– REPORT

Best Practice Guide

Implementing CX
Strategy
This report offers practical and pragmatic advice for developing and
implementing a successful customer experience strategy.
Implementing a
Customer Experience
(CX) Strategy
Best Practice Guide

Published July 2021 Econsultancy London Econsultancy New York

Floor M, 205 Hudson Street,
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Copyright © Econsultancy.com Ltd 2021 Email: [email protected] Website: http://econsultancy.com

Contents
1. Introduction 5

1.1 Executive summary 5

1.2 Methodology 6

1.3 About Econsultancy 6

1.4 About the author 7

2. Changing CX Contexts 8

2.1 Rapid change and the need to double down on CX 8

2.1.1 Great CX drives real business advantage 9

2.1.2 How good CX supports business resilience 10

3. CX Strategy Fundamentals 12

3.1 Defining CX 12

3.1.1 The customer-centric organisation 12

3.1.2 What does great CX look like? 14

3.1.3 Critical elements of a CX strategy 15

3.1.4 Using segmentation and personas 17

3.1.5 Using customer journey mapping 19

3.1.6 Current and future state customer journey mapping 20

3.1.7 Empathy mapping 21

3.2 Creating omnichannel experiences 22

3.2.1 The barriers to creating great omnichannel experiences 23

3.2.2 Customer experience and employee experience 26

3.3 The importance of brand in CX 27

3.4 Data and CX strategy 30

3.4.1 Data and technology setup to support CX 30

3.4.2 Using data through the customer journey 31

3.4.3 Personalisation – limits and potential 32

3.4.4 Customer and data feedback loops 32

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 3

 3.5 Evaluating and measuring CX 34

3.5.1 Inputs to inform CX strategy 34

3.5.2 Using focused metrics 36

3.5.3 Approaches to measuring CX 37

3.5.4 Using NPS – benefits and drawbacks 40

3.5.5 Deploying a ‘fitness function’ 41

3.6 A framework for implementing and optimising CX 41

3.6.1 Creating an action plan for improving CX 41

3.6.2 A maturity model for data and CX 42

4. Resourcing and Ownership of CX 43

4.1 Who owns CX? 43

4.2 The need for horizontal collaboration, autonomy and empowerment 44

5. Trends in CX 46

5.1 The future of CX 46

5.2 The key technologies driving the future 46

5.2.1 Automation and AI 47

5.2.2 Augmented reality 48

6. Conclusion 50

7. Further Reading 52

7.1 Econsultancy reports 52

7.2 Econsultancy articles 53

7.3 Articles 53

7.4 Books 55

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 4

1. Introduction
With the need for organisations to respond to rapidly evolving markets, shifting consumer behaviour,
new technologies and higher levels of unpredictability brought on by the pandemic, there has never
been a greater focus on CX strategy and execution. These unfolding contexts are bringing a heightened
need for customer experience management and implementation to bring real benefits to customers and
businesses. Yet real challenges remain for businesses in creating the kinds of customer experiences
that can bring real competitive advantages.

This report is designed to provide marketers with a good fundamental knowledge of CX strategy and to
augment this with pragmatic advice and guidance on execution. The report includes useful models and
frameworks to enable a good foundation for developing a CX strategy, and incorporates relevant case
studies and guidance to support implementation. It is intended to be useful for marketing and customer
experience-focused practitioners, as well as leaders in other disciplines.

1.1 Executive summary

The key findings of this report are as follows:

