Asking oneself about customer experience strategy means recognizing that the focus on customer experience has gradually become widespread in both B2C and B2B companies. For example, it is not uncommon to find roles dedicated to customer experience within Marketing, Digital, or Customer Relations departments.
At iQo, we've observed that there's one difficulty we still face every day when it comes to giving meaning, fully involving teams and managing all the associated projects: how do you define and formalize your customer experience strategy?
Summary
Defining a customer experience strategy is not just about improving customer journeys or measuring satisfaction. It involves aligning the entire organization around a shared vision, consistent with customer expectations, the company’s positioning, and its competitive environment.
An effective customer experience strategy is based on a clear vision, differentiating pillars, appropriate performance metrics, and concrete implementation across offerings, customer journeys, and customer engagement channels.
By making the customer experience a true driver of transformation, companies can sustainably strengthen customer loyalty, differentiation, and value creation.
Contents
What is customer experience?
The customer experience is generally defined as all the emotions felt by the customer in relation to the company - before, during and after a possible purchase (source: Welcome to the Experience EconomyB. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, Harvard Business Review (July-August 1998)).
To provide a more concrete framework for its definition, we could define customer experience as "What I would like my customers to say about me".
The importance of the customer experience in 4 figures
There are many commonly shared tools for defining a corporate strategy or business model.
However, there is no reference framework for defining a customer experience strategy, putting it into practice and sharing it easily internally. Indeed, the concept of customer experience is still relatively abstract...
63% OF COMPANIES BELIEVE THEY ARE NOT PERFORMING WELL ENOUGH IN TERMS OF THEIR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SKILLS.
52% OF FEMALE EMPLOYEES SAY THEY DO NOT HAVE THE TRUST OF MANAGEMENT OR THE AUTONOMY NEEDED TO SATISFY THEIR CUSTOMERS.
81% OF CONSUMERS SAY THAT A POSITIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE INCREASES THE LIKELIHOOD THAT THEY WILL MAKE ANOTHER PURCHASE.
41% ADDITIONAL REVENUE GROWTH FOR CUSTOMER-OBSESSED COMPANIES.
How do you define your customer experience strategy?
iQo, as a a consulting firm specializing in customer experience helps organizations with their strategy and transformation. To facilitate the development of a customer experience strategy, we have created a framework that is easy to use and adaptable to any environment: the CX ID by iQo.
iQo's CX ID methodology enables :
- Describe the strategic environment: customers, strategy, external and competitive environment;
- In response, describe the customer experience strategy: an ambition, pillars answering the question "what would I like my customers to say about me" and objectives;
- Describe the relational systems that will support this strategy in concrete terms: the distribution model, the offer, the customer paths, the customer engagement and culture systems.
Defining the company's strategic environment
The first step in the CX ID process is to map out the company's strategic environment. This involves answering the following questions:
Customer vision
- What are the main customer and prospect segments?
- What are the priority segments in terms of acquisition/loyalty?
- Which are the most valuable
- What are their expectations/needs?
The corporate vision
- What is the company's strategy?
- What are its key objectives?
- What are the company's values and DNA?
Market vision
- What are the competitors' positions/practices?
- What are the multi-sector best practices applicable to the company's environment?
Defining the customer experience strategy
The ambition
The next step is to formalize the company's ambition in terms of customer experience, in line with its strategic environment. Ambition gives meaning to the company's medium-term vision. The ambition of a customer experience strategy can be expressed in different ways:
- Quantitative or market positioning ambition
Ex: "Be the leader in...", "Satisfy 100% of our customers...". - Ambition to recognize experience in a specific dimension
Ex: "Offer a digital experience...". - Customer impact ambition
Ex: "Simplify customers' daily lives...".
The pillars of customer experience
Based on this ambition, the next step is to define the pillars of the company's customer experience: "What do we want customers to say about us? A good practice is to identify 3 or 4 pillars at most, which embody the ambition.
For example:
- Reliable (the company is always sincere and loyal)
- Close (the company knows me, my relationship with it is unique)
- Stimulating (the company opens me up to new ideas and inspires me)
- Listening (the company really listens to me)
At this stage, the aim is to make choices and identify the key priorities for the company's development, based on the 3 visions described in the strategic environment. It is therefore necessary to identify fundamental pillars, as well as pillars that will enable the company to differentiate itself from other market players.
The definition of these pillars requires several iterations to ensure that they respond to the strategic environment.
KPI's
Finally, appropriate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are identified to assess the achievement of the ambition and the response to the chosen pillars.
Translating customer experience strategy into multi-channel relational systems
To ensure that the customer experience strategy is sufficiently robust and concrete, the next step is to incorporate these pillars into all the elements that make up a company’s customer experience.
Examples include :
- Its distribution model and customer relations
- Its product and/or service offering
- Its customer paths
- Its customer loyalty and engagement systems
- Its customer culture and its listening to the voice of the customer
How do you define a customer experience strategy based on CX ID?
We have developed a collaborative approach that allows us to define a company’s customer experience strategy in three steps.
- An initial phase of gathering information from within and outside the company. Internal information (strategy, positioning, values, customer segments, customer expectations, etc.) is gathered through internal interviews with the marketing, sales, and engagement teams. Customer interviews and benchmarks from other industry players provide external input for this initial phase.
- A second phase, structured around workshops involving the company’s teams, allows us to share and refine the framework defined in Phase 1 and to collaboratively develop the customer experience strategy: by articulating the company’s vision through strategic pillars, translating it into key metrics, and defining action plans for implementing this strategy across the company’s customer engagement framework.
- The third phase involves synthesizing and presenting the results of all the work carried out, as well as validating the strategy and its implementation through operational and relational measures.
Customer Experience Consulting
As a strategy and transformation consulting firm, iQo places AI at the heart of its business model. Understanding all the challenges of AI today, while providing our clients with the right AI tools, is central to our approach. We place AI at the heart of a hybrid consulting approach to deliver concrete, results-oriented solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a customer experience strategy?
How to Develop an Effective Customer Experience Strategy?
The process begins with an analysis of customer expectations, business objectives, and the competitive landscape. It continues with the definition of a strategic vision, customer experience pillars, key performance indicators (KPIs), and an action plan implemented across all customer journeys and touchpoints.
Learn more about our customer experience consulting services here.
What are the main pillars of a customer experience strategy?
Why is a customer experience strategy a driver of performance?
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