Mind the gap: between customer experience and customer expectation
Insight - helen blake
Image by Brett Jordan at Unsplash
Since we started our customer value work 21 years ago, we at Futurecurve have actively encouraged our B2B clients to think about customer value in a holistic way. You have heard me talk many times about bringing the outside-in and inside-out perspectives together; today this feels more important than ever.
I recently had a client discussion about this, focusing on the increasing tendency to look at customer expectation and customer experience in a linear way. We all use common tools such as customer segmentation, personas and customer journeys to design value streams across our internal processes. We provide digitally enabled self-service tools and track customer behaviour across a range of touchpoints. We use the data we derive for proactive customer relationship building.
Don’t get me wrong, all of these are, of course, essential and important aspects of value for the customer.
But are we forgetting something?
B2B is complex, with a variety of buyers and multiple influencers and sources of influence. It’s easy to lose sight of this human complexity. So the conclusion my client and I came to is that, as businesses operationalise their commitment to deliver value and successful outcomes for their customers, the tools we adopt drive this linear approach.
Often our investment in the operational mix of processes and platforms, handovers between one internal team and the next, together with a range of customer feedback loops means that gaps can very quickly open up between a change in customer expectations and customer experience.
This happens when the inside-out perspective dominates and organisational silos become work arounds.
How can we ensure we keep the customer in plain sight?
We suggest taking the time to:
Check everyone in the business has a shared understanding of who the customer is and what their needs are
Review the customer data collected by each internal team – do the teams recognise and empathise with the customer experience?
Challenge customer journeys against emotional ‘moments that matter’ to the customer
Assess what we at Futurecurve call the hot spots of customer need – the points when customers become frustrated and/or dissatisfied
Bring the outside-in through an independent customer research process to identify changes in expectations, where customer success / outcomes are, or are not, enabled and the desired experience going forward is refined.
Why is bringing the outside-in so resisted or overlooked? Probably because it’s perceived to be difficult! It can be challenging, sometimes revealing uncomfortable customer realities of value and experience that can be painful to face. Also, let’s face it, people are looking out for their own careers and don’t like giving the boss what they think will be bad news. The key point to hang on to here is that the good stuff delivered through the outside-in approach always outweighs the bad – otherwise you wouldn’t be in business.
It is vital to keep abreast of what ‘good’ means for the customer today. Inside-out led linear processes cannot deliver this alone.
If you’d like to design an outside-in approach for your business, do get in touch. helen.blake@futurecurve.com