Top 6 Reasons Why Your CX Program is Failing

The word is out – everyone is investing in customer experience. So then why aren’t all businesses delivering on this fantastic customer experience?  

In fact, research shows that only 10% of European organizations state that their customers are truly satisfied with their CX efforts. So what’s missing? 

In order to understand that, let’s start from the beginning. What exactly is Customer Experience? It’s often confused with delivering great customer service, but CX is a lot more than that. 

It’s about the impact you leave on a customer at every stage of their journey, whether it’s their social media interaction, product purchase and delivery, or even follow-ups. 

So it’s understandable why most professionals would define Customer Experience as the sum of all interactions a customer has with your brand. Customer experience, however, goes one step further. It is an ever-evolving philosophy that a company abides by, and the companies that instill CX into their strategy can attest to this.  

So Why is CX Failing? 

Despite the significant percentage of resources funneled into CX, why is it that a lot of companies aren’t able to satisfy their customers? There are several factors that can affect your CX strategy, but here are the top reasons: 

A Mismatch of Expectations 

When implementing CX, you’re probably rolling out numerous surveys just to make sure you can understand exactly what your customers expect.  

The NPS rating tells you just how many promoters you have, while the CSAT score gives you an idea of how satisfied your customers are and why.  

You might even be asking for constant feedback to know just what you can do better. So when you’re getting all the answers, how could there possibly be a mismatch of expectations? 

The reality is, perhaps you aren’t asking the right questions. For example, you don’t want to know how you can do better; you want to understand what the ideal experience would be and then strive to achieve that.  

That’s why you mustn’t just listen to your customers, but also focus on asking the right questions.  

Customers might tell you that perhaps you could make your website a little faster or incorporate more payment methods, but their ideal experience might include a lot more features, or even a different layout.  

At the end of the day, customers will only answer the questions you ask, so learn to ask the questions that matter.  

Lack of Internal Communication

Engage all teams as you set out to create the ideal CX strategy for your company. It isn’t just the teams most in contact with customers that need to be aware, but the entire organization.  

In fact, an organization where leaders place significant emphasis on their CX not only in strategy but in action is an organization where employees inculcate this as an essential. As a consequence, the employees are more focused on delivering exceptional CX at every step of the process. This impact all teams, whether it’s while programming and creating the latest features, marketing strategy, or interacting with customers.  

Inflexible Strategies

You might have a CX strategy in place, but is it flexible enough to accommodate the changing market demands? 

One of the biggest hurdle’s organizations face is a CX strategy that fails to adapt across the board. To combat this, build a well-integrated system that empowers you to immediately pivot strategies and correct pain-points that emerge.  

Having a closed-loop feedback system enables you to resolve complaints and experience gaps to consistently deliver a great experience.   

All Numbers, No Action

It’s very easy to be caught up in numbers. What was your NPS score? Did your CSAT rating fall? What is the churn rate for your organization? 

These are all numbers you might be aware of, but that doesn’t always translate to action.  

The end goal of a great CX strategy is to inspire loyalty and retention and increase the ROI of your company. However, satisfied customers aren’t always the customers that bring the most value to your company.  

While ensuring a high rate of customer satisfaction is essential, it’s important to keep the eye on the goal and not be distracted by the numbers alone.  

Take your entire business model into account, chart out your customer journey, and try to understand the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) that your customers bring to the table.  

Just making an effort at implementing a powerful CX isn’t enough. Your efforts need to be honed in on the most advantageous points (and these aren’t always what you think).  

So instead of just focusing on satisfaction, shift your focus to the value added to your company as well.  

Lack of Ownership 

When you want something done, you need to assign the responsibility to someone. Having multiple managers at par is never a good idea for an effective implementation of the entire CX strategy.  

Instead, hold one person accountable for its execution and see the strategy fall into place. Having multiple persons in charge is often the leading cause for confusion and lack of consistency across the board, and this is especially vital when it comes to your CX.  

Believing the Customer is Always Right 

One of the biggest myths when it comes to delivering an exceptional CX is the belief that the customer has all the answers.  

While it is critical to listen to what your customers are saying, this isn’t all you need to rely on. Instead, your focus as a business needs to be on predicting customer needs before they even know it themselves. 

If this sounds too outlandish, just take the example of Apple – a company that prides itself on customer experience and thinking ahead.  

Had they simply reflected on feedback; the iconic iPhone would never have been created. The customer at the time never realized they wanted a phone completely based on touch without the QWERTY keyboard attached. Instead, the iPhone changed the playing field altogether and revolutionized the market to deliver an experience the customer didn’t yet realize they wanted.  

Customer Experience, when implemented properly, can transform your business. Increase customer loyalty and brand advocacy, see the spike in customer retention rates, and reduce churn. But when not done right, investing in CX can be money down the drain. So keep an eye out for these key CX hurdles, and you’ll also notice a marked difference in the return on your CX revenue. 

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