A Guide to Mastering the Art of Customer Experience
Priya Chakravarthy, VP—Experience, BluSmart, 0
With more futuristic technologies entering the mix, the customer experience (CX) realm is at an interesting juncture. We recently conducted an exclusive interview with Priya Chakravarthy, VP—Experience, BluSmart, to learn more about the flaring trends in the CXO segment. A CX specialist, Priya is an insightful leader with over 25 years of professional experience. Below is an excerpt from the interview.
Creating a customer-centric culture is essential to consistently delivering exceptional customer experiences. What is the future of this culture?
The CX culture is going to be a big game-changer. Many organizations are rapidly consciously adopting this. The essence of CX being an integral part of any robust system has reached its peak, and it’s no longer a cost center.
As we look towards the future, the evolution of this culture will be influenced by several key trends and strategic changes.
Integration of Advanced Technologies: Machine learning has made advancements, and many diversified advanced AI and automation tools will continue to play a significant role in experience. It will bring efficiency, personalization and more data analytics, enabling organizations to predict customer behavior and expectations.
Empowerment will be the next task. The more you empower, the more efficient the system is, and your ability to make decisions will increase exponentially, thereby influencing experience.
Personalization / hyper-personalization bring in that human touch element which can enable and create enhanced revenue models. Not empathizing and creating personalized value will take you far away from repetitive customer buying behavior.
Also, adapting to changing customer expectations and market trends will be crucial.
On the other hand, innovation not done right will lead to brand damage. Sustainability, consistent improvization, and innovation will be the biggest key strategies that an organization must take. Ethical practices should be combined with innovation.
Valuing corporate social responsibility is increasing the brand value. Many organizations present the value change they bring into Social and environmental segments.
Breathing and preaching experience is the role of visionary leaders. They ought to inspire and advocate customer-centric behavior and practice.
The future of a customer-centric culture will be shaped by technological advancements, empowered employees, personalized interactions, proactive engagement, agility, holistic customer views, sustainable practices, and strong leadership. By embracing these trends, companies can consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences and build lasting customer relationships.
How should leaders ensure that their company’s values are aligned with the demanded customer experience?
For leaders, aligning their company’s values with the demanded customer experience involves several strategic and cultural initiatives. The changes that need to be strongly implemented and measured timely for great success include:
The value system needs to be embedded in each employee. The values should have experience at the core, and how they are presented to the teams makes a huge difference. Defining core values and how they translate to customer experience has to be communicated through all communication segments both internal and external.
However, all values are driven by a top-down approach. If the culture is rich in fostering values ingrained in everyday practices and decision-making processes, it's more sustainable. Leaders set standards for the entire team. Regular leadership engagement is crucial for sustainable improvement in the ethical value system. Additionally, constant value-based training will emphasize the importance of company value in delivering exceptional services.
You must also have policies and procedures that reflect your commitment to the desired customer experience. Analyzing customer data and close looping will significantly impact company values.
Leaders play a crucial role in ensuring that the company’s values align with the demanded customer experience. By clearly communicating values, embedding them in the
company culture, aligning policies and practices, providing training, developing aligned performance metrics, empowering employees, engaging in leadership, and ensuring consistency across channels, leaders can create a cohesive and value-driven customer experience. This alignment not only enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty but also reinforces the company’s reputation and success in the market.
How do CX leaders navigate conflicting goals across business areas, reach a consensus on setting priorities, and build trust in analytics-driven models?
Customer experience leaders always have the challenge of balancing revenue and experience. Aligning various business areas with frequent conflicting goals is often challenging. Reaching a conclusive consensus on priorities and building trust in analytics-driven models requires a strategic approach.
First and foremost, understanding the conflicting goals is important from various lines of business that are functionally, operationally and strategically involved. Identifying them becomes even more critical. An operations team works on revenue with growth as a lever. However, an experienced team will have a metric to reduce operational inefficiency that causes bad experience. Mapping them is the key.
While finding a common path, we can't deviate from common goals. Fostering a collaborative approach through meetings, workshops, and joint initiatives helps significantly. Developing a unified vision with customer-centricity as a key differentiator is the sustainable model that will thrive.
Including key stakeholders in decision-making and accommodating their perspectives help gain their buy-in. Setting priorities with a clear call out on outcome-based severity also helps.
A great collaborative approach with strong leadership support for CX initiatives adds great synergies—cultural integrations with the common alignment of value systems against customer expectations. Finally, the significant use of unified platforms to provide a source of truth, where reporting and measuring to actuals are periodically fine-tuned, adds to the unified vision of success.CX leaders can ensure that customer experience remains a top priority and drives overall business success.
What methodologies do the CX leaders implement to estimate the cost of CX ideas and forecast their expected value?
