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It can take a long time to build a relationship with a customer. Working in a B2B focused environment, this is particularly true. Whether in my prior roles with consultancies or here where we work to offer the most innovative customer experience software platform with unique tools like our QuestionPro NPS+ question type.
I recall a memory with one of our clients where it took twenty-seven months to go from the first discussion until we were “selected” as the vendor for this project that was vital to their customer experience strategy because it included voice-of-the-customer measurement of so many customer experience touchpoints across a very large organization.
Once we were selected, we started working on an extensive master services agreement and statement of work that ultimately took another six months to complete covering CX in the telecommunications industry. This became a big problem because we needed at least four months to get the program up and running, a deadline that we could not miss for the sake of the stakeholders on the client side.
There were many pitfalls in getting both the agreement across the finish line and having the program launching by the deadline. We had many moving pieces between legal teams, operational teams, project managers, training managers and global call centers with individual regional requirements.
In one of our early planning meetings, while we were still working in good faith while legal teams continued to negotiate a contract, it all nearly fell apart. During discussions of how a specific process would work, one of our client stakeholders stated that the data being requested could not include all the fields required by our fieldwork teams due to the company privacy policy that was in place at that time.
As I thought about ways we could work around that problem, my colleague responsible for that workflow barked out “Not my problem. You will not be included in the voice of the customer strategy program”.
Not really the client experience anyone ever would think is ideal. Nevermind that this division was one of the most critical focuses of the program (dealing with escalated calls), they also funded nearly one-third of the program’s budget despite making up less than twenty percent of the program’s costs. With that one phrase, “Not my problem”, that stakeholder reached out to the legal department to find out if they could get out of the memorandum of understanding that we were operating out of and completely cancel the multi-million dollar contract. Three little words, one really big phrase.
Fortunately, before the day had ended, not knowing that she had sent a message to their legal team, I approached the stakeholder and proposed an idea that would allow them to participate in the program and actually get more value from the information. Immediately, her sour disposition improved and she was excited with the approach, but expressed doubts that the workflow lead on our side would be willing to implement.
In the meantime, their legal department had reached out to our company president who already had a message out to me for a conversation. After all the dust settled, the client had asked me to take charge of multiple workflows that initially were “not my problem” – now they were.
Instead of a cancellation of a four year contract that was nearly eight digits in value, we maintained a twelve year relationship with the client that included customer experience on multiple CX Enterprise Software tools, financial linkage analysis and social media analysis across the entire customer journey.
Our work was frequently stated in the company annual report and was a topic of conversation at nearly every management level discussion. While we often speak about customer experience in terms of customer journey templates, customer feedback loop and sentiment analysis, there is something left out if you only think about customer experience (and in the same ways, Employee Experience) in terms of measurement and tools.
It cannot be all about dashboards and analytics. It really comes down to understanding all the touchpoints in the customer journey map and then taking action where it is most needed – and best for both the company and the customer. It is a reason we have both inner and outer loop closed-loop tools. Even our CX Reputation tool focuses on action, not just analytics.
Understanding Customer Journeys and Taking Actions for Customers. For every touchpoint, no one in the organization should ever say the phrase “Not my problem”, once it is said, it gives the customer all the reasons they need to walk away – whether it is about a daily coffee purchase and a multi-million dollar agreement that was almost three years in the making.
Is there something wrong with your customer experience?
When you complete an honest assessment, the outcome can be beneficial. Particularly when it comes to your Customer Experience program.
Take five minutes and complete an audit for your organization here.
You may discover a gap in measurement, an opportunity to improve a process, the place where an organizational shift needs to take place or an opportunity to win a greater share of your customers’ wallets.
We all want that bigger “return”. In this situation, the worst case scenario is that you’ll get some information that will help your organization since there is no cost or obligation in completing this audit.
