- Founder and strategy director, Tiny CX
- Website
Tom is the founder and strategy director at Melbourne based CX consultancy Tiny CX.
CX is about future-proofing your business by ensuring that your commercial model is always looped into your customers' needs, perceptions, values, beliefs, motivators, and detractors.
There is a lot already known about the positive impact CX can have on a business, including increasing revenue and customer retention, but what happens when you neglect the framework as a whole or implement a poor quality solution?
Not investing in, or creating a subpar CX framework makes businesses more vulnerable to competition from non-traditional competitors. It can eat into your product-market fit, which can lead to a lack of differentiation, lack of perceived value, and subsequently, a lack of organic growth. It also means that you are less likely to have good relationships with your customers, which in turn leads to less loyalty and weaker brand equity.
These days, customers are more empowered than ever and if you treat your customers as the individuals they are and not just as another number, you are already on the way to creating a great CX framework.
If you run a business and want to ensure you create a sustainable and worthwhile CX framework, avoid the five most common mistakes made by both small and big businesses alike.
1. Making assumptions
A large part of CX is validating and disproving assumptions. For example, people often cast their "millennial" target market into a range of cliches that simply aren't true (e.g. stating that millennials aren't long-term thinkers). It's shocking to see how many decisions are made at an executive level that are based on the assumptions of a target market - it's a business killer.
2. Depending on opinions
Similar to assumptions, executives often make high-level decisions based on opinion rather than data. Opinions are important, but make sure they're loosely held and can be challenged by statistics, research, and facts.
3. Ignoring customer feedback
In terms of customer experience, it is crucial to listen to your customers and take on any feedback they have about certain aspects regarding your business. If someone has a complaint, there is an experience attributable to that complaint that must be analysed. Whether you agree with the individual complaint or not, complaints in general are a sign that something isn’t working and you need to re-evaluate the experience associated with your brand and align it with your customer’s needs, expectations, and perceptions.
4. Lacking detail
Attention to detail and delivering on the little things is just as important as making the big ideas work (and is why I named my company “Tiny”). Telstra, for example, is shocking at this - they'll give amazing coverage and deliver some really great perks to their users, but simple things such as updating your details in their customer portal is a nightmare. Those little things are just as important, if not more important to the customer, and can be the reason that customers seek alternative providers.
5. Lack of CX fulcrum
A danger of pursuing CX is becoming so customer-centric that you lose your competitive differentiation. Ensure that you're still driving a mission or a value proposition throughout yourCX framework (we refer to this as the “CX Fulcrum”), otherwise, you run the risk of losing differentiation against a stronger branded experience.
CX is a crucial investment for any business, not only during the starting foundations of a brand but also as your brand scales and your customers’ behaviours and perceptions evolve. If you avoid the above mistakes and put your customer first, you are already well on your way to creating a sound and sustainable framework for your business to grow and succeed.
Tags: customer experience management, Tiny CX