Achieving An Excellent Customer Outcome

Achieving An Excellent Customer Outcome

ACHIEVING AN EXCELLENT CUSTOMER OUTCOME

By: Jason Redekopp – Marketing Consultant

In this article, I will look at the relationship between Customer Service (CS) and Customer Experience (CX) to achieve a better Customer Outcome (CO). Better CO means a longer customer lifecycle.

CO = CS+CX

Closing the gap between customer service (CS) and customer experience (CX) will improve the customer outcome (CO). At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how great the service or experience is, If an organization is not delivering a uniform outcome to its customers, it's just a matter of time before they vamoose.

I dare say in most companies today, both CS and CX are controlled or facilitated primarily by different departments, i.e., the marketing department & customer service division. This is good and essential, however, to ensure a successful CO, responsibility must also fall with those departments whose job it is too grow and strengthen customer relationships, that being for example the sales department and account managers. I will refer to these individuals as part of the CO team.

With the right cross-collaboration in the right order a company is better equipped to collect relevant data at key touchpoints and put such data into action without obstruction. It makes involving the CO stakeholders into the mix critical because they are the closest to the customer and have the highest leverage on key CX metrics.

What are the results when you have organization cross-collaboration buy-in?

This article makes a pretty strong case

  • 10-times greater year-over-year increase in annual revenue
  • 55% greater customer retention rates
  • 23% decrease in year-over-year customer service costs
  • 292% greater employee engagement rates

Thus, reducing or eliminating the gap between CX and CS has a ton of downstream benefits for improving customer outcomes, such as: helping companies prioritize action steps, get prescriptive with customers, and deepen the relationship and thus life-cycle of its customers.

It's important that CX and CS do not get hamstrung as a purely departmental activity. To be successful today companies need clearly defined and accepted alignment across all relevant departments. Total buy-in, total collaboration from the ground to the corner office.

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Jason W.H. Redekopp

Marketing & Business Development