A customer-first strategy must have a single board-level sponsor, and every employee must understand what their role is in making it happen. Don't treat it as just another project but as a long-term company objective. If “everyone in the senior leadership team is responsible for the customer experience”, then no one is.

The organisation hasn't fully embraced the strategy 

Satisfying and delighting the end customer is not the job of one person or one department. Everyone has a role to play, and the success of a customer-centric strategy depends on making decisions and taking action that supports that mindset. One method to ensure it is top of mind is to ask this question at the end of team meetings: 

"what would our best customers think of the decision we just made?"

If it is something they wouldn't like or you know that you would disapprove of, then it needs to be reconsidered.

There is a belief that it costs too much

While this is the perception, the reality is that it costs a lot more not to adopt a customer-centric strategy. It makes both customer AND business sense, and there's been a plethora of research that supports positive ROI: 

• 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience. However, only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. (CEI Survey)
• 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service. (RightNow Customer Experience Impact Report)
• Walker forecasts that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. (Customers 2020 Report)
• A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. (Bain & Co)
• 94% of consumers say they are more likely to be loyal to a brand that offers transparency. (Label Insight)

Failure to listen to customers

Twitter is what happens when you ignore customers, according to digital analyst and renowned keynote speaker Brian Solis. Successful customer experience programs start with a culture of customer-centricity, where customer needs come before the demands of shareholders. 

The need to truly understand your customers is a cornerstone of ongoing customer engagement. When customer requests to address problems fall on deaf ears, the experience and the initiative suffer.

Inability to link CX to business value

The call to "improve your customer experience" is a nebulous one. Often companies use metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) to track the success of their Customer Experience platform without linking it back to critical metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), churn rate, onboard success rate, and customer asset value. For CX programs to gain traction within a company, individuals need to see a link between program efforts and business KPIs. 

Lack of ownership

As we touched on in "Getting the most out of your CDP", CX initiatives require a strategy-first approach with leadership driving change from the top down. Without a CCO (or CXO, as Danny recommends) managing the program, it is tough to deliver unity. According to Jeanne Bliss, co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association:

"The CCO is not the owner but the enabler of having one company perspective, uniting the leadership team and embedding competencies." 

Robust Customer Experience initiatives involve multiple departments, including marketing, product, development, sale and customer success - one or numerous individuals in these team needs to play their part under the leadership of the CCO/CXO, to ensure progress in the same direction. Without this, we see initiatives get quickly derailed.  

If you don’t have a dedicated CCO/CXO, then outsource this responsibility to your CX agency for the short term.

Failure to break down silos

A customer-centric culture, valuable business KPIs, and a clear program owner could still yield an ineffective customer experience program if functional silos hinder the customer journey.

Overcoming silos isn't just about departmental collaboration. To eliminate silos, business leaders need to recognise all the teams that associate with the customer. Discovering pain points in the path to purchase can also pinpoint areas where the customer journey can be streamlined. Whenever a customer has to enter the same piece of information twice, for example, it is a sign that internal teams need to be sharing relevant customer information.

Seamless customer experience is a team sport. One team independently can't provide a great end-to-end customer experience. Getting relevant groups to collaborate under the leadership of your CCO/CXO will help your CX program succeed.

Customer Service teams are seen as complaint handlers

The perception that customer-care teams are mere complaint handlers is getting in the way of successful CX transformations. You only have to look at the financial results of companies that surpass competitors in customer care to realise the business benefits of putting the customer first: Lexus, Google, and Apple, to name a few. This article by Shep Hyken called "Ten Customer Service Tips for Customer Loyalty Month" details the essentials of a forward-thinking customer-first strategy, especially relevant in today's environment - despite how long ago it was written.

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Avoiding these pitfalls is critical to transforming your brand's customer experience, but they're not the whole story. An informed CX strategy will include partners and tools that help you along the way to meet business outcomes; that's why we're here - to find out more, get in touch here.