A Tactical Approach to Customer Experience Improvements
Many companies talk a good game when it comes to the customer experience. It's very easy to speak in broad strokes when it comes to a company's efforts to provide a consistent, positive experience from any channel. Yet when it comes to taking action, it can be confusing to know where to begin. There are two tactics that may serve as good starting points.
In today's issue of 1to1 Weekly, I spoke with Breanna Vanstrom, an MBA student in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. She took the school's Customer Relationship Marketing class, taught by Peppers & Rogers Group's own Tom Lacki, Ph.D. As part of the class, she was assigned a research paper to explore a topic within CRM. She chose the customer experience.
During her research, she found that two tactics emerged as particularly insightful. One is the process of touchmapping, and the other, creating service blueprints.
"[Touchmaps and service blueprints] help employees understand how the pieces fit together and what's expected of them to deliver on the customer promise," Vanstrom says. "A lot of times the experience breaks down because employees don't understand the consequences of their actions on customers."
These are two fairly simple tactics, but the customer insight they can provide is critical. Any company interested in improving the customer experience should be sure to conduct both efforts.
What other tactics help understand the customer experience? What have you found works best at your company with your customers?
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I'm glad to see the service blueprint recommended in conjunction with the touchpoint map. Skin-deep touchpoint management can work some of the time, but only well-refined business processes yield sustainable customer experience results.
-Lynn Hunsaker, ClearAction.biz