3 Steps to Creating Better Customer Experiences - Business Improvement Tools

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3 steps to creating better customer experiences
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• Providing an exceptional experience for customers
  is a core objective for any business serious
  about growth, brand expansion and financial
  performance.Its a complicated mission though,
  with many traps and obstacles to be encountered
  along the way.

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Customer Behaviors Needs

• Customers are demanding they want companies to
  know them, understand their needs, not waste
  their time and provide the product or service on
  time and as expected. How does a company know
  what customers want and stay in touch with their
  needs?

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Cross-Channel Alignment

• The ways in which customers engage with an
  organization are evolving and expanding rapidly
  also the so-called omni-channel experience is
  here to stay. Customers can walk into a store,
  call the service center, chat with an agent, send
  an email, send a text, engage through social
  channels and the list goes on. How does a
  company keep these channels connected and in
  sync? How is a consistent customer experience
  delivered across every channel?

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Systems Processes

• Systems and the back office generally move much
  slower than the marketing and customer
  experience design team would like them to. How
  does a company deliver the optimal experience
  working with the speed and capability constraints
  of the technology and process environment?
• These are just some of the challenges. What are
  some of the proven methods than can help to
  overcome these obstacles and shape an exceptional
  customer experience. Whilst by no means
  exhaustive, here are some suggestions for
  analyzing, understanding and designing a
  world-class customer experience.

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1. Use Gemba Gather Data

• Gemba literally means the actual place. Get out
  from behind your desk and go to where the
  customer experience is actually being delivered
• Direct Observations. Sit in a store and watch how
  the customers are engaging with staff, processes,
  and products. Notice issues and pain points that
  are being experienced. Ask front-line staff
  questions (use some 5 whys). Listen in on some
  customer calls. Put together a simple worksheet
  for tracking your observations before you do the
  exercise. If you have any hypotheses developed,
  take those and see if any evidence proves or
  disproves them.

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• Day in the Life Of. This method works great
  when focusing on a specific role that is involved
  in serving customers. It can shed light on how to
  make the role more effective or address issues
  further up the line.
• Mystery Shop. Pretend you are a customer. Use the
  web site, buy a product, use a product, call
  customer service, chat with an agent, review your
  bill, make a complaint! How was the experience?
  Do the same with a few competitors - what are the
  differences?

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• Voice of the Customer (Voc). What do customers
  say about the experience? What do they want in
  the experience? A variety of methods exist for
  gathering the VoC including focus groups,
  surveys, interviews and using existing customer
  data such as complaints, feedback, reviews.
• Gather Compile Data. Supplement data captured
  from observations, DILO, mystery shopping, VoC
  with data from corporate systems related to
  customer experience. CRM systems, order
  management, complaint tracking, etc.

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• Look at the macro-level (trends, volumes,
  patterns) in addition to the micro-level
  (specific instances of an issue, triggers that
  lead to a process breakdown, etc). Do some
  sampling if you need to a good start is to grab
  a batch of customers, orders, complaints
  (whatever you are most interested in) and do
  end-to-end analysis on these. Roughly 400 is good
  sample size to get strong confidence in the
  results.

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2. Map the Customer Journeys

• Map the Current State. Using all the data thats
  been gathered and the insights from the Gemba
  exercises, map the key journeys as they currently
  exist. Do this across channels and focus on the
  most critical and frequent journeys taken by
  customers. Brown paper process mapping is a
  terrific way to bring together a variety of
  stakeholders to build up a clear picture of the
  customers experience. It also allows the
  incorporation of different data elements and
  visuals to bring the journey to life. The data
  gathered will help draw out the key points and
  ensure the process mapped is actually what is
  happening (not what the team thinks is happening).

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• Map a Desired Future State. Using the same
  insights and method, craft a future state
  customer journey that aligns with the ambition of
  the organization. Look for opportunities to
  eliminate pain, points, waste and align with the
  aspiration of the customer as told through the
  VoC.
• Synthesize the Pain Points. From the current
  state process maps and the gaps identified in
  designing a new future state experience, document
  the key pain points.

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3. Develop Solutions and an Action Plan

• Once you have mapped the current state and
  designed an ideal future state and used this to
  highlight the gaps its time to move into
  solution mode and planning.
• Prioritize Pain Points. Take the documented pain
  points and prioritize them based on severity
  and frequency.

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• Brainstorm Solutions. Ideate solutions and
  prioritize them based on their ability to address
  pain points, and their cost / complexity and time
  to implement. Look for solutions that address
  more than one pain point.
• Scope Plan. Scope out each solution including
  development of a charter and create an integrated
  improvement plan with clear milestones,
  activities, deliverables, success factors and
  performance measures. Be sure to follow good
  principles such as holding people accountable,
  testing solutions, monitoring results and scale
  solutions once they are proven to work.

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• Let us know if you have any questions or
  feedback. Many of the business improvement tools
  mentioned on this blog are available on
  experttoolkit.com as will the upcoming Management
  Consultant Toolkit which will be available in
  April.
• Go make a greater impact!

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