Organizations today seem partly unable to overcome their hesitation to adοpt a CX strategy, stating they cannot afford CX.
We experience a most technologically evolving environment where the balance between digital and physical services tend to change constantly. Google brings to the discussion the so called life moments instead of the classic definition of needs as we traditionally know them. Disney Institute offers creative solutions on delivering exceptional customer experiences based on storytelling. Most of the things we have been taught about marketing or management have been shaped into a different form.
Everything can be easily replicated. A thousand times we saw brand new products or services introduced to the market from an organization and right after from another. What it’s proved to be hardly replicable is the entire experience a customer has from an organization. And what is the entire experience? It is the sum of interactions between customer and business through all available channels (digital/physical). This is one of the reasons why Omni channel and seamless transition is so much talked about between UX experts.
The truth is that adapting such a strategy would mean a radical change inside the organization or even disrupt industry. It means change mind set, adapt technologies and methodologies like Agile and Lean and of course User Experience which could really work as pillars to customer experience edifice.
But there are alternatives and examples to confirm that you can start the implementation in stages.
As people make the difference, organizations can begin with them. Key skills for people working in Customer Experience is creativity and storytelling. Those people need space and authority to act as ambassadors, to work with teams and start spreading the “virus” of customer experience, because this is what it is. Once you are “infected” you cannot be healed. When you learn how to take a mile in your customer shoes you cannot go back and even further when you start seeing results.
Of course the journey of customer experience doesn’t end there. There are efforts to be put on IT and new methodologies but… it’s just a start in an endless learning process. A process that will make each one of the participants much more rich in experiences and feelings that inevitably will change their point of view.
Instead of asking: “Can we afford Customer Experience?” maybe we should be asking “Can we afford to miss Customer Experience?”