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The Nancy/Bruce Project

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Have you seen the Oscar-nominated movie Julie & Julia?  Julie Powell spent a year perfecting the recipes of Julia Child and reporting on her journey.  She blogged each step of the way, providing insight into her successes and failures.  This year, I'm looking for the perfect recipe to get our customer experience program to the next level.  First, let me tell you a little bit about where we are.

Last year, I was asked to develop a formal Voice of the Customer program at Vovici.  With many VoC experts in the company, we already had a strong focus on gathering customer feedback. Yet, when Greg Stock joined the company as CEO, he envisioned a world-class program and asked me to take the lead in making that vision a reality.

As a side note, I'd like to tell you how excited I was to have the opportunity to develop a VoC program.  I've had a lot of terrific jobs in my career, building and managing customer service departments.   However, as I talked with customers, I realized it wasn't just customer service satisfaction that determined their loyalty to the company.  It was their combined experience with the product, sales, onboarding, customer service, training, etc.  I always thought the perfect job would be to have the responsibility for the entire customer experience for a company.  And now I had that perfect job!

Six months later, I still think I have the perfect job, but I have a new respect for the work involved in the development of a formal VoC program.  We've developed surveys and are gathering data at 7 points in the customer lifecycle.  This data is being reviewed by the cross-departmental Customer Insight Team and recommendations for customer initiatives are being made on a quarterly basis.  Data is being shared both internally and with customers.  But we have a long way to go. 

So, back to the perfect recipe.  Bruce Temkin's blog, Customer Experience Matters, is part of my daily reading.  I was inspired by his recent recommendations for Customer Experience programs that want to "get real" and succeed in 2010.  This is the recipe that I intend to perfect in 2010. Here are his 7 keys to Customer Experience in 2010:

1. Drop the executive commitment facade. It's very easy for executives to say "customer experience is important." But it's much more difficult for them to dedicate the time and energy required to make it a real priority. So in 2010, executives should either get actively involved in customer experience transformation or drop it from their agendas.
2. Acknowledge that you don't know your customers. When market research teams require long lead times and expensive projects to answer questions about customers, too many organizations go without this insight. But the path to customer experience success requires significantly deeper customer insight. So in 2010, companies need to develop voice of the customer programs that provide ongoing and continuous access to customer insights.
3. Keep from getting too distracted by social media. Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites may seem sexy, but they aren't the only channels for customer feedback. Other channels like comments on surveys and calls into the call center can often provide even richer insight. So in 2010, companies need to learn from social media feedback, but not overreact to it.
4. Stop squeezing the life out of customer service. My research shows that consumers care more about good customer service than they do low prices... But companies often treat customer service as an unwanted stepchild, focusing almost exclusively on aggressive cost-cutting. So in 2010, companies need to start viewing customer service as a strategic asset.
5. Restore the purpose in your brand. True brands are more than just color palettes, logos, and marketing slogans, they're the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause... Unfortunately, many companies have lost this sense of purpose in their brands. So in 2010, companies need to redefine their brand and embed it in the hearts and minds of all employees.
6. Don't expect employees to get on board. Employees are often the most critical element of any customer experience effort. But firms can't just hope that everyone will participate in these change initiatives. So in 2010, companies need to actively focus on engaging employees at every level across the organization in their customer experience efforts.
7. Translate customer experience into business terms. My research uncovered a strong correlation between customer experience and loyalty. An average $10 billion company can generate $284 million of additional revenues from customer experience improvements... So in 2010, companies need to identify how customer experience impacts their financial results.

Periodically, I will post to Voice of Vovici and let you know how I'm doing.  Like Julie, I'm committed to perfecting my technique and skills but will report honestly on each effort -- whether it is wildly succeeding, stalling or just plain failing.  I invite you to join me on this journey by adding comments on your 2010 plans - or simply providing insight on what special ingredients and techniques have worked for you and your company.  For now, I'll sign off...I have a lot of "cooking" to do!