● Rapidly changing contexts, notably accelerated by the pandemic, have ensured the need for
organisations to double down on CX. Exceptional customer experience is driving competitive
advantage and greater business resilience for those organisations that are willing to invest.
● Although many businesses talk about being customer centric, a customer-focused mindset needs
to be prevalent not only in touchpoint design, execution and with front-line staff, but it also
needs to run right through the organisational culture and ways of operating. This is the
difference between being customer focused and customer obsessed.
● The foundation for great CX is working backwards from an exceptional understanding of
customer needs and bringing that understanding right through into execution. This means
identifying the audiences and customers that matter to the business, and generating clear personas
that can represent customer segments in ways that bring to life key needs, motivations and
frustrations.
● Customer journey mapping is an essential tool to inform CX strategy and execution.
Marketers should map out the high-level customer journeys for key personas in order to identify
critical areas for improvement and optimisation, before using more detailed customer journey
mapping to inform strategy for specific scenarios. Look for opportunities to remove blocks to a good
experience (‘pains’) or to surprise and delight customers (‘gains’). Utilise current and future state
journey maps to identify opportunities for innovation and further improvement.
● Technology and data are key for enabling great CX. This means using customer data platforms
to pull together profile data and link it into other systems on the tech stack that can then support a
more personalised, omnichannel delivery. Visibility and accessibility to customer data helps support
cross-functional execution and understanding.
● Employee experience is a key area of investment to support great CX. Happy, empowered
employees create great experiences for customers. Data-driven decision making and frequent ‘test
and learn’ are important as a mindset and in optimisation. Multi-disciplinary collaboration and
transparency are key to support joined-up journeys.
● A solid measurement framework to evaluate CX is essential for identifying areas for
improvement and to track progress. Overarching, focused metrics can be useful in aligning
teams but a selection of other customer-focused metrics that ladder up to that over-arching measure
are also important to inform understanding and optimisation.
● Encouraging, collecting, categorising and acting on customer reviews and feedback is
important in empowering continuous improvement, dealing with customer issues that can get in
the way of great CX and generating ideas for innovation.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 5

 ● Personalisation can support CX implementation if it is part of a wider omnichannel
experience and is based on a solid foundation of customer data and understanding. This
report contains a maturity model for the application of both omnichannel and personalisation
strategies. Automation can offer a route to greater efficiencies, but it needs to be implemented with
customers front of mind.
● As the possibilities created by new technology and data emerge and expand there will be
new opportunities to surprise and delight customers, but the foundations of great CX
remain. The conclusion to this report features a CX Scorecard which enables practitioners to
assess their own organisational capability and execution of CX in order to identify areas for
improvement and develop a future strategy for optimising CX.

1.2 Methodology
This report is based on comprehensive desk research and is informed by a series of in-depth qualitative
interviews with a broad range of senior marketers and practitioners, industry experts, authors and
consultants.

Econsultancy would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this report:

● Patti Alderman, AVP Digital Experience, Cognizant

● Glyn Britton, Chief Customer Officer, Bionic
● Roy Capon, CEO, Zone Digital
● Bastien Chicha, Managing Consultant, Brand & Experience, Capgemini
● Jan Gooding, non-executive Chair, Given; President, Market Research Society
● Conor Hughes, Customer Manager, Nando’s
● Lisa Hulme-Vickerstaff, Customer Insight Manager, Lowell Financial
● Max McShane, Head of Digital, Octopus Energy
● Ritchie Mehta, CEO, School of Marketing
● Raina Purba, Managing Consultant, Brand & Experience, Capgemini
● Phill Palmer, VP of Marketing, Access Intelligence

1.3 About Econsultancy

Econsultancy is one of the world’s leading thought leaders in modern marketing excellence and digital
transformation. We are the trusted partner of more than 600,000 marketing, digital and ecommerce
professionals, providing businesses, brands and teams with the essential resources to validate
decisions and apply learning.

From strategic guidance and pioneering thinking to in-depth analysis and practical advice – we’ve
helped some of the world’s leading organisations transform their digital and marketing capabilities. Our
approach looks to address the three drivers of modern marketing: Knowledge, Skills and Mindset, and
regularly reflects the Econsultancy M3 Model, the world’s first competency framework to fuse classic
and digital marketing skills into one end to end model.

We assess, design and deploy tactical projects to full-scale digital transformation, and our EconLearn
hub provides a central location for all our learning resources, featuring in-depth skills assessments and
fully structured personalised learner journeys.

