Customer Experience in the Year Ahead
- by Christina McKeon
With 2012 coming to an end soon, we find ourselves
reflecting on the year behind us and the year ahead. Now is a good time for reflection on your
customer experience initiatives to see how far you have come and where you need
to go.
Looking back on your customer experience efforts this year,
were you able to accomplish the following?
Customer journey mapping
Align processes across the entire customer
lifecyle (buying and owning)
Connect all functional areas to the same customer
data
Deliver consistent and personal experiences
across all customer touchpoints
Make it easy and rewarding to be your customer
Hire and develop talent that drives better
customer experiences
Tie key performance indicators (KPIs) to each of
your customer experience objectives
This is by no means a complete checklist for your customer
experience strategy, but it does help you determine if you have moved in the
right direction for delivering great customer experiences.
If you are just getting started with customer experience
planning or were not able to get to everything on your list this year, consider
focusing on customer journey mapping in
2013. This exercise really helps your organization put your customer in the
center and understand how everything you do affects that customer. At Oracle,
we see organizations in various stages of customer experience maturity all
learn a lot when they go through journey mapping. Companies just starting out
with customer experience get a complete understanding of what it is like to be
a customer and how everything they do affects that customer. And, organizations
that are further along with customer experience often find journey mapping
helps provide perspective when re-visiting their customer experience strategy.
Happy holidays and best wishes for delivering great customer
journeys in 2013!
