Build Customer Experience Competencies In 2011

At this time of year, many companies are beginning to plan for next year. So many of my upcoming blog posts will focus on that planning process; making sure that customer experience is appropriately covered in your 2001 plans.

To begin with, companies must understand that sustained customer experience excellence does not come from some superficial projects; it requires mastering four core customer experience competencies:

1. Purposeful Leadership.
2. Compelling Brand Values.
3. Employee Engagement.
4. Customer Connectedness.

I highly recommend that you start the process by completing Temkin Group’s Customer Experience Competency Assessment. Then examine your results in a number of ways:

• What was your company’s rating; overall and for each competency?
• How consistent were the results across the people that took the assessment?
• What appeared to be the most significant problem areas?
• Does the current competency level match your firm’s ambitions?
• What do you need to do to get where you want to be?

As you can see in this data from the research report The Current State Of Customer Experience, most companies have a lot of opportunity to improve across all competencies.

Over the next week, I’ll be publishing individual posts for each of the four competencies — providing more data as well as advice in each area. Stay tuned!

The bottom line: It takes strong competencies to drive long-term success.