Let’s say you’ve appointed a head of customer experience, who's part of your senior management team. You've got a customer experience practice. This might be a small team of a few people, or it might be a bigger division or department within your organization. And you’ve implemented practices and procedures driven by customer experience. You’re doing research. You’re creating and using personas and journey maps. Maybe you’re even doing a service blueprint. And, of course, you have metrics and measurements. From thoseat, you get analytics and intelligence. You know what your visitors need. You are aware how they think; you know what they’re saying. And you are acting according to that which you learn. You’re changing priorities, decisions and investments. So, you’ve established the discipline, and you’re doing everything right.
But are you really? Don’t get me wrong. Everything you’re doing in that scenario is essential to your organization. But if your customer experience discipline is siloed, if it's simply aligned although not embedded and woven throughout your organization into all you do, and if it's not a key driver for almost all you do, the concept you’re truly driven by customer experience is much more myth than reality.
Creating a realistic look at being driven by customer experience requires education, understanding and implementation of the discipline throughout your entire organization. It requires the data of how customer experience differentiates from customer support and the need to share, apply and nurture practices and assets, not simply develop and document them. This is not about creating personas and journey maps and then putting them on a shelf or implementing them within a siloed discipline. CX assets and practices need to be top of mind and referenced frequently by everyone – in thoughts, conversations, planning, practices and absolutely decision-making. And, just as your customers' journeys continually evolve, so must your CX practices and assets.
I cannot stress enough the associated knowledge or practice of customer experience affects just about everyone inside your organization and merely about everything in your business in the same way that everyone and all things in your organization affects your visitors, whether you realize it or not. Customer experience should become an inextricable a part of your culture. This isn't accomplished roller, and it’s not accomplished bottom up. It must be woven throughout all of your strategies, plans, projects, workflows, conversations, decisions and just how you apply technology.
To accomplish this organic customer experience culture, many of these components need to be designed and orchestrated to allow the desired customer experience. It is not just going to happen. Done correctly, this transformation is really a journey similar to innovation or digital transformation, and it’s one that reaches the real heart of the organization and affects every facet of that which you do and the reason why you do it. It’s a big journey. But like several big journeys, it starts with small steps and it is about gaining momentum. With time, customer experience won't be a thing you do, but rather will end up an important part of how you think, how you behave, and just what drives your conversations, priorities, investments, and decisions. To maneuver from the myth towards the reality and be truly driven by customer experience, it's key to educate and involve everybody. Don't align, but rather embed. And go beyond the customer’s view and journey and look at your internal journey.
Is customer notice a discipline on its own? I think you'll would agree that customer experience is certainly a discipline, but the last thing you want is to ensure that it stays unto itself.
