Assess Your Four Customer Experience Competencies

In the recent research report The State of CX Management, 2012, we examined how large companies are progressing along their journeys towards becoming customer-centric organizations. We found that only 7% of companies have reached that level of CX maturity.

What does it take to become a customer-centric organization? Our research shows that leading companies master four customer experience core competencies:

• Purposeful Leadership: Do your leaders operate consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values?
• Compelling Brand Values: Are your brand attributes driving decisions about how you treat customers?
• Employee Engagement: Are employees fully committed to the goals of your organization?
• Customer Connectedness: Is customer feedback and insight integrated throughout your organization?

To gauge how effective companies are in mastering these competencies, Temkin Group created a 20 question assessment. As part of the research in The State of CX Management, 2012, we asked 255 large companies to complete the assessment. As you can see from the overall results, nearly 60% of companies are in two lowest stages of CX maturity.

And when it comes to the Four Competencies, companies struggle with all four areas but have a particularly hard time with compelling brand values and employee engagement.

In case you’re interested, here’s how I describe the four competencies…

The bottom line: Are you building your customer experience competencies?

Temkin Experience Ratings Spotlight: USAA

Almost any discussion about companies that deliver great customer experience has to include USAA. The financial services firm that serves the military and their families earned industry-leading scores in credit cards and insurance in the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings and in last year’s ratings as well.

In 2011, USAA consolidated all of its customer interaction groups into a single organization, Member Experience. Previously, USAA’s product businesses had their own sales and service arms. By bringing together all of those customer-facing groups, USAA hopes to deliver even more cohesive experiences to members.

To find out how this customer experience powerhouse approaches customer experience, I spoke with Wayne Peacock, Executive Vice President of Member Experience at USAA. Here is a synopsis of our Q&A:

1) What do you think makes USAA a perennial customer experience leader?

It comes down to our core DNA. We are a mission-driven organization. Everything we talk about is focused on helping military families with their financial security. Everyone in our organization has an intense focus on serving our members. It’s our true “North Star” that allows us to do things differently.

We also have a relentless corporate focus on delivering exceptional service and experiences for our members. We continuously look at opportunities to improve and innovate around serving members. There’s nothing exciting or sophisticated, we just stay true to our mission and core purpose all the time.

Every day, 200 thousand members call us and a passionate, empathetic employee tries to help them. At an atomic level, everything flows from those individual interactions and the other contacts that members have through our online channels.

We want to run a healthy financial business so we invest in our future, but our internal score keeping is clear and direct: our key objective is to help our members do better in life. It’s what we recognize and reward, and it manifests itself in how we hire and train our employees. We use the term “surround sound” to mean that we bring the needs of military to life throughout our organization. We hire a lot of ex-military, bring military members into the building, take employees to military installations so they can see and feel the real life situations of our members, just to name a few examples.

2) What things do you personally track to tell if USAA is veering even slightly off course?

We look at, and set a high bar, on metrics around member satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty. We are not satisfied just weeding out defects. We examine what highly satisfied members are telling us so that we can replicate it across our organization. It’s about the decomposition of what we do well and what we don’t do so well to ensure that we stay on course.

I believe that you have to touch and feel the customer experience and have a sense for what’s going on. I spend my time, and I ask my leaders to spend a few hours a month, shadowing a front-line employee.  Sitting in a cubicle beside a rep  and listening to the member call through the headset. I am always asking people about their experiences with USAA.

Member satisfaction at a transactional level is our key metric. We measure it by product, geography, and channel and are working on a cross-channel measurement. We use a 10-point satisfaction scale and consider only the top-two boxes as acceptable scores. We examine problems for any score that is six or lower.

We are also  improving our social media listening.

3) What projects or initiatives at USAA are you most excited about in terms of its impact on future customer experience?

How we use insight to inform action is a critical competence that we need to be excellent at. And one of the underpinnings of that is analytics. I’m interested in emerging opportunities to bring big data into our environment–to use insight at the point of service or sales to direct that experience.

The single interchange between members and USAA is working every day but the ability to connect across those individual conversations is what we are working on. How do you link a conversation that might span over a month or two? And then how do we use behavior and analytics to shape the next conversation so we are relevant and personalized for what they want to do next?

We want to create experiences around what members are trying to accomplish, not just our products. If a member is buying a car, then we would historically see that as a change in auto insurance. We are changing that to an auto event – to help the member find the right car, buy it at a discount, get a loan, insurance, etc. and do that in any channel and across channels. There’s enormous value for members and for USAA if we can facilitate  that entire experience.

