If you want the optimal customer experience (CX) as a company, then the customer must be central in all your actions. That sounds logical, but it’s harder than you think. To promote knowledge sharing, we are organizing a round table on CX & organization on 20 June in Amsterdam – a sneak peak in this article.
Now that organizations are in the spotlight via social media, a good customer experience is increasingly decisive for success. For many marketing departments, the NPS score is almost the holy grail – it calculates the likelihood that your customers would recommend your product or service to others. The customer experience is getting better, and with that the pattern of expectations is rising again: customers now also want more. It is not surprising that customer experience is high on the agenda of more and more boards. Especially now that we are fully in the transition from a product-driven economy to a service-driven economy.
Look at it from the outside in
An organization that wants to focus on the customer experience would do well to put itself in the shoes of that customer. Do you mainly think from the perspective of your own product or do the needs of the customer always come first? You can expand a product with functionalities, but perhaps the customer actually wants a simpler product. The same goes for booking a trip – your marketing department wants to know as much as possible about your customer, but the customer may want to book as soon as possible. What gets priority?
Integral and consistent experiences
The customer experience is often determined by digital, human and physical interactions. If you use an app or website, everything must work intuitively and properly, but if you have a question you also want to be helped properly and the final product must of course also meet your wishes. These different facets must be properly coordinated for an optimal customer experience. Because the airline can have such a good app, if the staff is unfriendly or if your luggage is lost, you are still dissatisfied. The expectations that are raised at the beginning of your customer journey must be met everywhere – an optimal customer experience requires an integrated and consistent experience and therefore close cooperation within an organization.
“The expectations created at the beginning of your customer journey must be met everywhere.”
Internal structure overhauled
For customers, the experience during the customer journey equals your brand. To provide an optimal experience, organizations must ensure that all departments are attuned to each other. With the rise of design thinking / service design and user experience design, there is sufficient knowledge available to get the digital and physical experience in order. The human experience is linked to a strong HR policy, because without good staff and clear core values, it will be difficult to get customer service to the desired level in implementation. Outwardly, these different parts of an organization need to join forces so that the customer has a “seamless” experience. For many organizations this means that the internal structure and working methods will have to change.
Learn from other organisations
Anyone who wants to improve the structure of an organization faces quite a challenge. It varies per organization what exactly needs to be done – in short, customization. However, this does not mean that lessons cannot be learned from the challenges and solutions of other organisations. To promote knowledge sharing of these experiences, Essense is organizing a CX Roundtable on 20 June in Amsterdam with five existing clients plus a limited number of guests.
If you are responsible or decisive for CX and the associated structure of the organization, take a look at the offer of our Academy.
