As executives, we often assume that our customer experience is at least moderately good, even if we have never personally experienced it. However, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review titled "Executives Need to Invest in Understanding the Customer Experience" highlights the fact that this assumption isn’t always accurate.
What is accurate however is that customers have a sixth sense about the culture of any business they interact with. They form a perception of a business based on how it treats its employees, its customers, and the community. They can smell apathy and they vote with their wallets. And slick websites, glossy products, and persuasive marketing are no longer enough to keep them. What they want is to ‘feel’ seen, valued and understood.
So what we need to do is to shift our focus from the mechanics of the CX, our operational systems and processes, to how our customers feel as a result of doing business with us. This requires being empathetic to customer needs and preferences from the top down, so that when something isn't going right at the customer contact level, the CEO knows about it.
It means moving away from siloed responsibility for the CX to a business-wide vision that fosters customer-centric culture. It means assigning accountability for the CX to all employees as a strategic necessity and incentivising for superior CX delivery. To achieve this, employees at all levels must be provided with the necessary skills, tools and training to be effective.
Fundamentally, a customer centric culture also requires turning CX data into actionable insights, using data to predict and gain a deeper understanding of customer needs, and taking immediate corrective action where necessary.
So, what's your data telling you?