Anyone who grew up in the 1970s likely associates the phrase “He likes it!” with Life cereal. Marketing the cereal as a healthy breakfast option for children, Quaker Oats ran a series of commercials featuring young boys skeptical of trying Life for that very reason. Instead of sampling the cereal themselves, the boys get Mikey, a younger boy who “hates everything,” to try it, and, much to their surprise, they discover that he likes it — thus the popular catchphrase. Unfortunately for community financial institutions (CFIs), identifying whether customers are pleased with the experience they have with your organization is not always so apparent. To make it easier for financial institutions to better gauge the quality of the customer experience (CX) that they provide, a new global standard has been created for measuring and managing the CX. Core CX Challenges Efforts to measure CX have been around for years, but many organizations do not appreciate its value, a problem frequently compounded by a lack of communication and shared understanding between CX specialists and marketing professionals. While comprehensive customer data is widely available, it doesn’t automatically lead to an improved customer experience or a competitive edge. In many cases, the true obstacle lies in insufficient support or commitment to CX initiatives.The inability to demonstrate the value of CX has also translated to limited funding for these efforts. According to CX Networks, CX specialists cite the three biggest obstacles to CX investment as demonstrating a return on investment (42%), finding budget (38%), and securing stakeholder buy-in (35%). In fact, 90% of CX practitioners believe that failing to show the value of past efforts prevents organizations from being more experimental with future initiatives. Bain & Co. EVP Stanford Swinton shared with CX Network that organizations with the most impactful CX programs focus on three critical areas: customer-obsessed culture, strong capabilities to understand and prioritize CX investments, and effective execution of these priorities. If any of these elements are missing, the outcomes are likely to fall short:
- Customer-centric culture ensures a CFI’s values focus on improving customers’ lives. Big investments in systems capabilities and a customer-centered execution will still miss the mark without engaged leaders and employees who are focused on the customer.
- CX capability enables CFIs to interpret and act on customer feedback. Without proper SaaS platforms and robust data collection abilities, culture and execution are not enough to move the needle.
- CX execution refers to keeping the focus on the customer throughout the customer lifecycle, including personalized interactions and customer journeys. The best customer-centered culture and capability tools will fall short if the execution shifts focus away from the customer.
New Standards Hoping to change this, Bain & Co., Kantar, and Qualtrics joined forces to create CX global standards. According to Kantar’s research, one in eight CX practitioners feels their work has an impact on business performance. The new standards, which are based on Bain & Co.’s CX Advance Framework, aim to create a universal benchmark that organizations around the world, and across industries, can use to assess the quality of the CX they provide and help strengthen ties to existing customers and attract new ones. The new standards focus on seven key areas:
- Purpose and leadership. The company’s purpose, priorities, and values, and how its brand aligns with them; the quality of leadership training and internal communications and how effectively they are aligned with that purpose.
- Employee experience. How well employee feedback regarding the customer service experience is captured and supported; recognition and rewards for employees who effectively carry out an organization’s CX vision; and overall alignment of employees with that vision, beginning with onboarding.
- Feedback management. Tracking customer input based on relationships, competitive benchmarks, journeys, and interactions; ensuring that data and insights are kept anonymous and effectively shared throughout an entire organization and that qualitative analytics are used to adequately interpret what customers are saying.
- Data management. Ensuring that customer data is appropriately mapped to advanced science techniques and data fields, creating a clear roadmap with specific goals and initiatives.
- Value management. Incorporating customer feedback into all marketing initiatives and decision-making and ensuring that the customer value proposition is built around that input.
- Journey management. Tracking the profitability and journey of individual customers and ensuring that staff are adequately trained on CX design techniques and equipped to make additional improvements.
- Lifecycle management. Effectively tracking each customer's lifetime value and personalizing direct marketing and account management using insights gained through AI and other tools.
As CFIs strive to enhance the CX that they provide customers, enhanced insight into the effectiveness of their efforts is critical. The creation of a set of global CX standards will make it easier for financial institutions to see what they are doing right and where they are falling short — and to identify some of the steps they may want to take to improve their CX.
