identify a laundry list of potential improvement opportunities.

Take what you’ve learned about your customer experience process and begin to think like an exterminator: eliminate the bugs.

Step 3: Listen to Your Customers

So far, what we’ve covered has been somewhat academic. We’ve covered the blocking and tackling aspects of customer experience management. But don’t underestimate the voice of your customer. Make sure that you reach out to your customers and listen to what they have to say. Ideally, getting customer feedback should be a habit, not just a one-time affair. Here a just a few of the proven methods for collecting customer feedback:

1. Focus Groups
2. Direct Mail Surveys
3. Web-Based Dialog (blogs, webinars, emails)
4. Interactive Surveys (in person interviews with the customer)
5. Customer observation
6. Telephone Surveys

What should you ask them? There are literally hundreds of resources available to help you design and conduct customer satisfaction surveys.
Here is a short list of some tried and true questions for your customers:

1. How did you hear about us? (Identify which attraction method worked)
2. How long have you been a customer? (Indicates customer longevity and loyalty)
3. What was the best thing about your customer experience? (Identify the good)
4. What was the worst thing about your customer experience? (Identify the bad)
5. Would you shop with us again? (Gauge ongoing loyalty)
6. Would you recommend us to other people? (Determine degree of advocacy)
7. Why did you choose us over the competition? (Identify your differentiation)
8. How well did the product/service meet your needs? (Determine product/service quality)
9. What one thing should we do differently? (Identify opportunities for improvement)
10. Do you get the value that you expected? (Determine if expectations were met or exceeded)

The feedback that you receive from your customers is invaluable. Incorporate what you learn from your customers into your customer experience into your list of improvement opportunities.

By now, you should have a list of improvement areas from a) your identification of customer profile gaps, b) your assessment of touch points and scenarios, and c) customer feedback.

That wraps up Lesson #3. To recap our lesson, the three steps that we covered included:

1. Give Your Customers Some Personality
2. Identify Where It Hurts
3. Listen To Your Customers

Stay tuned for Lesson #4, where we will help you to develop that all important customer experience business case.

Inside Jobs, February 14, 2008

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. 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:

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.
2. 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.
3. Identify a compelling strategy: Identify and define a compelling strategy and vision. When done right, a provocative strategy can sell itself.
4. Identify compelling results: Numbers can speak louder than words. Do the math to demonstrate the value of delivering a better customer experience.
5. 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:

1. Develop a Common Customer Experience Goal
2. Focus on the Key Metric
3. Get Executive Alignment (Value Proposition)
   

Stay tuned for Lesson #3, when we will dive into the details of how to identify your customer experience areas of opportunity.

Customer Experience Domination #1

Lesson #1: Create a Sense of Urgency

NOTE: You’ve heard me rant about the value that Customer Experience Management can generate for any business. I truly believe that Customer Experience Management (CEM) is the next competitive battleground where businesses will commit vast resources to capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of the ever-elusive customer. Those companies that get it right can establish an emotional connection with their customers that can boost their revenues and profits – even when the economy gets soft. Those that don’t, will languish.

Over my 20-year career, I’ve seen too many businesses miss the mark. I want to see all businesses be wildly successful; especially businesses that may not be able to afford or access world-class consulting services. That’s why I’m providing these courses for free. If you follow everything outlined here, you too can see your business soar.

Before you begin, you must be 100% committed. If you’re not absolutely serious about improving your customer experience, then go back to surfing the Internet or watching YouTube. Only read on if you plan to utilize the valuable information that I am about to provide to you. If you do, you too can capture the incredible power of customer experience management for your business.

Now, on to lesson #1…

If you are involved in a business in any capacity, then you know that in order to get things done – there has to be focus and commitment. Getting that focus and commitment is often easier said than done. Other commitments can distract executives and team members aren’t motivated to go the extra mile. This is the main reason that projects never get started, fall behind schedule, get off track, or fail altogether.

To get your customer experience project off the ground, you must create a compelling sense of urgency.

“Fail to create a compelling sense of urgency
and your project will languish”

Step 1: Identify the Common Customer Experience Management Pitfalls

This year thousands of companies will take on a customer experience project. But with CRM project failure rates reaching as high as 75%, some might ask ‘why bother’? The answer is simple; the benefits of doing it right are significant.

Companies that successfully develop and maintain a unique customer experience are far more likely to have significantly higher customer loyalty and advocacy than their counterparts. Products and services can be replicated, but a unique customer experience can establish a competitive advantage that is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. As a result, the stakes are high and companies will seek to gain a first mover advantage in customer experience regardless of the potential for failure.

Smart companies can improve their chances for success by identifying and overcoming the common pitfalls that besiege many customer experience projects.

My experience has shown that most companies fall victim to five common pitfalls that can spell doom for your customer experience project if not properly managed. They are:

1. Maintaining Inside-Out Thinking: Sticking to the build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy can be a dangerous habit. Learn to overcome this habit and improve your chances for customer experience success.
2. Lack of Ownership: As with any major project, effective leadership can mean the difference between success and failure. Overcome this deadly pitfall by getting the right leaders on board.
3. Losing Touch: Companies can sometimes lose touch with their customers’ wants and needs. Smart companies dig deep, continuously, to understand why and how people buy and use their products and services.
4. Lack of Clarity: Too often, companies define the lifecycle and customer touch points too narrowly – leaving critical elements of the customer experience to chance. . If you can’t develop consensus around what customer experience means to your company, your project will likely languish.
5. Losing Sight of Profitability: Many companies lose site of customer profitability and financial results. If your company doesn’t have a handle on individual customer profitability, your customer experience project will have only mediocre results.

You can learn more about each of these potential pitfalls – and how to overcome them – in our report titled “How to Overcome the Top 5 Customer Experience Project Pitfalls.”

You can purchase this report online by clicking here.

Identifying the common pitfalls is an important first step in creating a sense of urgency for your customer experience project. Presenting business leaders with the grim picture of what can happen with a lack of customer focus can be a powerful motivator.

Step 2: Develop and End-to-End Perspective

If your business is like most, you probably jumped on board the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) bandwagon at the height of its 'hype' in the late 1990's and early 2000's. During that time, I often asked companies if they had implemented CRM in their business and they almost unanimously answered 'yes!' But when I dug deeper, I found that it was often only a partial solution.

"We implemented a new call center solution!" one company would say.

"We optimized our loyalty program!" another would say.

What became painfully clear was that most companies implemented only a point solution to address one finite touch point in their organization. If the project was even remotely successful, which more times than not it wasn't, the company would declare CRM victory and quickly focus their attention to other areas of the business.

They failed to grasp the bigger picture; customer experience is an end-to-end process that begins with customer attraction, flows through interaction, and ends with cultivation – where the process starts over.

A critical first step for any customer experience project should be to map out the entire customer experience lifecycle. By doing so, you and your company can develop a deeper appreciation for how your business appears to, and interacts with, your customer. This exercise is also an important step in identifying the multitude of break points that can detract from the customer experience.

