Over the last ten years I’ve become convinced that annual planning is the Achilles’ heel of customer experience. It is at the root of what inhibits the most efficient investment on priority investments in customer driven growth. That is because annual planning usually starts with the silos, not the customer asset, and not the customer journey.
- Without a one-company review of the customer asset and experience, your company continues to focus only on business outcomes. You stand still regarding customer asset growth without knowing exactly why.
- Without common accountability targets, actions will continue to be planned tactically, based on the individual annual plans of the silos.
As a result, the customer experience becomes the defaulted outcome of every silo’s budget and projects they plan to spend that money.
Rarely is there a decision making lens in place to identify and drive investment in the most important customer experiences. Companies need an ongoing roadmap to define where they want to make progress in customer profitability, customer loyalty, and customer experience delivery.
Your annual planning customer-centered goals should include:
- Know volume and value of lost customers and volume and value of new customers required to drive incremental growth.
- Identify priority customer experiences driving customers out the door.
- Move customers from one level of engagement to the next.
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