Customer Experience Optimization Consulting

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ClearAction Customer Experience Optimization Consulting 1-877-CEM-ROI-4 www.clearaction.biz

Differentiation through Customer Experience Optimization
ClearAction customized consulting and mentoring services
.
Customer Centricity Goes Beyond CX Management

While 56% of managers think
they’re customer-centric, only
12% of their customers agree.
81% of companies with strong
capabilities and competencies
for delivering customer experience
excellence are outperforming
their competition.
Aligning Business to Customer Preferences
To differentiate customer experience, do something your
competitors aren't doing in customer experience management.
Re-examine how you're listening to customers, viewing
customers' expectations, and focusing your employees and
business rituals on customers.
ClearAction is a customer experience optimization consulting
firm that guides company-wide action on a clear view of
customer intelligence. Customer experience optimization goes
beyond the revenue-focus of customer experience
management, to grow both revenue and profit naturally through
company-wide alignment with buyer priorities.
ClearAction's depth of practitioner experience since 1989:
 Inspires employees to take the customer perspective —
know your customers' world better than competitors do.
 Instills customer-focused decision-making as a habit
among all employees — motivate customer experience
optimization as a way of life.
 Engages employees to resolve and prevent customers'
issues — collaborate cross-organizationally for company-
wide customer experience excellence.
"ClearAction has taught us things that would not readily cross
our minds; they make total sense, and have increased our
efficiency and accuracy in many areas."
– K. van Diepen, Director of Marketing
Customer experience optimization (CXO) differs from
traditional approaches to customer experience management
(CEM) by balancing revenue-focused customer touch-point
excellence with profit-focused, company-wide operational
alignment to what matters to customers.
What matters to customers is defined primarily by customer-
initiated, rather than company-initiated inputs; most customers
will readily share extensive feedback if they are asked in a way
that matches their preferences, rather than the way the service
provider company thinks they should collect feedback.
Customers make paychecks and budgets possible, and
shareholders leave when customers leave — not the other way
around. Hence, profits as the purpose of a business is a
misnomer — every organization, and every job, exists to serve
a customer need — and profits are a necessary and desirable
byproduct of meeting those needs both effectively and
efficiently.
Therefore, CXO positions customer experience inputs as
determinants, rather than a subset of corporate strategy.
To do this, the nature of customer experience (CX) inputs must
support information needs of the strategic planning process as
well as key responsibilities of each functional area, such as
hiring, training, recognition, incentives, reviews and promotion
of people; policies, billing, reporting, and investing of finances;
and similarly, the various components integral to IT, safety,
quality, manufacturing, engineering, service, and so forth.
Employee engagement and accountability for action-plan
follow-through company-wide are also essential to CXO.
 Customer Experience includes all of the steps
a buyer takes to get and use a solution from the time of
the buyer's realization of a need until the buyer deems the
need no longer exists.
 Customer Experience Management is a composite
of customer management efforts (CRM, VoC, UX, service,
loyalty, advocacy, references, touch-points, etc.).
Statistics from CMO Council Customer Affinity study and Peppers & Rogers Customer Experience Maturity Monitor study.


Customer experience management is necessary, yet insufficient.
Leapfrog your competitors through customer experience optimization.
ClearAction provides customer experience optimization (CXO) mentoring, training, and customized services.
Customer Experience Optimization is company-wide alignment with buyer priorities to grow both revenue and profit naturally.
Align to buyer priorities by 1) taking the customer perspective, 2) making customer-focused decision-making a habit,
and 3) resolving and preventing issues for customers cross-organizationally.
1) Inspire employees to take the customer perspective. Know your customers' world better than your competitors do.
Customer Experience Management Customer Experience Optimization
Mindset:  How the company is doing
 How the company can increase revenue
 What the customer is doing & why
 How the company can contribute to well-being
Typical
Tools:
 Surveys, listening posts
 Advisory boards, user groups
 Positive word-of-mouth, promoters
 Social media, communities
 References, buyer personae
 Text mining, voice mining, data integration
 Complaints, cost-benefit perceptions
 360-degree view of customers’ world
 Jobs-to-be-done segmentation
 Customer experience personae
2) Instill customer-focused decision-making as a habit among all employees. Motivate CXO as a way of life.
Mindset:  What customer-facing employees should do
 What all employees should do
 How the company can increase profit
Typical
Tools:
 Key drivers of customer perceptions
 Touch-point improvement
 Customer journey maps
 Front-line training
 Customer loyalty management
 Customer-focused roles & competencies
 Customer-focused individual & organizational reviews
 Customer-focus training company-wide
 Customer-focused motivation & incentives
 Self-awareness of stakeholder perceptions
3) Engage employees to resolve and prevent issues for customers. Collaborate cross-organizationally for CX excellence.
Mindset:  Resolving issues at touch-points
 Preventing issues for all buyers
 How the company & customers can mutually increase value
Typical
Tools:
 Closed-loop survey responses
 Customer loyalty programs
 Brand advocacy
 CRM technology
 Personalized marketing
 Closed-loop systemic issues
 Cross-functional collaboration to transform CX
 Ongoing adaptation of company to customers
 Customer experience informs all strategies
 Pre- and post-purchase CX innovations
Customer experience management is necessary, yet insufficient.
Customer experience optimization efforts can work in lieu of or in concert with customer experience management efforts.
Note: ClearAction does not provide survey management or technology solutions. Our work seamlessly augments your existing customer experience
efforts and/or helps you navigate your options to create a methodology that best fits your customers.


