According to my ex-colleagues at Gartner, Customer Experience (CX) is “the practice of using customer insight to design and execute a cross-functional CX strategy that increases satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.”
I’m pretty aligned to that definition.
- Good CX is based on both hard data on customers and their behaviour, as well as human insight on the personas the business is addressing;
- The intent is to design and execute experiences and underlying business strategy, not just educate people in the business;
- CX belongs to the whole organization and is cross-functional by default;
- There are definite, measurable business impacts from delivering good or bad experiences.
“89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service.” – Oracle/RightNow
“A customer is 4x more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service-related, versus price or product-related.” – Bain & Co.
“70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.” – McKinsey & Co.
In other words, while some people consider CX a Business Process Initiative, it is more of a collective journey into strategy, a cultural “people movement” within a firm.
While it should not be considered a replacement for business strategy, it’s an important component that a surprising number of product-focused companies still don’t have.
CX is about designing and creating change initiatives, usually enabled by technology. It’s also a source of unharvested upside and potential business disruption, meaning that it’s only possible with CEO & senior management commitment…and measurement.
Next: How CX Management Works
David.p.Kohler 