There’s lit­tle debate that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) is the new growth engine for busi­ness­es. In fact, an astound­ing 97 per­cent of senior exec­u­tives con­sid­er it “crit­i­cal.” Of that group, 93 per­cent have made it a top three pri­or­i­ty. But unlike the brand, inno­va­tion, and dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tions that pre­ced­ed it, the bur­geon­ing CX rev­o­lu­tion is not a “bolt on” growth dri­ver.

Pour­ing mil­lions of dol­lars into expe­ri­en­tial trin­kets mat­ter lit­tle when com­pa­nies fum­ble the fun­da­men­tals. Got a new in-store VR app? Cool. But not cool enough to soothe your shopper’s frus­tra­tion that her favorite yogurt fla­vor is out of stock. Again. Great CX is not about quan­ti­ty of nov­el­ty. It’s about total­i­ty of qual­i­ty. That means offer­ing flu­id, con­tex­tu­al, per­son­al, and delight­ful expe­ri­ences at every touch­point. This isn’t only a go-to-mar­ket chal­lenge.

It’s also a cul­ture, struc­ture, incen­tives, tal­ent, busi­ness mod­el, and oper­a­tions chal­lenge. Lead­ers must fun­da­men­tal­ly rebuild their orga­ni­za­tions around the cus­tomer to deliv­er supe­ri­or CX. Not every­one is ready to run head­long at this mul­ti-head­ed hydra, though. Fire drills rearrange pri­or­i­ties. The nec­es­sary invest­ment of time, mon­ey, and peo­ple isn’t avail­able.

The con­ver­sa­tion about reskilling teams is mind numb­ing while the sug­ges­tion of uni­fy­ing inter­nal fief­doms sends chills up the spine. Of all these chal­lenges though, the tough­est one is the first: where to begin? Six­ty-three per­cent of exec­u­tives are still look­ing for an answer. The truth is, there is no one per­fect place to start; but there are five sen­si­ble places. They’re high-reward, low-cost lever­age points. When simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enact­ed, they make over­com­ing all the oth­er chal­lenges pos­si­ble.

Leverage Point 1: Free The Capacity For Change

Com­pa­nies are fan­tas­tic at adding ini­tia­tives, less so at elim­i­nat­ing them. Becom­ing a CX leader, means hav­ing the capac­i­ty – time, mon­ey, and peo­ple – to do so. Every depart­ment, direc­tive, posi­tion, process, ini­tia­tive, and incen­tive should fall under the micro­scope. Is it inef­fec­tive? End it. Is it friv­o­lous? Pull the plug. Is it redun­dant? Hit “stop.” Change only hap­pens when orga­ni­za­tions cre­ate the capac­i­ty for change.

Leverage Point 2: Lower The Percentage Of Project Work

In recent years, lead­ers have dumped retain­er rela­tion­ships in favor of more exper­i­men­tal and non-com­mit­tal projects. And their com­pa­nies aren’t any bet­ter for it. Crowd­ed part­ner ros­ters intro­duce all sorts of inef­fi­cien­cies. It inflates the time and effort to man­age them. Ini­tia­tives often emerge dis­con­nect­ed from a larg­er com­pa­ny ambi­tion.

Con­flict­ing objec­tives and project redun­dan­cies are com­mon. Project rela­tion­ships dis­in­cen­tive part­ners to work togeth­er, so they don’t. What the cus­tomer gets, in the end, is an incon­sis­tent, balka­nized, fric­tion-filled cus­tomer experience—the oppo­site of her def­i­n­i­tion of “qual­i­ty.” Build­ing a supe­ri­or cus­tomer expe­ri­ence requires strate­gic lead­er­ship from one, con­sis­tent part­ner – one who will:

• Estab­lish and man­age a holis­tic CX per­spec­tive
• Speak hard truths to you
• Build with you a port­fo­lio of CX ini­tia­tives to roll out in a man­age­able way
• Part­ner with you to dri­ve change through­out your orga­ni­za­tion

Leverage Point 3: Elevate What You Value

The pur­pose of a busi­ness, to build on Peter Druck­er, is to cre­ate and take care of a cus­tomer. But pur­pose and prac­tice rarely align. Cus­tomers feel it: a whop­ping 8 per­cent believe com­pa­nies deliv­er great CX. The rift exists because the cus­tomer isn’t val­ued. That may sound harsh, but a com­pa­ny ele­vates what it val­ues. Look in most c‑suites and you’ll see what their orga­ni­za­tions exalt: oper­a­tions (COO), mar­ket­ing (CMO), infor­ma­tion (CIO), and finances (CFO). These c‑suites uncon­scious­ly inspire cul­tures con­cerned with the man­age­ment of busi­ness func­tions. Not the cre­ation and care­tak­ing of cus­tomers. For them, the cus­tomer will always be an input, rather than the point. For aspir­ing CX lead­ers, why not include a “Chief Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Archi­tect” in the C‑suite? A sim­ple addi­tion at that lev­el can be a pow­er­ful sym­bol of reeval­u­a­tion and reori­en­ta­tion for a com­pa­ny.