One best practice that I would recommend is to develop two end-to-end processes; 1) a current state (or as-is) process model, and 2) a future state (or to-be) process model. The current state process is a powerful tool to help clearly demonstrate just how bad the customer experience can be today. I’ve seen this tool used effectively to send business executives clamoring for a quick fix. Likewise, the future state process model can be a powerful tool to create a sense of urgency. It can paint the picture of what the customer experience should be like, if everything and everybody worked perfectly together to fulfill the customers’ needs. Together, these process models can quickly demonstrate the missed opportunities in the customer experience lifecycle.

I would highly recommend that you be creative during this process. There are very few people in the world that actually get excited about flowcharts or generic use-case diagrams. Most people need to visualize the process in order to effectively understand it. I’ve found that one of the best ways to do this is to use storyboarding to bring the customer experience process to life.

We have created a set of fully illustrated customer experience process maps for this very reason. Our process maps are colorful and illustrate the path that a customer takes as they progress through the customer experience lifecycle. This modeling concept, also referred to as ‘A Day In The Life’ model, is designed to facilitate meaningful diagnosis and discussion in order to establish consensus about what is, or is not, working.

You can purchase ClearBrick’s fully illustrated process maps here.

You can use these process modeling and diagnostic methods to create a compelling case for changing your customer experience capabilities.

Step 3: Identify a Compelling Strategy

Getting your business motivated and aligned on a customer experience management initiative is perhaps best achieved by identifying a compelling idea or strategy. You need an idea that can differentiate your business in the market. Otherwise, you may find your business being viewed as a simple commodity in the marketplace; an uncomfortable position for nearly any business.

The antidote: be different.

Michael E. Porter defined the differentation strategy as “creating something that is perceived industrywide as being unique.” More importantly, it means creating something that is perceived different in your customer’s mind.

Don’t just jump on the ‘me too’ bandwagon. Work to identify compelling differentiation strategies that will make your customer experience truly unique in the marketplace. Not only will you stand out in your customer’s mind, you’ll be more likely to get your executives on board to commit to the effort.

To get the ball rolling, I recommend that you facilitate brainstorming sessions to identify potential strategies that can help to break your business out of the pack. Coming up with unique ideas can be difficult at times. That’s why we created a series of strategy booklets that serve as thought-starters. Not only do they help to provide a framework for customer experience management, they offer several strategies to help get the thought process rolling.

A few strategies, for example, include:

• Stretch the Box: Look at what your company does for a customer in the context of their total needs network. Then determine if there are areas where you can expand your products and services to fulfill a larger portion of the customers’ needs.
• Be Different: You can differentiate your product or service, your customer experience, or both. Differentiate only one of these dimensions and any gain you experience may be fleeting. Differentiate both and enjoy a lasting and enviable market leadership position.
• Show You Care: Poor customer service is the leading cause of customer defection. Keep more customers for longer by showing them you care. Don’t let policy or procedures get in the way of truly meeting the customers needs.
• Do the Dance: Every customer experience is made up of a series of touch points. The customer scenario represents the unique path that a customer may take while navigating your touch points. Becoming a master at customer scenario management can make all the difference between customer experience success and failure.
• Be An Exterminator: Take a Six Sigma approach to customer experience management. Six Sigma is a measure of quality that represents near perfection. A Six Sigma approach focuses on identifying and eliminating customer experience ‘defects’ in an ongoing effort to achieve customer experience perfection.

Identifying which customer experience strategy is most appropriate for your business is entirely up to you. However, I recommend that you look around to see what other best practices might fit in your business. Gathering ideas from other industries can often provide an interesting perspective.

We offer a number of potential strategy thought-starters in our strategy booklets that can be purchased online and downloaded immediately.

You can get started with your own customer experience strategy by downloading them here:

1. Five Customer Strategies That Can Work For Your Business (Free)
2. Make Your Customer Sing! Tips for Improving Your Customer Experience
3. Get Attractive: Tips for Improving Your Customer Attraction Capabilities
4. Get in Touch: Tips for Improving Your Customer Interaction Capabilities
5. Cultivate What You Sow: Tips for Improving Your Customer Cultivation Capabilities

Step 4: Identify Compelling Results

By now, you should have developed your end-to-end customer experience process and identified your unique customer experience strategy. Now, it’s time to demonstrate the tangible value that your business can achieve by implementing on that strategy by creating your customer experience business case.

Certainly, by now you realize that customer experience is important: Good experiences can increase customer loyalty, profitability, and share of the wallet. Unfortunately, many companies treat the customer experience as more art than science – and art can be difficult to quantify and measure. As a result, companies tend to rely on customer satisfaction, opinion and perspective as a surrogate for measuring the quality or effectiveness of the customer experience. However, demonstrating the return on customer satisfaction can be difficult – leaving many projects to conclude with few – if any – tangible results.

Companies can yield better results from their customer experience projects by linking the art and science of customer experience in a formal business case.

Companies can yield better results from their customer experience projects by linking the art and science of customer experience in a formal business case. An effective customer experience business case must link the art of customer experience with the science of traditional financial metrics such as revenues, profit, and cash flow.

To assist companies with this linkage, we developed the Customer Value Compass; a tool that links customer experience activities and initiatives to tangible value drivers. By doing so, the art and science of the customer experience can be more readily modeled in a formal business case.

Companies often recognize that customers are their most valuable assets. Maximizing the value of those assets, however, requires a keen understanding of what the customer values and how specific actions by the company can improve total customer returns. Companies with the discipline to identify and improve their specific customer value levers will realize a higher return on investment for their customer experience projects.

Identifying which customer value lever to improve can be unique to each customer, company, industry and marketplace situation. ClearBrick developed the Customer Value Compass to help companies to navigate their way to customer value. You can use the value compass to create the framework for your own business case.

You can get our complete guide on how to build your customer experience business case here.

I think it goes without saying that numbers can often speak louder than words. A business case that outlines specific attainable results can be the most compelling argument for improving your business case. Business leaders often speak the language of money and speaking their language can quickly get the ball rolling.

If you missed my earlier article on the compelling value of customer experience management, you can read it here.

Go ahead, make your case. Your business leaders would be fools to ignore the cold hard facts; customer experience can yield significant results.

That wraps up lesson #1. To recap our lesson, the four steps we covered included:

Step 1: Identify the Common Customer Experience Management Pitfalls
Step 2: Establish an End-to-End Perspective
Step 3: Develop a Compelling Strategy.
Step 4: Identify Compelling Results.

Stay tuned for Lesson #2, which will provide you with the next step in the customer experience journey, is titled “Define the Customer Experience Vision”

Inside Jobs, February 6, 2008

Multichannel and On-Line Retailers Top the Customer Experience Survey

The National Retail Federation (NRF) announced this week at the NRF convention in NYC the results of their 2008 NRF Customer Experience Survey. This year, on-Line retailers dominate the top spots with LL. Bean, Zappos.com, Amazon.com, and Overstock.com taking the top 4 spots respectively. Multi-channel retailers (those with both on-line and physical store locations) also did well, with Blair (#5), Lands’ End (#6), Coldwater Creek (#7), Nordstrom (#8), and Lane Bryant (#9) taking spots in the top 10.

L.L. Bean Number One in Customer Service, According to NRF Foundation /American Express Survey

Increasingly in a multichannel world, customer experience is the differentiator. The problem is, however, that operating across multiple channels is increasingly difficult to serve the customer in a consistent manner... Regardless, this year's survey results demonstrate that it IS possible and that leading companies are doing well in customer service despite the increased complexity of the evolving multichannel retail operating model.

