Customer Experience
The House Of Customer Experience - use this framework to ensure a great delivery of customer experience
There are dozens of books and papers on customer experience, most of them say the obvious – be super nice to your customers and they will keep returning. This is usually supported by tips on how to keep customers happy. Research carried out in 2016 by Julia Cupman, a director of B2B International, identified the foundations for great customer experience. Nick Hague and Paul Hague pulled this and other research together in a book called B2B customer experience: a practical guide to delivering exceptional CX. It launched a framework for managing customer experience programmes.
Customer experience isn't new. What is new is the recognition that good customer experience, especially from large companies, doesn't just happen. A survey by Julia Cupman in 2016 found that more than half of 200 large companies surveyed had customer experience programmes that fail on six critical foundations:
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Commitment: leaders of a company have to be truly committed to delivering great customer experience. This means that when times are hard and budgets are tight, customer experience is still a priority. 52% of companies surveyed acknowledged that their customer experience programs fail on commitment.
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Fulfilment: it is vital to understand customers' needs in order that they can be satisfied. Fulfilment means delivering against customer expectations. 62% of companies surveyed believe that their customer experience programmes fail on this dimension.
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Seamlessness: customers want their dealings with suppliers to be easy. They don't want to know about internal difficulties faced by the supplier. 73% of companies surveyed said that they fail their customers on this important factor.
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Responsiveness: in this busy and demanding world customers expect a timely response to their requests and orders. 60% of companies surveyed said that they fail in delivering adequate responsiveness to their customers.
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Proactivity: customers want their suppliers to anticipate their needs. 75% of companies do not believe that they are successful in this respect.
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Evolution: customers are always hungry for faster, cheaper, better products. 61% of companies say that they fail in delivering improvements to their products and services.
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When a company gets the six foundations in place, it can develop a customer experience strategy. For this a company needs the right products, at the right price, delivered through the right channels, with the right promotion and brands, and supported by the right people.
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With solid foundations and a good strategy, a customer experience programme can be made distinctive and more powerful by tactics. These are the little things that really matter such as service with a smile, resolving a complaint and providing unexpected compensation, going the extra mile etc.
These various components of a customer experience programme can be brought together in a framework that resembles a house - the house of customer experience.
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The House Of Customer Experience
The six pillars form the foundations and these make sure that the house stays solid. The 4Ps together with the right people and a great brand form the strategy. The tactics (the little things that matter) sit on top of the house and make the roof.
The framework must also accommodate different segments of the market. This is exemplified in the model by a man and a woman who stand outside the house, admiring it. They may want slightly different things from the house but that is to be expected. Just as with customers, there will be many aspects they both love.
Also visit: https://www.b2bcustomerexperience.co.uk/