Operationalizing customer experience

Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities

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Operationalizing the Customer

Experience: Challenges and

Opportunities


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Table of Contents

Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Contents .......................................................................................................................................................... 2

Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Key Findings: ................................................................................................................................................... 4

Customer Experience as the New Strategic Imperative ................................................................................. 5

From Blue Sky to Modern Complexity: The Challenge of Making “Exceptional” a Reality ............................ 8

Stumbling Block #1: Business Silos ........................................................................................................ 8

Stumbling Block #2: Management Pay Lip Service/Not really bought in ...........................................10

Stumbling Block #3: Resistance to change ..........................................................................................11

Stumbling Block #4: Fragmented Customer Data ...............................................................................11

Stumbling Block #5: Lack of Resources/Budget ..................................................................................12

Stumbling Block #6: Poor Process Design ............................................................................................13

Other Stumbling Blocks ........................................................................................................................13

What does it take to make strategy a reality? ..............................................................................................14

Factor #1: Visible commitment from senior executives: ....................................................................14

Factor #2: Engaged and empowered employees: ...............................................................................14

Factor #3: Gathering Continual Customer Feedback ..........................................................................17

Recommendations ........................................................................................................................................19

#1: Establish a strong partnership between Customer Experience teams and Process Improvement

teams ....................................................................................................................................................19

#2: Focus on getting the basics right ...................................................................................................20

#3: Establish a culture – not just tactics ..............................................................................................20

Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................................21

About PEX Network ......................................................................................................................................23

About the Author ..........................................................................................................................................24


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Executive Summary

The advent of new platforms and channels with

which customers now interact with companies –

the web, mobile, social media, etc. – has

brought with it great opportunities to establish

a new kind of relationship with customers. But

these new channels have also contributed to the

growing complexity of business operations.

No company intentionally sets out to provide an

unexceptional and sometimes frustrating

customer experience. But this is often the result

when poorly designed IT systems, ill-conceived

processes, and a demoralized and disengaged

workforce conspire to make it overly difficult for

customers to do business with a company.

Many companies have decided that focusing on

the customer experience is now a competitive

business advantage in a world where

commoditization of products and services has

become commonplace and increased consumer

transparency and competition has eroded other

sources of differentiation (such as a unique

product/service offering). Competing on price

alone will only end in a race to the bottom.

While that strategic focus appears to be

embedded in corporate boardrooms across the

globe, the difficulty is in translating the strategy

into real business operations. How can you both

improve and operationalize the customer

experience? What are the key challenges? How

can those key challenges be overcome?

This report is based on a survey conducted with

114 process, customer experience and business

professionals in June 2014 in an attempt to

answer those questions. Additionally, telephone

and in person interviews were conducted with

several survey respondents and industry

experts. Specific recommendations for action

have been made at the end of this report.


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Key Findings:

Customer experience improvement is one of the top priorities at the vast majority (70%) of companies with 24% of survey respondents reporting that it is the highest priority of their company

Formal customer experience departments are relatively new to many companies: 25.8% of survey respondents reported having a Customer Experience department that’s less than 2 years old, over 30% report not having a department at all

Business and customer experience

professionals perceive the top 3 stumbling blocks to customer experience improvement to be departmental silos, “lip service” from top management, and resistance to change

Engaged and empowered staff and top management commitment were seen as the two major ingredients contributing to the ability to operationalize exceptional customer experiences

Improving processes and IT systems were seen as critical to not just supporting the customer experience but also providing staff with the tools to serve customers better


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Customer Experience as the New Strategic Imperative

Improving the customer experience is

something to which all companies – whether in

a B2B or B2C environment - are starting to pay

attention. Customer experience goes beyond

the traditional notion of “service” as a one-off

transaction between a company and its

customers. This isn’t just about making your

frontline staff smile at customers when they

arrive in the store.

Instead, customer experience is the more all-

encompassing idea that the collection of

experiences – the accumulation of different

touch points and interactions – that a customer

has with a brand contributes to the customer’s

satisfaction, loyalty and desire to continue doing

business. It is as much about engaging with

customers on an emotional level as it is about

delivering flawlessly across all channels.

