4 milkshake
Do this poorly and the discontinuity of
an unpredictable experience will churn
customers out of your portfolio.
The secret to pulling this off is no secret
at all. To provide a high-touch experience
for customers, brands must take a
foundational and objective assessment of
their authenticity, continuity and agility.
Authenticity is measuring customer,
employee and supplier sentiment, which
informs brand culture. Continuity is
harmonizing business delivery systems from
first touch messaging all the way through to
successful solution execution. Agility is the
ability to proactively harness change and
replace the status quo.
“Continuously assessing and improving
these three foundational elements of the
organization will reap the tactical outcome
all companies want,” Herrin says. “Public
praise, referral activity and positive metric
scores that lead to satisfied, loyal and stable
customers with predictable revenue streams.”
Authenticity, which Herrin says is borne
of company culture, is the most critical.
You want to populate your customerfacing
organization with people who crave
objective assessment and honest dialogue
from customers, peers and leadership.
This helps create a learning-oriented
organization where the best ideas win.
Next, continuity is the knitting together
of all the systems and processes, including
external communications, that convey
the importance of the customer to the
organization. You can have the best
intentions to create an amazing customer
experience, but it will come up short unless
you create seamless continuity. “In Atomic
Habits,” James Clear wrote, “You do not
rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the
level of your systems.”
Finally, agility is the adaptation process
of interpreting and absorbing change.
While it is an important element of a
complete CX Management program, it will
not be effective absent an authentic culture
and seamless business delivery model.
“A critical aspect of this stage is moving
the organization from a metrics collector
to an analytics predictor of outcomes,”
Herrin says. “In its perfect form, these
three elements are a continuous cycle:
Data gathering feeds predictive intelligence
into a learning organization with nimble
systems that can pivot to keep pace
with customers’ businesses that are
continuously changing.”
For brands wanting to build the perfect
customer experience, Herrin says you must
CUSTOMERS
VOTE WITH
THEIR WALLETS,
SO UNDERSTANDING IF
THEY ARE COMING BACK
AND GROWING IF THEY
COME BACK ARE THE
TWO KEY INDICATORS.”
— EVAN WEXLER,
GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN THOUGHT LEADER
September 2022