As part of Xeim, a family of businesses dedicated to Excellence in Marketing, we have access to a

professional community with more than 3.8 million interactions per month, award-winning global events
and media exposure. With offices in London and New York, we are a global team with local mindset.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 6

 To find out more how we can help you and your organisation, get in touch with our team today:
Tel: +44 20 7970 4322
Econsultancy.com

1.4 About the author

Neil Perkin is a consultant with Econsultancy and the author of Building the
Agile Business through Digital Transformation and Agile Transformation
(Kogan Page, 2017 and 2019), which provide essential guides for leaders
wanting to achieve greater organisational agility and digital transformation. He
is a regular keynote speaker across Europe on digital transformation and
digital strategy and has been named by the British Interactive Media
Association as one of the most influential people in the UK digital industry.

Neil is also a renowned blogger, writer and the founder of Only Dead Fish, a
digital consultancy that specialises in applying strategic understanding of
digital and emerging media technologies to help businesses optimise their effectiveness within the new,
networked communications environment. He curates the global quarterly series of Firestarters thought
leadership events on behalf of Google, is a keynote speaker on the Google Squared programme and
has worked with market-leading global businesses including The Financial Times, BBC, Warner Bros,
the UK government, Unilever and YouTube.

https://www.neilperkin.co.uk/

@neilperkin

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 7

2. Changing CX Contexts
2.1 Rapid change and the need to double down on CX
Covid-19 has served to accelerate a number of customer-related trends which were already evident
long before the pandemic. Customers are spending more time online, consume more mobile, social and
video content, and depend more on digital channels to do their shopping.

Data from Comscore and Ofcom, for example, showed that in 2020 UK consumers spent an average of
3 hours 37 minutes a day on smartphones, tablets and computers which is nine minutes more than in
2019.1 In the US, consumers spent even more time online, averaging 4 hours and 38 minutes a day.
Time spent on mobile notably increased; for example, UK internet users spent nearly four times as
much time on smartphones (an average of 2 hours 19 minutes a day) than they did on computers (37
minutes). Some global markets are notably mobile centric, with a third or more of internet users being
mobile-only in markets including UK, China, Spain, Brazil and India.

Figure 1: Devices used by adults for accessing the internet, by country

Source: Ofcom/Comscore2

MMX Multi-Platform, Age 18+, Sep 2020, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, US and UK

Online retail spend has also increased significantly. According to the US Department of Commerce, in
the first quarter of 2021 ecommerce increased by an estimated 39% from the first quarter of 2020.3 In
the UK, Ofcom showed that online retail sales increased by 48% (which compares with an average
annual increase of 13% in the previous four years).

With such significant changes in customer behaviour in such a short period of time it has become even
more business critical for organisations to respond to shifts in both customer behaviour and expectation.
The 2021 Econsultancy Digital Trends report in partnership with Adobe highlighted how the pandemic
had resulted in unusual growth in digital customers, unusual customer churn and unusual buying
behaviour from existing customers.4

1
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/internet-and-on-demand-research/online-nation
2
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/internet-and-on-demand-research/online-nation
3
https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf
4
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 8

 Figure 2: Changes in customer behaviour affected every sector

Source: Econsultancy in partnership with Adobe5

“Long before the pandemic drove them to their home offices, businesspeople were already behaving
more like consumers, with expectations of convenience that often outpaced a brand’s ability to deliver,”
the report noted. “The wave of digital customers in 2020 accelerated the trend towards convenience.” 6

The report noted that the long-term trend for how customer expectations around convenience often
outpaced a brand’s ability to deliver and how shifts in digital consumption during the pandemic had
accelerated this trend. For example, over one-third of the survey respondents said that customers are
now less loyal to products or brands. Customer journeys have also changed with over half of the survey
participants reporting new paths to evaluating and purchasing.

2.1.1 Great CX drives real business advantage

The Econsultancy’s 2021 Digital Trends report in partnership with Adobe also highlighted how a strong
focus on CX can build competitive advantage and the ability to outpace sector norms.7

‘CX leaders’ (defined as those with a ‘very advanced approach to customer experience, where strategy
and technology are aligned to a successful effect’) were far more likely to not only be better positioned
to adapt to changing customer behaviour and market conditions, but also to have achieved growth
above that of the ‘CX mainstream’ organisations.

