A modern fairy tale – You don’t need a customer experience strategy – you already know what to do (Part 1)
Don’t bother with a customer experience strategy. You already know what to do.
Well, most of us think we do. Including me. We all have lots of ideas that will make customers happier. Let’s just implement them. That should save a lot of time. Right?
And now… a bedtime story about how that is likely to go, as told by an anonymous (for now) narrator.
[Arriving at work…]
Here is my favorite idea at the moment. I am sure our customers would like to discuss their experiences in an internet forum. That should be easy to do. There are so many of them. I will just go over to Michelle, our IT manager, and ask her to set it up.
[An hour goes by…]
Wow! Michelle is really grumpy today. She said she has nobody to do it. They are all ‘busy’ with supposedly important things. How could anything be more important than our customers? I need to go and talk to her manager.
[Another hour goes by as I meet with the CIO…]
All these techies must have slept badly last night. Danielle didn’t want to help either. She said she has all the projects she can handle for the next six months. Apparently I should come back in next year’s budget cycle. What a blocker. She must hate our customers.
Hmm… I played golf with our CEO once. Let me try to grab him over lunch. I hope he doesn’t remember that ball I moved when I thought he wasn’t looking.
[After lunch…]
Well that question caught me off guard. John asked what made me think customers wanted a forum. Then things got worse. He asked me to tell him the top three things that customers actually tell us they want us to improve. He wants to know what the improvements would cost, and what the ROI is. He asked me to present it to his leadership team a month from now. Based on data. With numbers. And worse, he asked me to suggest where we could find the money.
Why could he not just trust my instinct?
I don’t know how to do all of that.
I just have a month.
Panic!
