CX strategy is smarter in 2024 due to several new discoveries I talked about last year. You may have adopted these since then, or they may be new to you.
Going forward, our customer experience profession can increase value and maturity by embracing these 9 strategy truths, in addition to the 15 truths covered in the first 3 parts of this series:
Customer Experience Value: Part 1 describes discoveries 1-4.
Customer Experience Metrics: Part 2 summarizes discoveries 5-9.
CX = EX: Part 3 explaines discoveries 10-15.
Now, for customer experience strategy, here are discoveries 16-24.
Ideal Customer Profile
16. Ideal customer profile is the first step to CXM ROI: As soon as customers accept your value proposition, you have an obligation to deliver it.
Why it Matters: When determining “ideal” by spending power, are you overlooking cost to acquire, serve, and retain? Higher costs mean less budget for new products and markets and salaries. High costs and churn add pressure on revenue generation. More negative word of mouth dilutes your Marketing and creates doubts that slow Sales velocity.
What to Do: Show your Biz Dev team the customer profile with lowest cost to serve. Agree on your operational sweet spot. Then, focus CXM on issue-free CX for ideal customers.
What You Get: Lower costs of acquisition, value delivery, and retention. More resources for value generation.
Brand Integrity
18. Brand integrity is a 1-to-1 ratio between what’s promised and what’s received.
Why it Matters: It’s basic business management: say what they’ll get, and deliver it. It’s the simplest definition of customer experience management.
What to Do: Proactively communicate what to expect, especially as changes arise. Ensure ability and commitment to meet what’s promised. This is the primary role of a CX team (different from a CS team or Marketing).
What You Get: This is the key to magnetic attraction for both new and existing customers, at far lower cost.
Customers’ Aims
18. Elevate your view of customers’ aims, segments, personas, and value, without industry limitations.
Why it Matters: When you benchmark and design to industry norms and competitors, are you overlooking what matters most to customers? Their view of alternatives may be wider than your industry players.
What to Do: Step into your customers’ shoes: what are they really aiming for through your solution? What alternatives do they consider? What are their unmet needs associated with this aim? What they’re aiming for is their job-to-be-done (JTBD): what are they trying to get done in their business or life? Let go of previous segmentation ideas and see what bubbles up naturally from customer comments. Everything anyone does in your corporation should align to these JTBDs.
What You Get: Rise above price competition with greater differentiation that propels revenue and profit growth.
CXM Facilitates Alignment
19. Position CXM as a facilitator of alignment companywide to expectations.
Why it Matters: Meeting investor expectations is easier when customer expectations are met: minimal value-rescuing and more organic demand. Customers are the horse, and investors are the cart: customers fund value for everyone and investors reinforce that value — not the other way around. Who in your company is discovering crystal clear expectations (JTBD) and aligning performance accordingly?
What to Do: Explain points 16-18 above to your CEO and set up your CX Leader role as an ally to all leaders reporting to the CEO. As an ally, continually give each leader a heads-up about ways they can grow value (top-line, bottom-line, and in strategic advantages) relative to points 16-18. Facilitating means hands-on guidance to each senior leader’s deputies. Show them how to use CX insights in how they’re running their organization.
What You Get: Senior leaders aligned to customers and with one another. Minimal waste, greater coordination and collaboration, more creativity for innovation everywhere.
Silo-Smoothing
20. Silo-smoothing is the most impactful CXM: 5 execution silos are at the heart of 5 operations silos. A silo is anything that should be connected, but isn’t.
Why it Matters: Seamless customer journeys are impossible with silos. Misaligned assumptions, vision, goals, metrics, and and handoffs are the reasons for points 16-19 above. These execution silos are the reason for data silos, system silos, channel silos, process silos, and organizational silos.
What to Do: Emphasize silo-smoothing as your CX Leader’s positioning. Equip your core CX team to facilitate alignment of assumptions, vision, goals, metrics, and handoffs. Show each organization how they can smooth silos for data, systems, channels, processes, and cross-organizationally. Your CXM team has more power than HR in changing your culture, because customer insights are the proper basis for un-silo-ing.
What You Get: Better employee experience and customer experience: fewer hurdles and hassles, more freedom for creativity and productivity. Better partner experience and investor experience: lower costs and accelerated performance.