According to the research, 71% of CX leaders outperformed their sectors (and were three times more
likely to have ‘significantly outpaced’ their sectors) than CX mainstream organisations.

5
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/
6
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/
7
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 9

 Figure 3: CX leaders 2020

Source: Econsultancy in partnership with Adobe8

CX leaders were characterised by a strategic approach to CX that was supported by investments. For
example, survey participants at businesses that had built strong analytics functions proved to be more
than twice as likely as those at businesses with lower levels of insight to say that their customers are
positive about their digital experience (71% vs. 31%).

The survey also demonstrated the impact of CX on customer loyalty and the bottom line. Almost two-
thirds (61%) of respondents at CX mainstream companies say that if they were a customer of their own
digital CX they would ‘possibly’ or ‘definitely’ look for other brands. This proportion drops to one quarter
among CX leaders.

The common theme throughout the report is that a strong focus on developing a sophisticated and
integrated approach to CX enables businesses to outperform their sectors and competitors and to drive
growth.

2.1.2 How good CX supports business resilience

It is evident that investment in CX can support not only competitive advantage but also the ability of
organisations to be resilient in the face of stresses and changing environments, including the challenges
brought on by the pandemic.

McKinsey has detailed three key priorities that it says will define customer experience in the post-
pandemic era: digital capabilities and excellence; providing a safe and seamless customer journey by
default; and dynamic customer insight in which companies can anticipate, and not just ask for, customer
feedback.9

Customer expectations and the bar for digital excellence, says McKinsey, have been raised even
further, leading many organisations to invest in both digitising core competencies and explore new
possibilities. Investment in technology stacks to deliver best-in-class CX, combined with the
implementation of design thinking and agile-led approaches in order to push the boundaries of
innovation into new areas, can ensure resilience in the face of unpredictable environments.

For example, car manufacturers including Audi and Tesla have invested in reinventing the car buying
process, offering digital customisation engines and digitalising showrooms so that buyers can custom
order models to their exact specifications. During the pandemic, these virtual user guides and digital
showrooms combined with contactless car delivery to provide an essential route to market for new

8
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/
9
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/elevating-customer-experience-excellence-in-the-next-
normal

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 10

 customers. As a result, Tesla saw its sales double in China in Q1 2020, while sales for other
manufacturers dropped by 50%.

McKinsey also stresses that, in the context of the changing dynamics around the pandemic, there is an
opportunity for businesses to digitise processes and interactions, working back from a deep
understanding of customer needs to address consumer concerns while also simplifying engagement.
When digitising key points in the customer journey, the goal should always be to facilitate interaction
that is at least as good as the in-person experience.

In addition to this, there is an opportunity to be increasingly proactive in not only reacting to but
anticipating customer feedback. This in turn requires a move towards more dynamic and real-time
insights derived from analytics, rather than relying on insights-derived surveys which tend to be more
reactive in nature.

As the new post-pandemic normal emerges, the companies that have doubled down on CX will be
those best positioned to lead into the future. Data from the Forrester Customer Experience Performance
Index cited by McKinsey10 shows that in the 2008/9 recession, companies that were CX leaders were
able to deliver three times higher returns for shareholders than CX laggards.

Case study: Orange Flex

In Poland, telecommunications operator Orange started transforming the digital telco experience,
designing and implementing a new completely digital operator called Flex. Launched in mid-2019, Flex is
a subscription-based telecommunications app that offers a 100% digital service with no shops or call
centres, enabling customers to set up their mobile plan, make payments and handle service, roaming
and package changes all from within the app.11

The programme began with research into customer pain points in essential telecommunications
journeys, which let Orange identify the critical opportunities to innovate and optimise experience. One of
the key pain points identified was the inability of customers to anticipate how much they would be billed
at the end of each month, and so Flex changed the model to allow customers to pay a fixed amount on a
monthly subscription.

