What Sets The Best CX Companies Apart?

Starbucks, Qatar Airways, Netflix, Disney, Hubspot… these are just some of the many companies that are consistently recognized as having the best customer experience (CX) in the world. They frequently win CX-related awards and tend to dominate within their respective markets.

So what is it about these organizations that enables them to deliver a CX that is consistently superior to that of their competitors?

In gathering insight from executives and senior leadership teams and putting a few of the organizations that exhibit outstanding CX under the microscope, some key things surface that give us a clue as to why these companies are so far ahead. Each possess many (or in some cases, all) of the following:

1. A CEO who understands the economic value of a first-class CX, and actively promotes its importance both internally and externally.
   
   
2. An inherent understanding of the customer problems that they solve, which drives them to constantly strive to uncover new, unmet areas where they can assist customers in need.
   
   
3. A clear organizational purpose that is understood by all staff and is regularly communicated to all of their customers.
   
   
4. A comprehensive definition of their aspirational CX, which includes detailed principles and the strategies that are required to support it.
   
   
5. A practice of diligently evaluating the impact that any change, whether minor or major, would have on their customers before making that change.
   
   
6. A central repository where they store information about customers - such as preferences, feedback, requests, etc. – that they’ve carefully collected and recorded from a wide variety of systems. 
   
   
7. A practice and mindset for continuous improvement. They map their customer journeys and communicate them across the organization, and work to reduce the difference between the intended and actual CX at each and every touchpoint.
   
   
8. A deep knowledge and understanding of their customer value proposition and why their customers are attracted to their organization in the first place, why they remain patrons, and even reasons why they might churn.
   
   
9. A thorough and accurate record of customer feedback, which they analyze and subsequently distribute learnings from, so that everyone across the organization can track and manage actions based on this feedback.  
   
   
10. An awareness of the inherent value of collecting insights from agents (in parallel with customer feedback). These insights will add further context, details, clues and direction that will drive CX improvement faster than relying solely on feedback from customers.
      
11. A practice of recognizing and rewarding staff when CX goals are achieved.
    
    
12. An understanding of the tight link between the employee experience and customer experience, and practices that actively work to improve their culture, employee engagement and employee wellbeing.
    
    
13. A habit of constantly working to design new, improved and differentiated experiences for their customers.

As such, a robust customer insights program is critical to ensure a comprehensive understanding of your customers’ thoughts, insights and experiences, along with any pain points they may have. 

To develop any of the above-listed aspects (that organizations with great CX possess), you must have robust customer feedback practices. And through an effective ‘Voice of the Customer’ (VoC) platform, such as Cyara CentraCX, your customer feedback can also be used to improve your workplace culture and employee engagement.

If you find yourself looking at this list and feeling a little overwhelmed at the number of things you’re not currently doing, start by working on just one or two of the low-hanging fruit. Once you feel like you’ve embedded them within your organization, you can select another one and so on. It will take time, but as the Chinese proverb says, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” and the rewards you achieve will ultimately be worth it.

It’s more important than ever before to know what customers are thinking, feeling, and needing. If you don’t currently have a VoC program in place, start with the small, achievable step of incorporating a short post-interaction survey and go from there.

Finally, just remember that becoming a more customer centric organization is a business transformation journey. To improve your chances of success, implement any changes you make to your business using evidenced change management principles, such as Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model, Hiatt’s ADKAR Model, or Lewin’s Change Management Model.

The companies with the best customer experiences in the world have achieved such a status because they place customers at the heart of everything they do. By adopting the 13 habits and actions listed above, you too, can follow the path they have created and join them on the CX summit.