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Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences.

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Ready set action One, two, three four

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

You know what we don't always talk about in customer experience: process improvement. We're talking about it again here today on the Experience Action Podcast.

Listener Question: 0:43

Hi, Jeannie. It's Christopher Brooks here. When we talk about process improvements and we can be talking about being deep in an organization. What is your experience of how you keep the customer and their priorities on the agenda whilst balancing it with the pressures of business priorities too? So how do you keep the customer visible, active, and their priorities driving the decision-making in the process improvements? Love to hear your thoughts, thank you.

Jeannie Walters: 1:19

Christopher, what a fantastic question. Thank you so much. And for those of you who don't know Christopher, I encourage you to look him up on LinkedIn. Christopher Brooks follow him for all of his great insights as well.

Jeannie Walters: 1:32

So when we are talking about customer experience work, a lot of times we kind of fall into these habits where we report a lot about customer feedback, we report a lot about things that maybe are broken or not working according to customers, but we don't necessarily get into the conversations that are happening in our organization around process improvement. So this question of balance how do we make sure that the customer stays visible I love that you use that word so process improvements stays visible? I love that you use that word. So process improvements often they focus on internal wins, things like cost savings, scalability, speed. All of those things are important and as a business owner myself, I can tell you I care very much about those things within our organization. But, frankly, I've seen it again and again where, without customer focus, these improvements are kind of short term. They're not something that is a long term win, because they can actually break the experience for the customer and cost loyalty. So the goal here is to balance those internal priorities with the customer's needs and wants and voice and expectations. We need to balance those things.

Jeannie Walters: 2:49

So how do we do that? Well, first of all, start with the mindset. You've heard me say this before. I believe customer experience, work and strategy is really around the mindset, the strategy and the discipline to deliver it. So, with your mindset you need that customer-centric lens. But it's not enough to just tell people think of the customer or put the customer in the center of everything you do. We hear that all the time as if that's the magic wand. We have to give people tools and the how and the why. So the mindset is most importantly around the why. Essentially, what is our belief about how we need to show up for the customer and what is our belief about the role of the customer in our business processes? So if we don't answer that question, if we don't start there, then we're basically saying to everybody hey, use your best judgment. And judgment is based on our individual life experiences. So if you have a large organization and you're telling everybody use your best judgment, you will have inconsistencies in the customer journey that do not lead to process improvement. They lead to breaking things. So if we believe the customer is central. If we're really focused on that, we must include them when we define how are we improving processes. How do we do that here in our organization?

Jeannie Walters: 4:17

So one of the ways we do this is by starting with that intentional success. This is part of our CXI Navigator Framework. So, with intentional success, we always start with the customer experience mission statement, because that's really about how we show up. That's about how we want to be for the customer, no matter what. And then we also have our customer experience success blueprint. This is where you define what success looks like for your organization, with customer experience meaning, what are the efforts we can control around customer experience that lead to greater success for our organization? Now we can't just have a generic phrase like that of success for our organization. We have to get specific. What does success look like? We want to balance that. So those two pieces of intentional leadership can really help us understand how do we balance that internal need for scalability and speed and cost savings and what our customers expect from us.

Jeannie Walters: 5:24

The next part you've heard me say this too is strategy. We want to make sure the customer is visible in those decisions that we make. We have to do this by really understanding what that definition of success is and where are our priorities today, because everything can feel like a priority if you don't have a real strategy. So one of the ways you can incorporate customer visibility into strategy and what goes into that is really start with the customer. When you're talking about process, when you're talking about these types of improvements that are mostly internal, start with a customer quote, with a story, with a data point that really shows why this is important to the customer and what we need to do to show up for the customer in that moment, in that process.