We are also continuing our journey around cross-channel experience. We are finding ways to allow customers to seamlessly move across channels and have us move with them, from marketing campaigns to sales and service at our Website, mobile apps, or contact center.

Mobile is also a key area of focus for us as the proliferation of mobile phones and tablets increases. We see mobile as a key entry point into USAA. We are working to digitize and miniaturize all of our business processes to be effective on a 3.5-inch screen. We’ve already built great capabilities  like deposit@mobile.  In the future, people are going to manage their lives through mobile devices. We want to establish a mobile-first mindset at USAA.

4) What advice do you have for customer experience executives at other companies that are leading transformation efforts in an attempt to become a customer experience leader like USAA?

Start with getting clear on the purpose of your organization. If you don’t have a true North Star, then you can’t get aligned.

You have to win the hearts and minds of your employees. Get the front-line people excited about what you’re doing and find a cadre of leaders that will buy into the vision and be advocates for the changes. Our front-line folks saw what we were trying to accomplish by aligning our member interaction functions into one organization; they saw how it would be beneficial to members and could provide additional career paths for them.

And remember to celebrate your early wins.

The bottom line: USAA wins through its unwavering purpose, member-centric culture, and a relentless desire to improve.

Customer Experience Reading List For Senior Execs

Our research shows that an increasing number of companies will focus on customer experience in 2012. So there will be a new cadre of senior executives beginning to learn about customer experience. As they gain interest, they’ll look for materials for getting up to speed. Here’s a short list of posts that I’d recommend sharing with these CX newcomers:

1. The 6 Laws Of Customer Experience. Every executive should understand these fundamental drivers of how organizations deliver customer experience.
2. The Four Customer Experience Core Competencies. The path to customer-centricity requires mastering these four competencies: Purposeful Leadership, Compelling Brand Values, Employee Engagement, and Customer Connectedness. The report also has a self-assessment tool that execs can use to gauge their organization.
3. My Customer Experience Manifesto Continues. Provides a perspective of how to think about customer experience management.
4. Customer Experience-Loyalty Connection. This report uses large-scale consumer research to show the link between customer experience and customer loyalty, good for understanding ROI.
5. What If Customer Experience Has No ROI?. This is a three-part post that explains the connection between customer experience and business results.
6. Customer Experience Affects Attitudes And Behaviors. Shows how customer experience links to business and brand strategy.
7. Three Characteristics Of Transformational Leaders identifies what leaders need to do if they want to drive change in their organizations.
8. Improve “Purposeful Leadership” In 2011. Gain a deeper understanding of the role that leadership plays in transforming customer experience.
9. The 8 Signs Of Executive Commitment. Gauge the commitment level of the executive team with this simple diagnostic.
10. The Customer Experience Checklist Manifesto. Use this checklist of eight items to make sure that investments will improve customer experience.
11. 8 Customer Experience Trends For 2011. These trends give a good sense of where things are heading, but keep an eye out for an updated list of megatrends.

If you can get your senior executives to spend 60 minutes reading through this material, then they should have a much better understanding about what it takes to build a more customer-centric organization. If they show some interest, then sign them up for the monthly CX Journal so they can continue on their learning journey.

The bottom line: An informed senior executive is a critical CX asset.

IBM’s Success Highlights Four Questions For All Execs

In case you’ve missed it, IBM is a hot commodity; during 2011 its stock rose from $147/share to $184/share.

A lot of the credit has to go to Samuel J. Palmisano, who just stepped down as IBM’s CEO after nearly decade of leading the IT behemoth.

Mr. Palmisano led the company using a framework based on four questions. According to Palmisiano, these four questions were a way to focus thinking and prod the company beyond its comfort zone and to make I.B.M. pre-eminent again:

1. Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?
2. Why would somebody work for you?
3. Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?
4. And why would somebody invest their money with you?

Palmisiano used this approach to redefine IBM as a smaller, more profitable company by divesting businesses like PC and disk drives and acquiring PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting among others.

My take: I like Palmisano’s questions; they point to an overarching theme: Value creation. I find that too many executives forget to ask themselves and their people about how they really create value. Even if they had a good idea of the answers to Palmisiano’s questions at one point in time, the world changes and they need to continue to ask — and answer — those four questions.

But there’s another key component to this type of framework: honesty. It’s tempting to view the world through the eyes of optimisim, but this gets in the way of good decision making. That’s why I often refer to a key lesson that I learned from Jack Welch during my days at GE:

“Deal with the world as it is, not how you’d like it to be“

The bottom line: Be honest: how will your company create value in the future?