Inside Jobs, January 10, 2008

Is Your Business World Flat?

Perhaps you’ve heard the term ‘360 degree view of your customer.’ It’s a business term to describe the ability to identify and understand all aspects of a customer’s attributes, wants, and needs regardless of the channel. So if there are indeed 360 degrees to every customer – we must assume that they are round (metaphorically speaking, of course.)

But how does the customer view your business? Is it round or flat?
The answer may depend on the laws of customer relationship physics.

Physics and the Customer Relationship

It took a simple apple falling from a tree for Sir Isaac Newton to recognize that some force was in action. Soon, he had proven that there was a force – called gravity – that constantly pulled on all things in our world. He eventually determined that if gravity were constant around our large round world that an object traveling at the right velocity could orbit the planet – much like the moon!

The next time you look up at the moon, covet her. For the earth is your business and the moon is your best customer. You may not know where she came from or how she got there, but she keeps coming back like clockwork. She is extremely loyal, doesn’t complain, and never ever asks for a refund. Every business should yearn for a few more moons.

Unfortunately, the typical customer relationship is a bit more complex than the moon. To expand our physics analogy, consider your customer; he or she is a body of mass sitting motionless out in space. As a physics refresher – that body of mass won’t move itself. It requires a force to get it moving. That’s where socioeconomic and other forces come into play. Hunger, for example, is a powerful force and will drive customers to the grocery store or restaurant. Socioeconomic factors can push customers into the market for homes, cars, appliances, health care, or other services. The force can be slight (‘Oh, I’m just browsing’) or it can be extreme (‘I’ve just gotta have that now at any price!’).

As a business, you are the earth that hopes it has enough gravitational pull to capture those customers that may be hurtling towards a purchase. The problem, or course, is that there are plenty of other businesses out there competing for the same customer. Typically, the business with the greatest pull will win the business.

Does your business have the right stuff?

The Customer’s Flight Path

So what does physics possibly have to do with your customers and your business? Plenty. A customer in motion is a customer with a want or need that could be fulfilled by your business. If your business world is flat, you’ll lack the pull to capture the customer and they’ll just continue on their path. Apply the right force, however, and you can begin to influence their purchase decision.

The difference, of course, is that gravity is a constant force – regardless of where you stand on the earth. Business forces are quite inconsistent; some touch-points work well while others may send your customers flying away into the market universe.

Apply the right amount of force consistently, however, and the customer may orbit the business for eternity (much like the moon orbits the earth). Miss your opportunity and the customer could behave like a meteor – flying by the business only once – never to be seen or heard from again.

The Fly By
A customer that is in the market for a product or service is a customer in motion. Likely, that customer will continue on her path until the want or need is fulfilled or expires. Often a business will only get one opportunity to capture her attention.

For example, a drop in interest rates may prompt a customer to consider refinancing her home mortgage. This force puts the customer in motion and she may start by researching interest rates online. During that process, she will be exposed to a dozens of potential home loan providers. She may utilize a few of their web sites to get information, but without the appropriate pull, she will simply fly by – never to be heard from again.

Many companies understand this fly-by dynamic and are increasingly requiring customers to enter basic identifying information prior to providing them with product information. By doing so, the business can establish a dialog with the customer to encourage them to come back for a closer look.

The One-and-Done Customer

Many businesses will work tirelessly just to get the customer in the proverbial door. They’ll work even harder to convert that customer into a sale. Unfortunately, many businesses spend all of their time and effort on the sale and neglect the potential that a repeat customer represents. As a result, they may spend all of their efforts trying to attract new customers, but then let them slip away out the back door. Their customer pull may be great up front but weak in the end. Using our analogy of customer physics, that means that the customer will often just keep moving on.

Consider a first-time prospect; they may linger a little longer and take in more than one perspective of your business. If you make the right impression, you just might influence their decision and even ultimately convert them into a sale. But businesses that don’t over deliver and cultivate the relationship can have a customer that is simply one-and-done. First impressions can be hard to overcome, so make sure that yours is a good one.

For example, the customer looking to refinance their mortgage already has an account with a mortgage firm. It may be a strong and reputable firm, but without an effective cultivation and differentiation strategy, the current mortgage firm may lose its existing customers when they look to refinance.

Businesses that understand this relationship dynamic will work to keep their current customers. They maintain an active dialog, create a sense of membership, and offer incentives for sticking around. Without applying an effective and consistent retention force, the customer relationship is vulnerable to the next competitor trying to lure your customers away. And that can lead to customer relationships that are like a meteor – they are one and done.

The Repeat Customer

The holy grail of any business is the repeat customer. Any customer that is willing to stick around can be worth their weight in gold. Keeping your customers around doesn’t happen by accident. Businesses must apply a constant force at every possible touch point. To be effective, businesses should understand two important dynamics of the repeat customer relationship.

First, customers in the pre-sale mode may orbit your business multiple times before deciding to buy. During this phase of the decision making process, business should realize that some customers may require up to 5-7 interactions before they make up their mind. There is a correlation between the type and complexity of the product or service you are selling and the number of pre-sales contacts that may be required.

In this pre-sales phase, many businesses make the mistake of believing that their world is flat; they make only one contact or impression. If there is no sale, they assume the customer either isn’t qualified or interested and they give up. However, this is where persistence can pay off. Continuing the dialog can keep the customer interested and improve your chances for winning the business.

The second dynamic that businesses need to understand is the cultivation cycle. Take a customer that hires a contractor to do some repairs on their house. The contractor does a good job and the customer pays promptly. Businesses that truly value their customers will work to cultivate the relationship. Perhaps the customer – or their friends and neighbors - will have other home improvement projects in the future. It is in the contractor’s best interest to maintain a relationship that could help to circumvent the entire pre-sales cycle altogether. Ideally, the customer will become a loyal customer – and will avoid looking at other contractors.

The cultivation cycle is perhaps the most overlooked element in the entire customer relationship. Many businesses continue to spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to attract new customers, rather than maintaining their existing relationships. In order to maintain the customer relationship orbit, the force must be applied equally across the entire customer experience lifecycle.

Newton Had It Right

Sir Isaac Newton knew that there was something at play when the proverbial apple fell from the tree. His study of how the force of gravity affects other objects provides us with some insightful perspectives of how customers interact with businesses. Perhaps the law of physics does closely resemble our customer relationships.

Some businesses may indeed appear flat to their customers. The customer may encounter the business, see that there isn’t much to it, and disappear over the edge of the world never to be heard from again.

Businesses should know better.

Your business world is indeed round. Customers will look at your business from many different angles. They may even orbit a few times before they decide whether or not to buy your products or services. Or they may slingshot by – like a meteor - inquiring once but never to be heard from again.

What do you think; is your business world still flat?

Don't Improve Customer Service!

Don't improve your customer service. You'd be spending your precious time and resources in the wrong place. Now don't get me wrong, customer service is an important aspect of any business. Customer service, however, is only a minuscule piece of the bigger picture that you should be worrying about.