Fully 70% of survey respondents (see Chart 1,

below) indicated that customer experience

improvement was either the highest priority of

the company (24%) or one of the top priorities

of their company (46%). The remaining 30% of

respondents indicated that their company was

paying attention to the customer experience but

Highest priority of the company – it has

full backing of company leadership

and resources/investmen

t assigned to it 24%

One of the top priorities of the company – top management is

committed to the customer experience and some resources

and budget have been assigned

46%

Company is paying attention to the

customer experience but not committing

much in terms of resources or budget

30%

Chart 1: How high a priority is improving the customer experience at your company?

70% of survey

respondents reported that

improving the customer

experience was one of the

top priorities of their

company


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not backing it up with resources and

investment.

There are hard business reasons to focus on

improving the customer experience: there is a

body of research and evidence which

demonstrates a direct correlation between

improved customer satisfaction and more

revenue.

“In a sector like Retail food, those organizations

with higher customer satisfaction have on

average better market share and revenue

growth,” says Jo Causon, Chief Executive of the

Institute for Customer Service. “Across a wide

range of sectors we have been able to identify

some key measures – recommendation, loyalty,

trust, repeat purchase – which show that where

customer satisfaction levels are higher,

customers are more likely to stay with an

organization, they’re more likely to purchase

more products from an organization and are

more likely to recommend an organization.”

But many of these drivers around customer

loyalty and repeat purchases have been known

for decades. So why is customer experience

coming to the fore as a widespread strategy at

this particular juncture?

There are several technological and economic

shifts that are driving the increased focus on the

customer experience.

Firstly, technology has driven widespread

changes in the way that customers interact with

companies. This has resulted in shifting

expectations as well as increased complexity of

business operations. That same technology has

also created an environment of radical

transparency where good and bad experiences

with companies can be amplified and shared

globally.

Secondly, over the past couple of decades the

twin forces of globalization and the

commoditization of products and services have

resulted in a market environment in which it is

increasingly difficult to differentiate a brand.

Global competition puts downward pressure on

margins and prices while commoditization (the

process whereby a product or service becomes,

to put it simply, “much of a muchness” rather

than considered distinct and unique) means that

any previous competitive advantage from a

unique feature is getting harder to maintain.

This means that for many companies there are

two ways to compete: on price and on customer

experience. Focusing solely on price quickly

deteriorates in a race to the bottom and will

attract the types of customers who switch from

one brand to another in search of the best deal.

That’s why many companies are starting to

understand that customer experience is where

the real competitive advantage is to attract,

“In a sector like Retail food, those organizations with higher customer

satisfaction have on average better market share and revenue

growth. Across a wide range of sectors we have been able to identify

some key measures – recommendation, loyalty, trust, repeat

purchase – which show that where customer satisfaction levels are

higher, customers are more likely to stay with an organization,

they’re more likely to purchase more products from an organization

and are more likely to recommend an organization.”

- Jo Causon, Chief Executive, Institute for Customer Service


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retain and grow loyal customers.

Some companies have gone down the route of

setting up “customer experience” departments

designed to focus on gathering Voice of the

Customer feedback and align the customer

experience with the brand values.

However, survey feedback indicates that for the

majority of companies these departments are

still at a relatively immature stage within

organizations: nearly 35% of survey respondents

reporting that their company did not have a

customer experience department and over 25%

indicating that their department was less than

two years old (see Chart 2, above).

Regardless of whether companies have decided

to formally invest in a customer experience

department or are embedding the responsibility

within an existing department such as

marketing, process improvement, or sales, the

challenge will remain the same: how do you

make a strategy for enhancing the customer

experience an operational reality within a

business?

The next two sections will focus on some of the

key challenges as well as the success factors

identified by survey respondents.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

N/A – Don’t have a customer experience department or team

0-2 years

2-3 years

3-5 years

5+ years

Chart 2: For how long has your company had a formal customer experience department or team?


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From Blue Sky to Modern Complexity: The Challenge of Making “Exceptional” a Reality

Anyone who has tried to translate their ideas for

improved customer experience into reality will

recognize the challenges of executing that

strategy. Big ideas and good intentions quickly

bump up against the very real constraints of

resources, budgets, and organizational politics.

