Creating a data-driven CX strategy that aligns your people, processes and technology
When you think about the number one thing a business must have in order to survive, what probably comes to mind is revenue. But that’s not the answer. Sure, money is of course important, but there’s something even more critical to a company’s success – customers.
In fact, according to a study by CB Insights, the number one reason why start-ups fail is because there is “no market need.” In other words, no customers means no product.
It may seem obvious, but it’s really incredible how many companies overlook the critical role that consumers play in their success. So, what ends up happening is they either fail, or they have to spend a considerable amount of time and money to back track and restructure their entire organization.
We all know how important it is to prioritize the consumer – and most of us even say it out loud – on our website or in other marketing material. But in today's competitive landscape, businesses need to go even further to ensure that the customer isn’t just a priority, but the first priority.
Here are a few stats to stress just how important this concept is:
74% of senior executives said customer experience impacted customers’ enthusiasm for being brand advocates (Oracle survey).
60% of participants were willing to pay more for better customer experience (study by American Express).
While 80% of companies participating in research believed their customer experience was great, only 8% of customers agreed. (Bain & Company)
So, what’s the solution? By implementing a customer-first strategy across your organization, you can create an engaging and satisfying customer experience that results in brand loyalty and even brand advocacy.
Now let’s talk about what that means and how to get there.
What is a customer-first strategy?
A customer-first strategy is a business plan that's centered around meeting the needs and/or wants of the consumer – ultimately creating a satisfying and engaging brand experience for the consumer. This means that the target consumer – and her wants/needs/desires/concerns etc. – are at the forefront of everything you do, from product development to product marketing.
What a lot of companies, startups in particular, run into is that they don’t take this into account until after they’ve got their processes in place (which is an easy way to end up with a great product and no consumers to actually use it). Because here’s the reality: advanced technology is great, but without consumers, it's just that – great technology.
On the other hand, when you pair advanced technology with a data-driven, customer-first strategy, you can build and market a product that meets the needs of your target audience. That’s what turns a great product (and great technology) into an actual business.
So how do you develop and implement a customer-first strategy? Here are a few steps to consider (we’ll get into more details below):
Get to know your audience: Gather the right data and research to understand your consumers inside and out.
Identify the needs/wants your product/offering will fulfill: What problem(s) are you solving?
Tap into emotions: What emotional connection will you make with your consumers?
Align your teams and departments: Align your people and processes with your top priorities to ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction.
Identify what makes a great user experience & ways to improve it: Using the data, identify what your users are looking to get from your product and determine how you will specifically meet their needs, solve their challenges etc.
Get constant feedback from your customers: Get constant feedback! Continue to learn as much as you can in order to continue improving the customer experience across all touch points.
We’ll dig deeper into each of these below, but before you can even begin to implement a satisfying customer experience strategy, there are a couple of things you need to do first.
Do a status check across the organization
What should be our top priority right now? If you asked three different people from three different departments that same question, you’d very likely get three very different answers. That’s a problem… because if your people aren’t on the same page, that’s when it’s very easy for your actual priorities to get overlooked and left behind.
Here are a few questions to help you better understand what’s happening across each part of your organization:
What are the priorities? (Do they even know the priorities?)
What challenges are they facing?
What do they currently do to try to solve those challenges?
What would help them//what do they want to know that would help them in their day-to-day and overall performance?
Communication and synergy are crucial to ensuring that the right business goals are prioritized across your entire organization and that everyone understands the part they play. Understanding what’s going on with your people is the first step.
After digging deeper into each part of the organization, what many companies find is that they've been focusing their efforts on one or two things, while overlooking some crucial pieces of the puzzle. It's a common mistake, but it can cause you a lot of problems the longer you continue on the same path without taking the time to better align your people, your processes and your technology.
Stop focusing solely on technology
Many start-ups (and even large companies) end up having to back-track quite a bit because they reach a point when they realize that they dove headfirst into building some great technology (or platform) without considering the actual wants and needs of the target user. As important as having advanced technology is, if it doesn't provide a satisfying customer experience, no one is going to actually use it. Regular people don't care how complicated it is on the back end – if it doesn't give them what they want or need, you’re going to lose them.
How to build an engaging customer experience
Before we get into how to get there, let's take a step back and define what a great customer experience actually means.
Building a great customer experience means using the latest technology – along with data and analytics – to meet a need or want in the marketplace. You can't solely rely on technology, because without the data, how do you know what your customers actually want or need? Relying on the assumption that you know your customer (or “know” that something is “true”), without the data to back it up, is a very dangerous place to be. Great customer experience is found where great technology is built with consumer wants in mind. And by using research and advanced analytics, companies can create a successful user experience that leads to higher satisfaction – and greater loyalty – in the long run.
Gathering the right data
Even if you have a pretty good idea of who your customers are, that's not enough. Data will always reveal at least something that you haven't considered, didn't know or didn't think mattered. It will also confirm some of your assumptions and help you identify your blind spots. Figuring out exactly who your target customer is – along with what they want/need, challenges they face and more – will allow you to create a customer-first strategy that aligns product development with product marketing. The idea here is to use the data to then create a marketing strategy that fits your product seamlessly into the lives of your consumers. And to do so, both teams must be on the same page.
