Aligned Customer Experience: 5 Steps to Build It

Why the Customer Experience Matters
As consumers, we have all felt the impact of the customer experience — both good and bad — on how we perceive a company, its brand, and whether we remain loyal. As employees, we know that a well aligned customer experience makes work easier, clearer, and more fulfilling. Yet as leaders, customer centricity is often where strategy execution breaks down.

The gap between perception and reality is striking. A Bain survey of customers across 362 companies found that only 8 percent described their experience as “superior,” while 80 percent of those same companies believed they were delivering a superior experience. Most organizations think they are customer-focused. Very few actually are.

Customer experience is not a slogan or a service initiative. It is how customers react to and feel about every direct and indirect interaction with your organization — from sales and service to billing, digital channels, and follow-through. And as technology advances and competition intensifies, customer expectations continue to rise. Today’s customers expect experiences that are fast, easy, personalized, value-added, and consistent — regardless of how or where they engage with you.

Missing the mark on any one of those dimensions doesn’t just frustrate customers. It erodes trust, loyalty, and long-term value.

An Aligned Customer Experience Delivers Value
If you want your business to thrive, assess your corporate culture so that you can evaluate the way your customers experience every aspect of your business.  To create a customer experience that aligns with your organization’s values, purpose, culture, and strategy, you must thoughtfully work with your entire organization to understand at each level how to consistently deliver the best customer experience possible.

Recent research by Accenture found that companies that create a simpler, more engaging customer experience across all customer-facing functions are 26% more likely to achieve the highest levels of:

• Customer satisfaction.
• Speed to market.

The Challenge of An Aligned Customer Experience

To create a truly aligned and customer-centric culture, the entire organization must work out the “why” and the “how” from your customers’ point of view. You will need to:

1. Explain and Advocate for the Reason Why
   To marshal the efforts and commitment required to put customers first, leaders need to capture the hearts and minds of the entire workforce by sharing a compelling rationale for why it matters. You can’t expect employees to change their behaviors and attitudes until they buy into what’s in it for them, their teams, and the business.
   
   Be prepared to get feedback, honestly answer questions, and take steps to close any gaps.

2. Map Out the Current Customer Experience
   Invest the time to do a current state analysis to understand what is working and not working from the perspective of your target customers.  While it may be tempting go full steam ahead to the desired future state, do not underestimate the need to understand and agree upon the current state before you embark on a change initiative.
   
   Pay special attention to the underlying employee motivations that influence choices and actions that impact the customer experience.
   
   
3. Detail the Desired Future State
   With your key stakeholders, design the desired end-to-end service delivery map required to exceed current and future customer expectations. Focus on the critical moments of truth, key pain points, and prioritized areas of opportunity. Create a process to encourage employees to continuously re-imagine the products, services, and experiences their customers seek.
   
   Challenge teams to design and deliver innovative client experiences.
   
   
4. Implement and Reinforce the Critical Few New Ways
   Begin implementation with the understanding that you’ll be far more successful if you focus on the top few strategic priorities that matter most. Identify them, model them, reward them, and reinforce them.  Data from our change management simulation found that an aligned culture of accountability and support is required to reinforce the new ways.
   
   In many situations, starting with a minimum viable product to prototype the new design allows for faster learning, buy-in, and momentum.
   
   
5. Measure and Reinforce the Progress
   Successful customer experience transformations rely on meaningful performance measurement systems to track customer feedback and results so that leaders can reinforce positive progress and adjust when the data don’t match expectations.

The Bottom Line
To build an aligned customer experience, leaders must create strategic clarity, have a deep understanding of the current state, and design an end-to-end customer experience that matters.

To learn more about how to successfully redesign your customer experience, download How to Mobilize Your Change Initiative

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.