“A lot of companies think improving the

customer experience is easy. They think it’s as

simple as doing the same thing with the same

people or buying a tool. But it’s much, much

harder than that,” says Seth Marrs, Vice

President of Operations at medical device

manufacturer Carl Zeiss.

The top challenges identified in the survey

include departmental silos, lack of real executive

management commitment and resistance to

change. Many other factors were also at work

(see Chart 3, below).

Here are the top stumbling blocks to

operationalizing the customer experience

identified by survey respondents:

Stumbling Block #1: Business Silos

Most companies are organized into functional

units such as finance, marketing, sales, etc.

These functional groupings serve to optimize

reporting lines, connect teams of people who

need to collaborate often, and/or share ideas on

similar job duties. But departmental silos can

also serve as a major stumbling block when it

comes to the customer experience. 60.4% of

survey respondents identified it as one of their

top 3 key stumbling blocks to operationalizing

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Other

Inconsistent or poor quality data

Legacy technology issues

Process complexity

Complexity of managing multi-channels

Poor process design

Lack of resources/budget

Fragmented customer data (i.e. unable to get “one view” of the customer)

Resistance to change

Management pay lip service/not reallybought in

Business silos (lack of communicationacross business units)

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

Chart 3: Select your primary, secondary and tertiary challenge of implementing your customer

experience strategy


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the customer experience.

The hand offs between departmental silos can

cause miscommunication and processes are

more likely to be “broken” at the points

between departmental silos. Both of these

problems result in the all-too-familiar customer

experience of being told different things by

different people or passed from one

department to the next.

“We need to start putting our customer at the

center of our processes,” says Derinda Ehrlich,

Vice President of Business

Transformation at Avnet.

“This is in comparison to

putting our customer in

the squeeze zone where

they get volleyed back

and forth between

departments and

processes and systems.

We no longer want to

hear – ‘that’s not my

department’.”

Jo Causon, Chief Executive of the UK’s Institute

of Customer Service agrees explaining that

customer service is something that the entire

organization needs to commit to.

“Customer service can no longer be thought of

as a stand-alone function or department,” she

explains. “Those organizations that are doing

this well are integrating their customer

experience across all of their functional areas.

They are thinking, therefore, about what it

means in terms of IT infrastructures, reporting

lines, business functions, and rewards and

recognition. It requires a fundamental shift to be

able to deliver a seamless experience.”

Gray Hollins, Senior Consultant at customer

experience consultancy SingleStone, thinks that

it’s not inherently silos that are to blame for

causing problems. Instead, he says, companies

need to think about

how they manage the

connections between

silos.

“I’ve partnered with

organizations that are

vertically organized and

inherently that means

that they’re in silos,” he

says. “But they operate

quite well by

communicating across

those silos and having technologies to help

support that communication and information

sharing.”

Charles Farina, Business Process Improvement

Manager at Essroc Cement, agrees that

departmental silos are a fact of life and instead

60.4% of survey

respondents cited

“Business Silos” as one of

the top three obstacles to


experience

“Customer service can no longer be thought of as a function

or department. Those organizations that are doing this well

are integrating their customer experience across all of their

functional areas. They are thinking, therefore, about what it

means in terms of IT infrastructures, reporting lines, business

functions, and rewards and recognition. It requires a

fundamental shift to be able to deliver a seamless

experience.”

- Jo Causon, Chief Executive, Institute for Customer Service


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we must focus on improving “how work gets

done across those silos.”

Getting the business start to “thinking across”

business silos involves a multi-pronged

approach that includes changes to processes,

communication lines, IT systems, and even the

metrics by which individuals within those

business units are measured. All must be

considered because just focusing on one factor,

such as processes or technology, but not others,

such as realigning employee performance

measures will

doom the

initiative to failure

as one constraint

may be removed

but others persist.

Additionally, it is

worth cautioning

here that

implementing a

technology

should not be

seen as a silver

bullet – many

organizations

have invested

heavily in

technology that

fails to deliver

expected gains. Instead, strategies, people and

processes need to be looked at first – and

perhaps in that order - to set any initiative up

for successful operation.

Stumbling Block #2: Management Pay Lip Service/Not really bought in

“Leaders always talk about how important

customer service is but never truly back up the

statements with the resources and backing

necessary to support true customer

improvement,” laments one survey respondent.

