Why the Moments of Truth Are Alive and Well

Do you have consensus on how to define the experience you deliver to your customers?

Do you have consensus on the stages of the experience?

Have you mapped the touchpoints to know which are most critical to:

• driving revenue
• forming a relationship/bond
• rescuing customers at risk
• retaining and growing share of wallet

Have you done the research and work to know what customers value most, what drives them emotionally so that you can build differentiated actions?

If you haven’t identified the opportunities that exist to give your customers a good experience, then you can’t manage it. Two key things happen to your customer experience:

1. The operational silos take over in determining what they’re going to do to the customer and when they will do it.

2. The customer experience happens by default. The collision of your dueling silos interacting with the customer is the outcome.

I believe in pushing people together to create a common language to define the stages of customer interaction and the moments of truth (or customer touch points) that define the experience for your brand.

The moments of truth enlighten the organization to understand the stages that form their interaction with their customers. They push the organization to create a common language and framework for understanding the touch points with the customer that cross the organization. The identification of the moments of truth inspires creativity by opening people’s minds to thinking through what should be delivered at key intersections with a customer to deliver value and experiences unique to the brand.

If there is no effort to identify the moments of truth, a contact prior to expiration of a subscription frequently is missed, along with revenue opportunity. Many companies don’t purposefully plan an automated and consistent companywide renewal effort where they solve any issues with service prior to sealing the renewal.

Finally, the moments of truth burst across the silos and push them to work together in the optimum delivery of the customer experience. Building an operating plan for the execution of the key moments of truth clarifies the organizational and operational handoffs where so much customer dissatisfaction and defection occurs.

1. Customer Experience Reliability Competencies:

• Managing the Customer as an Asset – Strategic customer management to connect customer value to ROI
• Customer Listening – Active listening across the silos and channels
• Collaborative Customer Experience Improvement – Cross-company accountability & improvement. Read more: Who is Accountable for the “Moments of Truth” of the Customer Experience?

2. Customer Experience Innovation Competencies:

• Customer Lifecycle – Company-wide alignment and adoption to lifecycle and priority points of contact (“moments of truth”). Read more: The Customer Room and the Power of Accountability 
• Operations & Experience Innovation Driven by What Customers Value – Experience creation driven by customer priorities. Take Action: Three Tools to Evaluate Your Customer Experience Stages.
• United Annual Planning – Prioritize investments to increase  customer value and deliver high value experiences. Read more: Why Annual Planning Hurts Customer Profitability