To differentiate customer experience, do something your competitors aren’t doing.
Re-examine how you're listening to customers, viewing customers' expectations, and focusing employees and business on customers.
To optimize customer experience, you may elect to pursue the following
best-practice building blocks to engage employees company-wide in
customer-focus and customer experience excellence. This approach
acknowledges and leverages your existing customer-centricity data and
methods, and expedites noticeable changes in customers’ experience.
(1) Articulate a clear vision:
 Executive sponsorship is #1 key to success.
 Unclear CX strategy is a common obstacle, according to many
recent benchmarking studies.
 Formulate success factors for company-wide engagement
needed to differentiate the customer experience sufficiently to reap market share and profit gains.
(2) Assimilate the what, why, and how of customer-initiated inputs/feedback:
 Identify “low-hanging fruit” for immediate improvements.
 Act on what customers have already shared before asking for more feedback.
 Collect guidance for the design/revision of voice-of-the-customer feedback (i.e. ongoing VoC).
(3) Design a voice of the customer (VoC) program that truly fits your customers:
 Capitalize on places/times/methods that customers feel most compelled to share their perceptions.
 Combine all input sources for a comprehensive view of customers company-wide.
(4) Collect customer inputs on an ongoing basis.
 Allow customers to provide feedback how and when they prefer.
 Focus on what customers are pursuing in the larger context of acquiring and using your offering.
 Translate customer inputs into business management language for use in all strategies, policies, processes.
 Avoid the temptation to jump into this step prematurely: first, explore what really fits your customers.
(5) Engage employees company-wide in customer-focus and customer experience excellence:
 Align skills of all employees according to needs identified in #1-4 above.
 Weave customer-focus into all processes, policies, meetings, decisions, programs and rituals.
 Make customer-focus a way of life in daily communications, recognition, incentives, etc.
 Innovate customer experience excellence on multiple dimensions to clearly differentiate your company.
Steps 1-3 may occur simultaneously, utilizing the tools, data and
energy already available within your company. During steps 1-3,
employees may begin using new techniques to generate systemic
solutions to customers’ most obvious pain points. Steps 4 and 5
occur in perpetuity.
Create a roadmap for customer experience optimization.
A clear customer experience optimization strategy is the first step to increasing business results.
Plan in advance who will do what and when – company-wide. Let your boldness reflect your insight that customer experience
differentiation is crucial to your future. Expect everyone to understand their snowball-effect on customers, and to be accountable for
continual improvement, prevention of issues, and customer experience innovations.


