The foundation of our CX Principles

The customer experience principles are based on insight from listening to over 500,000 customers across a range of brands and interactions. This insight provides us with a clear and detailed understanding of customer experience across a range of sectors and interactions. This knowledge and focused expertise has allowed us to develop a framework to help our clients understand their customer needs and harness this insight to evolve the service offer. We have taken the insight and run extensive modelling to identify the key elements that make up outstanding experience. These key elements are the five customer experience principles and the emphasis on each principle varies by sector and type of interaction.  

Being customer centric sets brands apart.

In an increasingly commoditised and crowded marketplace, ever advancing technology and readily available information continue to shape and influence consumer behaviour. One change in consumer behaviour is hyperadoption – an increased willingness and ability to switch brands frequently. This willingness to change and switch is more prevalent for certain categories, but is becoming more common even in sectors with lower engagement and higher inertia such as financial services. This means brands need to work harder to attract and keep customers. Therefore, delivering an outstanding experience is vital – customer centric service is a differentiator.

Being customer obsessed is rare.

There is a wealth of evidence that great customer experience drives better business results across a diverse range of industries from banking, utilities, and travel through to retail. Customers who have a better experience are more likely to stay with a brand, buy again from the brand and become a brand evangelist. This directly links to actual business performance and commercial return, brands who deliver great customer experience grow more quickly than their competitors offering a poorer experience. Despite this evidence outstanding customer experience is still rare.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." – Maya Angelou

Listening to the customer – an objective view.

In order to deliver a great service, it’s crucial to listen to the customer needs and expectations. To have an objective view it is important to reach out and understand, in-depth, the customer experience. This needs to include determining what is important to customers and the wider context of their experience with other brands. The insight can shape refining the experience and ensure the entire organisation puts the customer at the heart of everything they do.

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves.”  – Steve Jobs

How to use the customer experience principles

Understanding the customer journey.

The starting point is mapping the customer experience – defining the journey stages. This will provide an in-depth understanding of the customer pathway across all interactions and communications.

Measurement – asking the right questions.

It is then about measuring the customer experience and quantifying it across all the journey stages. Underneath each of the five principles we have developed a series of relevant question areas that determine performance in that area. The questions and emphasis on each principle will vary by and across the customer journey. For example, effort might be a focus at the point of purchase, whereas personalisation will be more important in the pre-purchase experience.

Prioritising service transformation. 

Once the customer experience is understood the next step is to prioritise areas for improvement. This involves modelling, multi-variant statistics, to understand the relative importance of each principle in shaping customer experience on specific journey. Having an evidence-based view of what is important to customers mapped to actual experience provides a clear picture of where and how to focus service transformation.

Transforming the service.

The in-depth understanding of the customer can then be used to refine, design and innovative the customer service. The voice of the customer and the vision can be broadcast throughout the business as part of the implementation plan for evolving the service.

Our CX Index

We have created a benchmarking study that measures the position of over 100 brands across 7 sectors based on CX. This allows brands to look for inspiration to transform CX within and outside of their own sector.

Delivering a great customer experience is key to differentiation in a crowded and often fickle marketplace. To drive loyalty, retention and brand evangelism businesses need to be customer obsessed and ensure they are listening to and acting on their customer needs and priorities.  Our customer experience principles form the foundation for helping businesses transform their customer experience with proven commercial benefit.