In his new book “Total Customer Experience,” Bob Hayes discusses the role that strategy, governance, business integration, method, reporting, and research play in helping companies establish more-effective customer experience programs. For me, it all boils down to a toothbrush.
Socially connected customers have longer reach and more clout than ever. Every transaction is an opportunity to strengthen a relationship--or lose it. I talked to Hayes, the Chief Customer Officer at TCELab in Seattle, Washington, (and a PhD in industrial-organizational psychology) about what companies can do to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and get their best customers to not only buy more stuff but actually become advocates for the corporate brands they value most.
Businesses have been trying to master the art and science of customer relationship management (CRM) for years. As a technology journalist, I wrote articles more than 10 years ago about the trend to use data warehouses, data mining, and other tools to create a 360-degree view of customers and provide products and services to a “market of one.”
Those were merely first steps toward what we now call customer experience (CX), the idea that businesses can use everything they know about a customer to personalize and maximize the transaction at every touchpoint and across business channels--in the store, on the phone, online, and via social media and mobile.
The first question I asked Hayes was how CX is different from the CRM I wrote about years ago. His surprising answer: “Not much at all.” By that, he means the name of the game is still applying what you know about a customer to provide a superior experience, whether that’s buying a cup of coffee or a car. What has changed are the tools, processes, and best practices used for customer interactions and, most importantly, the customers--they're on the go, always connected, highly engaged on social media, and well informed, and they know that you know what they do.
New technologies, apps, and cloud services can help companies excel at CX through virtually any combination of web, call center, and social media capabilities, sales and marketing solutions, analytics, and customer service and support. Oracle’s broad line of customer experience offerings includes
According to Hayes, CX hinges on being able to capture information generated through customer interactions and feedback and integrate that data with back-end CRM systems. (In other words, CRM is an important component of an overall CX strategy, but just one element of it.) Social media buzz is increasingly part of the feedback loop, as well.
What’s more, big data can be used to cross pollinate CX activities with other business operations and to align outcomes in ways that show up on the bottom line. Hayes sees an opportunity to integrate a company’s business, financial, and even HR data with its CX program to reveal correlations and insights. Are employee attitudes reflected in customer attitudes? Does an increase in a particular CX metric have a parallel in real buying behavior? Business units will have to interact with the CX team to get answers to those questions, Hayes says. In the process, CX becomes a true enterprisewide initiative.
At Oracle, we practice what we preach. Oracle has its own internal customer experience program, and Hayes devotes a chapter of his book to a case study on how we do it. “I know you guys get it by the things you do as a company,” he told me. (In this blog post, Jeb Dasteel, Oracle Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer, shares details on Oracle’s customer experience strategy along with insights on how
At this point, I should mention that I’m relatively new to Oracle, having joined the company in June. In my second week on the job, I took part in a five-hour “journey mapping” exercise that forced us to think about the sales cycle from the customer’s perspective. Journey mapping can be very useful in sharpening our instincts about what makes customers tick, Hayes says.
That brings me back to the toothbrush mentioned earlier in this column. On a recent same-day business trip to Washington DC, I found myself stranded overnight after my return flight to New York was cancelled. It was 11 p.m. when I arrived at a local hotel without an overnight bag or even a clean pair of socks. I had hoped to brush my teeth and catch a few hours of sleep before my 6 a.m. flight the next morning. But, the desk clerk explained apologetically, the hotel had run out of toothbrushes.
But that’s not how things ended. Ten minutes later, there was a knock on my door, and a toothbrush arrived. Chalk up a 10 for that customer experience.
The moral of the story is that all the CX planning in the world won’t matter if you don’t get those critical points of interaction right. The whole process--systems, services, people--must work in unison. “People think it’s all brand new, but it’s really the same thing it’s always been--making sure you give customers the things they value to increase their loyalty,” Hayes says.
True enough, but the state of the art has certainly advanced in how companies do that. In “
For even more ideas on how to ramp up your company’s CX strategy, I recommend “Eight Steps To Great Customer Experience” by Greg Gianforte, the founder of RightNow Technologies.
The good news is that new technologies and best practices make this a great time to capitalize on all we’ve learned about CX. The bad news is that delighting customers around the clock never really gets any easier. Will your company pass its next toothbrush test? Your customers will be sure to let you know.
For more, see the following articles:
Customer Experience Key To ‘Computing Everywhere’ Business Success
Getting On Board With Customer Experience
