22 2322 23

CX MAsTERCLAssBY SHAUn SMITH

Jan 24th, 2017 9.00 am to 5.00 pm

Hotel Clarion Jätkäsaari, Helsinki

DATE AND TIME VENUE

“ Great customer experiences don’t happen by accident.They are created on purpose.”

Jan 25th, 2017 10.00 am to 12.00 pm

Hotel Klaus K Helsinki

DATE AND TIME VENUE

CX MAsTERCLAss

VIP bRUNCH

24 25

training, process changes and sometimes changes in the organisation. Smith calls for allowing people to act in the way you want them and make it easy for them to do so.

Lack of CX strategy leads to CX failure

According to Forrester research, the number one reason for CX failure is the lack of a CX strategy. recently, in the “State of Customer Experience Management in Finland” study by CXPa Finland and shirute, 41% of the respon-dents also stated the lack of a clear CX strategy as the biggest reason for failure. “That’s our experience around the world, too. We’ve seen lots of great initiatives, but unless there is something that binds them together that creates a sense of strategy, it’s very diffi-cult to sustain them.”

Smith advises organisations to create an align-ment framework that pulls everything together. It should address the purpose of the organisa-tion, its strategy (i.e. what are the significant things it is going to do to achieve that purpose),

what it promises to its customers, the experi-ence it wants to create, and what implications all of this has to people, processes and prod-ucts. “That simple framework creates a very powerful visual way of seeing the linkages between various CX initiatives in organisations. Without it, they are likely to be developed in isolation, and therefore not fit the strategy. Alignment is key, that is what gives your strategic focus.”

“Another key success factor is leadership. I’ve never seen an organisation succeed with CX unless the leadership is committed, passionate and engaged in the process. A warning sign is if a CEO tells me that the company has appointed a person as their CX Director, and to ask him later on if we need anything. Senior executives need to make change a priority and actively engage in it, because fundamentally in the end, people look upwards to what the CEO and the Board of Executives are paying attention to. If they are not paying attention to the customer and the CX, the conclusion people will come to is that this is not that important, and they won’t pay attention to it either”, Smith warns.

The co-founder of smith+co, shaun smith, a world-famous Customer Experience Manage-ment expert, explains that a purpose acts like a beacon in two ways: firstly, it attracts clients who want to do business with an organisation, because they know what that company stands for. Secondly, it attracts employees who want to work for organisations they identify with. It also warns off employees, who may not be a right fit for the company. Purpose is increasing-ly important, because it is the way you create profit.

When asked where one should start to build better CX, Smith points – perhaps un- surprisingly – to customers. But not just any customers: “It’s important that you start with your most valuable customers, because they generally represent the significant part of your revenues and profit – generally 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers.”

That is also the fundamental difference between CX research and market research. Whereas the first one wants to understand the

mass market, the latter one tries to find out what drives the behaviour of your most valuable customers, so that you know where to start to differentiate from your competition.

So how do you drive cultural change in an organisation? Smith brings up three different, integral parts in creating CX transformation: the Head, the Heart and the Hands. He says that you must explain to people why something matters. It may be because of customer feed-back, competitor threats, or a huge opportunity in sight. In order to convince people, start with why and create meaning with your purpose (Head).

People also need to be told why they should care about the change (Heart). So strive to ensure that both employees and customers un-derstand, for example through motivation and rewards systems etc.

It’s also vital that employees have the skills and tools (Hands) to be able to behave in the intended way. This must be facilitated through

“Why is purpose so important? Because consumers have so much choice now. They can buy pretty much what they want, whenever and wherever they want through the internet. With all of that choice comes confusion and uncertainty. A strong sense of purpose allows a company to be very focused and intentional in the value it creates for its customers.That is essentially what purpose does.”

HOW DO YOU bECOMEA CX MAsTER?

26 27

Don’t serve vanilla training

CX has been around for a long time. Many organisations all over the world are embarking on CX initiatives, and many of them are very mature in their efforts. Smith warns advanced companies looking for extra gains and neglected areas, about an issue he sees a lot: organisations do design work etc. well, but they fail by doing a generic training.

“If you give ‘vanilla’ training, you will get general vanilla service and CX. You should look to what extent your training itself is branded – is it styled in the way you want your CX? If you want your CX to be innovative, exciting and energising, is your training all of that, too? If not, you are not likely to generate the CX you want.”

“Think about the training you give to people as being almost a mirror of the experience you want to create to your customers. The closer you get those two things in the feel of them, the more powerful it will actually be. Unless you do that, you’ll end up with vanilla service.”

Get everyone on board and start with people

In order to create great CX, you need align-ment and a strategic framework. It must also be the effort of everybody in the organisation. For Smith, it is particularly important to align the internal functions. “They should have a line of sight to the end customer, and understand how they impact the end customer. If your

legal department has the view that their role is to protect the organisation, they will do so painstakingly through every contract. It’s really important for functions to understand how they impact the experience, and to respond accordingly.”

“I am often asked how long it takes to create CX and to implement it in an organisation. There is a rule of thumb that to really become habitual, for an organisation to behave in that way because it feels right, it can take 2-3 years.

However, you can see results quite quickly. For example at British airways, we saw significant change in the perception of customers in just about eight months.”

Smith points out that changing processes and technology takes time. Therefore, he recom-mends starting with people. “Customers can perceive changes in the attitudes or behaviours of people much faster than changes to pro-cesses or systems. You can create a short-term effect in the organisation that becomes self-enforcing. If you get people to behave in a dif-ferent way, and they see results, they become self-motivated and behave in that way more. So you get a virtual cycle with positive cus-tomer feedback, positive behaviour and high morale. If you can get that cycle working for you, that can be a very powerful way of buying time, whilst you fix some of the more difficult things like technology and processes. So start with your people!”

sIRTE PIHLAJASHIrUTE

26

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

shaun smith has co-authored five critically-acclaimed CeM business books. He has worked on CX initiatives for leading brands around the world to design, develop and deliver dramatic customer experiences, and been a key catalyst in expanding management attention from the tactical issues of customer service to the much wider and strategic issue of CX. smith has developed some of the latest thinking and practice around this subject.

Shaun Smith will be visiting Finland for CX Masterclass and a VIP Brunch on January 24th and 25th. Join us for more advice on how to delight your customers, and take your CX to the next level.

CX Masterclasswww.cxmasterclass.fi