This is the fourth article in our series explaining the collaboration process we follow with our clients. The first article overviewed our entire framework, and the second article explored why clients reach out to us. In our last article, we explained the first 10 days of establishing the relationship.
At this point, we’ve spent two weeks learning about the company and its challenges. We’ve delved into their processes, identified improvement goals, and developed a roadmap for the next 6+ months. We’ve established our working relationship and set the pattern for the entire partnership. Our client knows what to expect from us and how we’ll support them.
Now it’s time for the project to move from discovery and to action. During the Getting to Work phase, we’ll start executing this framework and preparing our client for long-term CX excellence.
Weeks 3-10: Getting to work
During Weeks 1 and 2, we’ve identified gaps in our clients’ CX process as well as opportunities for better CX. We’ve also surfaced ways to address immediate needs and developed a near-term CX strategy. We’ll use this strategy over the next two and a half months to boost our client’s operational efficiency and improve their customer experience.
During this stage, we focus on making immediate improvements to critical CX issues and setting up a system for sustainable future CX processes. To this end, we use a 4-phase approach that includes:
- Prioritizing CX gaps
We create a framework that prioritizes the gaps our research has identified into a Now-Next-Later framework. We consider the urgency, feasibility, costliness, and potential impact of each identified change. Then, we segment changes into three groups:
- Now: These are often high-impact adjustments that need immediate attention. They can also be inexpensive, low-effort changes that will have a quick impact.
- Next: These are either less impactful actions or time-consuming and/or expensive changes. We can make these adjustments in the near future.
- Later: These include goals that are low-impact, low-priority, or too expensive/complicated to currently be feasible. We periodically revisit and reassess these items as the organization and their CX matures.
- Preparing CX basics
We use a standardized list of basic customer experience and customer service goals that include empowering consumers, aligning tech systems, and standardizing CX procedures throughout the organization. We also select which processes to track; monitoring the right processes is essential to success.
Understanding which metrics capture the information our clients need to effect meaningful change is also essential – as we’ve often discussed elsewhere in our blog and newsletters.
- Cultivating a planning mindset
It’s common for businesses to have a reactive approach to CX. Instead of proactively looking for improvements, they wait for problems to surface; only then are improvements considered. We consider this the “basic” stage of CX maturity; there’s awareness and effort, but little long-term planning.
This is why we start fostering a planning-oriented CX mindset so early in our collaboration. We help clients look forward instead of backward – developing future goals and a sustainable strategy that actively looks for ways to improve the customer experience.
Allow time for CX growth
While this isn’t a stage per se, it is an important part of our process. In fact, it’s something we do from the very beginning of our collaboration: setting a realistic tempo for CX improvements.
It may seem counterintuitive, but we often encourage clients to slow down a bit as they move into a new level of CX maturity. Rather than quickly making a lot of changes, we’ve discovered that it’s better to introduce change at a measured pace. This ‘slow down to be sustainable’ approach helps employees and team leaders adopt a more human-oriented mindset, which is key for future CX growth.
Up next: Months 3-10: Prioritizing problems and establishing baseline CX
During the Getting to Work phase, it’s common for some unanticipated issues to arise. During the next 7 months of our collaboration, we’ll help the client address these challenges. We’ll also help their internal teams set up sustainable and repeatable processes for CX mastery. Join us in the next article for all the details!