Synchronization Drives Maturity
21. Synchronize CXM itself, along with outer-loop and inner-loop, CX gap closure, and silo-smoothing.
Why it Matters: What are the consequences of mis-aligned managers of CRM, UX, DX, VoC, Support, Sales, loyalty, and so on? How much outer-loop value is ignored due to maxed-out energy on inner loop? How much do you invest in addressing a CX symptom versus stopping its root causes?
What to Do: Manage CXM as a flowing sequence of building blocks. Balance investment of energy and resources across each building block, with emphasis on the foundational ribbon: customer-focused strategy and culture.
What You Get: Business results (loyalty, retention, etc.) are the natural outcome of the building-blocks. When you focus on the flowing sequence, your results organically grow with less need for investment directly in loyalty per se.
CXM is a Functional Area
22. CXM is a functional area, not a “program”: Follow the precedent of Information Technology (IT) and Human Resources (HR) in holistic management that requires personal stewardship of issue-free customer experience by everyone companywide.
Why it Matters: “Program” implies temporary or ancillary status. “Data Processing” and “Personnel Management” were the scope of IT and HR decades ago. Then we realized that’s insufficient for what the business needs from IT and HR. CX is not ancillary! Like IT and HR are primary operations of your business, so is CX. Even if you have not yet set up CX as a primary operation, it is de facto primary to your operations!
What to Do: Position your CX Leader according to points 16-21 above. Follow precedent of IT and HR in requiring everyone companywide to demonstrate personal stewardship of CX, with no exceptions. Stewardship precedents in your firm include ethics policy, fiscal responsibility, data privacy, confidential information, performance reviews, etc. CX stewardship is ensuring 1-to-1 ratio between what customers expect and get. Ban the word “program” in favor of words like department, initiative, or function. As a function, the key players for CX may report directly or dotted-line. Best: dotted-line for most of them. You don’t want to create an empire that silo-izes CXM!
What You Get: Ownership of CX performance by everyone whose mindset and action have a ripple-effect on customers and those who serve them.
Embolden, Straighten, Convert
23. CX-inspired corporate strategy emboldens expansions, straightens strategies of every business unit, and converts costs to value streams.
Why it Matters: Expansions, strategies, and cost decisions mis-aligned to customer insights are flying blind with unnecessary costs and slower gains.
What to Do: Collect, clarify, communicate, and champion customer insights in ways that are timely, compelling, and actionable for everyone leading expansions, strategies, and cost decisions. Give them some hand-holding (champion) to see how to apply customer insights early and often in what they’re doing. Teach them human-centered design practices (lite version) they can apply to their work.
What You Get: Faster payback, synergies, and more resources.
Artificial Intelligence
24. Beware of CXM artificial intelligence: AI is as good as the data its based on. Double-check the completeness and freshness of sources before automating. Build-in feedback loops at every step and ongoing.
Why it Matters: AI based on poor data yields artificial results indeed.
What to Do: Ensure your data has high validity and statistical significance. Harvest almost-free VoC for more complete big data. Check the sources of what you read, where you learn, and who you rely on: what is their scope and success in the topic in real life?
What You Get: Greater credibility, inspiration, and wise actions.
Most Valuable Player
Bonus: 25. Your CX Leader is your CEO’s most valuable player (MVP). In sports and in business, the MVP (not to be confused with minimally viable!) prevents risks for the team and maximizes the team’s value.
Why it Matters: CFO or CRO as MVP is “the tail wagging the dog”: they represent end results, but not how you get there. Brand Integrity is the machine that delivers the results. Brand Integrity is how your business thrives.
What to Do: Earn it by embracing the 24 ways 2024 CX is smarter!
What You Get: Enhanced joy for all parties: executives, employees, customers, partners, suppliers, community, investors.
Customer experience strategy begins with crystal clear expectations of customers. What’s in-sync with customer expectations across your business? What’s out-of-sync? Prevent gaps. Permeate every part of your business with customer insights to integrate customer-aligned mindsets into your DNA. Whatever your corporate strategy is, that spells your customer experience strengths and weaknesses. Likewise, whatever your customer experience strategy is, that spells your corporate strategy strengths and weaknesses.
This is Part 4 of a 4-article series: 2024 CX is Smarter for:
1. Customer Experience Value
2. Customer Experience Metrics
3. Customer Experience = Employee Experience
4. Customer Experience Strategy
This article is an expanded revision of the original LinkedIn article: “23 Ways CXM is Smarter Now (ICYMI)“.