Lengthy onboarding and identity checks in face-to-face account setup processes were another source of
frustration. In order to ensure security in an all-digital experience, Orange worked with identity
verification business Onfido to bring document and selfie checks into the Flex account creation flow. This
created a reliable and more efficient journey, resulting in it taking an average of less than 10 minutes to
sign up for a contract, while customers with an eSIM-enabled device were able to activate a mobile
number in just two minutes.

This convenience and ease of use has meant that in less than a year, Flex had achieved around
280,000 app downloads and secured an app rating of 4.7/5.0 on the App Store (higher than Netflix and
equal to Uber). Half (50%) of new activations were won from competitors or were brand new
customers.12

10
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/adapting-customer-experience-in-the-time-of-
coronavirus
11
https://onfido.com/resources/case-studies/orange-flex-case-study
12
https://inform.tmforum.org/casestudy/orange-poland-uber-izes-telecom-with-orange-flex/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 11

3. CX Strategy Fundamentals
3.1 Defining CX
The origins of customer experience can be traced back to Gilmore and Pine’s book The Experience
Economy. The book sets out a five-stage maturity model that shows the progression of economic value,
from delivering basic services, towards orchestrating and staging experiences before progressing to
guiding transformations. As organisations mature in CX they are able to provide more value through
customisation and thus counteract the forces of commoditisation which would, otherwise, put pressure
on pricing and perceived value and competitive positioning.

This maturity model provides the basis for considering the role of agencies in helping clients to craft
more valuable experiences and to support transformation in Econsultancy’s The Future of Agencies:
Systems and Empathy report. The report explains how increasingly sophisticated customer experiences
can support improved organisational value and competitive advantage, describing a maturity model –
from ‘delivering services’ to ‘guiding transformations’ – which is also relevant in this context:

● Delivering services: At this stage, service delivery remains basic, and is largely characterised by a
linear, one-way and mass-market approach.
● Staging experiences: As sophistication in customer experience increases, the company takes
greater account of customer needs, generates more custom solutions, and experiences are two-
way, integrated interactions across multiple touchpoints.
● Guiding transformations: As the capability of the organisation increases further, CX becomes
embedded in multiple facets of how the organisation works, creating the ability to adapt rapidly to
changing customer needs with a truly integrated approach guided by sophisticated use of data and
systems.

Taking a single product (coffee) as an example of this, a basic service may be represented by a simple
cup of coffee which is delivered in a uniform way by a machine. A Starbucks coffee shop brings much
greater sophistication and customisation to the coffee experience. The incorporation of even higher
levels of customisation for customers (including anything from staff putting customers’ names on cups,
to the Starbucks app which incorporates a rewards programme, payment options, advance ordering,
and integration with other services like Spotify) takes this to the ultimate level.

Customer service business Zendesk has defined CX in the following way:

“Customer experience… is everything related to a business that affects a customer’s perception and
feelings about it.”13

It expands further on this, describing CX as the sum of all interactions between a business and a
customer over the lifetime of that relationship. Therefore, a good definition of CX reflects the impression
and perception that customers gain about the brand and/or business throughout all the interactions that
they may have in their journey and relationship with that brand and/or business.

3.1.1 The customer-centric organisation

Many organisations describe themselves as ‘customer centric’ and yet somehow still end up creating
experiences that are oriented more around the needs of their business than those of their customers.
This can easily result in customer frustration at not being able to solve simple challenges or needs in
intuitive and convenient ways.

Feedback from the interviewees for this report shows how, in order to realise true ‘customer centricity’,
businesses need to bring the customer thinking and needs into not only how they manage touchpoints,
journeys and interactions, but also into the fabric of how the organisation works and makes decisions.

13
https://www.zendesk.co.uk/blog/why-companies-should-invest-in-the-customer-experience/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 12

 Raina Purba, Managing Consultant of Brand and Experience at Capgemini, described true customer
centricity as: “Orienting the whole organisation to[ward] helping customers achieve the outcomes they
are after.”

To that point, Conor Hughes, Customer Manager at Nando’s, spoke of the importance of the personal
touch in delivering great CX, and how important it is for staff to understand that great CX is an ongoing
part of how the organisation operates and not just a one-off programme to drive better metrics. It is, he
says, about knowing what you are as a brand and organisation, having great products and then bringing
them to life through building a great experience around those things.

