It will come in the form of aggressive vendor marketing copy. It will come in the form of updates about new strategies your competitors are employing. But when it comes to meaningfully improving your customer experience, you only need to focus on one source of insight: your customers.
The world of customer management is overflowing with "groundbreaking" new technologies and "battle-tested" best practices for satisfying customers. And, indeed, many of these will prove quite valuable in elevating a brand’s customer experience to a level of true value for the customers.
But with boundaries defined by the budget, organizational structure and affirmed commitment to the customer, successful brands cannot afford to chase strategies simply because they are trendy or being employed by competitors. If they do not speak to the customer’s needs and the way the business organically goes about meeting those needs, those strategies are not right for your organization.
Speaking in this exclusive Customer Management IQ podcast on how change management practices impact the customer experience, Martin Dowson, a presenter at the Customer Experience Management in Banking & Financial Services Conference, September 18-20 in London, reveals that businesses need to center all improvement efforts around their relationships with customers.
"Be clear what it is you are going to stand for and what it is that you want to achieve and who your customers are," explains Dowson. "When you know that, then you know what serves you in being able to do that for your customers."
This is not a call to ignore surroundings, but it is a reminder that no amount of "best practices" or clever promotional print can replace the insights gained from the target audience.
"It’s not that you’re keeping your focus internal or that you’re not looking at what your customers are doing, but you’re looking at it all the time through the lens of your customer," says Dowson. "If I know my customer, and I know what I’m capable of doing, and I know what I need to change, then I know what technologies need to change.
Check out this exclusive podcast for Martin Dowson’s insights on how to successfully drive change in the customer experience function. Who delivers the relevant insights? Who sets the wheels in motion? And how do you get the front-line staff and C-suite behind a voice of the customer mission?