Enhancing Customer Experience (CX): A Strategic Imperative

Originally published in Channel Partners

In today’s competitive market, customer experience (CX) is a critical differentiator for client-facing organizations. It is impacted by all points along the buyer journey – from the initial encounter to long after the purchase. CX encompasses every interaction and impression a customer has with your company. Leading CX organizations take impactful action before, during, and after the sale to drive CX and enjoy significant revenue growth and above average EBITDA margins.

Leading CX organizations embed CX into their go-to-market practices across the buyer journey. They align their commercial organizations to a unified CX vision and strategy, engage customers effectively, and set and achieve CX goals tied to customer outcomes. To do that, they utilize advanced processes, plays, and tools. These high-value practices lead to more effective account penetration, better new logo acquisition, and higher customer retention and satisfaction.

Integrating CX Throughout the Organization

CX success requires buy-in from stakeholders across the organization, with clear ownership of CX. Alexander Group research shows three common CX ownership models: a dedicated CX team, a cross-functional center-of-excellence team with an aligned CX vision, and CX ownership within each functional area. Higher commitment to CX is observed in the first two models. The third model is more commonly seen in organizations at the beginning their CX journey. Organizations with CX owned separately and within each function often lack alignment and coordination around a shared CX vision across the organization.

Focusing on Roles That Influence CX

All roles within the organization have an influence on CX. Lagging organizations often view functions like customer service and support as the function with the CX responsibility. Leading organizations understand that all functions contribute to CX and, to that end, deploy the right resources to the right customers at the right time. Strong CX starts with the buying experience, commitments made to customers in the sales process and then followed by the delivery on those commitments. Especially for IT solution providers, post-sales delivery and service roles are crucial for ensuring value delivery which drives customer satisfaction and makes expansion and resell opportunities a possibility. New post-sales roles enhance sales and delivery teams, with roles such as customer success managers and customer support playing key parts in the buyer journey.

Setting Goals and Measuring Engagement

Like with any important initiative, it’s important to measure progress and results. Leading CX organizations measure CX success primarily through customer retention and growth. Beyond that, leaders commonly use customer conversion rate, social media engagement, net promotor score, net revenue retention, customer satisfaction and customer effort scores. It’s important to clearly state the measurements, goals and communicate periodically back to the organization on progress against those goals.

Aligning Processes, Plays and Tools

More commonly, internal processes and tools are being aligned to support CX efforts across conversion, retention, and expansion. CX leading companies align use cases to engagement plays and sales objectives, leveraging tech tools to enable insightful tracking of key CX indicators. This alignment ensures that the organization can effectively meet evolving customer expectations and achieve superior business outcomes.

A Strategic Approach to CX

A customers’ overall satisfaction is paramount in the information age. New competitors, alternative options, new information, reviews and testimonials are constantly emerging. Improving CX leads to real business and reputational outcomes and should be a priority for organizations seeking to drive revenue growth. A strategic approach to CX involves establishing a clear CX vision and strategy, clarifying and documenting customer engagement expectations, setting specific goals and measurements, and building the right processes, plays, and tools for on-going execution. Companies can improve CX and drive customer lifetime value by recognizing CX responsibilities throughout the organization, communicating how different roles influence CX, setting measurable goals, and aligning processes and tools. CX is not just a single function or the responsibility of one part of the organization but a strategic imperative that requires dedication and investment at all levels of the organization.