The Most Expensive Misunderstanding in the Corporate World
Customer experience is written into strategies with grand phrasing. But when you dig deeper, the red thread is missing. The thread should be money.
Customer experience is the most expensive misunderstanding in the corporate world.
I argue this because customer experience should be understood and managed on three levels: strategic, tactical, and operational. Often, I see it written into the top-level strategy with grand phrasing, but when you go a notch deeper, the red thread snaps. So, what should that red thread be?
Money.
When you strip away all the “fluff,” it is simply about financial success. How long does the customer relationship last, and how much does its value grow? We are talking about Customer Lifetime Value.
It is a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Understand the customer’s need, remove the friction, and you create the opportunity for success. The alternative is a loss. And on a side note, we talk way too little about loss in this context.
So why is this so difficult? Because customer experience is perceived as abstract. Managing it lacks the same hard-nosed culture as sales. Moreover, the results typically show up with a delay, unless you mess up badly.
How do we get on the winning path? First, I ask: who is actually responsible for customer experience at your company?
This is usually accompanied by the most dangerous illusion: “Customer experience is everyone’s responsibility here.”
That sentence only works if you are a solo entrepreneur. Then you are responsible for everything yourself. But if a company has a hundred employees and the responsibility lies with “everyone,” we have a hundred different interpretations.
Interpretation creates uncertainty. Uncertainty does not produce priorities. And without priorities, there is no execution.
Financial success does not happen by accident. It only occurs when the customer experience is rigorously managed throughout the entire organization. And it starts from the top. It requires unambiguous ownership that has been given a budget, resources, and time. If any of these are missing, the strategy is just expensive paper.
Aspenly · Thinking