For aspir­ing CX lead­ers, why not include a “Chief Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Archi­tect” in the C‑suite? A sim­ple addi­tion at that lev­el can be a pow­er­ful sym­bol of reeval­u­a­tion and reori­en­ta­tion for a com­pa­ny.

Leverage Point 4: Measure What You Value

Com­pa­nies also mea­sure what they val­ue. Mea­sur­ing behav­iors, beliefs, or sen­ti­ments for spe­cif­ic touch­points is com­mon. But cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion as a cumu­la­tive score of expe­ri­ence across touch­points and time? That’s sur­pris­ing­ly rare. It should be a pri­or­i­ty since cumu­la­tive sat­is­fac­tion scores are more pre­dic­tive of busi­ness out­comes — high rev­enue, repeat pur­chase, low cus­tomer churn, pos­i­tive word of mouth — than any indi­vid­ual touch­point score. Form­ing a CX ana­lyt­ics team and a CX track­er is a low hang­ing fruit with big ben­e­fits. It doesn’t require any pro­pri­etary sys­tems, infu­sion of cash, or reskilling of tal­ent. It requires mere­ly a shift in research ori­en­ta­tion to return a wealth of insights that can fuel orga­ni­za­tion­al change and CX improve­ment.

Form­ing a CX ana­lyt­ics team and a CX track­er is a low hang­ing fruit with big ben­e­fits. It doesn’t require any pro­pri­etary sys­tems, infu­sion of cash, or reskilling of tal­ent. It requires mere­ly a shift in research ori­en­ta­tion to return a wealth of insights that can fuel orga­ni­za­tion­al change and CX improve­ment.

Leverage Point 5: Chart Your ‘Share Of Experience’ Expansion

It’s tempt­ing to think of “cus­tomer expe­ri­ence” as a customer’s con­tact with a busi­ness. This point of view isn’t wrong; it’s just incom­plete. Peo­ple don’t think in terms of “cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.” They think in terms of “my expe­ri­ence” – one described as a goal and defined by a series of activ­i­ties. While an online retail­er might use the lan­guage “shop­ping expe­ri­ence,” a soon-to-be father is more like­ly to describe it as “my expe­ri­ence prep­ping for the baby” – a recent expe­ri­ence for me. Yes, includ­ed in it are store vis­its and pur­chas­es, but it also includes many touch­points:

• Read­ing about baby’s needs
• Cre­at­ing a wish list
• Solic­it­ing ideas from friends
• Research­ing sug­ges­tions
• Research­ing prod­uct tox­i­c­i­ty
• Hunt­ing for nurs­ery design ideas
• Watch­ing how-to videos for crib assem­bly or putting on wraps
• Wife’s baby show­er
• Fig­ur­ing our how to store the baby items
• Baby proof­ing the home
• Return­ing items baby didn’t like
• And so on…

Through­out those activ­i­ties, mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies dip in and out. Rarely does any one expand into adja­cent phas­es or own a whole touch­point. There­in lies the oppor­tu­ni­ty for savvy CX lead­ers. Defin­ing expe­ri­ence as the father does reveals oppor­tu­ni­ties to extend a company’s val­ue in authen­tic and rel­e­vant ways. This is the essence of “share of expe­ri­ence.” By expand­ing its val­ue, a com­pa­ny can enrich its rela­tion­ship with cus­tomers. In addi­tion to being a source of inno­va­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, it’s also a source of growth: Acquir­ing a new cus­tomer is always more expen­sive than grow­ing val­ue for exist­ing cus­tomers. It costs six times more to get a cus­tomer than to keep one. Fur­ther­more, a mere 5 per­cent increase in reten­tion can gen­er­ate a 75 per­cent increase in prof­itabil­i­ty.

First-Mover Advantage

The rea­son the brand rev­o­lu­tion gave way to the inno­va­tion rev­o­lu­tion and then that of dig­i­tal is because the com­pet­i­tive advan­tage each cre­at­ed was not sus­tain­able. Adver­tis­ing cam­paigns were, at best, super­fi­cial gains. Inno­va­tions were easy to mim­ic. Look­ing for­ward, the same par­i­ty will occur in dig­i­tal as lead­ers add sim­i­lar capa­bil­i­ties, ser­vices, and prop­er­ties. The CX rev­o­lu­tion is dif­fer­ent, though. As not­ed, achiev­ing supe­ri­or CX requires sys­temic change across an orga­ni­za­tion: from oper­a­tions to cul­ture to go-to-mar­ket. The learn­ing curve is steep and long. Com­pa­nies that act ear­ly and fast will gain a first-mover advan­tage. The asso­ci­at­ed com­plex­i­ty and nec­es­sary costs of CX imi­ta­tion will deter most would-be copy­cats. Those who do attempt imi­ta­tion will find lit­tle reward. While they strug­gle to ascend the learn­ing curve, CX lead­ers will move with the effi­cien­cy found at the top of the curve. Not only will the com­pet­i­tive gap yawn, but also the cus­tomer loy­al­ty lead­ers earn

Not only will the com­pet­i­tive gap yawn, but also the cus­tomer loy­al­ty lead­ers earn will shore up them up against aggres­sive tac­tics of des­per­ate imi­ta­tors. Thus, the advan­tage giv­en by CX endures pre­cise­ly because it is so dif­fi­cult to achieve.