When I started at Highland, I was tasked with finding new clients for our growing Customer Experience (CX) practice. But first, I had to ask myself an important question:
What the Heck is CX?
Sure, I had a general idea, but did I truly understand the nuances of customer experience work?
After a few years of working at Highland and countless conversations about CX, here’s what I’ve learned about how to define it, who’s responsible for it, and where organizations should start to deliver good customer experience.
What is CX vs UX?
Unlike User Experience (UX), which focuses on screen-based interactions, customer experience management (CXM or CX management) attempts to capture the entire span of a customer’s relationship with an organization in both digital and physical contexts (such as on e-commerce websites and mobile apps as well as in-store or in person). This means it aims to meet customer expectations with omnichannel customer-centric solutions.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is another aspect that’s connected with CX, but generally, CRM tends to focus on the actual software used for customer support, rather than dealing with the offline and online digital experience of a customer.
While we use the word “customer,” we think of Customer Experience as valuable practice for any organization that wants to improve the overall customer experience of the people they serve. It’s a key differentiator in the marketplace. This includes nonprofits, who have a broad range of non-customer constituents like members and donors. In healthcare organizations, “customers” are patients and their families, whose experiences can be extremely complex and emotional. We work with many mission-driven organizations and find that CX and its related practices are great tools for helping them solve sticky, human-centered problems.
Who’s Responsible for CX?
I’ve found that in a majority of organizations, the customer experience strategy falls under the Marketing umbrella. According to a Gartner Customer Experience in Marketing Survey, 81% of marketers plan to compete on the basis of CX.
Andrea Istwan, a VP Director of Client Experience at Envestnet — a Chicago-based fintech company — recently transitioned into CX from her previous channel marketer role. She remarked that the shift from CX to marketing was an intuitive one for her:
We’ve always been a client-centric organization. With my new role, we’re now laser focused on putting a measurement behind that effort. I’m focused on looking across all client engagement efforts and providing insights to help decision makers provide a better experience to both our clients and employees.
Andrea also mentioned that the shift to CX is having a broader impact across the company — both externally and internally. “By gathering data across multiple touch points, both top down and bottom up, we can create a holistic strategy to vastly improve not just our client experience but our employee experience as well.”
While CX efforts tend to end up in the Marketing department, I’ve also spoken with companies who have assigned CX responsibilities to Operations and even Finance teams. There’s no one right answer to where your CX efforts should live, but the deciding factor should most likely be proximity to actual clients so that they can gain customer feedback in real time and have a better understanding of customer interactions. The more customer-facing your CX teams are, directly connecting with real customers, the more positive experiences will be and the higher customer satisfaction levels when dealing with your organization.
One of the knock-on effects of improving customer touchpoints and the customers' perceptions is not just customer retention. Word of mouth, advocacy and positive messaging to friends, family and others on social media channels can also occur. It also stands to reason that a bad customer experience can have an equally negative impact on these areas - as well as your bottom line ultimately.
Unfortunately, bad customer experiences lead potentially loyal customers to abandon the brand. That means no more interactions with customer support teams, no brand loyalty, and no further chances for the company or retailer loses to turn around pain points and retain the customer. So, understanding CX metrics and ensuring the voice of the customer is heard, are both vitally important for success.
The Four Foundations of CX
So now that we know what good CX is and where CX responsibilities should live within an organization, we’ve come to our next inevitable question:
What the heck do I do next?
Whether you’re a seasoned customer experience pro or a CX newbie, we think these four foundational projects are critical to organizations who’d like to deepen their understanding of their customers throughout their lifecycle.
Design Sprints
A design sprint is a week-long immersive process that uses design thinking to reduce risk when bringing a new product or service to market.
Design sprint engagements are great for teams who:
- …have a big problem to solve but an unclear solution (or too many solutions).
- …want to be as efficient as possible while mitigating risk.
- …want a structured way to organize and act on their best ideas.
- …have heard about the power of design thinking and are looking to try it out.
Learn more about design sprints here:
Customer Journey Mapping
Customer Journey Mapping provides your team with a visual representation of the thoughts, feelings, actions, and touchpoints of a specific customer segment.
Customer journey maps are ideal for teams who:
- …come from established organizations who want to become more customer-centric.
- ……want to break down silos, and organize their actions and priorities around their customers.
- …want evidence-based customer data and insights that’ll help their shape long-term strategic goals and provide a competitive advantage.
- …want to be more innovative (perhaps delivering personalized experiences, automation with AI chatbots, self-service customer initiatives and beyond).
Read Highland’s Guide to Getting Started with Journey Mapping:
Jobs to Be Done Research
JTBD research enables companies to capture customer needs and systematically identify opportunities for growth.
Jobs to Be Done research is ideal for teams who:
- …are feeling some stagnancy and confusion but are unsure what the root of the problem is.
- …are worried about being disrupted by or falling behind their competitors.
- …want to reach new customers but maintain existing customer loyalty by reducing customer churn rates and improving customer retention.
- …want to strengthen the alignment between their offerings and their customers’ subtle social and emotional needs.
Read more about why JTBD is so important:
CX Roadmap
This is a strategic document that defines the customer experience you want to deliver and gives you a path for how to get there.
CX roadmaps are ideal for teams who:
- …are led by newly-appointed CX leaders or have recently formed as a CX team and want to get off to the right start.
- …want a concrete 90-day roadmap with actionable insights and a plan for how to put them into place.
- …need to garner executive support and convince the organization of the ROI of a CX strategy.
- …want to clarify and document your CX goals, strategies for reaching them, and tools to measure customer success and customer engagement. There are many ways to measure customer experience with tools and metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSat), Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It’s important to set KPIs to determine your performance metrics and track success.
No matter where you are on your journey towards customer-centricity and ensuring positive customer experiences, Highland is happy to help you take the next step. We love to partner with organizations to create meaningful connections with the people they serve. If that sounds something you’d like to do, get in touch.
