“Everyone,” you say? Then what you’re really saying is “no one.”
Here’s an interesting exercise to prove the point. Build a simple grid with all customer MOTs listed vertically in likely order of occurrence. (MOTs or “moments of truth” identify customer interactions with sellers that significantly affect customer experience). Next, horizontally list all the functions interacting with customers either directly or indirectly. Finally, in the grid portion identify which internal functions control process and policy at each MOT.
What does the grid tell you? In 90% + organizations, you have a range of functions, each largely responsible for its own process and policy?without strong central oversight. Inevitably, each unit will have a somewhat different view of what customers should experience and how much to “give” to please customers. And some will have very different perceptions. A classic example is sales wanting quick shipment of orders to meet customer expectations and Inventory Management cutting stocks to the bone to reduce cost.
Companies presenting multiple faces and voices to customers in this manner or even more subtle ways rarely create sufficiently positive customer experience to minimize churn?and suffering churn in low-demand economic times just multiplies negative effects.
Since process design and execution (and process-level policy) create virtually all customer experience, should the task of overseeing process consistency fall to process leaders? And if so, what does marketing have to say?
Hi Dick
A short and insightful post.
You ask the question, “Since process design and execution (and process-level policy) create virtually all customer experience, should the task of overseeing process consistency fall to process leaders? And if so, what does marketing have to say?”.
The answer is quite simple really. Even if process leaders are responsible for process execution, Marketing provides most if not all of the content that is delivered during Moments of Truth. Particularly where companies are striving to deliver a branded customer experience.
Processes may be the medium, but Marketing still provides the message.
Graham Hill
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Bill, I like your grid idea to reveal functional areas’ connections to moments of truth. It’s a good starting point to build awareness, and should also be done with customers’ key dis-satisfiers (which may or may not be moments of truth, per se) listed vertically on the grid.
As you say, ownership of customer experience management certainly should be shared by everyone, and driven by a central group that can get align cross-organizational vision, metrics and continual improvement efforts.
Some companies assign this to a Chief Customer Officer (Jeanne Bliss wrote an excellent book by this title), while others assign customer experience management to a functional area such as marketing, customer service, quality, or IT. The debate continues, as you can see from my recent post Marketing Wins Strategic Clout by Driving Customer Experience Management.
This is a pivotal matter that deserves serious thought, strategic assignment, and careful nurturing by senior management in every company.
Dick Lee – Graham – good points. But what happens when there’s no message” per se? Or in purely transactional interactions where customers may not want the distraction of anything other than instructional/informational messaging? I’ll use a web checkout process as an example. Major MOT for customers, but who is best equipped to design this?
Dick Lee – Lynn, once we’ve identified MOTs, we chart “pain points” against them. Next week I’m planning a post asking whether operations quality or marketing plays a larger role in forming the customer experience. I’ll also post it in marketing and process groups both on Linkedin to see if I can set off some good scrapping. 🙂