Let me explain. Would you focus on the front door while the rest of the house was falling down? Hopefully not. Customer service is only a component - a small component - of your company's overall customer experience lifecycle. This is an important distinction to understand when comparing customer service vs. customer experience. Often we see these two terms used synonymously which is a mistake.

Customer service may represent a subset of potential touch points: a receptionist, a call center representative, or a restaurant waiter or waitress. Each touch point does provide a significant contribution to how each customer is treated. However, even the best customer service won't rectify an otherwise flawed customer experience. The customer experience, however, encompasses all customer service touch points that can extend from the customer's first impression to their ultimate defection.

If, for example, you have attended a professional football game in a season when your home team is struggling, it can be painful to watch. The price of a ticket and a parking pass is expensive. The stadium can be crowded and cold and the fans can be in a foul mood. Although the person behind the concession counter delivers great customer service, the overall experience can be a disappointment.

Companies that are serious about being more customer-centric, or are determined to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, should instead focus their time and resources on the bigger picture; fix the customer experience. Granted, customer experience management is a much bigger issue. It requires a keen understanding of the customer, a maniacal focus on end-to-end process perfection, and an innate paranoia that will never let you rest on your laurels.

Customer experience management is not for the weak or faint of heart. It is not an improvement initiative that can be delegated to that other department. It requires the re-mapping of a company's DNA to be completely customer centric, to elevate the customer experience process to the same or higher levels than finance or operations, and to be willing to listen and respond to customer feedback.

Simply put, mastering the customer experience is not easy. But it is quickly becoming critically important in a business environment where price, product, and promotion just won't cut it anymore.

If you want your business to survive and grow, don't improve customer service. Improve your customer experience instead.

Customer Experience Kit Sneak Peek Part 3

What can the Customer Experience Solution Kit do for you?

In part 3 of our sneak peak series, we'll show you how to manage and implement your own customer experience improvement project.

Watch this exclusive sneak peak now!



See what else is inside the Customer Experience Solution Kit!

THE SNEAK PEEK SERIES:

1. Part 1: How Do I Analyze & Clearly Understand my Customer Experience Problem?
2. Part 2: How Do I Identify & Plan What Needs to Get Done?
3. Part 3: How Do I Implement a Customer Experience Solution for my Business?
   

Customer Experience Kit Sneak Peek Part 2

What can the Customer Experience Solution Kit do for you?

In part 2 of our sneak peak series, we answer the question "How do I identify and plan what needs to get done?"

Watch this exclusive sneak peak now!



See what else is inside the Customer Experience Solution Kit!

THE SNEAK PEEK SERIES:

1. Part 1: How Do I Analyze & Clearly Understand my Customer Experience Problem?
2. Part 2: How Do I Identify & Plan What Needs to Get Done?
3. Part 3: How Do I Implement a Customer Experience Solution for my Business?
   

Customer Experience Kit Sneak Peek Part 1

What can the Customer Experience Solution Kit do for you? Find out in this exclusive sneak peak!



Check out what else is inside the Customer Experience Solution Kit.

THE SNEAK PEEK SERIES:

1. Part 1: How Do I Analyze & Clearly Understand my Customer Experience Problem?
2. Part 2: How Do I Identify & Plan What Needs to Get Done?
3. Part 3: How Do I Implement a Customer Experience Solution for my Business?

Three Key Cross-Channel Trends

If you’ve listened to your customers – or attended a retail industry conference - over the past five years, then you know that cross-channel retailing continues to be a hot topic. Not only are more and more Americans going online, but a growing percent of them use the Internet to research and purchase products. Retailers can no longer fudge their online experience; customer expectations for online customer service levels are also rising.

All businesses should take note. Although the impact of cross-channel buying behaviors is most prevalent in the retail industry, it is a trend that will increasingly impact all businesses in nearly every industry.

1. More Consumers Are Going Online

In the late 1990’s, the era of irrational exuberance was in full form. Internet companies of all kinds promised to change the world with their latest e-product, e-exchange, or e-service. You may recall that stock prices for just about any e-Business climbed to unprecedented (and apparently unfounded) heights. It all came crashing down as the now infamous dot-com bubble burst.

Although many investors turned their backs on dot-com companies as a result, consumers did not; the number of people surfing and shopping online has continued to climb. Today, an impressive 73% of adult Americans use the Internet, according to the Pew Internet Project. Not only is the total number of on-line surfers steady and growing, but the amount of time they spend online is also increasing. Those numbers will only continue to increase as today’s well-connected teenagers grow into tomorrow’s prospective customers. Today’s teenagers age 12-17 are even more connected than their adult counterparts, with 87% of teenagers going online according to the Pew Internet Project.

The importance of the Internet in everyday life also continues to climb. From product research to social networking or from news & entertainment to health care research, today’s consumers are increasingly looking to the online channel. It’s becoming hard to avoid it. In 2007, 47% of adult Americans have a broadband Internet connection at home, according to the Pew Internet Project. Most working adults have a computer on their desk that can access the Internet, and many mobile telephones now have web access on their tiny screens. Furthermore, Wi-Fi connections are becoming as common as your local Starbuck’s store and cable operators continue to look for ways to integrate Internet access with traditional television service.

Any business that turned their back on the Internet as a result of the dot-com collapse in 2001 has in effect, turned their back on their customers. Although many early dot-com businesses collapsed, some in spectacular fashion, it has not dissuaded the lure of the online experience. As more potential customers are going online, businesses should take note. Without a viable Internet presence, your business is missing out.

Key Trend: If you think you can afford to ignore the Internet channel; think again. 73% of adult Americans, and 87% of teenagers, are online today.

2. More Are Using The Internet to Research and Shop

As more and more adults are going online, a growing percent of them use the Internet to research and purchase products. Over 70% of all online consumers use the Internet to research products, according to Forrester Research. That translates into $400 Billion of store sales – or 16% of total retail sales – that are directly influenced by the web as consumers research online and buy offline; a trend that is forecast to grow at a compounded annual rate of 17% through 2012 according to Forrester Research.


The influence of the Internet on retail transactions could have an even bigger impact. By 2009, 41% of all U.S. retail transactions will be influenced by online experiences, according to Jupiter Research.

The Fortune 500™ rankings are further proof that the Internet should be a strategic channel for any retailer. Pure Internet companies Amazon and eBay have passed some well known traditional retailers in the rankings. According to Fortune’s 2007 rankings, Amazon has passed notables Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Limited in total revenues. eBay has passed other well-known brands including Bed Bath & Beyond, Molson Coors, and Ross Stores.

Regardless of how you slice it, the impact of the Internet on retail transactions will make up a sizeable component of how consumers research and buy products.

Key Trend: Consumers are increasingly using the Internet channel to research and purchase products. Over 70% of all online consumers use the Internet to research products. By 2009, 41% of all U.S. retail transactions will be influenced by online experiences.

3. Expectations are Rising

As adults become more comfortable with the Internet, their expectations for their online experience are increasing. In fact, 85% of adults expect their online service levels to be the same as offline, an increase of 3% from the prior year, according to a survey conducted by Tealeaf. If those service level expectations aren’t met, 40% of online consumers will abandon their transactions entirely or turn to a competitor according to the Tealeaf survey.