Clearly, without the support of senior

leadership, it will be difficult to get not only the

resources and investments required to make

changes but also to get the organizational buy in

from other employees. This factor came second

to “Departmental Silos” in terms of overall

numbers of survey respondents (45.1%), it was

the factor most cited as the “primary” stumbling

block with over a quarter of all survey

respondents saying it was the number one

stumbling block, a clear indication of the

importance of senior

leadership backing for

any customer

experience strategy.

“If the executive

leadership team

doesn’t have a

maniacal focus on the

customer then it’s very

difficult for the

organization to do that

ground up approach,”

observes Avnet’s

Derinda Ehrlich. “In

any strategy – if the

senior executives

aren’t aligned with it,

you’re going to have a

very tough time getting

anything done.”

One of the ways that process professionals can

gain that commitment is by clearly

demonstrating the impact that improving their

processes and the customer experience will

have on the bottom line.

“A senior leader has to understand that if they

improve their process and customer experience

performance that this is going to impact their

bottom line in the favourable sense. If they

make that connection, they will act accordingly,”

observes Essroc’s Charles Farina.

“A senior leader has to

understand that if they improve

their customer experience

performance that this is going

to impact their bottom line in

the favourable sense. If they

make that connection, they will

act accordingly.”

Charles Farina, Business Process Improvement Manager, Essroc Cement


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Seth Marrs agrees saying that a senior leader

who believes in something will bring “bring

power, engagement and investment.” But, he

adds, to get that commitment from leadership

you really need to connect the dots between

how improving the customer experience will

help the company increase revenues.

“If a new model came out today that said ‘don’t

take care of your customer and you’re still going

to make a lot of money’ then companies

wouldn’t take care of their customers,” he

explains. “It’s all about growth and trying to

satisfy your shareholders.”

Stumbling Block #3: Resistance to change

Organizations have an inherent bias towards the

status quo. People get comfortable with

patterns of work and it takes time to change old

habits. Equally, where people don’t understand

why something needs to change or believe that

the proposed change is for the better it can

appear that they are resisting change. 37.4% of

survey respondents cited resistance to change

as one of the top three stumbling blocks to

customer experience improvements.

“When you get into big corporate hierarchies,

it’s hard to get things done,” observes Seth

Marrs from Carl Zeiss. “Everyone wants to have

a say in their own little fiefdom that they don’t

want to have disrupted. The ship moves very

slowly, so a lot of people give up.”

As with any organizational change that will

impact on the way that people do their jobs or

the systems they use to get work done, a formal

approach to change management must be a

critical component of the plan in order to

achieve sustainable success. Most people are

not inherently resistant to change – just to that

which they don’t understand or agree with.

Stumbling Block #4: Fragmented Customer Data

“We have multiple systems, across multiple sites

with multiple customers so one view doesn't

exist for how a customer goes through our

business,” explains one survey respondent.

“Added to this we do not make use of consumer

data that exists in the world to understand our

customers and or to predict what they may or

may not need.”

Many organizations, whether because of

mergers and acquisitions or organic growth over

60.4% of survey

respondents cited

“Business Silos” as one of

the top three obstacles to


experience

“How many times have you been on the phone where you’ve

been told – ‘our computer systems won’t let us do that’. As a

customer I don’t want to be concerned about the

infrastructure that you have to serve me. I only have one

answer that I want to hear, which is ‘yes’, and how can I help

you?’”

- - Derinda Ehrlich, Vice President Business Transformation, Avnet


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time, are beset by complicated legacy IT

systems. These fragmented systems mean that

data for an individual customer is difficult to

access with 34.1% of survey respondents citing

“fragmented customer data” as one of their top

three challenges.

“How many times have you been on the phone

where you’ve been told – ‘our computer

systems won’t let us do that’. As a customer I

don’t want to be concerned about the

infrastructure that you have to serve me. I only

have one answer

that I want to

hear, which is

‘yes – and how

can I help you?’”

says Derinda

Ehrlich.

But Seth Marrs

says that

technically,

changing IT

systems involves

both investment

and a

commitment to

laying the right

foundations in

which many

companies might

be reluctant.

