Leading for Customer Experience (L4CX)

Customers keep the CEO up at night

Sleep is important, and a lot of studies particularly worry about what keeps the CEO up at night. You can read the list of top priorities in repeated research such as the IBM Global CEO Study,  PwC CEO Talent Challenge, and the yearly reports of the conference board. Over the past years the usual suspects have topped the list: dealing with change, getting innovation done and having the right talent in place. These are all big hairy challenges indeed. But there is another challenge that's been on the rise in these lists: the releationship with the customer. I can also see that in my personal work. Customer centricity and best customer experience are topics that emerge in my clients' must win battles, strategic drivers, and values

Image: CEO challenges over time.

It is a challenge

Most companies struggle with the challenge to create a customer centric organization. Let's take a step back in time. A long time ago, the crafstmen had direct customer contact. Then, asas we scaled up enterprises in the golden age of corporation the customer became an abstract entity many departments away. In fact, the term client was not used all that much With the internet, and especially the increased competition it created and the information spread through social media, customers have gained back their voice. Their power on the stakeholder table has considerably risen. It is a struggle for many companies to become more customer-centric.

Image: the occurence of the word 'client' over time (source: Google n-gram)

Who's challenge is it?

For me, one of the most interesting facts to observe about a company is whether the responsibility for customer experience is embedded within the company or remains the burden of the few people in direct contact with the client. There are legendary examples out there of great customer service and truly customer centered company cultures. So what can managers do to shape a customer-centric company culture? As always, leadership has its role to play in terms of generating the Direction, Alignment and Commitment (DAC) needed to address this challenge.

The ways to the customer

In our work to clarify how to "lead for customer experience", we have created this holistic GPS of all the roads managers can walk to increase the customer orientation in their company.

• Empathy Road: It all starts with empathizing for your customer segments. Tools to help you do that include Empathy Mapping, observation techniques, drawing the customer journey and listing the moments of truth.
• Value Avenue: How does your offering help your customers accomplish their tasks (and be awesome at it!), ailing their pains and contributing to their gains? One tool to help you here is making a Value Map.
• Satisfaction Boulevard: How are you satisfying your customer, and how do you know? One interesting tool here is the Kano model on satisfiers, dissatisfiers and delighters. 
• Brand & Simplicity Lane: How can you leverage your brand to create a great customer experience? Brands work on an emotional level, and are less controlled by organizations these days. How can you use social media to continuously shape your brand? 
• Design Drive: In what ways are you having the customer in mind while creating new products and services? A popular approach to do so is Design Thinking. 
• Expectation Street: How do you manage customer expectations? One tool to help you here is the Customer Service Gap Model.
• Alignment Parkway: We are getting to a major road here. Most companies we spoke with indicate that aligning internal structures and processes to drive better customer experience is a major challenge. We have developed a cross-company health check to help you focus your action in this area.
• Company Culture: Ultimately, we believe the care for the customer is everyone's business, not just the task of the customer service department or sales rep. When faced with the choice between running the business as usual for short term financial gain or  taking care of the longer term customer relationship, often the decision is to go for the first one. How can a company do both? A tools to consider here is polarity thinking. 

The GPS to customer experience breaks the challenge down in different paths. The overarching goal remains to reach a customer-centric customer culture.

What are your challenges in leading for customer experience?