As a comprehensive customer-centric approach, Customer Experience (CX) goes beyond ensuring your customers receive what they expect, when they expect it. It’s about creating a frictionless experience along the many touchpoints between brands and consumers on the path to purchase and ultimate use.
A CX program digs deeper into every step of the customer journey to create highly personalized, relevant interactions—interactions that give consumers what they really want from your product or service. Hearing the voice of the consumer and delivering on it, increases company value and extends the consumer’s relationship with a brand. Customer journey analysis often presents surprises that might otherwise go unnoticed by decision makers. Mining unexpected insights is where you find true CX gold. But then what?
Leadership Buy-in for Customer Experience
As we learned at the Forrester CX NYC 2018 conference, leadership buy-in is key to a strong CX program. Its success requires a champion within the organization, someone with a broad perspective of how all departments and channels fit together—and who’s willing to take the lead.
Properly implemented, CX touches all areas of an organization, along every customer touchpoint—departments, sales channels, advertising and marketing, etc. Since it isn’t relegated to silos, it is best to have management involvement in order to execute the necessary actions based on findings. Look at it this way:
- Corporation A’s sales team is busy showing and selling products to current and prospective customers. Sales numbers are being met.
- The inventory is available (in store, warehouse, online).
- Order fulfillment tracks and sends out the orders on time.
- The creative department/agency creates eye-catching packaging and marketing assets (website, ads, etc.) to promote the products.
- The customer service department/help desk logs the technical or customer support issues that are being called in; records are accurate.
On paper, Corporation A is handling business just fine and management is operating under that assumption. But what’s really happening for the customer, as revealed through diligently applied CX methodologies, might surprise the CEO, as illustrated in these examples with two of BNO’s medical industry clients.
Packaging redesign saves money and OR headaches
A company sells a medical device that surgeons (the end users) love. However, through our customer experience practice we discovered that the packaging was difficult to open in the operating room, causing great frustration. The devices often ended up on the OR floor, requiring the surgical team to get a replacement on the fly and wasting assets. Based on this valuable, actionable feedback, the CEO ordered a packaging redesign, saving money for the hospitals and time (and hassles) for the surgeons.
Clinical education boosts market share
The manufacturer of an acute care catheter product identified that medical providers were stocking the product but that it was underutilized. Our CX exploration among target users revealed that, in order for the brand to be more competitive, the end users required more clinical evidence and education that demonstrated the product’s advantages and applications.
Based on these insights, leadership directed the product team to work with the sales force to better understand market dynamics and voice of the customer; consequently, we built a robust education program and developed clinically differentiated product messaging. The result: the client captured 20% market share within the first two years with a multigenerational product platform in place.
Top-down execution
Because customer experience extends throughout the entire organization, it is best conducted when the CX team works directly with leadership. That top-down view is needed in order to implement the necessary changes across departments and channels, to make nimble course corrections when needed, and to delight customers every step of the way.
At BNO, the CX programs we employ for our clients are transforming the way their customers are experiencing their brand/product/service. Time and again, we find that when we tap into the truth about what motivates particular buyer or user personas, we come up with very meaningful insights. If you’re ready to transform your approach, read more at bnoinc.com/cx or contact Kevin Harding, VP Customer Experience at (908) 685-1510.