Coach K Demonstrates Winning Leadership

Earlier this week, Michael William “Mike” Krzyzewski known as “Coach K” broke the record for the most wins by an NCAA division 1 basketball coach. Duke’s victory over Michigan State was Coach K’s 903rd win.

While there is a lot of celebrating around this lofty number, I think there is something more important that should be celebrated: How Coach K led his teams and all of the young men that passed through his program over his 30+ years at Duke. Coach K is a great leader.

To give you a sense of his leadership, here’s what a couple of his ex-players have to say about him:

“I played for the greatest college coach of all-time. It was an amazing journey.”
-Shane Battier

“It’s a dream to play for a guy like that — a guy who’s just a rock, who believes in you every second you’re on the court. I love Coach K. I’d run through a brick wall for him.”
-Jason Williams

Coach K’s style is to empower, challenge, and inspire his players. He recognizes that wins are the byproduct of a team performing at its best. To understand his leadership style, here’s an overview of his philosophy on teams:

“There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. I like to think of each as a separate finger on the fist. Any one individually is important. But all of them together are unbeatable.”

Here are other quotes from Coach K that are valuable for leaders in any field:

• “Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one.”
• “Making shots counts, but not as much as the people who make them.”
• “When a leader takes responsibility for his own actions and mistakes, he not only sets a good example, he shows a healthy respect for people on his team.”
• “Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box . . . . People set rules to keep from making decisions.”
• “Mutual commitment helps overcome the fear of failure—especially when people are part of a team sharing and achieving goals. It also sets the stage for open dialogue and honest conversation.”
• “Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team.”
• “Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated.”
• “A leader has to be positive about all things that happen to his team. Look at nothing in the past as failure.”
• “People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be in a situation where they feel that they are doing something for the greater good.”
• “During the season, your team should be led with exuberance and excitement. You should live the journey. You should live it right. You should live it together. You should live it shared. You should try to make one another better. You should get on one another if somebody’s not doing their part. You should hug one another when they are. You should be disappointed in a loss and exhilarated in a win. It’s all about the journey.”

The bottom line: Leadership is not about wins, it’s about helping your people become winners

Leadership Thoughts From Colin Powell

A couple of weeks ago, I attended The Premier Business Leadership Series in Orlando which was hosted by SAS. It was a pretty interesting agenda. The first speaker was General Colin Powell, USA (Ret.). I’ve seen Powell speak in the past and once again really enjoyed listening to his remarks.

Powell shared his take on leadership: “Give followers missions and goals and make sure their individual missions are consistent with the overall mission.” He highlighted a number of attributes of good leaders:

• Passion
• Selflessness
• Ethics
• Character
• Moral courage
• Take care of the troops, give them what they need to succeed

Powell also discussed the importance of recognizing people who are doing a great job. He sends a lot of handwritten thank-you notes. But he also said that you need to be prepared to discipline people as well. If it’s not working, then you need to “move, retrain, or fire” the people.

Powell talked about how he updated the technology across the US State Department. He shared his realization that technology wasn’t enough; he needed to change what he called the “Brainware.” He had to persuade State Department employees to use the tools and the knowledge and stop doing things the way that they were doing them in the past.

I loved this quote from Powell: “If you want to win the battle, then you need to get inside of the decision cycle of your enemy.” He emphasized getting good data and developing contingency plans. His advice: If something doesn’t work, change it. If it works, then exploit it further.

Another quote I liked was this one that he attributed to President Ronald Reagan: “Hard work never hurt anyone, but why take a chance.” Powell shared other stories about President Reagan, who he clearly admired.

Powell was very upbeat about the US, which he described as “the nation of nations, inspirational to the rest of the world.” But Powell was not as favorable about the US government; he chastised congress for not being able to compromise. He explained that the founding fathers were deeply divided on how to handle slavery, but they put those differences aside and figured out how to draw up the constitution.

The bottom line: General Powell is a very wise person.

CX Mistake #8: Forgetting To Celebrate Success

In this series of posts, we examine some of the top mistakes companies make in their customer experience management efforts. This post examines mistake #8: Forgetting To Celebrate Success. Customer experience leaders spend so much energy focusing on what needs to be improved that they often forget to appreciate the progress that has already been made.

