Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Customer Experience Fad


In one of the forums I frequent, someone issued a lengthy diatribe against customer experience - suggesting it was just snake oil and didn't do firms any good, and that many corporate bigwigs feel the same way.   I'm copying my response (a little different to what was posted to the forum because character limits compelled me to shorten it) here, as I think this attitude is worth considering  when making any suggestion to the contrary...

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The concept of "customer experience" is fairly new and I cannot disagree that it has the distinct aroma of a fad.   Some practitioners are dishonest, and use CX as a label on the very same bunkum they sold as "intercompetitive synergistics" or whatever the popular thing happened to be called last year, and clients who don't understand what it means but want to buy some anyway, hand buckets of cash to anyone who promises to deliver - and are disappointed when the magic doesn't happen overnight.

You can't expect a C-level officer to admit he was mesmerized by buzzwords and failed to practice due diligence, disregarded the advice he paid for, or rolled up a program prematurely to admit he got fast-talked, willfully disregarded expertise, or lost his nerve too soon ... such an executive would seem incompetent.   He must let on that he made a sound decision and that CX just doesn't work.

The core principles that drive CX are difficult to refute: all income is given to a firm by customers, who assess their willingness to do business with the firm according to the experience they had - and whose word-of-mouth is the most credible source of information for others who are assessing whether engaging with the firm is worthwhile.   If customers have a positive experience of interacting with the firm and using the product, they will buy again and encourage others to do the same.   If they have a poor experience, they will take their business elsewhere and encourage others to do the same.   I don't think you can disagree with any of that that.

The problem within CX is that it is still very young.   Practitioners seek to understand what causes the customer to have a positive experience, and those who are intelligent and humble will readily admit customer satisfaction derives from a number of sources - the functional benefits of the product, the full price (which is more than the nominal money-price), the way they are treated by the firm in each interaction, what other people think of them for using the product, etc.    There is no single, simple answer, and many are clutching at straws.  Even the few who do research find there are factors they fail to identify, often revealed only when their plans are being executed.

Some of the factors that impact customer experience are not fully understood - and the reasons they are not understood are likely 20% that more study is needed to understand the factors, and 80% that the firm needs to understand how reasonable and well-researched theories can be put into practice, given the idiosyncrasies of their own customer base.   If their desire is genuine, it's likely that the firm was unwilling to invest the time and budget in doing sufficient research - to understand, before planing, before acting.

The more common problem in the business world is much more fundamental: the customer isn't sufficiently valued in the first place, which is why firms are unwilling to spend the time and money on understanding how to serve them better.   There's a great deal of navel-gazing and a desire to keep things the way they are, longing for the good old days when the customer would accept what ever was offered and kowtow to the provider because a single seller was the only source from which customers could get a specific product or service they needed ... and if they didn't like it, they would have to do without the product and suffer from unfulfilled needs because there was no other source.   That has changed and businesses must change, or cede the market to competitors who will.

However, some firms cherish business-as-usual so much that, when there is an opportunity to change their business processes to better serve the customers, they decide would rather keep their business processes than their customers.   So they reject the notion of customer experience, or compromise based on what little they are willing to do in order to avoid changing the business processes.   It's not until the customers leave in sufficient number that they realize that the firm does not exist by preserving its business practices, but by serving its customers.

What all of this implies is this: customer experience isn't something a firm can pay a consultant to do for them.   It has to start within, with a company that recognizes the customers are the source of all its revenue - and it must seek to understand the reasons customers are willing to do business with them, and be willing in turn to make the changes necessary to genuinely serve those needs and desires better than anyone else can.

Said another way: a business that doesn't understand and value its customers will likely hire consultants that don't understand or value them either - and the only good that will come of it is that the executives will have someone else to blame.

If you want to achieve real results, put real effort into it.   Hiring a consultant and letting them do what they will is tantamount to abdicating your own responsibility to discover and deliver the value your organization provides to the market.   Instead, seek to hire the help you need to understand what customers value, then hire the help you need to make the changes necessary to deliver an experience that achieves that end.   You must be very closely involved throughout, and not merely hand over the keys.

If you fail to be careful and deliberate, understanding what you're buying into, you will not achieve much except by accident ... but don't make out it's someone else's fault when that happens.


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