Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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Operationalizing the Customer
Experience: Challenges and
Opportunities
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
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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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
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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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
improving the customer
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
improving the customer
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
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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”
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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?
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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.”
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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?
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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?
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
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.
Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
22 | P a g e
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Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
24 | P a g e
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].