“It takes an

entirely different

infrastructure to be able to look at a whole

customer,” he says. “I want to see a 360 degree

view of the customer. Everyone wants that. But

it’s highly complex because our systems are not

set up to be customer centric.”

Stumbling Block #5: Lack of Resources/Budget

While it would be nice to have an unlimited

budget and all the resources you need to throw

at any challenge you wish, the unfortunate

reality is that all businesses must operate within

existing constraints.

“The companies that need customers badly are

often those who are under strict cost control

because they’re losing market share or they’re

in a tougher market environment,” observes

Seth Marrs. “So they want the customer but

don’t have the funding to be able to invest.”

“It's a true indicator of how committed a

business is to the customer: if they invest in the

lean times then

you know they are

truly customer

centric but if they

only talk invest

then you know it's

not being taken

seriously," he adds.

As discussed

earlier, gaining the

buy-in and

commitment of

senior leadership is

clearly an

important part of

obtaining the

resources and

budget necessary

to make the

essential changes.

But, in situations

where even then

budgets and resources are tight it can be useful

to focus on small improvements and

demonstrate success before committing more

resources and money to the changes.

“Starting small helps validate your strategy and

then you can shape your investment from there.

Sometimes you realize that you don’t need to

make a big investment in technology because

with certain tweaks in how people are organized

or how your process works, you might be able to

“Starting small helps validate your

strategy and then you can shape

your investment from there.

Sometimes you realize that you

don’t need to make a big

investment in technology because

with certain tweaks in how people

are organized or how your process

works, you might be able to realize

the returns you seek.”

-Gray Hollins, Consultant, SingleStone


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realize the returns you seek,” comments Gray

Hollins from SingleStone.

Stumbling Block #6: Poor Process Design

Processes are the means through which work

gets done so it’s not surprising that poor process

design was cited as one of the major stumbling

blocks to creating an exceptional customer

experience with 25.3% of survey respondents

citing it. “Poor processes cause breakdowns and

fallout across fulfilment channels,” explains one

survey respondent.

For all but the simplest types of businesses,

there are many complex tasks and steps that

need to happen behind the scenes in order to

execute flawlessly for the customer. These tasks

and processes are carried out by different

people and by different parts of the organization

often using different IT systems. All of these

different steps and systems represent a risk that

something will go wrong, thus detracting from

the customer’s experience.

“At the end of the day, customers don’t pay us

for giving them a process. They pay us for giving

them value,” says Derinda Ehrlich of Avnet. “A

process is a means to an end and it needs to be

as invisible as possible.”

Other Stumbling Blocks

Several other key stumbling blocks were cited as

inhibiting companies from operationalizing their

customer experience improvements including

inconsistent or poor quality data (12.1%), legacy

technology issues (15.4%), Process complexity

(17.6%) and the complexity of managing the

customer experience across multiple-channels

(e.g. the web, mobile, contact center, in store,

etc.).


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What does it take to make strategy a reality?

Committed company leadership emerged as the

top primary factor in making customer

experience improvements a reality, while

engaged and empowered employees was

selected as one of the top three factors by the

majority of survey respondents (see Chart 4,

below).

Factor #1: Visible commitment from senior executives:

As discussed in the previous section, lack of real

leadership commitment to customer experience

improvement is perceived to be one of the

biggest stumbling blocks. Unsurprisingly, the

reverse is also true. 35.5% of survey

respondents see committed company

leadership as the primary success factor for

improving the customer experience, with 64.5%

selecting it as one of their top three.

“If I have the Vice President of Sales or the Vice

President of Marketing or the President of the

company saying that the customer experience is

important then people are going to listen. I’ve

just got to get them doing and saying the right

things,” comments Essroc’s Charles Farina.

“What are the managerial behaviours that staff

see in place? What are the words our managers

are saying? What are the actions they’re

taking?”

Factor #2: Engaged and empowered employees:

Over 70% of survey respondents (73.4%)

indicated that engaged and empowered

employees was one of the top three factors in

contributing to a positive customer experience.

“I honestly believe that there’s a virtuous circle

whereby empowered and engaged employees

bring empowered and engaged customers.

