This five-part series focuses on established pillars for leading a world-class customer experience. From our own work, supported by the literature, there is a direct and beneficial link between instituting these pillars and the satisfaction of your most important and profitable clients. Our first article discussed how to foster a customer-centric culture. This article focuses on the setting of customer experience goals and strategies to support your culture.
To apply our learning, let’s take a look at a B2B company that provides a sophisticated travel booking platform. Ownership’s vision was to deliver an unforgettable travel experience for their clients. Turning vision into a reality for clients and growth for the business required a roadmap – a clear path forward that includes specific strategic business goals, metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and an action plan that delivers exceptional customer experience. Let’s dive into each element.
Define a Clear and Motivating Mission, Vision, and Goals
Crafting a compelling mission and vision statement is at the heart of building a customer-centric culture. Your mission should encapsulate what you aim to achieve for your customers, while your vision should portray your aspirations for the future. For instance, your mission could revolve around providing unparalleled service, while your vision can set sights on becoming the top-rated provider of exceptional customer experience in your industry. Setting specific and measurable goals should align with your mission and vision, guiding your organization toward a desired outcome. Whether it’s enhancing customer satisfaction ratings, reducing response times, or increasing customer loyalty, each goal should motivate your team toward taking the right action. To define a clear and motivating mission, vision, and goals:
- Articulate your customer experience (CX) mission, vision and goals, providing direction within the organization.
- Maintain thorough documentation of your articulated mission, vision and goals, ensuring clear accessibility and clarity across the company.
- Ensure that your CX goals align with your overall business objectives, guaranteeing effective contribution to organizational success.
Craft a Clear Action Plan
Crafting a concise action plan across all dimensions – culture and people, goals and metrics, technology and infrastructure, protocols, operations and reporting feedback – is essential for elevating CX. Prioritization ensures focused efforts on areas with the greatest impact, while setting timelines fosters structured implementation and accountability. Addressing all dimensions guarantees a holistic approach to enhancing CX, preventing gaps or inconsistencies that may diminish overall satisfaction. By considering these elements, the action plan provides a comprehensive strategy to drive meaningful improvements in customer experience. To craft a clear action plan:
- Maintain a documented and regularly updated CX action plan, outlining strategic initiatives and actionable steps.
- Prioritize areas with the greatest impact and set timelines for structured implementation and accountability within its action plan.
- Address all dimensions of CX enhancement to guarantee a holistic approach, preventing gaps or inconsistency.
Set, Communicate and Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Identify and track KPIs vital for assessing your progress towards your CX goals. These KPIs could include metrics like customer satisfaction score, response time and average handling time of customer issues. Communicate these KPIs across your organization to foster alignment and accountability. Regularly monitoring them allows you to identify areas for prompt improvement and to make necessary adjustments to your strategies. To set, communicate, and monitor KPIs:
- Measure and observes CX KPI-based targets and breaks these down on a team and individual level.
- Monitor certain CX KPI-based targets on a company level to measure progress toward strategic goals.
- Make and measure customer satisfaction one of your KPI-based targets.
Use KPI and Performance Measure Data
Businesses are increasingly relying on KPIs and performance measurement data to enhance the customer experience. Organizations that leverage these metrics gain valuable insights into customer interactions, preferences, and pain points across various touch points. This enables companies to identify areas for improvement, optimize processes, and allocate resources effectively to elevate the overall CX. Through a systematic analysis of the most important KPIs, companies can proactively address challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and exceed customer expectations. To use KPI and performance measure data:
- Analyze KPIs and performance measures to identify factors influencing customer experience.
- Pinpoint areas for improvement based on this analysis.
- Adjust continuously targets according to data insights.
From our example above, the B2B travel booking platform faced challenges with slow response times to customer inquiries. They strategically adopted average handling time as a performance KPI to measure the time it takes to resolve a case. By analyzing AHT metrics, the company identified process inefficiencies and deployed automation tools to expedite routine inquiries. This initiative also enabled them to accurately forecast required headcount by multiplying expected incoming customer contacts with AHT. Consequently, response times significantly improved, enhancing customer satisfaction, and reinforcing their reputation as a responsive and reliable partner.
Ultimately, setting clear customer experience goals and implementing effective strategies are vital for fostering a customer-centric culture within your organization. By defining a compelling mission and vision, setting specific outcomes-based goals, crafting actionable plans, and monitoring the most important KPIs, you can cultivate a culture that prioritizes and satisfies customers at every interaction.
Enhance your customer experience journey by completing our complimentary CX Function Index Survey. Upon completion, connect with us to receive a comprehensive evaluation of your CX function’s performance, including individual scores for the five strategic dimensions of a world-class CX function.
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