By: Rebecca Holland
The goal of most modern organizations is to create a business that centers their customer. Customer-centricity is a byword for enterprises, but too few really treat their users as the experts, and instead rely on what the executive thinks they know about the market, based on their decades of experience. Being focused on the customer then, is a process of unlearning the traditional business decision making practices that many executives were raised on, and radically shifting the mindsets and decision making flows to support swift reactions to market changes.
This is the point of a digital transformation, and achieving customer-centricity in this era requires going all-in on digital. More than just shifting tooling, a digital transformation gets your org to a place where your internal processes are solid, resources are flowing to where they provide the most value, and your teams are ready to turn their attention to the biggest challenge you face: Keeping your customer happy, excited, delighted.
Some enterprises have stood up CX Ops practices to facilitate this focus on their users. Customer experience Operations means facilitating the internal practices that allow for relentless focus on the customer. CX Ops underpins and supports your existing DesignOps and DevOps practices, allowing these teams to solve problems based on what your customers will find most helpful and engaging, based on how you measure success in your customer culture.
However, CX Ops is not about standing up another Ops practice for its own sake — you need to successfully implement a digital transformation, or be well along the path, to be ready to solve the customer experience challenge. Organizations that are mature in design practices, for example, outperform their competitors by as much as 2.5 to 1. The ROI on their investment in solid structure and practices allows them to focus on the customer in a depth and breadth not attainable for businesses whose design functions are immature or heavily siloed.
The customer experience operations function is designed to put the focus on the operations processes that underpin delivery of value to your customer. With people dedicated to understanding that pipeline, and finding ways to optimize it, there are time, cost and processes efficiencies to be had, not to mention benefits for your end users.
Are you ready to implement a CX Ops practice in your organization, or at the stage of your digital transformation where you’re ready to tackle the optimization of these processes? To assess your ability to focus on your customer, and attune your whole company to their needs, review the following questions with your teams.
The 5 A’s for CX practices
Creating a customer-centric culture
You’ll notice that the focus of these questions is squarely on the people who deliver value to your customer, and are closest to them in your product pipeline. As with any transformation, changing the “what” is easy: New tooling, building new products, targeting a new customer base. Changing the “why” is a challenge — culture shifts take time, and doing them badly can derail the success of your initiatives.
With Ops practices emerging rapidly in the business ecosystem, it’s easy to feel that they’re just another fad that your company had better miss. However, the need for digital transformation, especially for legacy companies, is undeniable. A plan for your culture is essential, too. Putting a new, fresh focus on the customer can be extremely motivating for your teams if they are also allowed to make decisions that will support delivering them a better experience. This is a fundamental rule of digital transformation, and one that we explore in our new eBook on digital transformation The Better Way: Transformation principles for the real world. Decisions on behalf of the customer must be made by those who are closest to them. As mentioned, this is not the C-suite, and they must unlearn the traditional ideas that keep decision making power locked in the boardroom.
The hard work needed to answer the demands of your customer in ways that do more than just meet their basic needs will put your company ahead of the curve in today’s changing and uncertain landscape. Solid planning, a commitment to a digital roadmap, and a narrow, intent focus on your customer will ensure success.
To learn more about how Rangle approaches digital transformation, visit our Hub page.
Originally published at https://rangle.io on August 16, 2021.
