What Is the First Step in a Customer Experience Transformation Roadmap?
Whether your program is just getting started or has stagnated over the years, this post is for you!
Every brand—across industries and around the globe—has a unique opportunity to overhaul outdated ways of managing customer experiences, and move toward actually improving experiences for customers and employees. Achieving this is no small task, and often requires customer experience transformation. At Pearl-Plaza, we’re here with you every step of the way and ready to take on the challenge, together.
So, what is the first step in a CX transformation roadmap? Set up your program with the end in mind!
Whether you are taking on a program for the first time, or redesigning an old one, this is the most fundamental step of a customer experience transformation. For a lasting impact, we can’t emphasise enough how important it is to take the time up front to outline your CX vision, align it with your corporate objectives, and make a tactical strategy for how your CX program will ladder up to expectations.
Three Ideas for Taking Action Toward Customer Experience Transformation:
Action Item #1: Outline Success
Decide what success looks like for your CX program in six months, one year, and three years. Without a vision to point to, it’s difficult to make any progress. An example of a program goal could be: 20% increase in customer retention, 10% reduction in cost to serve, +10% increase in revenue per store year on year.
Decide how often your team will check in to make sure you are still tracking toward your targets. As for the best cadence, plan to check in once a month with a program roadmap or visit these goals in quarterly board meetings—and don’t forget to schedule those calendar reminders!
Action Item #2: Consider Employees
Get super clear on how your customer experience program will impact employees. These frontline workers are your biggest resource to transforming customer experiences, and it’s important to help them understand what delivering success looks like in their unique roles.
You should develop a solid comms plan to bring staff on the journey, co-design and embed processes and training for closing the loop, or perhaps train employees to reach out to happy customers with a personal ‘thank you’.
Action Point #3: Decide What ‘Solving For X’ Looks Like For You
Decide which initiative you will tackle first—will it be customer retention, reducing costs, cross- or upselling, or customer acquisition? Pick one of these, which is your ‘X’, and make a plan for tackling financial linkage.
Action Point #4: Settle on a Program Soundbite
Ensure you understand the business benefit of transforming customer experiences so that you can communicate far and wide across the business. Prepare a soundbite or elevator pitch so you are prepared to communicate why CX transformation is so important and what it means to people in their roles.
At Pearl-Plaza, our team of experts are the best in the business for helping you design innovative, continually evolving experience initiatives. In fact, for three consecutive years, our clients have won the award for “Best CX Transformation” through the CX Awards! To learn the next five steps to an award-winning CX transformation, download the full guide here!
