10 Characteristics of Customer Experience

Ten characteristics differentiate CEM from the common knowledge of former initiatives such as customer satisfaction, loyalty or customer relationship management. The level of understanding of these characteristics among executives company-wide was assessed in the 2010 ClearAction B2B CEM Benchmarking Study. The best understood tenets of CEM (top half of graph below) reflect aspects of customer perception measurement. The lesser known tenets describe the customer's high degree of control in characterizing customer experience, and the need for organizations to maintain insatiable curiosity and uncanny adaptability for delivering superior customer experiences.



Here are the ten ways that customer experience is unique from customer satisfaction:

• 1. Perspective: customer experience is defined entirely by the customer, not the solution provider.
• 2. Preventive: customer experience gravitates toward the easiest and nicest methods to get and use solutions that address customers' needs.
• 3. Duration: customer experience encompasses the point from which customers become aware they have a need until they say that need is extinct.
• 4. Dynamic: customer experience evolves with the customer's context — the purpose and circumstances of their need, and overall experience reference points.
• 5. Choice: customer experience is built on trust and mutual respect for variety; share of budget is more important than loyalty.
• 6. Multi-faceted: customer experience is measured by functional and emotional (social and personal) judgments related to the customers' expectations.
• 7. Operational: customer experience is shaped by all the contributors to an organization's processes, policies and culture, in addition to the physical product or service associated with the customer's need.
• 8. Integrative: customer experience is impacted by the degree of alignment among departments, technologies, channels, etc.
• 9. Anticipatory: customer experience is ongoing, where the present and future are equally or more important than the past.
• 10. Transparent: customer experience sees through the solution provider’s motives and intentions, and favors genuine sincerity for the customer's well-being.

Customer Experience Management Success Factors

CEM has evolved to a more mature, customer centric field with roots in total quality management and customer satisfaction, and metamorphisis through customer loyalty, customer relationship management (CRM), experiential marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing. CEM encompasses all of the above, with an operational emphasis on enterprise-wide engagement for alignmnent of what you do to your customer's priorities. If your organization has become disillusioned with customer-focus initiatives, rate your historical use of these essential tools for initiative momentum:

• Executive sponsorship

• Formal business process for CEM
• Employee empowerment & engagement
• Organizational learning (knowledge management)
• Quality tools (Pareto, fishbone, etc.)
• Systems thinking
• Change management
• Internal branding
• Recognition and awards
• Incentive pay
• Balanced scorecards
• Relationship skills training
• Benchmarking

Customer Voice:
Best practices in customer sentiment monitoring differentiate between enablers of customer experience (the firm's solution) and customer's desired outcomes, focusing feedback mechanisms on the customer's world rather than the company's world. Best practics also include:

• Identify all the influencers on the buying decision (initiators, approvers, users, buyers, influencers, gatekeepers, decision-makers)
• Collect voice of the customer from all of the influencers on the buying decision
• Monitor customer perceptions of business transactions
• Monitor customer perceptions of overall business relationship
• Involve executives in objective listening sessions with customers
• Analyze lost sales
• Track positive and negative word-of-mouth
• Resolve customer complaints systematically
• Integrate customer feedback sources
• Analyze integrated customer data
• Communicate resolution of customer complaints
• Communicate improvements spurred by poor survey ratings

Customer View:
Best practices create company-wide understanding of customers' priorities and value, including:

• Establish a single view of each customer across divisions and regions
• Stream relevant customer feedback to all parties in the company
• Calculate customer lifetime value
• Segment customers based on lifetime value or customer experience parameters
• Use customer metrics to evaluate organizational performance
• Include customer metrics in balanced scorecard

Customer Centricity:
Best practices in customer centricity help keep customers' well-being at the center of everyone's thinking, decisions and behaviors:

• Use customer feedback to guide annual operating plan
• Review business processes from customer perspective
• Use customer metrics in performance reviews
• Reward customer experience improvement in team recognition
• Align incentive pay to customer experience metrics
• Create department-level action plans to improve customer experience
• Listen to customer needs prior to product development efforts
• Base strategic decision-making on customer experience or lifetime value segmentation
• Base front-line employees’ decision-making on customer experience or lifetime value segmentation
• View customer experience management as an ongoing journey

As the dynamics in the customer's world are constantly evolving, an insatiable curiosity about customers is a key to success. Company-wide alignment with customers prevents waste (improves profit) and prevents customer hassles (improves organic revenue growth).

ClearAction has personal experience implementing these best practices in large, fast-paced organizations that emphasized acheiving strong business results. Let us share practical methodologies and solutions to aid you in your customer experience management journey.