In my previous post, I blogged about the art of doing. In this post, I advocate for being selective about what it is you choose to do.
Last week, while I was at the first Members Insight Exchange of the CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association), panelist Joe Wheeler, Executive Director of The Service Profit Chain Institute,referenced Michael Porter (arguably the leading authority on company strategy and the competitiveness), boiling his theory down to this: the essence of strategy is sacrifice.
In other words, strategy demands focus: it can’t be ten things; it needs to be one or two. One or two that can be executed against to achieve success. And choosing the one or two will require sacrificing the other eight, at least for the short term.
This notion of sacrifice is often overlooked at the intersection of customer feedback results and the determination of customer strategy. Too often, the menu of areas for strategic focus and action is too long, and the result is that insufficient resources are applied to any one area, and none live up to their potential to actually make a difference to the customers’ experience and to the company’s bottom line performance and/or growth objectives.
Leaders of customer strategy need to recognize the value of sacrifice, and guide executive teams to make tough, but informed, choices that will enable targeted improvement initiatives and result in advances in customer loyalty and business outcomes.