The Top Things You Thought Were True About CX

There are a lot of ideas out there about the role of CX in today’s environment.  In this blog, I discuss seven myths about CX that can get businesses distracted from driving the most effective business results.

1. It’s a fad.   I may be a bit biased since I’m a CX professional, but the customer experience is increasingly becoming more and more a part of how companies do – or should do – business.  After all, the customers pay your paycheck.  You might want to listen to what their expectations are!

2. You need a huge team to pull off a CX program.  CX teams come in all shapes and sizes, and sit within many parts of an organization.  The truth is that is doesn’t really matter.  You need to just fully chart your course and then either utilize internal resources, outsource activities to a CX firm, or a combination of both.

3. A CX focus has to come from the top-down.The CX euphoria is when you have a CEO and leadership team that drive CX as a strategic part of how the company does business.  That isn’t always the case.  If not, you may have to identify some quick wins, measure the business impact, and then prove to your leaders why CX matters.  It obviously becomes a slower process to engage the organization from the bottom-up, but it can be done.

4. Technology can do it all for you.  Technology is a great enabler of CX programs.  That said, you need champions, sponsors, and a little elbow grease to make things happen.  Use technology to disseminate information in a more efficient way, gather insights from your customers, consolidate feedback, and to understand what customer input means.  Don’t rely upon technology to do the hard work for you.  After all, CX is about personalization and building relationships.

5. Proving business impact should be easy to do – the results will speak for themselves. Proving the business impact of CX and the ROI of customer-focused initiatives is hard work.  It takes a lot of iterations, understanding of metrics, and time to make the story come together.  Don’t give up!  It’s critical to the longevity of CX in your organization.

6. Focusing on customer success minimizes the drive for operational excellence and product innovations.  As with anything you do, it’s a balance.  Utilize customer input to help with setting operational goals that are aligned with customer expectations, and focus on bringing customers in to help product development efforts that are in alignment with what customers want.  You can do all three, but do pick the one focus as a company where you want to excel the most (hint:  you can’t go wrong with customer focus!).

7. CX has to involve a survey.  As we as consumers have been inundated with surveys over the past few years, response rates are slowing down to web-based surveys.  Surveys still have their place, though, particularly when it is topical and aimed at the right audience.  However, don’t be afraid to lean on other types of feedback mechanisms in addition to surveys to help gather insights –from both solicited and unsolicited sources.

I’m sure there are many more “truths” that I could name, but these are a few top of mind thoughts that I wanted to point out.  What are some others that you have encountered?