The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of CX 

Is it just me or has CX entered the land of the Wild Wild West? Frequently labelled a ‘frivolous’ concept by the uninformed, Customer Experience actually has little to do with ‘warm and fuzzy’ and more to do with core fundamental business principles. It relies heavily on due diligence, governance, and most importantly, strategy. The pandemic has forced companies to innovate and wake up to CX which has been a huge win for the customer (the good), but oftentimes businesses don’t have a real strategy in place (the bad). This is when we start to see lawlessness taking over and the CX cracks begin to show (the ugly).

 

Shooting from the hip

Hurry up and automate, hurry up and digitise, hurry up and offer your service online. Sound familiar? Chances are you’re experiencing this panic in your own organisation, and rightly so. You do need to innovate and move with the times; you can’t afford to get left behind. But doing so with haste and impulse will not be of service to the customer in the long term. There are a lot of boxes that need to be ticked before implementing a digital CX strategy. What many companies are doing is relying on external tech vendors to magically solve their problems, without any real immersion into the process or genuine customisation. On top of this, they don’t have any metrics in place to measure the performance of a new system, or they haven’t a clue what to do with the customer data. This all comes down to not taking the necessary time to develop a proper plan. I can think of a few examples where, as a customer I’ve been excited about the automation of a service, only to be let down by its execution or functionality. The ‘Mobile Experience’ is a prime example. Banking apps can make things super complicated, and I’d be here all day if I had to list my woes with the local grocer app. Answer me this, why can I never find what I’m looking for in the search bar, but yet the item is theoretically on the ‘digital shelf?’ My worst is when an online system won’t recognise my login and password when it’s worked previously. Yes, subscription sites, I’m looking at you!

I wish more companies knew that rushing their innovation ‘plans’ is just plain reckless. You have to deliver a customer’s experience on the customer’s terms, not yours. All I hear around boardroom tables is the word DEADLINE. While deadlines are important, they hold us accountable, I think we sometimes allow them to compromise the integrity of a project.

You should never be chasing a deadline to please the higher-ups in the organisation or certain stakeholders if the customer will suffer as a result. This is short-sighted and the sales chart will reflect it.

 

Getting back in the saddle

So, let’s get back to those CX principles I was talking about. Really good CX strategies live by the basics. They are goal-orientated, structured, and revolve 100% around the customer’s journey at EVERY touchpoint.

Not every good idea is a good idea. All proposed CX improvement needs to be dissected, put back together, and then dissected again.  Ultimately what you want to achieve is a more consistent approach to your CX strategy. This can be slower at times but will yield more effective results.

I will be unpacking fundamental CX principles in detail at our upcoming CX Masterclass. Join us on 21 & 22 October (2021) at the CTICC and learn how to build a solid CX framework. We teach you how to really get under the skin of your customer and provide practical CX tools that you can start using right away.

See here for more information: Masterclass