A great customer experience (CX) evokes positive feelings and emotions, which leads to happy, satisfied customers and increased loyalty. It also helps businesses stand out from the competition—in fact CX is rapidly becoming a more important differentiator than product or price, especially in industries that are heavily regulated.
Source: Forbes
Based on the above proof points, it’s easy to understand why optimizing CX is a top priority for businesses in every industry. But accomplishing this feat is not without its challenges.
Challenge #1: Complexities
A complex technology ecosystem makes it challenging to build “good” customer experiences. According to Forrester research, “good” customer experiences are ones that include interactions that are easy to understand and transact; communications that are personalized and relevant to the recipient; and a level of empathy that makes customers feel appreciated and cared for.
To achieve all of these goals requires modern CX technology. Employing such a platform will allow organizations to create an omni-channel experience where communication is consistent and simple to follow. It will also allow companies to mine and analyze more consumer data, enabling them to have a better understanding of their customers. Emboldened with this insight they’ll be able to produce communications that are tailored to each individual’s needs and wants and interact with customers with greater empathy.
Challenge #2: Overcoming Organizational Silos
Many large enterprises still create and manage customer communications in silos. For example, operations are often responsible for billing, marketing for promotional communications and direct mail, services for call centres and line-of-business owners for business correspondence. Aligning these groups is essential if an organization is to follow through on their goal of creating a great customer experience.
Source: Forbes
The first step to encouraging internal alignment is getting C-level buy-in. With C-level backing in place, the rest of the organization will feel compelled to get on board. Next, a designated CX executive, CX shared services team or CX steering committee should be appointed. This person or group of people will then serve as the evangelist, broker and facilitator of company-wide CX adoption and the breaking down of silo barriers. The last piece of the puzzle is to develop a framework or road map for CX. This will help each person in each department understand what your organization’s big picture goals are; and what their individual departments are responsible for in order to achieve those goals.
Challenge #3: Managing CX Strategically
As mentioned in the point above, the successful development, implementation and execution of a CX strategy takes an enterprise-wide effort. IT and marketing will obviously be the key stakeholders, but depending on the organization your CX efforts may also involve other departments such as legal, product development, logistics, finance and more.
The following three best practices are considered foundational to making your CX initiative a successful one:
- Input from stakeholders in all departments should be incorporated into the CX strategy.
- The CX ecosystem is a constantly evolving entity therefore it is imperative that your CX strategy not be considered a “one-off” but rather an on-going activity of refinement.
- In most cases, top-down leadership is more effective for developing and implementing new strategies like CX. Appoint a C-level executive in your organization to take this on and empower them with the resources they need to execute.
Challenge #4: Managing Physical Communications Alongside Digital Communications
Today’s consumers expect the experience they have interacting with your organization at one touchpoint to be consistent at another. Seamless communication across multiple channels reinforces trust in your brand and a sense that you understand what your customers want and appreciate. This is what omni-channel communications is all about.
Sounds easy enough, but making it happen takes a lot of work and commitment, especially in organizations where their physical communications are managed separately from their digital ones. The challenge in managing physical communications alongside digital efforts is that physical communications require very specific preparations in order to optimize print production and postal delivery.
What’s the solution? A customer communications management (CCM) system.
Modern CCM software will enable your employees to create, edit and manage both physical and digital content. It will allow them to consistently deliver an omni-channel experience to your customers and changes can be easily made across various touch-points and channels too.
Learn more about the challenges to CX success and how to overcome them Download the whitepaper “Top 4 Converging and Disruptive Forces Impacting Customer Experience in 2019” today.
