What makes customer experiences so important?
“Think about what is the most memorable thing you have done this week and what made it so?
It doesn’t take you long to remember that moment, does it?
But do you remember those literally hundreds of other things you did or purchased this week? I bet not.
The reason is that when any customer experience manages to be somehow different and more valuable to us than the rest of them, we tend to remember them for a long time and go back to that business again. This is why customer experiences are key for companies since mediocre experiences will not be remembered, but remarkable ones will be shared even with friends.
In business terms, this means money!”
How companies can ensure they are producing remarkable customer experiences?
“That is a great question. It is practically same as asking that how companies can ensure that they are here also next year and many years after.
The first thing is to acknowledge that customers are absolutely crucial for the business results. And not just for the results, but also for the survival.
This should set the priorities of any companies straight. That is to focus on creating value for clients in a profitable way. It is difficult to improve something that is not first acknowledged to be important and worthy of pursuing.”
What happens to organizations that do not put proper effort in customer experiences?
“There’s no good news for them, as you might have guessed.
Looking at statistics, they will disappear from the face of the earth in the next 10 to 15 years. There is no competitive advantage in manufacturing, logistics or even in information anymore. Today the advantage comes from understating customers and serving them in a remarkable way. Those who are not in the customer business, won’t be in business. Period.”
Would you share one of your success stories with us, please?
“One great example of power of customer experience strategy is from one telco client of mine. As you may know, telco companies have been struggling with their profits for sometime already. This particular company was seriously on red and needed to recover quickly or they would be out of business. That is the time when they acknowledged that the customer experiences are key to their success and they didn’t really have any proper strategy for it.
So, they engaged with me and we designed together workshops both for top management and employees to define what remarkable experience would look like for their clients. And that is unique to every target customer group you know.
Then we used that new strategy to align the business operations to increased customer value and they made a transformation program, which lasted for 4 months. During that time they increased the value they offer for their clients and made cost savings of over $1million. That is quite an amazing result after 4 months of effort.”
Do you have some brief tips, ideas or precautions for our readers?
“I understand that our attention span is limited here and it is only so much I can explain in this great blog website. Therefore, I will share with you couple of things that are real game changers in business.
First is getting your top management on board to create remarkable customer experiences for your clients every time. Once you get the buy-in, then create purposeful programs that are designed to make profit from adding more value. Those two are the key secrets to survive any economic downtimes or difficult market conditions. Those who add the most value to customers will get their business regardless of market situation in general.”
Do you have any specific resources for our readers that would benefit them?
“I want to help you to get on the right road in creating remarkable customer experiences. You can get free 3 part online video training series for creating your own customer experience strategy at http://addvalueto.me/customer-experience-blueprint
To receive a complementary copy of Janne’s book on customer-centric process leadership please visit http://addvalueto.me/download-a-free-process-leadership-book/
By Janne Ohtonen, EPM Channel Contributor.
Janne believes that the most dramatic changes to organisations effectiveness and performance comes through an alignment of customer experience to business processes, enterprise architecture and innovation. He has delivered tens of challenging change programs, with double-digit performance enhancement in many of them. He holds three university degrees and am about to finish a Ph.D. in BPM. Janne has contributed to a number of scientific research papers including developing organisation’s business process management capabilities and enterprise architecture. His approaches are acknowledged as thought leadership and used in a number of organisations today. Janne Ohtonen is a regular contributor all over the world to C-level roundtables, MBA courses and international conferences as keynote speaker. He also delivers workshops in Customer Experience Management, BPM, principles of leadership, innovation and change. See Janne’s articles on EPM Channel here.