GUEST BLOG: Digital customer experience

By Graham Fagan, head of Customer Experience and Multi-Channel, BT

Many of us reach for sporting metaphors to assist with the communication of business challenges. Once they don’t distract from the core discussion, utilising them as an aid can be beneficial.

There are some that immediately come to mind – ‘you are stuck in the blocks’, ‘hit them where it hurts’, ‘taking one for the team’, etc.

As someone who played soccer for many years and as a father who has fulfilled a supporting role on a side-line of a Sunday morning, the one line that you don’t want to be accused of, or worst still, here mentioned about your own child, is ‘you missed an open goal’.

Other expressions don’t come close to conveying failure and missed opportunity in a way that those five words do. It carries a strong sense that something was firmly within your grasp and well within your ability to achieve; yet you didn’t get the job done.

I believe many European organisations are missing a very big open goal when it comes to customer experience (CX). The research focused on four key questions:

• What importance is attached to CX within companies?
• Who leads CX initiatives?
• How is the success of CX measured?
• Which CX channels are most favoured?

They are a good set of straightforward questions, with the intent of getting behind important areas of interest such as executive sponsorship, return on investment, etc. The findings from the research show some strong positives but they really highlight massive opportunities ahead for organisations that properly approach this domain of organisational transformation.

ENCOURAGING SIGNS

On the positive side of the research, I was very encouraged to see that:

• Two-thirds of European companies (66%) say that customer experience has been a ‘very important’ priority over the last three years, and just as many believe it will continue to be so in the next three
• Investment is continuing to increase and countries such as the UK are leading the way e.g. More than one in four (26%) UK companies say they have increased investment by more than 25% over the last three years
• A significant minority of respondents (40%) say that the CEO leads Customer Experience initiatives within their organisation. Sweden lead the way on this leadership item, with CEO’s leading CX initiatives in exactly half of the companies
  

  CX has suffered a lot from the structure of traditional organisations and associated culture, which in turn impacts leadership clarity

If the CX trajectory is tracking upwards and this is a current snapshot on status, then we should be hopeful that we are starting to get the right level of attention around CX as something that can truly transform a business as opposed to something that just feels good to have in a mission statement.

If there was any danger of us getting complacent on the progress made, the following 2 findings from the research provide a sobering reminder:

• On a global level, the research indicates a level of confusion within companies about who is leading the customer experience drive. Although 72% of CEOs surveyed believe they own the CX initiative, only 27% of other executives believe the CEO leads it
• Despite the fact that so many companies in Europe maintain that customer experience is a very important investment priority, a significant proportion (37%) do not measure the success of customer experience transformation initiatives

This is worrying for a number of reasons. CX has suffered a lot from the structure of traditional organisations and associated culture, which in turn impacts leadership clarity. There can be no confusion in terms of who leads these initiatives. In my personal opinion, it has to be top down and organisation wide.

CX sceptics out there will push back strongly in the face of clearly defined metrics and evidence. How do you meet those objections and challenges head on if you don’t have any measurement in place? How do you continue to elevate the importance of CX and the continuing investment required in it if you don’t have a way of demonstrating its value? The lack of proper CX measurement in European companies is an item of material concern and opportunity.

BACK OF THE NET

There is nothing new or groundbreaking about the advice offered to drive ball into the back of the goal! Its about being really clear on your CX purpose and getting the basics right:

• Make CX a priority – Across the board, companies that prioritise future investment in CX believe they are reaping the benefits of better revenue growth and improved profitability more than companies that consider CX less important
• Place the CEO in charge – As in other regions, CEOs in Europe are more likely than any other senior executive to be in charge of customer experience transformation initiatives. The survey indicates that companies where the CEO is in charge of CX initiatives are more likely to believe in them, and invest in them
• Find the evidence – More than a third of companies in Europe (37%) don’t measure the success of CX initiatives. This endangers the effectiveness of CX investment, as companies that do not measure success will not be able to identify what works and what does not. The principal reason given for not measuring CX is that companies find it difficult to differentiate between the impact of CX and other factors that may improve performance

Companies who prioritise future investment in CX initiatives believe they are more profitable and have better revenue growth than their peers, according to the EIU research. As a certified customer experience professional (CCXP) who works with large corporations on their digital customer experience strategies I don’t just believe that is the case, I know it is!

Photo (above): Michael Pardo