Focus on 'customer experience' - or lose customers

Former NHBC and City University CIO Carl Stokes tells Computing why customer experience should be a priority - and how organisations ought to do it

"Today's customer is more discerning, has more choice, and has better access to others' opinions of companies and products than ever before," says Carl Stokes, a CIO who has worked for the likes of NHBC and City University.

"That counts for both consumers in a B2C relationship and to customers in a B2B relationship," he adds.

"In addition, the competitive landscape in most industries is changing fast, with new nimble competitors entering markets with slick and often better value product offerings than incumbent businesses."

Drive the programme function by function. Choose a high opportunity/easy to implement department first

Previously, businesses could differentiate themselves by having the best product or the most efficient operations, says Stokes. But consumer expectations are quickly changing, meaning that organisations need to look for new ways to attract and retain customers. "Nowadays, these playing fields are often more level, leaving the customer experience as an important differentiator," continues Stokes.

"Gartner now cites customer experience as one of the top three mission-critical priorities for most organisations. Focusing effort on improving the customer experience can lead to other benefits such as operational expenditure - opex - reduction and improved staff morale and engagement."

But how can businesses drive customer experience improvements, and what steps do they need to take in particular?

Lean is a way of working that seeks to create value for customers and eliminate any activities that do not

Stokes believes that businesses can only do this by recognising customer experience as an organisation-wide effort. He tells Computing: "As a CIO, I can tell you that I have considered this to be a fundamental part of my role everywhere I have worked, but I've taken more of a leadership role more recently. Whoever takes the lead though, everyone has a part to play and you need great teamwork.

"It's important to get the buy in at the most senior level (board, CEO, CxO). Assemble a CX vision and then embed a staged and gated programme to assess and improve it in your company strategy and strategic plan. As with all large initiatives, move in stages, with incremental assessment and approval of the next stage. Iterative delivery carries far less risk."

Stokes points out that customer experience programmes will have several stages. "First, I recommend a high-level assessment of the entire business that scopes the improvement opportunity and the ease of implementation, per functional area. The assessment might also look at cross-functional processes that could be improved. The output is essentially a high-level business case and a basis for prioritisation," he says.

Today's customer is more discerning, has more choice, and has better access to others' opinions of companies and products than ever before

"Thereafter, drive the programme function by function. Choose a high opportunity/easy to implement department first. As a rule of thumb I'd suggest that the year-one benefits of the first implementation should substantially outweigh the costs. A successful first implementation will prove the methodology, establish and prove the team (both internal and external) and instil confidence that the remaining programme will be successful."

Of course, when it comes to embarking on any kind of transformation, businesses can incur operational expenses. But lean principles and methodologies, according to Stokes, can help to reduce these.

He says: "I have become a big fan. Lean is a way of working that seeks to create value for customers and eliminate any activities that do not (waste). It is a mindset of rethinking everything that is done and for colleagues to support each other to achieve this. It enables organisations to deliver outstanding service, long term business success, and motivated colleagues.

Cost reduction is likely to be directly proportionate to customer experience improvement

Stokes claims there's a substantial opex reduction opportunity within well-established businesses that have been successful for decades, typically in the millions of pounds.

He adds: "Cost reduction is likely to be directly proportionate to CX improvement. It is well understood that reducing effort in the CX leads to improved customer satisfaction and retention."

While great experience has obvious benefits for customers, it can also improve staff morale and engagement. Stokes explains: "An important feature of Lean is that frontline staff co-create better ways of working with the core team. This means that staff have a say and a stake in their working practices. When redesigned, some of the time consuming and less interesting work is removed from processes. Staff are freed up to focus on more interesting and fulfilling tasks.

A strategy is needed to articulate the data vision and the value that can be sought to obtain buy-in

"These programmes also provide opportunities for staff to gain new skills, and for those with the right aptitude and attitude, for career development into new roles (for example into a continual improvement team)."

As a CIO, Stokes has helped a range of companies undertake customer experience improvement programmes. For example, at NHBC, he helped to conceive and implement two web portals. "MySites won an industry award and provides access for builder customers to interact digitally with NHBC. This is an example of reducing customer effort," he says.

"My Reports provides a comprehensive online dashboard of site information benchmarked against other geographic regions within a builder and with anonymised data from other builders, driving up build quality. This is an example of a differentiating product - only NHBC has access to this data."

He also worked on a number of customer experience projects while CTO at City University. Stokes says: "We delivered several initiatives to improve the student experience, including a virtual learning environment to ensure consistency across schools and a single online registration portal for students delivering a streamlined first experience of the university."

On both of these projects, data analysis was integral. "Data is an important corporate asset and making full use of that asset has many benefits, including improved customer segmentation, data services such as APIs, and data products such as My Reports, as well as enhanced decision making, better pricing, predictive analytics, use of ML/AI and so on," he says.

But to leverage the power of data, businesses must work through their strategies. Stokes says: "However, to ensure benefits are realised a strategy is needed to articulate the data vision and the value that can be sought to obtain buy-in, ensure activities are co-ordinated and mutually supporting, provide a framework for prioritisation, and establish underpinning activities such as effective data governance, compliance, and operations.

"Creating an effective data strategy can be done in a few months. Again, I'd recommend some external assistance if an organisation is starting from scratch or has struggled to make headway previously, either with a unified strategy or with the underpinning activities like data governance (this can be difficult to get right, usually due to lack of clear ownership or accountability)."

For any organisation, putting customers first should be one of their top priorities. There are few captive customers any more; they have a wide range of choices and plenty of information enabling them to compare one provider with another. Often, what will make all the difference - and help drive profit margins - is their experience of your organisation.