Organisations typically understand the importance of improving the customer experiences they provide to their customers. The CX mantras have been around for a long time and most organisations have developed CX capabilities that focus on designing and delivering customer experience improvements.
In our opinion, these efforts are too myopic and don’t elevate CX to its required level of strategic consideration. They typically focus on removing pain points that relate to the existing products and services - they are incremental improvements to the status quo.
This approach makes two big assumptions. The first assumption is that when improvements are made, customers will see the value and respond accordingly. This assumption is wrong if organisations don’t know why customers are choosing the product or service in the first place. If organisations don’t know what is driving choice for its customers, then it is highly likely that it could improve the related customer experiences in ways that don’t impact these drivers of choice - they have essentially created superfluous value. This ‘wasted’ effort is a big reason why so many CX initiatives fail to deliver on their expectations and as Eric Ries, of Lean Startup Methodology fame, quotes:
“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
The second assumption is that the most value that can be created for customers will come from improving the products or services that currently exist. We have countless examples where we have uncovered opportunities to create new customer value by delivering a whole new set of experiences. Often these are the initiatives that should be prioritised for investment - or at least should be considered as an alternative to just ‘improving’ what’s already there.
This elevates CX into a far more strategic discipline that isn’t just dealing with customer pain points but actually leads the business in terms of product and service development. Given businesses exist to create value for their customers and that their existing products and services are just delivery mechanisms for this value creation, this focus on CX as an opportunity to maximise customer value and not just improve the current customer experience mechanisms is, in our view, entirely appropriate.
We have developed a new approach to CX optimisation, one that is anchored in Professor Clayton Christensen’s Jobs To Be Done methodology. His insight was that most new products and services fail in-market not because they don't work, but because they don't improve things on dimensions that drive choice. For companies to create successful new products that people will choose over the competition, they need to identify what causes customers to choose product A over product B.
This is the foundation of our new CX approach - a blend of innovation and CX best practice that elevates CX into its proper role of customer value creation and a key driver of growth. If you’d like to find out more, then give us a nudge - we love everything CX and are passionate about realising its full potential.
