TRADITIONAL CX IS BROKEN: THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE

The CX industry is under a lot of pressure. According to Forrester, 1 in 5 CX programs will be terminated. With the economic challenges in the market, CFOs and CEOs are starting to question the belief in the notion that CX is all important. There is often very little proof of the value of CX, the improvements in programs are often limited and the impact is unclear. We think a large cause of this problem is because of the use of an inappopriate approach to CX sometimes referred to as ACAF ie:

• Ask customers for feedback across channels
• Categorise the feeback into buckets that are meaningful to businesses
• Act on the insights by feedback it back to the business who should be motivated to change
• Follow-up on the rollout of initiatives and with customers that provided feedback

A lot of the reason the above approach is doomed to failure in the change program necessary to change customer experiences. Changing staff's behaviour to deliver undefined customer experiences is incredibly hard and in most cases outside the remit of CX professionals.

An alternative approach is one that is focused on getting customers toward their goals. Consumers interacting with businesses do so because they are trying to achieve an outcome such as take out a new insurance policy, settle a claim or upgrade their mobile plan. They are not thinking about the experience, they are thinking of the outcome and they want value to be delivered to them and if that happens, they will spend money. With this in mind, we think an alternative approach to customer experience is appropriate and results in far more tangible results ie:

• Manage customers through customer journeys.
• This starts by deeply understanding what value should be delivered to or in conjunction with the customer
• We know that customers act on nudges IF the content of the nudges is salient to the goal that the consumer is trying to achieve
• The right nudges start to move the customer towards their goal. These nudges can be digital or people orientated.
• When customers reach their goals, success is achieved for both the customer and the business offering products or services. We are not ignoring that value perception along the journey which is vital but the experience is not the only perspective - achieving customer goals is critical (and missing from traditional CX metrics)
• When customers achieve their goals and they perceive value, they spend money with companies selling products and services.

Anyone working in the CX industry does so because they appreciate the subtleties of human perception and behaviour. However, the traditional approach of implementating massive staff change management programs is too hard and has largely been shown to be ineffective.

We are seeing incredibly success in using a journey centric approach built around goal achievement and value delivery. It works, it is effective and it produces results - results that can be measured and quantified as the goals can be linked to real customer profitability.

CX is broken and Customer Journey Orchestration offers a far superior approach.