Customer experience transformation isn’t easy. Leaders of these efforts must push through ongoing resistance over several years to guide their organizations towards being customer-centric. So it’s only natural for them to keep looking ahead, trying to anticipate and avoid the next barrier. This non-stop forward charge can cause some problems because it:

• Accelerates burn out. Pushing up against barriers and resistance can be very tiring, which is why many customer experience leaders don’t last beyond a few years. Even if they go longer, they are often tired and frustrated.
• Distresses stakeholders. Executives get tired of hearing that their organizations have problems or that they aren’t changing fast enough. Sooner or later they tune out to the message.
• Limits organizational change. Identifying problems can drive initial change, but organizations get tired of facing an uphill battle of improvements. People don’t get emotionally engaged until they feel good about their efforts.

Here are some tips for avoiding this mistake:

• Institutionalize success-seeking. One of the items that should be regularly on your agenda is “signs of success” where you discuss what’s working well. By putting this on the agenda, people will get in the habit of looking for, and thinking about, the progress that they’ve made.
• Acknowledge your organization’s great work. One of the 6 laws of customer experience is “people do what is measured, incented, and celebrated.” So make sure to celebrate! The wins in the organization don’t happen on accident. Make sure to recognize members of the customer experience team that are making a positive difference.
• Regularly communicate success. The organization wants to know that it’s succeeding. So make sure to communicate the signs of success. But don’t oversell. People will start ignoring messages that don’t match what they’re seeing.
• Thank the organization. Don’t just communicate the success, but widely thank people across the organization for their help. This will make employees more anxious to be a part of the effort, in the hopes that they will also get the recognition.
• Create customer experience awards. If your organization has quarterly or annual awards, then some of those accolades should be channeled towards customer experience champions. The people inside of your company that are making a difference deserve an award!

The bottom line: Focus on the future, but don’t forget to celebrate the past

Words Of Wisdom On The 4th Of July

For those of you who celebrate it… Happy 4th of July!

Given the holiday in the US, I’m turning to insight from one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said

“All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.”

These words should provide a wake-up call to executives that underestimate the value  of customer loyalty. Firms that consistently deliver better customer experiences end up with more loyal customers. But in a recent Temkin Group study, we found that only 17% of respondents believe that their executives regularly support decisions to trade off short-term financial results for longer-term customer loyalty.

The bottom line: Treat customer loyalty as a critical business metric

Three Characteristics Of Transformational Leaders

I work with many companies aiming to become customer-centric organizations. These efforts are never easy, and they always require a multi-year journey. In order for an organization to sustain a change agenda over that span of time, the senior management team needs to actively lead the effort. What does that mean for those leaders?

In my work, I’ve observed that the most effective leaders demonstrate three key characteristics:

1) Communicate “Why”
The only way to get people to truly buy-in to change is for them to understand why it’s happening. Most executives tend to under-communicate. And when they do communicate, they often focus on “what” the company will be doing and “how” it will get done. Here are some ways that executives can improve their communications:

• Develop a clear script about “why” the company is going through the change
• Develop a clear script about “why” the change is good in the long run to your organization and its employees
• Make sure that your direct reports fully understand why the change is going on and have their own scripts
• Make sure that you regularly discuss the “why” in your ongoing communications

2) Model Desired Behaviors
Temkin Group’s 6th law of customer experience is simply: “You can’t fake it.” And we can all learn from New Jersey mayor Corey Booker’s mom, who once told the mayor: “What you do speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying.” Your organization can tell what’s truly important by observing your actions. If people see that you haven’t changed, then they won’t change either. Here are some ways that you can model new customer-centric behaviors:

• Look for new ways to use customer feedback; consider regularly calling out to customers
• Find ways to incorporate voice of the customer data/insights into your decision-making
• Start asking customer-centric questions like: who is the target audience and how will this help them?
• Make the change a top item on your meeting agendas; even above the normal operational items.
• Make choices about what meetings you attend or decisions you make based on the signal it sends to the organization about your support for the change

3) Reinforce Change
It’s very easy for organizations to fall back into their regular, “comfortable” routines. So you need to make sure that you continuously reinforce the changed behaviors. Here are some of the things you can work on:

• Hold your direct reports accountable for change in their organizations
• Make “leading and supporting change” a key objective that you use to measure your direct reports
• Publicly recognize and call out people in your organization that are acting consistently with where the company is heading
• Don’t promote anyone in your organization, even high performers, if they are not proactively supporting the change
• Embed the new direction in the hiring and new employee on-boarding process
• Ask people in your organization what you could be doing to more effectively support the change
• Develop personal goals every quarter for how you will reinforce the change

The bottom line: Transformation takes strong, committed leadership.

