Successful CEM Requires True Customer-centricity... and Process Mapping can help you get there

Customer Experience Management is truly customer-centric as it takes an outside-in approach, making the customer experience the center of focus rather than the company, product or service. GfK uses a tool called Process Mapping to align an organization around the customer experience and recommend internal changes.

For those of us who work in Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, we have watched businesses over the years begin to recognize the central role delighted customers play in their success, starting with customer satisfaction measurement through customer loyalty and NPS (Net Promoter Score), and into Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which offered the hope of harnessing technology to allow personalized, one-to-one dealings with customers that would ease businesses’ journey into the promised land of truly connecting with customers. But in many ways we are still wandering in the wilderness.

I say this because there are still darn few companies who know how to really gauge the experience they provide to their customers. Some have attempted to institute Customer Satisfaction or Loyalty programs, some have embraced CRM, and some are even singing the Customer Experience Management (CEM) song. But CEM isn’t something you can buy or even easily implement. CEM represents a transformation in how most companies go to business, even many of those who have been proudly and steadfastly pursuing strategies to make their customers unswervingly loyal and faithful ambassadors.

CEM is genuinely customer-centric. The focal point must be the customer and the value of the service and experience provided to the customer. But wasn’t the customer always the focus of customer loyalty? Well, yes . . . and no! The customer was certainly a key factor in the equation. The company collected information about why the customer was/wasn’t happy with their product or service. They then took this information and maybe tweaked their product or service or refined processes so they could efficiently and profitably take care of the customer. But tweaking and refining processes to fix one aspect of the customer experience does not necessarily result in a loyal customer. You must take it to the next level.

According to Ranjay Gulati, who wrote Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, this is because most businesses take an inside-out approach when they deal with customers. What they need to do (and this is where the transformation comes in) is take an outside-in approach, truly making the customers’ needs the focus.

Since it’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, I’d like to share an illustration that I think best describes the difference between an inside-out and an outside-in approach to business. This comes from Peter Merholz’ blog post, A Framework for Building Customer Experience. The diagram is his – I just added the boxes on top. I think it ably shows that everything emanates from the company’s needs in an Inside-Out organization but all efforts originate from the customer experience in an Outside-in business.

What this means is that many companies have to redefine their processes, bridge their silos, if they really want to become customer-centric, to make the customer, and not the company or the product or the service, the center of the universe. I’m sure many research and consulting companies have ways to help you in this endeavor. The tool that we use at GfK Customer Loyalty is called Process Mapping. We know it works because it’s one of the tools that we used to help us win the Malcolm Baldrige Award.

Process Mapping is relatively simple but you must be disciplined and maintain a laser-like focus on the customer throughout the process. Your goal is to align your organization around the customer experience and then to make sure the necessary internal changes happen in your company – and that all changes are rolled out properly and comprehensively.

In a nutshell, during Process Mapping you assign colors to certain people/departments/activities, and the subsets within. Then you map out your current process, sticking different colored post-it notes on a white board and drawing arrows from step to step. Once that is done, you highlight the customer touch points, listening posts, etc. that define the customer experience and determine how to make them the focal point of your activities: where departments need to interact and/or provide feedback to enhance the customer experience, what systems need to be in place, whether there are any redundancies or the need for new procedures, etc. Finally, and very importantly, you need to establish who in your company should be the true owner of each step in the process.

Of course, if you’ve been more of a product/service-centric company up to this point and have no more than a basic understanding of your customers, as a first step you’ll need to identify what your customers want before you tackle Process Mapping. You’ll need to use a tool like VOXSM for this discovery phase. Briefly, you’ll want to employ a method that will not only help you identify customer needs but will also aid you in turning them into actionable attributes that will allow you to measure your progress towards true customer-centricity. And, to top it off, it should also help in linking the specific product and service scores to actual process and policy changes, as identified during Process Mapping, that need to be made and/or refined.

On the other hand, if you already pride yourself on having a customer focus, you will have to identify those items that are most important to your customers so you can be sure that you’re focusing on the correct things. A driver analysis, such as KDA+SM (Key Driver AnalysisPlus), can identify the key drivers of business performance, which are defined as those product and service experiences most important to your customer. You should make two priority lists: a short list of powerful enhancers that differentiate your business and create loyalty; and a short list of dissatisfiers to help prevent attrition. Naturally, whatever tool you use to identify the drivers should be the same tool you use in your ongoing program to make sure you stay focused on the items that make the most difference to customers.

So what do you say? Is your organization ready to become truly customer-centric?

-April 2010

This content was provided by GfK Custom Research North America. Visit their website at www.gfkamerica.com or read their blog.