Episode 51 Shownotes…
On this episode, we are joined by Annette Franz. Annette Franz is the founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc. She’s got 25 years of experience in both helping companies understand their employees and customers and identifying what drives retention, satisfaction, engagement, and the overall experience. Annette was named one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider and is regularly recognized by companies around the world as a top influencer in Customer Experience. You can find her work not only on her own blog but also in Forbes, Business2Community, CustomerThink, Quality Digest, APICS Magazine, and more. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional.
Annette states company leaders should map the journeys to better understand what is being experience currently to design a better future experience
Many companies just don’t do it right. They don’t get the right people involved, they haven’t developed their personas – different personas have different journeys – they don’t map the right level of experience.
She suggests to think about the experience or the job the customer is doing to determine what to map – example: A customer service call to the support service. What was the catalyst for the call and map from the moment they had the need to the moment it was resolved – even after.
Dig deeper beyond just mapping touch-points – Must map what the customer is thinking, feeling, and doing. Those are the key learning moments when you understand that perspective. The Aha moments come when you see some of the pain-points you cause for customers.
The biggest mistake folks make when they try mapping on their own? The fundamental problem is they go into the workshop without a strategy or process that they’ll be able to do something with what they learned.
She suggests doing the customer map with the customer in the room first. When assumptive maps are done, the leaders often think they are done with everything and not getting the customer perspective. Internal perspective is different than customer perspective. The assumptive map must be validated by customers.
Annette suggests a current pain point customers are experiencing you can map and fix quickly to see results. This motivates groups to continue mapping. Look for feedback to identify known pain points to map. Pick the things that matter to your customers using Outside In thinking.
She stresses there is a difference between B2B and B2C and how mapping can be used as a relationship tool.
Customer understanding is the cornerstone of customer centricity. She gives some simple strategies on how to keep the customer front and center at all times throughout your company.
When in meetings, always be thinking of how the customer is going to be impacted by the changes being discussed.
To see significant impacts of CX, Annette feels that focusing on the customer, not the metrics, is essential. When we do things to move the score, we do things differently than we would if we were focusing on the person.
Employees and their experience drives the customer experience. She says to focus on employees first before customers. The tools, processes, and resources are essential to employees being able to best do their job and embrace the
Be sure you have the right culture serving as a strong foundation to solidify the best customer and employee experience.
Think about how much you focus on your employees and their current experience and having everything they need to serve their customers well.
Go and Journey Map. It makes a huge difference in the way companies can best serve their customers.
Make sure that everyone on the Leadership Team is on the same page with the Customer Experience. The executive team is where everything starts.
You can connect with Annette and learn more about her by following her on Twitter @AnnetteFranz or by going to her website cx-journey.com and on LinkedIn.