These customers in turn bring business which

then allows the company to put more focus on

being more employee and customer centric,”

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

State of the Art Technology

Effective Customer Data Management

Other

Excellent Processes

Continual Customer Feedback (i.e. Voiceof the Customer Mechanisms)

Engaged and Empowered Employees

Committed Company Leadership

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

Chart 4: Select the primary, secondary and tertiary success factors for successful customer

experience improvement


15 | P a g e

says Avnet’s Derinda Ehrlich.

When frontline workers are engaged and

empowered, reasoning says, they will be not

only willing but also able to help customers.

Even for those employees without direct

interaction with the customer, there is an

argument that customers still “feel” the behind

the scenes passion that workers have for their

jobs.

For instance, several telephone interviewees

cited Amazon as an example of a company with

high customer satisfaction where computer

systems anticipate customer requirements and

deliver what customers are looking for –

without any human interaction at all. While this

is supposition, it is hard to imagine that the

engineers who created the system were

completely disengaged and uninterested in the

work that they were doing – a passion for

excellence comes through in the company’s

products and services.

Harnessing the creativity and engagement of all

employees is becoming all the more important

in the digital age. As Ehrlich observes, changing

demographics means that younger populations

are used to interacting with digital systems and

don’t have the same concept of customer

service being driven by a human. ““I do see a

future where customers may never talk to an

employee. They may never virtually know that

there’s an employee behind the scenes,” she

says. “But that doesn’t inhibit the power of

engaged and empowered employees making

decisions to better serve the customer.”

So what does it take to create engaged and

empowered employees?

Many telephone interviewees felt that engaged

and empowered employees and senior

executive commitment and focus are tightly

intertwined.

“Engaged employees start with senior

management. They’re the ones that set the

standards and say what’s important,” explains

Charles Farina from Essroc.

Leadership sets the overall tone and focus for

the organization, but an engaged employee can

quickly become disillusioned and frustrated if

they end up constantly having to fight IT

systems and processes in order to get their work

done. For frontline staff, this is an even more

“What makes a delightful customer experience is simplicity: a

customer not having to jump from one department to another

department to get their question answered. It’s simple

processes that are clear from complexity and unnecessary hand

offs. That’s linked to empowered employees; all of these factors

are tightly intertwined.”

- Gray Hollins, Consultant, SingleStone

Over 70% of survey

respondents (73.4%)

indicated that engaged and

empowered employees

was one of the top three

factors in contributing to a

positive customer

experience.


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0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Strongly Agree

Strongly Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Disagree

important point. Not only will poor IT systems

and processes mean that performing frontline

work is frustrating, but it also means that staff

will have more irate customers to deal with

when those systems and processes result in

poor quality results – a vicious circle when it

comes to creating passionate employees that

really believe in your company.

“There’s a direct correlation between employee

engagement and customer satisfaction,”

observes Jo Causon from the Institute for

Customer Service. “That’s not surprising

because when employees are engaged they

tend to feel empowered. They’re more likely to

go the extra mile, they’re more likely to want to

serve and do what is right for the organization.”

Consultant Gray Hollins believes that the same

thing that makes exceptional customer

experience – simplicity and effectiveness – is

related to good processes, which are in turn are

related to empowered employees.

“What makes a delightful customer experience

is simplicity: a customer not having to jump

from one department to another department to

get their question answered,” he explains. “It’s

simple processes that are clear from complexity

and unnecessary hand offs. That’s linked to

empowered employees. All of these factors are

tightly intertwined.”

Sami Nuwar, Customer Experience and

Operational Excellence Manager at Verizon

agrees: “I truly believe that the road to

customer experience is paved through the

employee experience. A happy employee is a

productive employee and a productive

employee is one that serves your customers.”

It’s not just about empowering employees

through good processes and IT systems, though,

there’s also a mind set required where all

employees – even those who never have any

direct impact on the customer – can connect the

dots between the work they do and the final

experience for customers.

“We live in a much more connected world these

days and that means that all parts of an

organization need to be integrated and see the

customer experience as a whole, rather than as

a set of one-off transactions,” comments Jo

Causon.. “If I worked in finance, for instance, I

need not just to view what I’m doing as the

processing of an invoice but instead think about

the connection to the customer. How does this

invoice impact on the delivery of the customer

experience?”

