01. LACK OF COMMITMENT FROM THE TOP
Lip service doesn’t cut it. Senior leadership has to walk the talk, not just mouth the words. All too often, leadership treats CX as the management fad du jour, rather than as a business strategy. Without senior-level commitment in time and funding, CX efforts are like pushing on a string.
Actively solicit executive sponsorship and involvement; strive to make leadership a participant, rather than a spectator.
Download
02. INSIDE-OUT VIEW OF THE WORLD
Looking out upon the marketplace from inside the company is gazing through the wrong end of the telescope: the perspective that matters is the outside-in view, seeing how the firm looks from the vantage point of the customer. Firms often build processes and systems strictly from an introspective position, failing to appreciate the impact on customers, even when customers directly interact with those processes and systems.
Try constructing parallel journey maps, one from the customer’s perspective, one from the company’s orientation to clearly illustrate the disconnect... and then lock away the internal version and work from the customer map.
03. RISING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS
While seemingly trite, CX is a journey, not a destination – and one reason is the tide of continuously rising customer expectations. Armed with more information and market power than ever before, exposed to a wider array of experiences and options, often with little “friction” in terms of switching costs, customers are more demanding than ever. And the hurdles will continue to get higher.
Stay attuned to and measure performance against changing expectations, set aggressive (but realistic) goals that push the organization.
04. SUB-STANDARD EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES AND POORLY TRAINED EMPLOYEES
While these aren’t one-and-the-same, the two issues are closely related. Employees are the company’s customer experience delivery system. If that system suffers from its own malaise of bad experiences and isn’t properly trained, it is absurd to think that the firm will somehow magically delight customers.
Link employee and customer experience to show how one affects the other and the impact of EX problems on CX.
05. CORPORATE CULTURE
This is another closely related issue. To be effective, CX can’t merely be a program; it needs to be infused into the bloodstream of the company and become part of the corporate DNA. Great customer experience must be intrinsic to the firm and be part of what the company is, not just something that the company does every now and then.
Constantly evangelize: disseminate information, train and communicate over and over (and over again).
06. MISPERCEPTION AND FAILURE TO LISTEN
Some companies and leaders smoke their own dope and really believe they deliver a good customer experience, despite what their customers are saying. Perhaps dismissing complaints or bad scores as unrepresentative, these firms suffer from a huge disconnect between the caliber of the experience they think they are delivering and what the marketplace sees them as delivering.
Getting leadership out of a box of their own construction is a tough one: you need multiple proof points that clearly illustrate the problem.
07. FAILURE OF MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS
Despite good intentions, firms sometimes use poorly designed measurement tools or rely on faulty observations. Or their measurements are OK, but they don’t analyze the data for meaningful insights and understanding. Or, worse yet, they misinterpret the data and take the wrong steps to improve the customer experience.
Bring in a third party to objectively assess your program and recommend paths for improvement.
08. FAILURE TO ACT
On the flip side, there are those organizations that seem to think that the act of measurement addresses the situation sufficiently by itself. While you might not be able to manage what you don’t measure, measurement by itself isn’t active management. For a host of reasons – uncertainty, lack of direction, resource constraints, poor leadership and so on – some companies never seem to implement any changes.
Look for small wins, perhaps action planning with frontline managers on modest initiatives to demonstrate to others.
09. COST/BENEFIT CHALLENGES
Delivering great customer experiences isn’t cheap. Some companies don’t see the ROI; they see the cost, but not the return and, in effect, make a conscious decision that investment in CX are bad investments.
While there are third-party examples of the economics of CX that can be brought to the attention of leadership, the only really compelling case is based on your company’s own data, so do everything you can to link experience data with actual customer behaviors and business outcomes.
10. LACK OF CLARITY IN OBJECTIVES
And some firms just don’t seem to know where to aim. If you don’t know where you are going, any path will do. Lacking a target linked to their business objectives, these organizations tread water or thrash about, but don’t accomplish much.
Take the initiative and articulate clear business objectives for CX efforts and don’t be shy about sharing them.
There no doubt are other reasons why so many companies don’t live up to the promise of great (or even good) CX, as well as other steps that can be taken to overcome each of these challenges – so feel free to chime in with others.
ABOUT CONFIRMIT
Confirmit’s solutions are built by insights professionals, for insights professionals. Market Research, customer experience and employee engagement consultants around the world rely on our solutions to turn insight into stories that fuel action. The heart of our business is the people behind our technology, and we work as a partner to deliver the flexibility and power you need to understand and manage experiences, emotions, and behaviors so you’re always one step ahead.