The exact data you gather will depend on your company/product/service and what you are trying to accomplish in your customer experience. In general, here are a few things to consider when deciding what data to gather on your target audience:
Specific demographics: Exactly who are these people? You can't be everything to everyone, so you must decide who your target consumer is and define their characteristics. Consider things like: married/single, age, income, job, kids/no kids etc. This will help you visualize your customer as an actual person.
Values: What do they want in life? You need to know what's important to them, because these are the things that influence their purchasing and other behaviors. Examples could include family, financial stability, joy, free time, security, growth, travel, health, exercising, wealth, etc. How will you help them attain one or more of these things?
Challenges: Knowing their challenges will allow you to build a product that can solve all (or at least some of – or even just one of) them. So maybe ask what challenges they face in their job, day-to-day routine or whatever other process is relevant to your product/offering. For example, a car subscription service might ask: what challenges do you face when it comes to buying or renting a car? To get someone to consider another option, the company must know the challenges they need to help their customers overcome in order to build the right product/offering and the messaging that will fit it into their lives.
Desires: What are consumers want out of your type of product/offering? Or more broadly, what do they want out of life and where does your product fit into that? If it's not a new concept, you need to figure out the gaps that competitors don't fill that your product can. If it is a new concept, what do consumers hope this new product/service can do for them that existing options can't or don't offer?
How will you improve their life? Maybe your consumers don't realize they have a problem, because they haven't considered that a solution even exists. By determining where their frustrations are in life – or in a specific aspect of life – you can build a product that makes life easier for them. No one specifically needed Uber, but the service made life easier for people who needed a ride somewhere. The company figured out that although people didn't consider calling a cab to be a major frustration in life, they would consider a different alternative that made the process easier. And voila, Uber had something to sell and people to sell it to.
Goals: Depending on what your product or service is, your customer's goals may be a factor in whether they convert to and/or adopt what you have to offer. By figuring out what your users are shooting for – in life, their job, their relationships, long-term career etc. – you can build your offering in a way that helps your users either accomplish or get closer to their goals. For example, it can be as simple as your target audience wants to be more efficient in their day-to-day work. What you would need to know is: what exactly does a more efficient day look like? Ask them what they would hope to get out of a more efficient routine and/or process. What is stopping them from being efficient – what are the obstacles? Then if you can remove those obstacles, your product will be set up in a way that solves a specific need or want for your audience – and your marketing messaging can speak specifically to your users’ aspirations and how this offering can be their solution.
Concerns: What would stop people from using a product/service like yours? For example, would they be willing to share their location in exchange for what you're offering? Why or why not? Would they be willing to pay more than they're used to? Why or why not? Would they be willing to switch to your product from something similar? Why or why not? Understanding your users' concerns can help you identify what would get them to overlook those concerns – and that can have major implications for your product development and marketing teams.
Analyze the data to figure out what you've been missing
Go through the data and separate the information into categories, which could be:
Duh: Things you've thought all along that the data confirms.
Hmm, interesting: Things that don't quite surprise you but that you hadn't considered.
Really?: Things that surprise you but you aren't quite sure how they fit into the big picture.
Wow!: Things your consumers just told you that could have a major impact on your offering.
Once you get a good grasp on the data, you then need to figure out what it all means for your company and your offering. Break up the data into main topics – questions you asked and/or common themes in the data – and then start to dig a little bit deeper.
Data is great, but in order to put it to use, you must identify what all of this information is telling you and the implications it has on your company/processes.
Audience Personas: Using the demo information you gathered, put together a few specific audience personas that bring your target audience to life.
Insights: What are the main takeaways from each part of the consumer research? What are the common themes regarding challenges, goals, desires etc.?
Impact: How do these takeaways impact and inform your offering? Maybe some things were confirmed by the data, while new considerations have surfaced that you never thought to be pertinent to what you're offering. How do these things impact your current roadmap and priorities? How do you articulate all of this to your target consumers?
Align your product management & product marketing strategies
Focusing on one more than the other can cause you some major problems. You end up with either great technology that has no practical use or a great marketing message with no product to back it up. Product development and product marketing go hand-in-hand in creating the best possible customer experience.
Research: Present the research and insights to all teams involved in your product launch/offering/marketing. This gives everyone context around what the offering is aimed at accomplishing and for whom exactly you're building it.
Reexamine the Product Roadmap: Do priorities need to shift given what the research and its implications have just told you? It's crucial that the development roadmap is aligned with your biggest priorities and that the entire team understands why they are focusing on those things.
Product Marketing: Your marketing messaging must be created with not only the consumer data in mind, but also the product roadmap. Using the data, you can determine the type of messaging you will need to implement to get consumers to consider, adopt and convert to your offering. And to make those people your advocates.
Focus on building product version 1, then add on later
The Uber you use now isn't the version that launched back in 2011. The company started out with one simple concept – whether people would hand over their location data and pay for a black car to come pick them up using their phone. Once they figured out that people were interested, Uber created the first version of the app that did just that. There was no UberX or Carpool or anything else. The engineers focused on perfecting the first version and the marketing team focused on selling only that first version.
Once you're successful out of the gate, you can then begin to learn more about your customer base/target users and determine what features, or additional offerings, would not only enhance the customer experience, but also drive up revenue.
Final thought
Creating the best customer experience is an ongoing process. It’s going through these steps and then repeating them over, and over, and over. By continuing to reexamine your customer, product and brand messaging – and ensuring that they are aligned – you can make certain that your business not only remains relevant, but also continues to thrive.