creating the customer experience white paper

8/8/2019 Creating the Customer Experience White Paper

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Defining and Creating

the Optimal Customer Experience



A brand is a promise—a promise that must be kept; delivered consistently day in and day out. The customerexperience is the fulfillment of that promise. Customers encounter your brand in numerous ways; products,packaging, price, advertising & marketing, sales & customer service personnel, etc. Each of these contacts ortouchpoints molds the customer’s overall ongoing impression of the brand.

Your customer experience ultimately defines you. It should be carefully planned and controlled. It mustreinforce your brand and the image you wish create. Learn how to define and implement a consistent customerexperience by:

• Starting with the brand promise and creating the reasons-to-believe.• Identifying the customer touchpoints and determining which are most influential.

• Defining the optimal experience and aligning the organization to deliver it.

By controlling your customer experience you can ensure the promise you make to the marketplace will be keptday in and day out across every key customer touchpoint.

Executive Summary

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Start with the Brand Promise

Customer experience design begins with an understanding of your brand. Your brand defines who you are, howyou operate, and how you are different from others in the marketplace. Without it, you are merely a commod-ity, lacking distinction, character, and value. Ultimately, a brand is a promise – a promise that must be kept. Itmust be delivered consistently day in and day out at each customer touchpoint. Managed correctly, your brand will become one of your most valuable assets – the embodiment of what you bring to the marketplace.

Create Reasons-to-Believe

Your brand promise is irrelevant if your customer doesn’t believe it. Therefore, your promise must be supportedby its reasons-to-believe. Some call these brand pillars . The brand pillars give substance to the promise anddefine specific expectations for the customer. For example, Saab Automobile promises an “intelligent choice forindividuals seeking uniqueness and unconventionality.” What makes Saab an intelligent choice? What makes itunique and unconventional? Why should the customer believe this promise?

Saab framed its brand promise with four brand pillars:

• Individual and personal design• Sporty performance• Safety and security• Intelligent technology

These brand pillars put definition around the promise and gave the customer reasons to believe the promise willbe fulfilled. It gave the company specific direction for designing the desired customer experience throughtangible customer touchpoints like vehicle design features, customer service activities, finance programs,

advertising campaigns, dealer sales approaches, and dealer showroom design/layout.

Keep the Promise – The Customer Experience

If the brand is a promise you make, then the customer experience is the fulfillment of that promise. Customersencounter your brand in numerous ways: products, packaging, price, advertising and marketing, sales andcustomer service personnel, etc. Each of these contacts or touchpoints molds the customer’s impression of thebrand. Some of these touchpoints are obvious, like product performance, advertising, and sales staff. Othertouchpoints, like the product manual, store lighting, or post-sales support, may be more subtle in its brandaffects.

There are four basic elements to designing and implementing a customer experience that supports the brandpromise:

• Identification of ALL customer touchpoints• Determination of the most influential touchpoints• Definition of the optimal experience at each of the key touchpoints• Organization alignment to consistently deliver the optimal experience

2© 2005 IMPERATIVES, LLC. All Rights Reserved.



Identify the Customer Touchpoints

Each step of your business process contains a number of touchpoints – moments when the customer comes incontact with your brand. The overall customer experience is the summation of all the direct and indirectinteractions the customer has with the company. The ultimate goal is to have each touchpoint reinforce andfulfill the marketplace promise.

Walk through your commercial processes with key executives and individual departments. Using your basicunderstanding of the products and services you offer, ask questions like:

• How do you generate customer demand?• How are sales inquiries fielded?• How are products sold?• How are products delivered?• How are products used by the customer?• How is after-sales support provided?

• How are customers retained?

This comprehensive trace of your marketing, selling, and servicing processes allows you to create a simple mapof the touchpoints that define your customer’s experience with your brand. For TD Canada Trust, the varioussub-processes that make up the mortgage loan process were clustered into three buckets: acquisition, servicing,and retention.

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Application

Internet

ProductLine

Loan Officer

App DocumentsAdditionalData Requests

Within each sub-process, the customer touchpoints wereidentified. For example, for the TD Canada Trust Applicationsub-process (at right), the touchpoints that ultimately

defined the customer’s experience included the productsoffered, the selling channels, the loan documents, andpost-application data requests.

Acquisition Servicing Retention

Marketing ApplicationClosingOn-Boarding& Servicing Re-win

© 2005 IMPERATIVES, LLC. All Rights Reserved.



Determine the Most Influential Touchpoints

All touchpoints are not created equal. Some will naturally play a larger role in determining the overall customerexperience. For example, if your product is ice cream, taste is typically more important than package design.Both are touchpoints, but each has a different affect on the experience as a whole.

