If you and the functional leaders of your company independently evaluated your customer experience (CX) strengths and weaknesses, do you think your perceptions would be the same?
Based on our research, you’d probably agree on 74% of the issues. However, the 26% where you have differing opinions may be the difference between a good and great CX capability.
Over the years, I’ve worked with a diverse group of clients to create digital strategies to make their customer experience better. I’ve learned that a tightly defined process empowers the project leader, best-of-class tools help extract information and prioritize issues effectively, and well-orchestrated workshops and other creative exercises create unity and spark ideas. But that’s not enough.
The leaders of every organization must be willing to share their honest thoughts about the CX strengths and weaknesses of the organization, make an effort to listen to their colleagues, and accept the fact that compromise is unavoidable. If they do this, it leads to alignment around the key issues – a foundational element of CX improvement.
I recently worked with a company that is dealing with major channel shift issues and rapidly changing customer expectations. In order to better understand their current state, I asked the Marketing and IT leaders to take our CX IQ self-assessment independently.
The results were amazingly insightful in a number of ways. Both groups were in alignment about areas such as customer insight and operations, but had very different perceptions about their technology and culture.
The marketing team discovered technology platform capabilities (i.e. content personalization) that weren’t being used, the technology team was able to offer some measurement and analytics solutions to fill several long-standing information gaps, and three operational issues were resolved – without any heated debate or finger-pointing. This group had been so busy running the business that they had never found the time to have a structured, open discussion about their customer experience – and how they might be able to work more effectively together.
The momentum that was created during the assessment discussion was significant, and the Operations, Customer Service, Sales and Finance teams will soon join the exercise.
If you’re dealing with a similar challenge within your organization, take our CX IQ self-assessment, and invite several colleagues to do it as well. We’ll tally your results and share a report that provides your CX effectiveness score, a comparison with other companies, and specific recommendations to address your most chronic CX issues.
You’ll be one step closer to an aligned management team, and on the path toward improved CX capabilities.
Align Your Organization – A Key Step Toward CX Improvement
by Gregg Sampson on July 18th, 2017 | ~ minute read
