With the world of CX buzzing with new opportunities and everyone trying to get ahead of the competition, I thought it was a good time to reach out to a couple of contacts to see how they view the current and future landscape. In particular people I know have their finger on the pulse. Below is an email back and forth I had recently with Shane Goldberg of Custcore Consulting. Read on to see what he believes are the most important and in some cases unheralded opportunities within CX transformation.

Ben

There is so much going on in the world of CX at the moment (A.I.!!!) that I wanted to get your take on a few things. See where you think the priorities of companies should be.

Do you think that the Importance of change culture is being overlooked while companies play Magpie and the Shiny object?

Shane

All too often I’m seeing leaders in companies wanting to try out new and shiny customer experience technologies without thinking about what they are really trying to achieve. And, with no focus on getting the basics of customer experience improvement in their organisation right first.

The right customer centric culture is definitely one of those basics, as are developing an understanding of customers, focusing on end-to-end journeys and not interactions, and ensuring that process capabilities can support customers effectively.

Ben

I agree, but those are in some cases, fairly complex sets of information. How do you break it down to ensure it is digestible across the employees of a business?

Shane  

I see having the right change mindset in an organisation as part and parcel of creating the right customer centric culture across the company. To be truly customer centric, everyone in a company needs to understand and be open to changing their mindsets to become focused on producing great customer outcomes. Which in turn will drive great business outcomes.

In the companies I have seen do these cultural changes well, they start with baby steps. Things like getting team members to spell out how what they do impacts on customers (most people who aren’t directly customer facing in companies don’t often think like that). Or even just getting internal employees to start listening to customers more (through things like call recordings, verbatims from surveys) and things like that.

Once they have people starting to understand a bit more about what customers think and how they are impacted, bigger changes can then be driven.

Ben  

That makes sense. Start from the beginning and get everyone thinking about the Customer.

I have seen quite a few of these customer centric activities early on in a project, but it does quite often lose momentum as they move to BAU. Especially as daily decisions are being made on the front lines.

What is the formula to keep this mind set when no execs or project leaders are around?

Shane

That is really where the true nature of cultural change comes in. If customer-centric activities don’t stick when no-one is watching then the culture hasn’t changed at all.

This does mean that these kind of change efforts can’t be short-term activities. Execs and project leaders need to stick around and projects need to be scoped to cover off the “embedding” phase, which can take some time but is so critical to success.

During this phase the BAU activities begin, but with oversight and monitoring to make sure they are effective. Then this oversight and close monitoring is slowly phased out. That doesn’t mean however that there is no revisiting of the activities over time to make sure they are still in place and working.  This revisiting can be through reward and recognition, stories or a range of other activities.

Ben

So true. When I was at American Express we included rewards and a bit of story telling at our Quarterly wrap-ups and it was genuine and because of that, people wanted to win and be involved. I have also seen the exact same thing done in other companies where it was a total flop. The difference to me has always been focus, as both the leader of teams or as a team member. Teams will focus on what their leaders ask them about. What are the daily mantras and discussions of the businesses teams about? If they aren’t about the Customer, you can’t be focused down the customer.

Shane

Yes, genuine and visible leadership is probably the most important thing in driving real cultural change. In fact, I’ve written an article previously stating that if there is no true support from the CEO for a cultural change initiative than the project shouldn’t happen.

A great example of true and genuine driving of a customer centric cultural change initiative from the CEO is David Thodey, who led the cultural change in Telstra from the front. When I was there he used to do things like read and respond to many customer complaints, spoke to a lot of customers directly, took an active interest in CX improvement projects, and talked about customers first in pretty much all of his communications. These are examples of true leadership.

Ben

We have all experienced good and bad examples of leadership. I’m glad we both stuck to sharing good examples.

I’m also glad we both are aligned on the importance of culture and leadership, but what about technology?

Shane

Yes, there are plenty of examples of bad leadership where this goes horribly wrong!

You are right, technology is important in supporting customer-centricity. There are actually three important levels of capability that are critical in driving real customer-centric change. These are people capabilities, process capabilities and system capabilities. The culture and leadership is a part of driving people capability improvements, as are things like training, feedback loops and coaching. Equally as important are improving the process capabilities in an organisation to support what customers are after, and the systems, tools and technology capabilities to support both the people and processes.