Chart 5: To what extent do you agree with the following statement: “All employees (whether they work

on the frontline or not) understand how their role fits in to delivering to clients”


17 | P a g e

However, it appears that many companies have

a fair distance to go in embedding that focus

throughout the organization. 42.9% of survey

respondents said that they disagreed or strongly

disagreed with the statement that “all

employees (whether they work on the frontline

or not) understand how their role fits in to

delivering to clients” at their organization

outweighing the 32.7% who said they agreed or

strongly agreed (see Chart 5, previous page).

Factor #3: Gathering Continual Customer Feedback

Companies have for decades been gathering

customer feedback and monitoring performance

against a wide variety of metrics. Common

metrics include Increased Sales, Net Promoter

Score, Customer Retention Rates and others

(see Chart 7, opposite, for commonly employed

metrics).

“Exceptional companies really understand their

customers and use this insight to shape their

strategy and operations,” explains the UK

Customer Service Institute’s Jo Causon.

It appears that many companies feel that they

are doing reasonably well in terms of gathering

and acting upon the Voice of the Customer

feedback. Over 50% of survey respondents

indicated that their company was doing a good

job of acting upon Voice of the Customer

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

My company has high qualitycustomer data

My company uses customer datain all aspects of operations to

make decisions, increase sales, andidentify new opportunities

My company has a well developedand effective way of gathering

Voice of the Customer feedback

My company takes action based onVoice of the Customer feedback

Agree/Strongly Agree

Neutral

Strongly Disagree/Disgree

Chart 6: To what extent do you agree with the following statements?

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Customer Churn

Customer Effort Score

Customer ReterntionRate

Other

Net Promoter Score

Increased Sales

Chart 7: Which metrics do you use to determine the

success of your customer experience

improvements?


18 | P a g e

feedback, while 37.6% of respondents indicated

that they had effective ways of collecting the

feedback (see Chart 6, previous page).

Where companies appear to find it more

difficult is in using that data to make decisions,

increase sales and identify new opportunities.

44.1% of survey respondents disagreed with the

statement that they were using data effectively

in this way versus only 21.5% who agreed.

Information remains trapped in information

systems or ineffectively communicated within

organizations.

“We’ve been on SAP for 14 years and there’s a

lot of data captured in SAP that we’re not

making use of. It’s either been too hard to get,

or you didn’t know how to get it or you just

didn’t know it was there,“ says Essroc’s Charles

Farina. “Now we’re trying to get customer

information out of SAP and make it visible and

useable to our sales people so that they can

make informed decisions.”

One of the additional challenges is in the

interpretation of the data.

“Gathering Voice of the Customer is easy. The

difficulty comes in communicating internally the

meaning of the feedback,” says Verizon’s Sami

Nuwar. “Most companies don’t have one single

mechanism to gather the feedback. They’re

getting feedback from different customers and

different responder types – decision makers,

influencers, segments – there are relationships,

touchpoints, win/loss. It’s connecting all of

those dots into something meaningful that can

be difficult for companies to do continuously.”


19 | P a g e

Recommendations

While there is no magic bullet to transforming

the customer experience and making your

strategy a reality overnight, there are some

specific things that process professionals can

consider doing in order to improve the

outcomes generated by their customer

experience program.

#1: Establish a strong partnership between Customer Experience teams and Process Improvement teams

As discussed

throughout this

report, so much of

the customer

experience is

driven by a

company’s

processes. Put

simply, those

companies with

well designed and

simple processes

are easy and

effective to do

business with.

Poorly designed

processes, in

contrast, not only

frustrate customers but can also lead to

frustrated and disengaged staff – thus doubly

impacting on the experience of customers.

This is where a partnership between customer

experience teams and those responsible for

process improvement within organization can

achieve powerful results.

“If you just have a customer experience

program without a continuous improvement,

it’s just empty promises. You’re doing a lot of

measuring, but nobody is listening and nobody

is doing anything about it,” observes Verizon’s

Sami Nuwar. “At the same time, if you have a

continuous improvement program without a

customer experience program, then you risk

making a lot of aimless improvements. You

don’t really know if your improvement is having

a real impact on business performance.”

Customer Experience

professionals may find the

analytical expertise in

identifying process

problems and

implementing changes

that is typically inherent in

a continuous

improvement program

useful for making practical

changes to business

operating models and

processes. Process

improvement specialists,

on the other hand, may

benefit from the deep

insight into what

customers want and need

that customer experience

professionals bring to the table.

