It’s ALL about CX
How well defined and supported is your concept’s customer journey?
For years as a shopkeeper, and then later as a retail leader, I believed the level of service our teams provided was a powerful value-add to the niche filled by our company. An early mentor used to say, “With a tasteful product, at a fair price, we win the day!” I still believe you need a great product at a reasonable price, but it takes more—much more— to win the day today. Today your customer journey is the differentiator.
Let’s look at some numbers. A 2022 Super Office survey asked 2,000 business professional to share their top priority for the next five years. The results:
Customer Experience (CX) — 46%
Product — 34%
Pricing —20%
To further underscore that point, research from PWC found that the more expensive the item, the more a customer is willing to pay. In fact, if the customer experience is consistently at or above expectation, customers will pay a price premium between 13% - 18% more. This all points to how critical it is to fully define what your customer’s journey should look like and to ensure it’s supported at every touchpoint.
In my experience organizations like to believe they’re all about the customer journey, but then neither invest in their customers nor create a company ethos that brings the customer into every decision. This needs to change.
Investing - In the Super Office survey above, 30% of the professionals planned to increase spending on CX, and 14% said they planned to significantly increase spending. Most of that spending is funneled into 3 areas:
More powerful ways to understand their customer’s behavior
Strengthening their Omni channel experience
Bolstering their mobile channel
Ethos - All of that spending will be meaningless if brands fail to create a culture where the customer truly informs every decision. Teams that share ownership of customer experience outcomes, rather than passing it on to those who directly interact with the customer, will thrive. Others will fall by the wayside.
To instill a customer-first mindset we need to develop the organizational maturity to think critically pre and post-launch. In my work with California Closets we transformed from a siloed approach to a team that listened to “the voice of the customer” every day and reacted quickly to feedback. The resulting customer loyalty drove consistent year-on-year revenue and profit growth across all channels. In fact, NPS scores grew to such consistently high levels that HBR profiled California Closets Service Commitment in this article. Those results were truly an organization-wide effort!
In an incredibly competitive marketplace and with customer expectations rising, your success depends on a 100%+ commitment to CX. Let’s talk.
