So my email about funnel vision started an interesting conversation. Thank you if you were one of the people who replied. I love it when you write back!
All of my talk about having a customer experience owner led to some interesting questions around who that person should be and what their role involved.
So, I thought I would share with you some of the observations I have made helping clients in this area. And if you are interested in reading more about how I help clients improve the customer experience, you can do so here.
However, before we get into my thoughts — do you run an agency or are you a freelancer? If so, this email is not going to be relevant to you. If you click here, you can avoid getting emails like this in future, instead only receiving those that help you in your job.
Who Should Own the Customer Experience?
A lot of people replied, arguing that everybody needs to own the customer experience. They are, of course, correct on one level. However, in my experience, that doesn’t work in reality.
Yes, everybody should care about the customer. However, this “we all champion the customer” attitude is flawed in three ways.
First, if everybody is responsible than effectively nobody is. Nobody can be held accountable if the experience is terrible. Nobody is making the customer their exclusive focus.
Second, just because you tell everybody they need to care about the customer experience doesn’t mean they will, and even if people do, they won’t know how to go about it.
Finally, even if people are taking that responsibility seriously, they will only do so within the scope of their role. That makes joining up the parts of the experience extremely hard. Customers can be lost in the gaps between teams.
That said, the ultimate aim should be for every employee to play their part in creating a great customer experience. The organisation needs people to help everybody get there. That is the role of the customer experience team and Chief Experience Officer.
What Role Does a Customer Experience Champion fulfil?
A growing number of organisations seem to be appointing customer experience managers, building customer experience teams and even occasionally adding Chief Experience Officers to their boards.
These are all positive steps, and in your case, you might be dreaming of a day that senior management takes customer experience that seriously!
However, all too often, these steps are not enough in themselves. These teams and individuals are often under-resourced and faced with the daunting challenge of changing the culture of an entire organisation.
Too often, I see them getting sucked into individual projects and initiatives, spending their day’s firefighting projects that virtually ignore customer needs.
They are vastly outnumbered by other colleagues, all of which have their agendas.
I believe the role of these customer experience champions should not be to get drawn into individual projects but instead to focus on educating and empowering others to do that. That is where we come full circle back to the idea of everybody being responsible for the customer experience.
It falls to these customer experience advocates to:
- Encourage others to care about the customer experience.
- Take responsibility for changing the company culture.
- Educate others about how to improve the experience in their areas.
- Facilitate collaboration between different disciplines and silos.
So, yes, those who said it is everybody’s job to improve the customer experience are correct. However, they will need a customer experience team to educate them on how to do that and to coordinate their activities.
More to Come
The formal role of customer experience champion is a relatively new one, and I believe organisations are making a lot of mistakes in this area, which is why it is an area of growing focus for me.
You can expect to hear more from me on the subject. However, I could do with your help if you work for a company with over approximately 500 staff, I would appreciate you completing this short survey on how your organisation handles customer experience.
Finally, I would be interested in your thoughts on what stops your company from providing a better customer experience? Is it targets, budget, resources, management, compliance or something else?
Drop me a reply if you have time.
