At the risk of getting an onslaught of ‘feedback’ this is a topic that comes up every few days. It came up again today in an educational forum so I thought I would share the lens that I have carried around for years so I can say .. “here is a link to my blog”. There is nothing tremendously new or innovative about this with many organizations having very similar views including the wonderful CX Professionals Association home of the CCXP certification.
The Question – Is Customer Centricity and Customer Experience the same thing ?
The Answer – Simplistically No
In my experience there are actually three topics under discussion; Customer Centricity, Customer Experience (CX) and Experience Management (XM)
While these three topics are deeply interrelated they are also different and immediately raise a few basic questions:
Can an organization be customer centric and have poor customer experiences ? Absolutely, a business can be focused on ensuring they think of the customer fist in every decision they take but still have large portfolio of experiences they haven’t improved yet (or may never improve based upon resources). The customer centric business will constantly strive to think about and even research customer perceptions and wants and needs in deciding what investments to make 9and what not to make). However an organization (or an executive) that cannot point to a systematic way (or a desire for a systematic way) to gather customer input that informs decisions and a history of experience and experience management capability improvements that matter is probably not being sincere in their statements about customer centricity.
Can an organization have great customer experiences without being customer centric? Absolutely, either because of an acquisition or because a specific group of individuals have championed a specific experience or because as they say “even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut”. However it is highly unlikely that a non customer centric organization will consistently and systematically deliver experiences that matter to and resonate with customers.
How do experience management capabilities relate to customer centricity and customer experiences ? The true goal of any business and especially a customer centric one is to be able to systematically deliver and improve great customer experiences that are highly personalized and raved about by customers and advocates. To do that it is critical that an organization builds and improves their experience management capabilities both relative to their own capabilities but also in comparison to competitors and even to organizations in other industries that customers may compare them to and base their expectations on.
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