Optimize customer experience with guidance from an experienced practitioner.
Maximize morale and accelerate business results by preventing mis-steps and leveraging best-practices.
Lynn Hunsaker, Head of ClearAction
Lynn Hunsaker is founder and president of ClearAction customer experience optimization consulting. She has
developed and managed customer experience programs at Fortune 250 companies in roles such as Head of
Corporate Quality, Director of Marketing and Business Development, Voice of the Customer Manager, Market
Research Consultant, Strategic Information Manager, and Customer Satisfaction Improvement Manager.
ClearAction clients include Accountants Inc, Adecco, Anritsu, Applied Materials, Cadence, Cisco, Deltek, Direct
General Insurance, FormFactor, Hospira, Ingersoll Rand, Merck, MicroWarehouse, SunPower, Thomson Reuters,
Valin, Whataburger, Zenprise and others.
Extensive Practitioner Experience
At Sonoco, Lynn led a taskforce to develop a 20-country multi-
division customer satisfaction survey methodology in 1991,
improved multi-year survey efficiency by 50%, and conducted
hundreds of personal interviews at customer sites as inputs to the
annual strategic planning process. Starting in 1994 at Applied
Materials, Lynn conducted customer experience action planning
workshops with 50 business units and deployed extensive internal
branding to engage employees company-wide in owning the
customer experience. She also designed and conducted focus
groups and customer feedback instruments for marketing, service,
product development, and operations.
ClearAction is a Founding Corporate Member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association.
Lynn is one of ten CXPA Customer Experience Experts, volunteering advice to members’ questions.
She has participated on the Education committee and moderated a B2B CEM discussion at the
Members’ Insight Exchange, and Lynn has contributed three CX Tools to the CXPA:
 Customer Complaint Management to Maximize CEM ROI
 Voice of the Customer Action Plans Focusing on Leading Indicators
 Calculate Your Organization’s Customer-Centricity
Lynn founded the Annual ClearAction Business-to-Business Customer Experience
Management Best Practices Study in 2010. She has been a CustomerThink top-10
customer experience author, and she has been a board member of The Customer Care
Network, CustomerThink, and Marketing Operations Partners. She is past-president of the
Bay Area chapter of Association for Psychological Type and Silicon Valley chapter of
American Marketing Association. Lynn is a Certified Professional Marketer (AMA), Certified
Quality Manager (ASQ), and Certified MBTI® Practitioner (CPP). She taught advertising,
marketing and business courses at UC Berkeley Extension, SJSU, and Mission College.
She earned psychology and marketing degrees from BYU, and her MBA degree from
Vanderbilt University.
Lynn Hunsaker has written and published three handbooks:
 Customer Experience Improvement Momentum
 Metrics You Can Manage For Success
 Innovating Superior Customer Experience
ClearAction's network of virtual teammates meets your needs economically.
ClearAction customer experience optimization consulting guides company-wide action on a clear view of customer intelligence.


ClearAction offers mentoring, train‐the‐trainer and offsite/onsite consulting in these topics:


Customer‐Aligned Perspectives
Inspire employees to take the customer perspective.
 What the customer is doing & why
 How the company can contribute to well-being
 Customer Data Integration
 Systematic Complaint Resolution
 Customer Value Quotients
 Customer World Perspective
 Customer Experience Personas
 Customer Experience Coaching
 Customer Program Review


Customer‐Aligned Decisions
Instill customer-focused decision-making as a habit.
 What all employees should do
 How the company can increase profit
 Customer Experience Value
 Customer Experience Excellence Vision
 Nurture Executive Sponsorship
 Holistic Decision-Making
 Internal Branding
 Customer Stories
 Speak Stakeholders’ Language
 Stakeholder Engagement
 Customer-Focused Roles
 Customer-Focused Reviews
 Customer-Focused Behavior
 Customer-Focused Motivation
 Customer-Focus Incentive Strategies


Customer‐Aligned Actions
Engage employees to resolve & prevent issues for customers.
 Preventing issues for all buyers
 How value can be mutually increased
 Systemic Voice-of-Customer Action Plans
 Touch-point Value Chains
 Internal Customer Deliverables
 Customer Experience Champions
 Customer Experience Governance
 Cross-Organizational Collaboration
 Self-Reporting Team Recognition
 Customer Experience Innovation
 Use Voice-of-Customer in Strategic Plans
 Process Maturity Ratings
 Leading/Lagging Indicators
 Act on Multiple Voices
 Multiple Functions in B2B Journey
 B2B Post-Purchase Touch-points
Customer Relationship Skills Training
 The Power of Listening
 The Power of Questions
 The Power of Intended Outcomes
 Balancing Open Dialog
 Interaction Bridges™
 Personalities Under Stress
 Building Trust
 Partnering Roles
 Sources of Influence
 Building Client Relationships
 Stakeholder Management
 Building Relationships with Each Buying Influence
 Creating Value through Systems Thinking
 Learning from Challenges & Successes
 Mastering Implementation

Customer Experience Optimization Consulting

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Customer Experience Optimization Consulting