Since this is a longer post, I’ve made a version that you can download in .pdf form. Feel free to pass it around.

Improve “Purposeful Leadership” In 2011

As I mentioned in the post Build Customer Experience Competencies In 2011, I’m highlighting each of the four customer experience competencies as part of my effort to help companies put together their 2011 plans. Today’s post looks at…

Purposeful Leadership: Does your executive team operate consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values?

What’s the number one obstacle to customer experience success? Other competing priorities. That issue falls squarely on the shoulders of the executive team. It’s very easy to shoot off a few emails and “claim” that customer experience is important. But if the executive team doesn’t “behave” like it’s important, then why should the rest of the organization?

Here’s great advice that Newark Mayor Corey Booker shared:

“My mom used to say that who you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.”

As you can see from the results below of 140 companies who took Temkin Group’s Customer Experience Competency Assessment, most companies don’t regularly demonstrate Purposeful Leadership.

The biggest issues show up when it comes to putting customer experience performance on par with financial performance. If executives aren’t looking at customer experience and the resulting impact that it has on loyalty as a key business measure, then customer experience will always fall prey to “other competing priorities.”

Here’s a chart that shows what can happen when executives aren’t fully committed:

Take a look at these two free short eBooks:

• The 8 Signs Of Executive Commitment
• The 6 New Management Imperatives

Here are some other good posts about Purposeful Leadership:

• Sizzler Embraces Customer Experience Competencies
• When Did You Last Re-Recruit Your Teams
• Saks CEO Shares His Leadership Approach
• Rudy Giuliani Shares His Leadership Thoughts
• Accenture CEO On Leadership, Plus A C&P
• Costco, Newark, and NC On Leadership
• Ford’s CEO On Purpose, Focus, And Leadership
• Terry Francona On Leadership
• 3 Leadership Lessons From Ted Kennedy
• Macy’s Pushes Execs In The Wrong Direction
• 9 Management Principles From Dilbert’s Boss
• Leadership Insights From Obama’s Inauguration Speech
• Leadership Lesson: Less Is Better
• Leadership Advice From An MLB Umpire
• Management Lessons From Gary Hamel
• Leadership Lessons From Tim Russert
• The CEO’s (Key) Role In Customer Experience

The bottom line: Excellent customer experience requires Purposeful Leadership



Sizzler Embraces Customer Experience Competencies

I just read a great article called Kerry Kramp Keeps Sizzler Relevant that discusses how Kerry Kramp, CEO of Sizzler, did a complete makeover of the company. What makes it so interesting is that Kramp embraced all four core customer experience competencies. Here are a few excerpts from the article that showcase each competency:

Purposeful Leadership:

“Leaders have to be directly engaged in the business to the point where they can really understand that the decisions they make are affecting the business — the employees, the profitability as well as the guests. You can’t lead from a corner office. You’ve got to lead from being out there where the business is actually done.”

The measuring stick was long-term success through customer satisfaction. Kramp didn’t want employees taking drastic measures to earn extra profit this quarter if it wouldn’t align with the company’s core in 50 years.

Compelling Brand Values:

“The value-to-what-you-got equation was a little bit off,” Kramp says. “So it began a course of discovery to try to understand what really made Sizzler tick — not so much where the direction had been in the past as much as where the guests wanted Sizzler to be.

“It was to try to understand the uniqueness of this 50-year-old company,” Kramp says. “Where it had been and, really more so, where everybody wanted it to be and how to make it relevant to the consumers that we would need to be attracting in this new world order with the economy changed the way it has.”

Employee Engagement:

Gauging what employees need to do their jobs should be ongoing and continually balanced with customer feedback. Kramp regularly tours stores to ask whether employees have tools to connect with customers, based on their own perceptions of what they think patrons want.

“All of a sudden, whether you’re the cashier, the dishwasher or the server, you knew the food,” he says. “You knew what ingredients were in it, you knew why we did what we did. If you know that the ladle’s supposed to be upright and it’s not, you stop and make sure that the ladle’s upright. The employees began to take real ownership of the way that things were done.”

Customer Connectedness:

“From the guest side, first it was to really understand what was important to them,” he says. “It was looking at: How do the guests want to use us?”

Start by observing as customers use your service and talk to others about it. Kramp watched customers as they examined their 50-plus menu options — often appearing overwhelmed.

“We kept our finger right on the pulse of the guests’ feedback,” Kramp says. “As they gave us indications of what they liked — either verbally or through the product mix, what were they ordering — we kept adapting our business to the direction that they wanted us to head in.”