The online world has also become a key influencer in purchasing decisions. An impressive 43% of American adults identified online information as the most powerful influencer of their purchase decisions according to a report published by Accenture.

The large majority of adults now expect to be able to choose from a multiple shopping channels. In fact, 80% of consumers feel that it is important to have a choice of shopping in multiple channels when choosing a retailer, according to a Sterling Commerce survey. The survey also found that 90% said it was important to be able to return an item purchased online in a physical store; underlying the importance of cross-channel integration to the consumer.

While the retail industry seems to have embraced the Internet with online catalogs, promotions, and interactive product selectors, other industries should take note. The impact of the Internet on buying decisions is here to stay. Here at ClearBrick, we anticipate that cross-channel integration will become an increasingly important element in other industries as well. The highly fragmented health care industry – for example – will likely see an increasing demand for integrated online and offline services including scheduling, diagnosis, insurance claims, and the holy grail of health care - medical records.

Key Trend: Customers’ expectations for shopping across multiple channels is increasing.

• 85% of adults expect their online service levels to be the same as offline.
• 43% identified online information as the most powerful influencer of their purchase decision.
• 80% feel it is important to have a choice of shopping across multiple channels when choosing a retailer.
• 90% said it was important to be able to return an item purchased online in a physical store.
  

Recommendations

The Internet is not just for retailers anymore. As adults become increasingly comfortable with the Internet, they grow more reliant it for their purchasing decisions. Any business that does not have a viable Internet presence needs to catch up. Simply putting up a web page is not enough. Businesses should seek to create an online experience that mirrors – or exceeds – offline service levels.

Integration is key. Online and offline channels should not be treated as independent and disconnected offerings. Creating a seamless experience between online and offline channels is very important. Customers overwhelmingly expect a seamless customer experience between online and offline channels. Start by making your business web site functional – not just informational. Offer a way for customers to initiate or complete a transaction online and coordinate that experience with corresponding offline services.

Although the dot-com era as we know it may have died in 2001, the Internet has continued to grow into a business channel that businesses can no longer ignore or neglect.

Inside Jobs, October 10, 2007

How Well Do You Really Know Your Customer?

The basics of customer information and how to use it.

How well you know your customers can go a long way in determining the long-term success of your business. Regardless of your industry, knowing your customer comes down to how well you collect, manage, and use the right customer information.

Granted, each industry and individual business is different. The amount and level of detailed customer information will differ depending on the type of business and market approach. For example, a mass-market retailer such as a grocery store may not have access to individual customer identifiers such as name or address. As a result, they may rely more heavily on aggregated customer information that provides basic demographic data. On the other hand, highly personalized service businesses such as specialized health care providers or management consulting firms will typically have very detailed customer information.


Regardless of your business model or industry, being able utilize current and accurate customer information can help to focus marketing efforts, personalize the customer experience, and anticipate shifts in trends and tastes. When it comes to customer relationship management, customer information is king. It all comes down to how well you collect, manage, and use the right customer information.

CUSTOMER INFORMATION 101

Customer information can come from many sources and in many forms. Here are some customer information basics that any business should know and maintain:

1. Contact Information: Contact information is the basic information that identifies the customer. Examples include name, address, email address, telephone number, billing information, shipping information.
2. Demographics: Demographics represent data attributes that provide factual information about the customer. Examples include age, race, sex, marital status, age, number of children, income, education, employment status, location, etc.
3. Socio-Economic Data: Socio-economic data identifies the connection between social and economic factors. Examples include the correlation of demographic data or changes in economic factors - such as a recession - on individual buying behaviors.

TIPS:

• Collecting customer information should be an evolution. Don’t try to collect it all up front. For example, to get a customer lead you may only ask for a name and email address. Then when an order is placed, you can collect additional information such as address, telephone, and payment information.
• For mass-marketing companies, credit card providers can have a very rich source of customer spending information that can help you understand your share of wallet, key demographics, and spending trends.
• Privacy Rules: If you collect customer information, make certain that you take every possible precaution to properly secure it and maintain privacy. A customer information security lapse is a quick way to lose credibility and trust in the marketplace.

INTERACTION DATA 101

Customer interaction data can be just as powerful, if not more so, than customer information. Here are some basic customer interaction data categories that every business should know and maintain:

1. Contact History: Contact history provides the details of all outbound communication for each customer. Examples include emails, telephone calls, sales letters, newsletters, proposals, etc.
2. Transaction History: Transaction history includes the details of each transaction performed for each customer. Examples include purchases, refunds, returns, etc.
3. Interaction History: Interaction history provides the details of all inbound communications for each customer. Often combined with contact history, examples include service, support, information, quotation, and other requests initiated by the customer.

TIPS:

• Develop and follow a customer response policy. For example, be sure to respond to any incoming customer inquiry or request within 24-48 hours. Customers can quickly get turned off by any business that isn’t responsive to their requests.
• Know your transaction history. Make sure that you know what product or service your customers bought from you before you contact them. You don’t want to look foolish by trying to sell the same product that the customer just bought from you last month.
• Persistence matters. Don’t just assume that since you’ve contacted a customer once that your job is done. Often, a customer lead that is contacted multiple times is more likely to convert into a sale.

CUSTOMER INFORMATION: USE IT OR LOSE IT

Collecting customer information is obviously important. What you do with it is critical. If you don’t use it, you may lose it. Customers come and go and their contact information often changes. Therefore, you may only have a limited amount of time to make the most of your customer information:

1. Get Feedback. Customer feedback can be the single most important piece of information that you can attain. Leverage your customer information to establish a continuous product or service feedback loop. Then, incorporate what you learn into your next generation product or service.
2. Follow-up. Don’t just sell and forget. Make sure that you have an effective customer follow-up program to keep your customer contacts current. Often, selling follow-on products or services to existing customers is easier, and more profitable, than acquiring new customers.
3. Focus on Conversion. Collecting customer lead information is an important first step. But don’t just focus on volume; Make sure that everything you do is focused on converting people into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.

MANAGING CUSTOMER INFORMATION

Customer information is one of your most important business assets. The more you can collect, manage, and utilize – the better. But customer information can also be a fickle thing. Customers move. They change jobs. They change their mobile phone numbers and email addresses. Customer information can seem at times to be in a constant state of flux. To manage this properly, you need to get disciplined about customer information management. Consider establishing a process and assign responsibility for regularly collecting, cleaning, validating, and updating your customer information. Remember, when it comes to customer information – the rule of ‘garbage in. garbage out’ definitely applies.

There are obviously many ways you can store your customer information. Whether you utilize an electronic spreadsheet, or a robust customer relationship management (CRM) solution, make customer information the central focus of your customer strategies. Don’t just collect customer data for the sake of it. Make the most of it. After all, data is just data. But data with relevance is information. And customer information is power.

Go ahead and ask yourself, ‘How well do I really know my customer?’

"Hi, How May I Offend You Today?"

As an American consumer, chances are that you have been offended in some way by a company this year. It hasn’t always been that way. Before the current era of mass-everything, there was a real connection between proprietor and customer: a connection that continues to be the envy of most businesses today.