There are already indications that many

companies are starting to go down this route

with 69% of survey respondents reporting that

process improvement teams work on initiatives

that directly impact the customer experience

(see Chart 8).

Yes 69%

No 31%

Chart 8: Does your process improvement team

work on initiatives that directly impact the

customer experience?


20 | P a g e

Equally, the majority of customer experience

initiatives (see Chart 9, next page) are

reportedly led by either process improvement

team (26%) or the customer experience team

(18%).

#2: Focus on getting the basics right

The expression, you need to walk before you

can run holds particularly true when it comes to

customer experience. There will always be gaps

between where a company is and where it

would like to be in all aspects of its

performance. With regards customer experience

specifically, it can be easy to point to a market

leader and try to emulate them. However, if the

gap between your organization’s own

performance and its aspiration is too wide, it is

likely to result in frustration or even outright

failure.

“The basics still work – before you get too

elegant and start trying to turn yourself into

Amazon!” says Avnet’s Derinda Ehrlich.

The building blocks of well-designed processes,

functioning and simple IT systems, and good

quality data will serve to enhance the success of

more sophisticated loyalty and retention

schemes, omni channel customer experiences,

and other marketing initiatives. While getting

the basics right may not seem particularly

innovative they are essential to laying the

foundations that will set a customer experience

program up for success.

#3: Establish a culture – not just tactics

Customer experience improvement isn’t just

about specific tactics: improving a process,

tweaking an IT system, monitoring metrics, etc.

Instead, it requires a fundamental change in the

way that all employees think about their role

and how they deliver value to customers.

Changing employee mind set takes a

combination of time, leadership, consistent

messaging and behaviours as well as

performance measurement schemes

throughout the organization that are aligned to

encourage appropriate employee behaviours.

“If I, as an individual, don’t understand how

what I’m doing contributes to the overall goal,

then that’s a problem,” observes Derinda

Ehrlich. “It takes a lot of people pulling the rope

to move the rock but everybody needs to know

what rope they’re pulling.”

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

Human Resources

Marketing

IT

External Consultants

Contact Center Managers

Sales

Other (please specify)

Line of Business Managers

Customer Experience team

Process Improvement team

Chart 9: Who normally leads projects that focus on customer experience improvement?


21 | P a g e

Conclusion

There is no single solution or tactic that process

professionals can adopt that will lead to the

successful operationalization of an exceptional

customer experience. Instead, the translation of

a customer experience strategy into reality is

won through a combination of designing

experiences from the customer’s perspective

and aligning people (and their performance and

job structures), process and technology to

embed that experience into the business

operations.

Customer experience touches all parts of the

business and requires an investment of time and

resources from many different functions (IT,

marketing, sales, customer service, etc.). That’s

why real and visible executive commitment is

essential to the success of any strategic

program. That commitment may be gained by

connecting the dots between improved

customer experience and improved revenue if it

is lacking.

Engaged and empowered employees were

perceived to be the number one success factor

to delivering effective customer experiences.

The individual efforts of all staff have an impact,

even when they are not frontline employees.

The same things that set employees up for

success to be effective at doing their jobs and

serving customers – i.e. well designed

processes, systems and access to data - are

those that also contribute to excellence in

execution in delivering to customers.

Change to any of these systems, processes or

employee mindsets, does not come easily to any

sort of organization. This is especially true

within large and mature companies as the

increased complexity coupled with long

established ways of operating can take time to

change. Achieving excellent customer

experience is as much about implementing

tactical changes as it is about changing the

culture of an organization. Both must be part of

a business’ long term strategy and commitment

to transform the customer experience.


22 | P a g e

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About the Author

Diana Davis is editor of PEXNetwork.com and follows trends in process

excellence and customer experience. She worked previously as a producer

with Associated Press Television News and she has also worked in

marketing and business development in the software industry. Davis holds

a Master's in International Journalism from City University, London and a

BA in English from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She can

be reached on [email protected].

Operationalizing customer experience

Business

featured speakers

key measures

poor quality

customer satisfaction

delightful

poor process

fragmented

avnets derinda