Estimating the cost and forecasting the expected value of CX ideas is very important. It definitely helps get approval and alignment from stakeholders and brings a collaborative approach to solving problems and integrating technology for business success. Precise, data-driven analysis and transparent communication of potential outcomes are crucial in building a compelling case for CX investments. Some key methodologies followed include:
(a) Developing a business case for a comprehensive study on cost, benefit, ROI and strategic alignment. (b) This is scrutinized through pilot testing on a small scale to examine its feasibility and measure the impact and cost-benefit of moving to a large scale. (c) Many organizations get into cost-benefit analysis, identifying all costs associated with the CX initiative. The benefit has to be declared or quantified through measurable output (retention percentage, revenue growth, increase in NPS etc). The benefit is the subset of the total cost vs. actual benefit, which is the estimated benefit value. (d) ROI is also another popular methodology used. (e) Customer Lifetime Value model: This model segments customers based on their value to the organization. The lifetime value for each segment is calculated by estimating the profit of what the segment can contribute. The impact of customer lifetime value is assessed through spending value and retention rates.
What would be your advice to budding leaders in the industry?
It’s a beautiful journey carved with exponential learning. Some things that I believe one should build in their journey are:
Be the visionary. Have clarity on your strategy to balance short and long-term goals. Be the influencer. Take every opportunity to influence your stakeholders and teams to build and work together. Stay connected with customers. Be it emerging trends or being proactive about adapting to new strategies, the role of human support will continue to evolve as experience is going to stay.
Be a data driver and make decisions by leveraging data & analytics.
Be the advocate of a customer-centric culture. Build a collaborative culture where you don’t just meet to solve problems, but also meet to encourage and appreciate good behavior. A unified working environment is a great way to write success stories.
Inculcate the behavior of inclusive decision-making. Help the team integrate through training and development so that decision-making is simplified and employees become enablers. Also, adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of integration by staying agile, and be willing to experiment with new technologies.
How do CX leaders navigate conflicting goals across business areas, reach a consensus on setting priorities, and build trust in analytics-driven models?
Customer experience leaders always have the challenge of balancing revenue and experience. Aligning various business areas with frequent conflicting goals is often challenging. Reaching a conclusive consensus on priorities and building trust in analytics-driven models requires a strategic approach.
Build a collaborative culture where you don’t just meet to solve problems, but also meet to encourage and appreciate good behavior.
First and foremost, understanding the conflicting goals is important from various lines of business that are functionally, operationally and strategically involved. Identifying them becomes even more critical. An operations team works on revenue with growth as a lever. However, an experienced team will have a metric to reduce operational inefficiency that causes bad experience. Mapping them is the key.
While finding a common path, we can't deviate from common goals. Fostering a collaborative approach through meetings, workshops, and joint initiatives helps significantly. Developing a unified vision with customer-centricity as a key differentiator is the sustainable model that will thrive.
Including key stakeholders in decision-making and accommodating their perspectives help gain their buy-in. Setting priorities with a clear call out on outcome-based severity also helps.
A great collaborative approach with strong leadership support for CX initiatives adds great synergies—cultural integrations with the common alignment of value systems against customer expectations. Finally, the significant use of unified platforms to provide a source of truth, where reporting and measuring to actuals are periodically fine-tuned, adds to the unified vision of success.CX leaders can ensure that customer experience remains a top priority and drives overall business success.
What methodologies do the CX leaders implement to estimate the cost of CX ideas and forecast their expected value?
Estimating the cost and forecasting the expected value of CX ideas is very important. It definitely helps get approval and alignment from stakeholders and brings a collaborative approach to solving problems and integrating technology for business success. Precise, data-driven analysis and transparent communication of potential outcomes are crucial in building a compelling case for CX investments. Some key methodologies followed include:
(a) Developing a business case for a comprehensive study on cost, benefit, ROI and strategic alignment. (b) This is scrutinized through pilot testing on a small scale to examine its feasibility and measure the impact and cost-benefit of moving to a large scale. (c) Many organizations get into cost-benefit analysis, identifying all costs associated with the CX initiative. The benefit has to be declared or quantified through measurable output (retention percentage, revenue growth, increase in NPS etc). The benefit is the subset of the total cost vs. actual benefit, which is the estimated benefit value. (d) ROI is also another popular methodology used. (e) Customer Lifetime Value model: This model segments customers based on their value to the organization. The lifetime value for each segment is calculated by estimating the profit of what the segment can contribute. The impact of customer lifetime value is assessed through spending value and retention rates.
What would be your advice to budding leaders in the industry?
It’s a beautiful journey carved with exponential learning. Some things that I believe one should build in their journey are:
Be the visionary. Have clarity on your strategy to balance short and long-term goals. Be the influencer. Take every opportunity to influence your stakeholders and teams to build and work together. Stay connected with customers. Be it emerging trends or being proactive about adapting to new strategies, the role of human support will continue to evolve as experience is going to stay.
Be a data driver and make decisions by leveraging data & analytics.
Be the advocate of a customer-centric culture. Build a collaborative culture where you don’t just meet to solve problems, but also meet to encourage and appreciate good behavior. A unified working environment is a great way to write success stories.
Inculcate the behavior of inclusive decision-making. Help the team integrate through training and development so that decision-making is simplified and employees become enablers. Also, adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of integration by staying agile, and be willing to experiment with new technologies.