Let me take you back to a time when the customer and business had a real – not artificial - relationship.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

“Jim was spending a typical fall Saturday working on a never-ending list of home repair projects. Ever since he bought the little two-story fixer-upper, he has been a regular down at the corner hardware store. Earl, the sole proprietor, was from the old school. He didn’t believe in fancy systems or gimmicks; he just liked helping his fellow neighbors. Earl knew everyone by name, and as any good businessperson should – he knew what one of his best customers, Jim, was up to today.

When Jim walked in the door, Earl recognized him like an old friend and immediately asked him about his latest project. Within minutes, Earl had found just the right product and tool that would help Jim get the job done. Earl made a sale as well as a very happy customer.”

That scenario just doesn’t happen often enough anymore does it? Perhaps it was easier back before quaint neighborhood stores were overrun by the big-box retailers and the mass-production of, well, everything. Neighborhood storeowners developed real relationships with their customers; not a relationship defined by a customer record stored in some computer database.

BAD SERVICE - MASS PRODUCED

Unfortunately, in today’s environment of mass-produced products and services, companies rely too heavily on a rapidly changing employee base, and a less than adequate customer database. As a result, it’s far too easy – and common – for companies to offend their customers.

If we were to replay Jim’s scenario in today’s environment, it might go something like this:

“Jim jumped in his car for the second time this Saturday to make the 20-minute drive to a strip mall where the big-box home improvement store was located. On his first trip, the young assistant didn’t really understand what Jim was trying to do and had sold him the wrong product. Now, Jim had to return to the store to exchange it for something else.

Upon arriving at the store, nobody greeted or recognized him, and when he finally tracked down a store employee, he had to re-explain his entire project and problem. After a long deliberation, Jim finally had a replacement product and was ready to check out. But without his receipt for the original product…”

You probably know how the story would go. Too many consumers have been treated just this way. It’s no wonder that many consumers say that customer service across the board is just plain bad.

THE REMEDY?

Unfortunately, we live in a time where mass-produced products and services are the norm. If you work for one of these organizations, you have to make the most of a difficult situation: multiple locations, multiple channels, changing employees, and rising customer expectations. Many companies turn to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to bridge the gap on poor customer service.

Although CRM solutions can stem the tide of poor customer service, they often can’t achieve the level of customer intimacy that some customers require. CRM solutions do a great job of tracking customer information, transactions, and interactions, but I would argue that a CRM system is only as good as the customer-facing individuals using it.

Ideally, your CRM system should help your organization to keep track of all pertinent customer information:

• Customer Information: This should include all of the basic identifying information for your customer including name, address, email address, telephone number, sex, age, etc.
• Transaction History: This should include a record of all transactions associated with your customer including the transaction dates, amount, products or services purchased, payments, receivables, returns, refunds, etc.
• Interaction History: This should include a record of all contacts made with the customer including telephone calls, emails, newsletters, direct mail, invoices, service calls, etc.

Armed with all of this great information, customer-facing employees should be well prepared to provide excellent customer service, right? In a perfect world, they should. However, there are several factors that can hinder the best intentions of any CRM solution:

1. Employee Behavior & Discipline: Poor customer service can continue even with a CRM solution in place when employees don’t utilize it properly or consistently.
2. Data Quality & Accessibility: A customer database can help to collect and aggregate critical information, but it won’t help if the data is incorrect or inaccurate, or if your employees can’t access it when and where they need it most.
3. Single View of the Customer: CRM solutions in your company are like debt; more is not necessarily better. Too often, multiple CRM solutions arise in an organization, which creates silos of customer data. That can prevent your company from ever getting a single view of your customer – a scenario that can perpetuate poor customer service.

Bad customer service doesn’t need to become a habit. We may never return to the time of quant neighborhood stores, where intimate customer service just came naturally. However, companies can begin to improve their customer service by taking a more customer-centric view of their CRM systems. CRM should not be viewed as the end-all solution, but rather as a enabling tool that, if used properly by your employees, can help to develop a more meaningful relationship with your customers.

You can improve your own customer service by getting the Customer Experience Solution Kit; a complete collection of methods, tools, and advice used by some of the largest and most well known companies to improve their customer experience.

The next time I walk into a business that I frequent, I’d like them to remember me. I’d like them to recall that I just bought something from them last week, or that I’ve been a regular customer for more than a year. I’d like them to ask me how I’m doing, or how they can help me with my latest project – which they should know about. Nobody wants to be greeted with an all too common mantra: “Hi, How May I Offend You Today?”

Inside Jobs, September 18, 2007

Would You Put Your Customers Through This?

There has been a lot of talk over the years about managing the Total Customer Experience. This is a Utopian view, of course, given the span of control that would be required to truly influence the myriad of events, factors, and third parties that make up the total customer experience in most industries.

Let me explain.

The travel industry, perhaps an easy target for criticism, is a perfect example. In order to get from one city to the next, we engage several entities, each one serving its own unique purpose. We need them all to accomplish our mission, yet none of them are necessarily motivated to work together.

You see, I’ve experienced these challenges firsthand. Admittedly, I am a frequent traveler and have logged an embarrassing number of airline miles and hotel points over my 20-year career. I’ve had my share travel miscues over the years, but a recent trip from San Diego to Kansas City this past weekend really highlighted the problems associated with any attempt at managing the total customer experience.

In this case, the total customer experience began when I checked myself, my wife, and three kids out of our hotel. It would end when we arrived safely at our home in Kansas City. Along the way, we would interact a hotel, a rental car company, two airlines, the transportation security administration (TSA), an airport terminal bus, and a parking lot attendant. In short, it was less than smooth.

Mysterious Beginnings. We began our day by trying to check out of our hotel in San Diego. Amazingly, the front desk said they had no record of our reservation, nor did their system have any record of anyone staying in our room. Apparently, we didn’t exist. Confused, we piled into our rental car and raced to the airport to return our rental car.

The Bad. We returned our rental car, full of gas, and void of any new scratches or dents. Hurray! But when we received our bill, they had not credited us for the coupon we provided for a free weekend rental day. Simply put, they made the offer – they should honor it. With little time to argue, we continued on to the airport with the issue unresolved. Needless to say, our experience wasn’t good so far.

The Ugly. Upon arriving at the airport at 7:30AM (have I mentioned the challenge of getting 3 kids out of bed at that hour?) we checked in to find out that our American flight had been cancelled due to weather in a city nearly 1,500 miles away. Obviously the airline industry can’t control the weather, but it impacted our customer experience greatly, to say the least.

The Good. American Airlines was able to book us on a direct flight (our original flight included a connection) on Midwest Airlines. Now, if you’ve flown Midwest – you know that this was a major upgrade; All seats are first-class leather seats. Although the flight departed nearly 4 hours later than our original flight – we took advantage of the time. We enjoyed a great Mexican breakfast in Old Town San Diego, and toured the Marine Corps Museum at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) before returning to the airport. Fortunately, we were able to make the most of our setback.

The Bad. If you’ve ever changed a flight at the last minute, you know that your ticket will be flagged for extra security screening. Now don’t get me wrong, I completely respect the TSA and personally thank them for the job they are doing. But the extra attention we received with three young children in tow added a bit of extra anxiety to our already bumpy customer experience ride.

