"A Chief Customer Officer is successful when he or she can simplify how the organization works together to achieve customer-driven growth, engage the leadership team, and connect the work to a return on investment."
- Chief Customer Officer 2.0, page 1
"Embracing your customers as assets shifts the attitude of leaders and ultimately the organization, because the purpose is to earn the right to growth by improving the lives of customers. When you improve their lives, the high scores will follow. They will. But the shift is to start work with the customer’s life, not the score. And that is no small shift."- Chief Customer Officer 2.0, page 34
Jeanne explains how most companies are addicted to surveys and use this to drive their customer experience. The problem with this is that it captures what customers think they will do as opposed to focusing on what actually has happened and why, which is at the core of her five competencies.
Two other things her model emphasizes are improving customer lives and breaking down silos.
The heart of your product/service should be to improve your customers’ lives. If that drives your product/service and your decisions, and if that drives the questions you ask and your customer experience choices, then you will grow due to the value you provide and you will deserve to do so.
But for these decisions to be effective, leadership needs to break down all the company silos. Every function needs to be focusing on improving customer experience and lives, and every function needs to be working together to roll out improvements. If the leadership team is not aligned and behind this goal, and working together to ensure its success, it will be impossible to get the rest of the company to do so.
"By establishing a competency for managing the process performance of key touchpoints that make or break your relationship with customers, you can start taking actions before customer relationships have eroded, causing customers to depart."- Chief Customer Officer 2.0, page 138
Companies know that efficient processes and measurements are important, but many focus all of this on their “power core” (what they’re in business for; e.g., product, sales, IT, etc.), rather than on understanding what is working and not within their customer experience. It is vital to develop these customer experience processes so that you can step-in and fix an eroding relationship. As many have said, it’s a lot easier to lose a customer than gain one.
Jeanne suggests many ideas and processes that would help with this, but I will just highlight a few:
"When you deliver a reliable experience, you earn the right to your customers’ story through word of mouth. And your customers will come back because they want to have your experience again."- Chief Customer Officer 2.0, page 148
Once you’ve figured out how to improve your customers’ lives and have the systems in place to understand what they want, you need to make sure that the experience you’re providing is consistent and reliable. Once you do so, not only will they come back for more, but they will be happy to share their great experience with their friends, both through word of mouth and through social media.
As per a stat Jeanne shares, “92% of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising.” That’s a huge number and free! Here’s another astounding stat: 300% is the “revenue gained by reducing negative word-of-mouth versus improving positive ‘buzz’.”
Given the above stats, the ROI on providing consistently reliable good customer experience clearly outweighs anything else a company can do. I know from personal experience that I’ve given up on apps or products if they were inconsistent, and I’m probably not the most impatient consumer out there.
Most companies have customers of one sort or other and most companies claim to be customer-focused, but Jeanne points out how few truly are and what it takes for them to get there.
Jeanne Bliss is not an evangelist or observer of companies; she is a customer experience expert.