There are many ways to determine which touchpoints drive the overall experience. The method used oftendepends on the complexity of the products and/or commercial processes, your existing knowledge base, andthe overall project budget. Methods cluster into three basic categories:

1) Quantitative: Includes survey instruments and covariate analyses of force-ranked touchpointpairs. (For example: Which is more important – a 0.25 point savings on a mortgage rate or asmooth closing? Which is more important – a smooth closing or a knowledgeable loan officer?)

2) Qualitative: Includes external focus groups and one-on-one interviews.

3) Inference: Includes analysis of existing research and institutional knowledge.

Define the Optimal Experience

The optimal customer experience must be defined for each of the most influential touchpoints. To accomplishthis, go back to the brand pillars. Use internal brainstorming groups, both functional and cross-functional, tointerpret what each pillar means for each key touchpoint. The output is a simple matrix that ensures that thebrand promise is designed into the customer experience at all high-impact touchpoints along the overallcommercial process.

The example below shows how Saab applied its four brand pillars to its major touchpoints.

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Individual &

Personal Design

SportyPerformance

Safetyand Security

IntelligentTechnology

MarketingInteriorDesign

ExteriorDesign

Showroom SalesStaff

Financing

Individual andPersonal Design

SportyPerformance

Safetyand Security

IntelligentTechnology

Marketing InteriorDesign

ExteriorDesign Showroom Sales

Staff Financing

Application

Internet

ProductLine

Loan Officer

App DocumentsAdditionalData Requests

Align the organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience This final but crucial step begins with an assessment of the currentstate of touchpoint alignment. Each touchpoint will deliver experien-tial elements that are in alignment with the newly defined optimalexperience (green activities) and some that are out of sync with theoptimal experience (red activities). Internal teams can determine thesource of red activities and how to address them so that thesecomponents of the overall experience can be brought into alignment.




As you strive for alignment, identify the people, processes, and tools that ultimately drive the touchpoint. “Onstage” employees have direct contact with the customer. The affects of their actions are highly visible. However,the affects of “off stage” employees – those that do not have direct contact with the customer – are lessobvious. Similarly, the impacts of work processes and tools (i.e. technology systems) on the customer experienceare less intuitive.

The TD Canada Trust example below illustrates this point. When the customer applies for a loan, he or she worksdirectly with a loan officer. The loan officer collects the necessary information from the customer and loads itinto the application system. Oftentimes that loan officer is supported by a processor. Both of these employeeshave direct customer contact and are therefore “on stage”.

The application system feeds data to the decision support system used by the underwriter who must approve theloan. The underwriter does not work directly with the customer thus the underwriter is “off stage”. In thisexample there is a breakdown in communication between the two systems – the application engine and thedecision engine. Some of the information that the underwriter receives is incorrect. The underwriter, usingerroneous information, creates a list of stipulations that must be satisfied before the loan can be approved. The

underwriter feeds these new requirements back up to the processor who goes back to the customer and requestsadditional documentation to satisfy the stipulations.

The request for additional documentation falls outside TD Canada Trust’s optimal customer experience. It isdriven by a broken process and a well-intentioned underwriter – both invisible to the customer. Yet the impacton the overall customer experience is very real.

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A Final ThoughtEvery product or service you bring to market yields a customer experience. Is it the experience you intended?Does that experience fulfill the promise you made to the marketplace? By working with your teams to identifythe people, processes, and tools that drive your customer experience, IMPERATIVES can help you design andcontrol your own, unique, optimal customer experience. The promise you make to the marketplace will be keptday in and day out across every key customer touchpoint. We invite you to visit www.imperativesllc.com or callus at (952) 591-8936. We can discuss your challenges and determine if IMPERATIVES may be of service.


Line of Internal Interaction

Customer Actions

Line of Interaction

Line of Visibility

Employee Actions(”On stage”)

Employee Actions(”Off stage”)

Support Processesand Tools

Apply

For Loan

Loan

OfficerProcessor

Underwriter

ApplicationEngine

DecisionEngine

ApplyFor Loan

LoanOfficer

Processor

Underwriter

ApplicationEngine

DecisionEngine



6© 2005 IMPERATIVES, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

About IMPERATIVES

(www.imperativesllc.com)

Headquartered in Minneapolis, IMPERATIVES is a mid-size consulting firm supporting clients coast-to-coast.We focus on building businesses, defining brands, creating optimal customer experiences, and developingcustomer loyalty & retention.

We distinguish ourselves by helping our clients bridge the gap between strategy creation and marketplaceimplementation. This is accomplished by helping our clients develop achievable strategies that draw ontheir existing capabilities. Through Strategy Activation we translate those strategies into specificoperational tactics, processes, roles and responsibilities that align the organization and prepare it forsuccessful strategy implementation. Finally, we work internally across functional lines to lead keyinitiatives and help manage marketplace execution.

For more information please feel free to call our Minneapolis office at 952.591.8936 or write to us [email protected].

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