The Good. We boarded our Midwest Airlines flight after confirming that they had meal service on this nearly 3 hour flight. In the air, however, they sold out of meals before we were served. Our kids didn’t seem to mind since they filled up on the warm chocolate chip cookies that followed. As you can imagine, dining on only cookies can have a potentially undesirable affect on any child. The pilot’s announcement that we would arrive 10 minutes early was a very welcome sound, indeed.

The Bad. At Kansas City International (MCI) airport, we arrived at a different terminal than where we started our trip, so I was required to jump on the terminal transfer bus that is supposed to run continuously in front of the terminal. After twenty minutes of standing and waiting, the first and seemingly only bus running, arrived to take us to our original terminal. This was just another weak link in a long chain of events.

The Ugly. We were ecstatic to see our own car and quickly loaded our luggage, anxious to get home. But not so fast. We pulled up to the parking lot toll booth and handed over our parking ticket and a credit card. I won’t go into details, because I don’t want to rehash the amazing incompetence we experienced. To cut to the short of it, our car idled at the booth for a full 25 minutes. No exaggeration. No apologies from the parking lot operators. No offers of rebates. Just an indignant notice that they were having ‘technical difficulties’ and that we would have to proceed to another toll booth to pay and exit the lot. There are a lot of four letter words I could have inserted here, but I bit my lip and proceeded on.

We did eventually arrive home safely, happy to have made the trip, albeit a full twelve hours after it began in San Diego. You might say our customer experience was less than ideal, but the point here is that there were many unrelated factors, entities, and third parties involved that all contributed (or detracted) from our experience.

In this example, the total customer experience was comprised of multiple independent links in a long chain. In order to manage the total customer experience, all of the entities would need to be well coordinated and tightly integrated. In addition, each party would need to share a common goal of optimizing the customer experience.

I don’t see that happening any time soon.

In the meantime, it’s the customer that must just grin and bear it.

Music Tames the Savage Family

Customer experience; it’s a topic we’ve been featuring prominently at ClearBrick.com for some time now. But what does it really mean to me personally? As it turns out - plenty. Especially when it comes to taming the savage family that routinely stampedes to our dinner table each and every evening.

For those of you parents of school-age children, I’m sure you can sympathize. We have to fight through the din of sibling rivalries, unfinished homework, and the never-ending rush to get our kids to the next soccer/football/baseball/dance practice session. Perhaps it’s a miracle that we have time to take on food at all!

Despite the seeming chaos, we make every attempt to get the entire family to the dinner table. Granted, this task may seem akin to herding cats, but we try it anyway. It is one of the few times we can all sit down as a family and see everybody’s shining faces – even if on some days it is for only ten minutes of speed eating.

So how do I make the dinner chaos a bit more bearable? Personally, I focus on the customer experience and I’ve found that sometimes, it’s the little things that can make all the difference. I tame our savage family with a little music.

It’s amazing the difference a little music can make. I often don’t care what it is; blues, rock, pop, or lounge music – a bit of background music can change the mood of our dinner table. Our kids seem to slow down long enough to talk to us, we get fewer complaints about the food, and fewer sibling arguments.

In addition, we’ve found that pairing music with food is a lot like pairing the right wine. For example, a little Italian background music can turn my canned spaghetti sauce and pasta into a gourmet Tuscan meal. Salsa music can make my southwestern dishes appear a bit more authentic. And softer music can help make even leftover chicken seem a little bit romantic.

In a good year, we’ll eat hundreds of potentially forgettable meals at home. It is easy to forget these events when the experience becomes mundane. Eating is a requirement of survival, so we go through the motions to get the job done. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can make each meal a little special by adding something as simple as music. The same principles can be applied to your business.

Now, I’m not suggesting that adding elevator music will make a difference in your business. In fact, please don’t! The point here is that you need to transform a potentially mundane customer experience into something that is special.

Our world is already full of mundane activities. Don’t let your business just blend into the white noise. When it comes to customer experience, being average just won’t cut it. You have to make it special and meaningful to each and every customer. Give them what they want; a memorable customer experience.

After all, if I can do it by adding a little music to the dinner table, you can too.

To find additional tips on how to improve your customer experience, get our booklet called Make Your Customers Sing!

Lead in Customer Satisfaction, and Lead the Market

Is your business stuck in neutral, or worse, drifting backwards? It doesn't have to be that way. Some companies have figured out the secret for achieving ultra high business performance, and it has nothing to do with anything you'll find on the balance sheet.

An elite set of companies have uncovered the secrets of customer experience to achieve ultra high business performance.

Customer satisfaction is one of those extremely valuable, yet sometimes elusive, business assets. Customer satisfaction won't show up on your balance sheet as an economic asset. However, get it right and your company can soar above all others in terms of profits, growth, and universal admiration.

Wouldn't you love to be part of a company like that? With the right tools and advice, you can.

A Journal of Marketing article published in 2006 demonstrated an amazing correlation between high levels of customer satisfaction and ultra high market performance. Using both back-tested and real-world portfolios, Claes Fornell, et al. proved that there was a significant relationship between customer satisfaction levels and market performance. Furthermore, their study demonstrated that between 1997 and 2003, a portfolio of companies with high levels of customer satisfaction

- outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJIA) by 93%,
- beat the S&P 500 (.SPX) by 201%, and
- schooled the NASDAQ by 335%!

Source: Claes Fornell et al., "Customer Satisfaction and Stock Prices," Journal of Marketing, January 2006.

It should be no surprise that leading customer satisfaction companies are also well represented in Fortune Magazine's list of Most Admired companies. In 2007, companies such as General Electric, FedEx, Toyota, Apple, Google, and Starbuck's were in the top echelon of both the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and the top 20 Most Admired companies according to Fortune Magazine. It seems obvious that companies with high levels of customer satisfaction are also universally admired by their peers.

Simply put, companies that are leaders in customer satisfaction can achieve not only good performance, but ultra high performance.


UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

So how did these companies unlock the secrets to ultra high performance? Customer satisfaction is obviously the key. But how did they learn to excel in customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is not a single event or discrete attribute. Customer satisfaction is the resulting measure of how well the customer was treated throughout the entire customer experience.

Therefore, in order to unlock the secrets of customer satisfaction, you must first focus on delivering an outstanding customer experience.


CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT - THE NEW COMPETITIVE BATTLEGROUND

Customer experience management is not new. However, more and more companies are quickly realizing that customer experience is becoming the new competitive battleground in today's marketplace. And the stakes are high. Those companies that gain an early customer experience advantage build a strong bond between their business and their customers - a bond that is extremely difficult to break. When it comes to customer experience, the first mover advantage can be significant.


NEARLY EVERY COMPANY CAN IMPROVE THEIR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Perhaps no company will ever achieve a perfect customer satisfaction score. On one hand, you simply can’t please all of the people all of the time. On the other hand, however, this means that most companies have a lot of room for improvement.

But improving the customer experience is a serious endeavor. It requires executive commitment, patience, and a clear vision. Any company that is serious about customer experience should first begin to think about customer experience as a process. Like any process, the customer experience process can work perfectly (or go horribly wrong), may contain numerous scenarios, and can be analyzed, re-engineered, and optimized.

The customer experience process does not begin and end at your store, sales representative, web site, or call center. It extends from the moment the customer becomes aware of your company and may last until they die, move, or leave you for another company. In short, the customer experience process is broad, deep, iterative, and (hopefully) long running.