Ben

But can’t I just choose a customer experience management platform and sit back and watch the cash roll in?

Shane   

That’s like asking if you can just buy a car, and instantly win an F1 grand prix. A customer experience management platform (or at least some way to gather and report on customer insights) is one key part of a total customer experience management framework, but there are also a number of others. In fact, we work with our clients on driving six key components of any CX framework that we roll out:

1      Strategy, Leadership & Culture

2      Customer Insights, Reporting & Dashboard

3      Experience Design

4      Journey & Process Management

5      Continuous Improvement & Feedback Loops

6      Governance & Program Management

Its only by implementing each of these effectively that companies can have a hope of driving long term change. Unfortunately most companies don’t make the required investment (money, resources, time) to get this right which is why you see so many improvement efforts fail.

Ben

That’s so true, I quite often see companies deciding what tech to buy and then mapping that tech back to their existing BAU and expecting to see improvements. I like that none of your steps are “find exciting technology to implement so we have an interesting story to tell”, which seems like the driver for some purchases.

However, assuming a company has purchased tech to support the strategy, journeys and processes they have designed, I still see major problems coming up time and again, especially around the effectiveness of the changes on improving the CX outcome. Let’s take Customer Journeys for example; aside from when companies confuse these for Customer Processes or touch points, do you find that Journey Mapping regularly doesn’t deliver real change in the Customers Experience?

Shane 

Yes, journey mapping is a good example of something that can be done because its “the thing all good companies are doing” rather than as a component of an overall customer experience improvement program. Too often I see nice flashy journey maps created that look good on paper, but then either just get put in someone’s drawer, or become wallpaper and are never looked at, updated or managed ever again.

In my six steps you will see “Experience Design”. Journey mapping is one way to design experiences, but if that is all that is done, and the other components aren’t implemented (especially Journey Management - which is the next step in the 6), then the journey maps aren’t any use at all. Its only when the journey maps drive actual improvement activities that they become real drivers of change.

Ben  

There are a lot of elements to CX that are “the thing all good companies are doing”, but what are the unsung heroes? What opportunities to improve CX are being overlooked?

Shane 

The biggest unsung hero is definitely feedback loops! You can also lump governance in there as well.

Ben

Interesting. How do you set up feedback loops to be effective? How would you suggest companies should use Feedback loops?

Shane

There are two types of feedback loops, those gathering feedback from customers (which many companies are doing), and those gathering feedback from employees, especially those at the front line (which is what’s missing in a lot of cases). Making these employee-focused feedback loops effective is critical to success, and not easy for companies to do well.

Ben  

What makes it hard for them to do set up Employee feedback loops well? How do you make them effective?

Shane 

Its hard to do because you need a number of things in place to make them work. You need

a      A way for employees to flag an issue or idea

b      A process to manage those issues/ideas and prioritise which ones to progress (either at a local or company wide level)

c      Resources to actually make the changes suggested

d      A culture that encourages frontline people to speak up and feel valued in doing so

Ben

e    Space for and commitment from management to take action

I have seen so many of these programs fail because people stop making suggestions when they feel like the suggestion makes no difference. Which in itself might get picked up by a feedback loop.

Hey one last thing, what do you think of when you see this:

Shane 

Yes, your E encapsulates all of A through D. I agree, too many times these programs are implemented in parts and the old black hole gobbles up anything that might actually be a good idea.

Aah, Skynet, I myself look forward to our robot overlords. On a more serious note, AI is going to help customer experience a lot, we just have to be careful how we use it.

I guess to sum up this whole chat, its really important that companies think about the culture they need to implement when looking to drive customer experience improvements. Without the right customer-centric culture in place (one that facilitates change, empowers employees to provide feedback and speak up,  and ultimately one which focusses on the customer) there is very little hope of ongoing success.

Ben 

Great, thanks for the insights.

Authors:

Shane Goldberg, Principal, CustCore Consulting 

Shane leads CustCore Consulting, a boutique firm which helps leading companies in Australia and globally to WOW their customers by unlocking new areas of growth through defining, measuring and improving customer experience across all parts of their customer's journeys, with a focus on customer insights, strategy, journey mapping and cultural change.

Ben Shipley, International Business Development and Partnership Development, Corinium Intelligence