Even when your company finally starts taking CX seriously and gets to taking concrete steps to improve it, there are right and wrong ways to go about it. We asked the CX experts to put together a couple of tips that would help you avoid some common mistakes and set you up for success.
Dean Brabec
CX Director, ČSOB
Initiating a conversation with a customer who has given a negative review or a low Net Promoter Score is crucial. Nothing beats the value of direct communication in understanding their concerns, addressing issues, and potentially transforming a negative experience into a positive one. I would highly recommend starting there; there’s no substitute for an interview with the client.
Lukáš Viktora
Head of Customer Journey, Gen
Use customer experience as your competitive advantage. When evaluating various initiatives, it’s easy to slide to prioritizing what would benefit the company from an internal viewpoint, rather than prioritizing the customer needs and perceptions.
Before moving forward with any initiative, ask these questions:
– How does this decision benefit the customer?
– Will it positively affect the perceived value of our product or service?
If you find yourself struggling to affirmatively answer both, the initiative should be discontinued.
It’s important to make CX an essential part of the long-term growth strategy, as opposed to seeing it as a way to reach short-term goals. Viewing CX as a core pillar of your business strategy will foster sustainable growth by building a loyal customer base and differentiating your brand.
Jaroslav Chaloupka
Former Director of Customer Management, UNIQA
The most important thing from the company’s perspective is to know “who” the company is and what relationship it wants to have with the customers. There are easy but essential questions to tackle, and you can’t move forward without answering them. Or you can, but in the wrong direction and that’s even worse than doing nothing. Despite this, many companies can’t answer them – and surprisingly not only small or new ones but also big ones with history and tradition. Sometimes it’s difficult to grasp how their business can function without them not knowing almost anything about their customers.
That’s why, with a new client, I always start with a Customer Centricity pyramid and a definition of CX strategy. Only then can we move forward. You have to make sure the CX strategy doesn’t collide with the general business strategy and that the CEO with the upper management are on board. If you can’t tick these two boxes, you have a company just pretending to care about CX. The real benefit is close to zero, and it will only cause infighting among the employees.
Nigel Bowman
Associate Partner, Dragonfish Consulting
No matter who you are, read this book. The Ultimate Question 2.0 by Fred Reichheld. Not everyone agrees that Net Promoter System is the best ‘customer measure’ and OK I can live with that, but whether you like NPS, CSAT, Ease or HXC the basic principle is consistent throughout all of these. Simply start listening to your customers in a structured way, learning from them and then driving positive improvements in how you design and deliver your products, services and experiences.
Your customers are your ultimate testers of the products, services and experiences you deliver. Treat them with the respect they deserve, as they have chosen to support you by buying your products/services, and make their voice an integral part of how you manage your business and most importantly how you make decisions. Companies that do this well see real benefits, with those leading in NPS outgrowing their competitors by a factor of 2 times (Bain & Company, Net promoter System ‘ How NPS relates to growth’).
Ondřej Borovička
Head of Customer Experience, Out of Dark
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “We are measuring NPS (or CSAT, CES, etc.) = We’re doing CX”. It’s great you’re measuring it, but instead of being interested in the number itself, focus on the experience that creates this number and what are the drivers of growth or decline. The best way to do that is to start listening to what your customers are saying, understanding the customer journey and testing it yourself, understanding the customer pain points, and eventually starting to improve things. Only then you should include the measuring where there’s the biggest risk of losing the customer or getting more value from him.