Mastering the customer experience process is no small task. Indeed, great customer experiences don’t happen by accident. They require a keen attention to detail, a focus on every touch point, and an orchestration of all customer encounters regardless of how each customer may navigate your company. Mastering your customer experience must begin with mastering the end-to-end customer experience process.


GET SMART ABOUT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

To get smart about customer experience, take advantage of the numerous resources available on the internet. Various online sources provide insights, tools, solutions, and advice on customer experience management. Utilize these resources to develop a strategy and perspective of customer experience that makes the most sense for you and your company.

I also recommend that you check out our Customer Experience Solution Kit. The Customer Experience Solution Kit provides you with strategies, methods, a roadmap, process maps, and advice so that you can conduct your own customer experience project.

Who knows, you just might unlock the secrets of customer experience that drive ultra high business performance.


DISCLAIMER

Past performance is not an indication of future results.

Inside Jobs: Customer Experience

Most Don't Have a Customer Experience Solution

Most organizations I have worked with recognize the power of the customer experience, but the majority don't know how to affect it. Organizationally, the customer experience is 'owned' across functions and across department heads. Very rarely have I seen where any one executive 'owns' the entire customer experience.

As a result, organizations struggle to employ a customer experience solution to improve their customer experience. They fail to organize initiatives that are broad enough to effect the entire customer experience, and they lack a clear customer experience methodology or customer experience approach focused on improving the customer experience.

Most CEOs don't think about 'How to Improve the Customer Experience', they are more focused on revenue growth and cost avoidance - not recognizing a complete customer experience program - focused on the end-to-end customer experience as a critical factor in strategy execution. Step 1 - Make your Customers Sing.

Executives need to ask themselves 'Are you really customer centric?'

These reasons are why ClearBrick was founded, to help organizations solve their business problems on their own - and why the Customer Experience Solution was the first solution kit that we focused on. It is a complete customer experience methodology and customer experience roadmap to help your organization improve your customer experience.

Customer Experience is About the Process not the Shtick

As I interact with companies in my daily to-dos. I find myself amused at the different elements of my customer experience and the lengths that some company will go to in order to affect the wrong elements of my experience.

Companies seem very willing to invest heavily in what I call the shtick of the experience but ignore the true process that creates value. Whether it is hanging rock-n-roll memorabilia on the wall, hanging a row boat from the ceiling or having the customer experience staff wear the same goofy uniform - companies invest in the shtick. Very rarely have I seen companies focus on a complete customer experience solution.

In their article on the "Total Customer Experience", Berry, Carbone and Haeckel outline correctly that "Offering products and services alone is no longer enough: Organizations must provide their customers with satisfactory experiences. Competing on this dimension means orchestrating all the 'clues' that people detect in the buying process"

So, if the customer experience is about the buying process, and not the shtick, then organizations must determine what the buying process is. - So I wonder, how many organizations have even mapped out their buying process and understand where it begins, ends and more importantly where they fail to convert, or fail to satisfy their customer's demands?

My 'ahh haa' for the day... Companies need to focus on the process, not the shtick. As that is where companies create real value for their customers.

Customer Experience Vs. Usability

I spend a considerable amount of time researching the topic of Customer Experience. After just a little bit of time, it becomes clear that the area is confusing and a bit amoebic in nature.

So, I thought it might pay to spend some time distinguishing between two terms that seem to get intermingled:

Customer Experience vs. Usability

Customer Experience = Value + Customer Service + Usability + Emotional Engagement

By this equation, I mean that the Customer Experience is the aggregation of the value a customer perceives, the interaction with the brand and how the brand makes them feel emotionally. Different brands leverage this equation in very different ways...which is exactly how it should work. Each individual company needs to look at the overall equation and determine how to apply their strategic formula - recognizing that the formula can vary across customers.

Conversely, Usability refers to how easy it is for a customer to interact with the brand. Recently, this word has been most applied to the usability of a web application or internet interface. However, it should be used to describe the accessibility and usability of the customer interface, regardless if it is web, call center, store, mail or telephone based. Customers have needs and they want to engage the brand. Usability describes how easily the customer can engage the brand to meet their needs.

I'd like to distinguish that usability IS an important part of the customer experience, but only a finite and limited part. Usability does not equal Customer Experience. No amount of usability reengineering can solve your customer experience problems. Usability is only one step in a long customer experience process that, when viewed holistically, includes the customer attraction (before), interaction (during), and cultivation (after) processes. I'd suggest taking a look at Clearbrick's free quick reference guide to get the big picture of the total customer experience process and what it entails.

In short, usability may be used to describe an attribute of a single customer touch point whereas customer experience is an aggregation of actions, perceptions, and emotions that are invoked when a customer passes through all phases of the customer experience.

Customer Experience in the Air

Over my career, I've spent a significant amount of time in the air. In fact, I've probably averaged 2-3 flights per week around the country and internationally over the last 10 years. That's a lot of frequent flier miles!!

In an age where competition is continually moving away from production and toward the customer experience, I find it interesting that the airlines industry has moved the other way. Largely, I have found that the large carriers have moved away from elements of the experience that differentiate and have moved to commoditize themselves.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. I'd call out Midwest Airlines, Southwest, JetBlue and Virgin Airlines as providing unique and differentiating customer experiences. In fact, recently, these airlines have consistently outperformed other airlines. Interestingly though, they find unique and different ways to differentiate. Southwest is bare bones, but consistent. Midwest gives you supreme service, first class seats, and my favorite...chocolate chip cookies.

See the Airlines Customer Satisfaction Scores Here

I find that the airline industry is an ideal industry for evaluating the customer experience and how companies can use the customer's experience to create a competitive advantage. The big airlines are prime for ClearBrick's Customer Experience Solution.

Age of the Customer

I was thinking recently about the transformation of the retail market. It may be obvious to others, but isn't always apparent. Over time, the demands on the retail market have changed dramatically. In the 1950s, variety was the spice of things for retailers. Consumer products were being introduced to meet a wide variety of needs and retailers were growing by making more items available in more locations - offering variety.

In the 1970s, the age of the department store emerged, with single stores that would offer a very large variety of goods, taking advantage of the small mom and pop, narrowly focused competition.

Then in the 1980s and the 1990s, the age of supply chain. Wal-Mart emerged as the behemoth that drove prices down through scale and supply chain efficiency. Many in the press wrote about 'The Wal-Mart Effect' and that Wal-Mart would rule the world. However, now, there is something else emerging, and that is the age of the consumer.

You can see that the competitive landscape is shifting to focus more on the consumer and differentiation in their mind. Take Target for example. They were once thought of as an also-ran to Wal-Mart, yet today, they have a very vibrant business that is clearly differentiated from Wal-Mart on the point of Customer Experience.

I project that Customer Experience will continue to be the new battle field of retailers, small and large alike. And, further, I project that the lines between retailers and consumer products companies will continue to blur, making Customer Experience a topic that companies up and down the value chain will need to deal with.

If you are interested in more information, I'd recommend downloading Clearbrick's Customer Experience Quick Reference Guide. This is the initial component of Clearbrick's Customer Experience solution.