The bottom line: Are you making customer experience sizzle in your organization?

7 Lessons From Navy Seals

I just read a post that I liked called  7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Should Learn From The Navy Seals. The author highlights seven lessons from Navy Seals that apply to entrepreneurs:

1. Take Decisive Action
2. Fear Nothing
3. Seek Excellence, not Fame
4. Lock and Load
5. Leave no Man Behind
6. Plan Your Mission, but Prepare to Pivot
7. Make Peace with Constant Chaos

My take: Almost any organization would improve dramatically if it could capitalized on its resources nearly as effectively as Navy Seals. These lessons are about making plans, taking action, staying flexible, and cherishing teamwork — good stuff!

The bottom line: We should all be a bit more like Navy Seals

Companies Lack Customer Experience Competencies

In a recent research report, we introduced the Four Core Customer Experience Competencies:

• Compelling Brand Values
• Purposeful Leadership
• Employee Engagement
• Customer Connectedness

To help companies identify their strengths and weaknesses across these components, we created a 20 question assessment for this competency model. In recent research report The Current State Of Customer Experience, we examined data from 144 large North American firms that completed the assessment. Here’s some of what we found:

Companies have a long way to go to master all four competencies. They performed the poorest in Compelling Brand Values, where 61% of firms ended up with “poor” or “very poor” ratings. Only 44% of companies ended up with “very good” or “okay” ratings in the highest performing area, Purposeful Leadership.

The results from that assessment also showed that only 3% of these companies are what we call “Customer-Centric Organizations.” That leaves a lot of room for improvement for a lot of companies.

Where is your company on its customer experience journey? Download our competency assessment and use the results to gauge your strengths and weaknesses and as a topic to discuss with your peers.

The bottom line: Companies need to build customer experience competencies.

When Did You Last Re-Recruit Your Team?

I just read an interview with Linda Heasley, president and chief executive of The Limited. Here’s an excerpt that I really like:

I believe that my associates can work anywhere they want, and my job is to re-recruit them every day and give them a reason to choose to work for us and for me as opposed to anybody else.

Heasley even raises the bar on employee expectations:

I encourage people: “Go out and find out what the market bears. You should do that and then come back and help me figure out what you need in your development that you’re not getting, because we owe you that.”

My take: This is the right attitude. Every manager should take on the personal responsibility of making their team members continuously chose to be on their team. Often times, that means preparing them with skills to leave the team… or to leave the company. When you can no longer re-recruit someone, it’s probably time for him/her to leave.

Leaders in high-performing organizations don’t treat employees like indentured servants; they inspire them, lead them, grow them, support them, and engage them in the mission of the company. That’s why Employee Engagement is one of the four customer experience competencies.

This is captured quite well in a quote from Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines:

…the more that people will devote themselves to your cause on a voluntary basis, a willing basis, the fewer hierarchies and control mechanisms you need.

The bottom line: Would your employees re-chose to work for you?

What If Customer Experience Has No ROI? (Part 3)

Here’s the 3rd (and final) installment of What If Customer Experience Has No ROI?

You can download a .pdf of the entire article.

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Tips For Making The Case With ROI

If you’re in a position where you have to make the case for customer experience based on business results and ROI, here are some recommendations to keep in mind.

• Enlist your CFO. You may have the brightest business analysts in the world on your team, but if the CFO’s team is not involved then they’ll always question your financial models and assumptions.
• Use existing metrics. Try to make your case based on the business metrics that the company already uses; it will make it easier for people to understand and will help you get their buy-in.
• Be conservative. Resist the temptation to use the high-end of estimates for potential benefits. While the results may seem more compelling, they will also be harder to defend.
• Create a simple story. People tend to remember very simple storylines, so make sure that you organize your results in a way that is very easy for people to understand.

Closing Thoughts On Customer Experience And ROI

I want to circle back around to the question that I posed in the title: What if customer experience has no ROI? If your customer experience improvements do not appear to have a positive ROI then you have three choices.

First of all, you can take a look at the model and assumptions that calculated the ROI and make sure you have fully captured the long-term benefits of increased customer loyalty. The next option is to refine your approach to customer experience; making sure that you are investing in the areas with the highest business impact. Finally, if you still can’t see any ROI, then don’t invest in customer experience initiatives.

Customer experience is not an altruistic endeavor; executive teams should focus on it because they believe that it will help their organization’s long-term business results.

The bottom line: Improving customer experience is (often) good business