Ignore Customer Experience at Your Own Risk!
I read an interesting post on the Good Experience blog that got me thinking about how organizations are aligning themselves to become more customer-centric. The post was a paraphrased chat with someone who asked "Since CIOs spend their days deciding which system to buy, or migrate, or install, do they really need to worry about the customer experience?" At first I was surprised that this question even came up. Of course a CIO has to worry about the customer experience, I thought to myself. Doesn't everyone in the executive suite have to worry about the customer experience? Doesn't everyone in the company need to worry about it? How can a company operate in a competitive environment without being completely customer focused? But the truth is that not every CEO, CIO, COO, CFO, etc. worries about the customer experience. And as the post mentions, it's usually the giants, the old-timers, the ones who don't understand change that still don't care about the customer experience. But they are wrong and are ignoring the customer experience at their own peril. Because a young-gun will come along who gets it and eventually topple the old-timer and take away market share until there is none left. Companies didn't use to care about the customer or his experience. In fact up until about a decade or two ago those two concepts weren't even connected to each other. A company sold products to customers, who were expected to pay and go away. The call center was an orphan in the organization and was intended to keep customers away from the rest of the company so it could continue to create and sell products. Eventually, with competition leveling out the playing field and with information at everyone's fingertips, selling products to unhappy customers was no longer going to work. That costly call center evolved into an extremely important contact center (to allow every form of customer interaction the customers wanted to use) and became the epicenter of the company's connection to its customers. Understanding the customer experience and making sure your customers are satisfied is what keeps companies alive and lets them thrive. Take the banking industry, for example. Is there really that big of a difference between the basic services that they offer? Is there that big of a difference in the fees you would pay at one bank versus another? What makes a customer stay with a bank instead of emptying his or her account and walking across the street to a competitor? The answer, of course, is what kind of experience these customers get when they deal with their bank. And that's why it is crucial for everyone in the organization, from the CEO down to the last employee in that bank, to make it a top priority to think about the customer experience at all times. Because if they don't, that customer will be gone. And if one customer goes, then they all can go, because there is nothing stopping them from withdrawing their hard earned money and depositing it with the competition. For more on how Customer Experience Analytics can help financial institutions become more customer-centric, read our financial industry case study. Also, watch a replay of our webinar with Bruce Temkin of Forrester Reseach about using Customer Experience Analytics to help your enterprise adopt Experience-Based Differentiation measures to gain a competitive advantage. To end this post on a lighter note, I'll leave you with a great scene from Mary Poppins. Ignore customer experience at your own risk: