With Yourself, Not With the Customer
Introduction
One of the most widely cited statistics is from a Bain & Company survey of CEOs at 362 companies. 80% of them claimed they delivered an outstanding customer experience. But when their customers were asked, it turned out only 8% of these companies (in the customers’ own words) actually delivered an outstanding customer experience. Source
The Gap
The statistic above captures the gap between what customers expect and what companies actually deliver. Closing this gap is one of the most important objectives for customer experience practitioners — and in colloquial terms, “the hole is bigger than the patch.” Closing it requires the entire organization to unite as one in delivering an outstanding customer experience.
Culture Is the Biggest Challenge
The biggest challenge for any company aspiring to deliver an outstanding customer experience is culture — creating a cultural shift in the mindset of all stakeholders so that their decisions revolve around the customer and the customer’s interest. The hardest cultural shift is at the top of the pyramid, because if it doesn’t happen there, nothing will trickle down. In the world of customer experience, change only flows top-down.
An Example
Promotion behavior in a company reveals its priorities. Do you have that arrogant, narcissistic colleague who gets promoted every year, struts like a rooster, and tolerates no disagreement — all because they hit sales targets and break records every year… yet they treat employees and customers badly, costing the company many employees and some loyal customers who’d dealt with the company for years? If you have this archetype, know that the company’s priorities are far from achieving a great customer or employee experience.
With Yourself, or With the Customer?
This is the defining question for business leaders over the next ten years. Product or service alone will no longer differentiate you from competitors or protect your market position and share. In reality, the customer experience will be the only differentiator that ensures your survival. The answer to this question isn’t a yes or no, nor is it an excellence or quality award you receive from some association. It’s a testament from your customers themselves, who won’t hesitate to grant you this honor if they truly sense that your brand cares about them — in word and in deed.
If you don’t humble yourself and listen to your customers, your decisions will remain based on mostly incorrect assumptions, and you’ll keep designing products and services that don’t meet customer needs. #WithYourself
If you get close to your customers to understand them better and design products or services that help solve their problems, you are #WithTheCustomer.
What seems logical to you may not seem logical at all to your customers, and vice versa. You are not your customer — and if you don’t believe that, you’re #WithYourself.
A company’s service philosophy can be defined by its customers, and its culture can be described by its employees. If you’re the one claiming the excellence of your service philosophy or the sophistication of your culture, you’re #WithYourself.
If you continuously seek to understand the kind of relationship your customers expect and then design the experience accordingly, you are #WithTheCustomer. If instead you try to design the experience based on some market segmentation data or generational profiles, you are #WithYourself.
If you’re constantly looking inward for inventive ways to extract more from your customers’ pockets, you are #WithYourself. But if you’re working with customers to find the value they see in your products/services and then evolving what you offer to reflect that value, you are #WithTheCustomer.
If your company is full of unfair policies — toward employees or customers — you are #WithYourself. If you try to create fairness for everyone and equip them with the tools and knowledge to serve one another well, you are #WithTheCustomer.
If you propose ideas for delivering service in different ways that are more useful and convenient for customers, and you find your ideas rejected one after another, know that the decision-makers are with themselves, not with the customer.
If the company ignores the suffering of frontline employees — like call center agents — leaves them as the last to know about any changes, doesn’t mind leaving them on the front line putting out fires it lit, and doesn’t address customer complaints at their root, know that they are with themselves, not with the customer.
If decision-makers focus only on internal processes (reflecting the inside-out view) and pay no attention to customer journey maps (which reflect the outside-in view), know that they are with themselves, not with the customer.
A Word for CX Practitioners
Always remember that you play the role of the customer’s defense attorney. You cannot accept this role with internal departments because how can you be defense counsel for your client and prosecutor at the same time? It can’t be done. So don’t make any concessions to any department. Remember: you represent the customer, and only the customer. This won’t hurt you as long as the CX function sits at an appropriate level in the hierarchy and has the necessary support and authority from senior leadership to play the defender role properly. If what I’m saying sounds out of reach for you, then it looks like you work in a #WithYourself company — and it’s time for change, my friend.
In Closing
In the end, companies that adopt a #WithYourself mindset will end up living the saying:
Customers are from Mars and Companies are from Venus.
It pains me to tell the leaders of these companies that the rules of the game have changed, and they have no option but to change too.
To my readers, share examples and stories from your experience of companies that adopt the one-sided #WithYourself mindset and others that live the collaborative #WithTheCustomer mindset.
Related concepts: Customer-Centric Operating Model, Voice of Customer (VoC), Customer Journey Mapping.
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