Customer Experience Competency #1 – Company Wide Alignment around Experience

Define the Stages of Experience to Gain Alignment around Customer Experience:

→ Manage Experience Reliability

→ Innovate to Find the Wow Moments

Many organizations say they focus on their customer “experience” but few do the hard work to define the stages of their experience from the customer journey point of view. In the absence of this, all of the operating areas do their own thing, driven by their internal tasks and agenda and scorecard. A lot of work is done, often in the name of the customer, but it doesn’t add up from the customers’ experience to deliver a unified experience. Customer experience reliability isn’t managed because each silo manages projects to their own annual priorities and scorecards.  The big things don’t get systemically fixed. We miss the opportunity for the big “wow” moments.

→ Critical Checkpoint: Define the stages of the experience and the moments of truth that comprise all of the experience touch points. 

This includes both the obvious touch points, such as “when the customer places their order,” and also those opportunities that might be missed, such as “when the customer places their 100^th order” or “when the customer has contacted customer service three times in a month.”

• Lead your teams to identify the key top 10-20 moments of truth so that you can prioritize the touch points.
• Once you have the prioritize touch points, begin working on improving reliability and weaving in the differentiating “wow” moments.

The significance of this is huge. Not enough companies understand this is the first “duct tape” exercise to get your organization moving together in one direction – and that’s to agree on the stages of your customer experience.

This is the platform work for a customer experience transformation journey. Once the stages of the experience and the moments of truth are agreed to, from here, you can…

• Line up customer feedback to these stages – where you gather feedback on the experience
• Connect cross silo operational metrics for the delivery of cohesive experiences
• Establish reward and recognition that enforces key moments
• Give leaders a manner in which to hold the company accountable – to stages of the experience – to cross functional teams who impact the stage.

Getting agreement here means changing accountability from “down the silo” scorecards and dashboards to “across the experience” shared metrics and accountability.

You’ll recognize when you have achieved company-wide alignment around experience when:

• Your business and language is aligned around the stages of your customer experience.
• There is a shift from silo priorities to customer priorities in language, action, and planning.

Learn about the 5 Customer Experience Competencies

Competency #1 – This is the post you’re reading. Define the Stages of Experience to Gain Alignment around Customer Experience

Competency #2 – Develop Experience Based Customer Listening and Feedback

Competency #3 – United (Cross-Silo) Experience Reliability and Accountability

Competency #4 – Manage Customers as Assets – Prove the ROI between Experience and Growth

Competency #5– Create “One Company” Customer Experience Culture