Jeannie Walters: 6:13

You can use personas, you can use things to really represent the customer. I've seen this go terribly awry, so I am going to put a little asterisk here, because I have seen this turn into things like we're going to have that empty chair for the customer. We're going to bring in a 3D printed persona that's cut out like a person that you have to walk past when you go in the room and while that's effective for about 30 to 60 seconds, those things just start collecting dust. They become wallpaper. So we have to be very intentional again about who are we serving, what are we doing, and let's make sure we're all aligned on that. So while those gimmicks can be short-term success, I would not lean into those personally.

Jeannie Walters: 7:01

This is where things like journey mapping, service blueprinting, the before and after that we're looking for, so maybe that ideal customer journey mapping, this can really help because if we know what we want the experience to be like for the customer and we have that ideal customer journey map, then we can break that down in a service blueprint and figure out okay, what do we need to do with our people, process, technology and tools to actually deliver that for the customer? So it becomes a broader conversation, not just about the one process not acting like we put our blinders on to the rest of the customer journey. It's all part of that holistic approach to customer experience. We want to reinforce this idea that internal efficiency and internal inefficiency they have consequences.

Jeannie Walters: 7:53

So if we are being hyper efficient but the customer feels lost or neglected, for instance, you could say it's efficient to turn off the phones in your customer service area and just force everybody to go through the online channel. But you and I both know that is not what's necessarily best for the customer. Would it be cost savings? Absolutely. But what are the consequences of that? The consequences are customers not trusting you, customers not getting what they need, customers telling other people about their horrible experiences, not renewing their contracts, not retaining, not spending more with you. The list goes on and on and on.

Jeannie Walters: 8:35

So instead of just making those efficiency-driven decisions around process, we really have to look at the big picture. That's why having a success blueprint and a journey map can be so effective. And then, of course, we have to deliver on this every day. This is where the discipline comes in.

Jeannie Walters: 8:52

So, whatever we're focused on with process, we want to balance that with the business case around customers and our organization. So we need both lenses. We need to make it a win-win, meaning what's the business gain. What are we getting out of this? Is it more revenue? Is it cost savings? Is it higher employee retention? Is it being an employer of choice? There are all sorts of ways to look at value for what we're doing. And then we want to look at the customer impact. What will this do for them? Will it drive more happiness? That leads to more loyalty, that leads to higher retention and referrals and all those good things that we get.

Jeannie Walters: 9:33

But we have to really look for that. I like to say it's a win-win-win when it's done well, and it's a win for the customer, it's a win for the organization and it's a win for the employees, because, if we are looking at this in the right way, we are including employees in that decision. What is the employee experience? What can we do to help them do their jobs better and more effectively while being happier while they're doing it? How can we treat them like whole people? That has to be part of this discussion as well. So this is where we need to be realistic about being business people, not just customer experience people, because it's really easy to slide into that view of well, we're going to advocate for the customer no matter what, but that only works if you can balance that with the business outcomes that you are seeking.

Jeannie Walters: 10:28

We want to connect our process metrics to our customer metrics, so we might want to look at okay, we automated a task. How is that showing up? Does it reduce customer effort? Are customers getting through that process faster? Are our employees getting more done in that time because they don't have to do that task? If we're cutting costs, are we driving up trust and loyalty? Does it have an impact on customer satisfaction, maybe for a transactional response, or if you're measuring loyalty like net promoter score? There are different ways to connect the dots, but we have to be hyper aware of that even before we get started.

Jeannie Walters: 11:10

So this is another one of those things that when people say, oh, your work sounds so interesting, they probably aren't thinking about connecting all these dots. This is so much more complex than we give it credit for, and the fact that you are out there trying to do this, that you are being that change agent I never want you to forget how important that is, because you are showing up for your customers. You are showing up for your fellow employees, your co-workers, your colleagues. You are also delivering for the organization and that is no small thing. So keep up the great work out there and remember we're constantly looking for that state of balance.

Jeannie Walters: 11:53

What does the business need? What does the customer need? We are the conduits for that as customer experience leaders, and I personally think that's pretty cool. What a fantastic question. I always love your questions, don't forget you can always leave them for me at askjeannievip and we can't wait to see you next time. Thanks, everybody. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.