Part 3: Operationalizing Return on Experience

In this 3-part series, I discuss what we mean by return on experience, the link between customer and employee experience, and how to operationalize great experience in a way that is repeatable and adaptive to change. These concepts are taken from my book, The Center of Experience, available in print and digital versions.

In this part of the series, I’m going to discuss how to get started with measuring and operationalizing return on experience.

Getting Started

Now that we have a good understanding of what return on experience is and a better idea of how to measure it, let’s talk about how we can start implementing a return on experience initiative.

Get executive buy-in

First things first. If you don’t have an executive or major internal stakeholder supporting your customer experience measurement initiative, it will undoubtedly run into hurdles. While it is possible to be successful without this, it is an uphill battle to tackle such an important project without leadership’s buy-in. 

This executive could be from any number of teams or departments, depending on your organization. Make sure they fully understand that your return on experience initiative is built around demonstrating value and return on investment. While building a better customer experience is going to be a definite byproduct of your work, you may get further with executive buy-in by highlighting a more pragmatic approach.

Start small with a plan for growth

Second, don’t try to boil the ocean with your first customer experience measurement initiative. Instead, start small and get some quick wins that demonstrate the value of your work. This will help you and the team you assemble, and it will also make the executive stakeholders look like heroes which will ideally get even more buy-in from leadership. 

With that additional support from the top, you can get access to more team members and other resources in order to continue building on your initial work. This means that you should also have a plan for what you want to do when you are successful. Have a great answer to the question “what do you need to keep growing this initiative?”

Don’t work in a silo

Just like the fact that you don’t want to start a return on experience initiative without executive buy-in, you also don’t want to be a lone team member trying to solve these complex measurement dilemmas. Every company’s structures and responsibilities vary, but whether you have a dedicated customer experience team, or whether those functions exist in different departments, it is best to create some type of working group to enable a full-featured CX measurement initiative.

In fact, since customer experience involves so many different facets of an organization (even when there is a dedicated CX team), it is advised to create a working group or steering committee around CX when possible. This allows you to tie in individuals from different practice areas in order to think through the measurement challenges (as well as potential improvements to the customer journey) as you go.

Operationalizing great customer experience

Once you have support from internal stakeholders and a starting point, whether that’s a small project, working group, or other type of initiative, it’s time to ensure the long-term success and continuous improvement of your return on experience initiative. Let’s explore a few things that are necessary in order to operationalize great customer experience.

Adopt an iterative mindset

No matter how much time you spend working out any platforms or processes, they will always have room for improvement. This may be because you are starting small with a pilot project, or because some type of process or technology innovation becomes possible, or it may be due to a brand new product or service that your company offers. Regardless, the one constant you can count on is change, and thus your mindset should always allow for improvement.

Needs to be repeatable, documented and adaptive to change

Just as you need to adopt an agile, iterative mindset, you also need to create processes that are easy to replicate, well-documented, and able to be modified as new needs, platforms, or team members are introduced. 

At any organization large or small, return on experience initiatives require people, processes, and technology all working together to achieve a goal of measurement in order to drive positive change. The less time spent on rethinking how processes are performed, documented, and rolled out through the company, the more can be spent on the strategy, design, and improvement of the customer experience itself.

Meaningful measurement

Making sure that you are identifying the right measurements to focus on  is critical to being able to get more budget, bigger approvals, and to continue the work of improving the customer experience. Remember: just because you can measure something, or because it is easy to collect the data, does not mean it will supply your team and leadership with the information they need to justify further investments in customer experience improvement.

Instead, base your approach of organizational Key Performance Indicators, and draw a direct line between improvements in customer experience to those. Prioritize measurement and improvements so that even those less familiar with the details of your CX initiatives can clearly see the relationship between experience and the bottom line.

Strategy and plan to grow

Last but not least, with a great foundation built, you need to have a guiding strategy and plan to help you and your team know where to go next. While this may be modified as your plans iterate, the ultimate strategic goal will rarely shift in a major way. After all, the purpose of a return on experience initiative is to ensure that customer experience is prioritized, measured, and improved. 

How this is done depends on your team, your resources, your products and services, and, of course, your customers. But the end result is always to continually improve your customers’ perception of every experience they have with your brand. 

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s not enough to simply say that you value your customers, and it’s not even enough to improve individual experiences they might have along the way. Only by implementing a program of designing, measuring, and improving a holistic customer experience can you achieve a true return on your investment. This investment, which I refer to as return on experience, will provide your organization with a sustainable CX program whose long-term benefits will be many, and, as importantly, they will be measurable. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this 3-part series,where we’ve defined what return on experience is and why it is so important, demonstrated the link between customer and employee experience, and finally discussed how to operationalize it. The next step is to get started!

You can read more about all of these topics and more in my book, The Center of Experience, available in print and digital versions.