As those in CX know, proving that a customer’s experience drives value to the wider business is one of the hardest parts of the job.
In fact, our research into the Global State of CX this year confirmed several key trends that show practitioners in all markets face a series of very similar challenges:
- 63 percent of respondents said CX delivers benefits to their organization that go unmeasured.
- 13 percent of practitioners described their company's CX management strategy as mature.
- 10 percent said they operate in a business culture that trusts them to be more experimental due to the returns CX has delivered in the past.
The problems don’t end with recognition; they also impact investment and therefore innovation. When we asked practitioners to select their top three barriers to CX investment, the most selected choices were demonstrating ROI (42 percent), finding budget (38 percent) and gaining buy-in from internal/external stakeholders (35 percent).
When it comes to recognizing value and driving progress, it’s clear CX faces a series of challenges that other business functions do not.
Enhancing the recognition of CX
There are a number of established and emerging methods by which to link CX to profitability. Prof. Dr. Phil Klaus from the International University of Monaco devised the EXQ scale and has spent the last decade helping organizations measure their CX success, explain why customers behave in a certain way and link it all to their company’s financial results.
More recently, Bain & Co, Kantar and Qualtrics launched a new set of auditable CX standards intended to demonstrate the power of CX and raise its overall quality.
For the practitioner on the ground, however, new methods by which to measure value require further buy-in from peers and leaders; they do not automatically lead to recognition.
“There is a lack of trust, fundamentally, from leadership teams, about whether CX really does make the difference that it is reported to make,” says Vinay Parmar, founder and CEO of Dhruva Star and a CX Network advisory board member. “Many companies have failed to move the dial on CX because they have given up on the investment. It comes down to ‘do we trust doing this drives enough value into our business’,” he adds.
On how to overcome these challenges, Yvette Mihelic, director of customer experience for rail operations and maintenance at John Holland Group and a CX Network advisory board member, says it’s up to practitioners to educate the wider business.
“When considering how CX can grow in recognition, I believe it is up to us as practitioners to educate, advise and demonstrate the interconnectivity of CX with overall organizational performance,” she says. “Practitioners need to cross-pollinate CX across organizations and industries – in fact, through entire supply chains – in order to create a meaningful identity for CX and ultimately betterment, not only for us organizationally, but also for the customers we serve.”
Mihelic says that the more people understand the value of CX, the more opportunity CX will have to be prioritized in funding, attract and develop a talent pipeline, deliver career growth opportunities for practitioners, add value to industries and businesses and create better experiences for customers.
Travis Gelbrich, VP of customer care and contact center for PetCo, says the biggest opportunity to link CX to top-line financial metrics is through stronger reporting on customer churn.
“One way to do this is to start with the retention and churn of individual customers. For example, what is driving a loss in loyalty?”
He explains: “It is hard to get this insight when you are looking at the survey results of thousands of customers. However, starting with an individual customer’s experience and future purchase behavior can unlock key findings about why customers pull back. As common themes emerge at the individual level, it becomes easier to find the same underlying driver of churn in larger groups or segments of similar customers. This helps find key drivers of churn that might otherwise be missed when starting with the entire survey sample. When you can tie key CX investments that address these themes and stop or slow churn, you can show a direct impact on repeat purchases and ongoing revenue.”
RELATED CONTENT: How PetCo is leveraging contact data to foster a culture of customer advocacy
Creating a customer-centric business culture
Establishing a business culture that puts the customer first in a business where CX is not recognized as it should be, is the ultimate chicken and egg situation.
As outlined above, our Global State research this year found a mere 10 percent of practitioners feel they operate in a business culture that trusts them to be more experimental due to the returns CX has delivered in the past. That means 90 percent are not trusted – and that poses a threat to the future of CX.
Yet innovation is central to improving the experiences a business delivers.
On how CX leaders can nurture a forward-thinking corporate culture, Jorie Sax, head of United Airlines’ innovation lab and a CX Network advisory board member, says it all starts with a solid understanding of what innovation is.
“Sometimes it is truly leading edge, future forward – at other times it's simply modernization, and that could still take leaps and bounds from where a company or a team is,” she says.
Once there is alignment on definitions, the next step is to assess resources, particularly around skilled labor.
“Then you can set forth a plan appropriately to either inspire others, help them get up to speed or nurture their innovation muscle. I've often found that there are a lot of folks who don't believe that they have an innovator inside, but often that is because they have never been put in that position. They haven't had the time, the space, the mentorship or the opportunity, frankly, in order to do that.”
“When you really understand what you have at your fingertips and what is missing, then you can put forth again that plan in order to do it right internally,” she adds.
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