The meaning of customer centricity

“Customer centricity is about seeing customers as people, not just statistics or data.”

— Conor Hughes, Customer Manager, Nando’s

This means working back from a deep understanding of customer needs, orienting the business and
decision making around those customer needs, and creating exceptional omnichannel experiences
through adept use of technology and data, all while working in a collaborative manner.

The meaning of customer obsession

“Being customer obsessed means going beyond CX being seamless and frictionless and, instead,
creating outrageously good experiences. This means everyone in the organisation has to go above and
beyond to surprise and delight customers and create experiences that are worth talking about.”

— Max McShane, Head of Digital, Octopus Energy

Amazon is often referenced as one of the most customer-centric organisations in the world, and it is a
good example of how customer-centric thinking can be pervasive throughout a business and how it
operates. Some examples of how Amazon brings customer centricity to life include:

● A customer-focused mission: Amazon’s mission statement is: “We aim to be Earth’s most
customer-centric company. Our mission is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by
using the internet and technology to help consumers find, discover and buy anything, and empower
businesses and content creators to maximise their success.”14
● Terminology and philosophy: Amazon talks about being “customer-obsessed” and has set a clear
expectation around “working backwards” from customer needs. Jeff Bezos has described how this
should be reflected in leadership outlook, perspective and action: “Leaders start with the customer
and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay
attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.”15 He emphasises how a customer-obsessed
culture creates the conditions for patient experimentation, learning from failure and doubling down
when encountering customer delight.
● Making business cases: Amazon’s ‘working backwards’ document (featured in Econsultancy’s
Product Strategy and Marketing Best Practice Guide) sets out a business idea or proposition with a
definition of the customer need or problem and a vision for an innovative or improved solution to
those needs.
● Orienting teams: Amazon famously structures teams into small, multi-disciplinary ‘two-pizza’
teams, which are made of no more than six to 10 people (or the number of people it takes to feed
with two pizzas), each focused on optimising interaction and solutions to customer needs.16

14
https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/uk-investment/our-mission
15
https://www.lexisclick.com/blog/customer-obsession-the-secret-to-amazons-success
16
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-two-pizza-rule-and-the-secret-of-amazons-success

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 13

 ● Measuring performance: Each two-pizza team has a ‘fitness function’ (discussed in more detail in
Section 3.5.5) which is a single key metric that provides accountability and focus for the team.
Wherever possible this fitness function brings in customer benefit and is focused on outcomes that
can support improved customer experience.
● Building capability: Amazon builds momentum around new capabilities (for example, AI) by
enabling teams to make learning easily available to other teams, thereby supporting scaled
experimentation around customer needs and new technologies, and rapid building of scale and
capability. The company calls this a ‘flywheel’ approach.17
● Running meetings and making decisions: Amazon finds ways to remind staff about the
importance of the voice of the customer at every opportunity. For example, meetings at the
company have an empty chair which is a ‘reserved seat’ for the customer as a visual reminder to
reference customers in every discussion.18

Econsultancy’s Digital Transformation: Agility and Innovation Best Practice Guide contains more detail
on how Amazon uses the ‘working backwards’ document and small, multi-disciplinary teams. In this way
Amazon brings a customer-obsessed lens to everything that it does, and uses this to build scale,
efficiency and competitive advantage.

Case study: How Netflix built a culture of customer obsession

Gibson Biddle, former VP of Product at Netflix, has written about how Netflix deployed a philosophy of
what Netflix Founder Reed Hastings called ‘consumer science’ in order to move from being simply
customer focused to being truly customer obsessed.19

This ‘consumer science’ vision is focused on catalysing learning about customer needs through an
ongoing cycle of forming hypotheses derived from quantitative and qualitative data and then testing them
through a continuous stream of thousands of experiments.

Biddle describes how existing quantitative data is used to understand past and current behaviour, and
how qualitative focus groups and one-on-ones help them discover how people think. In addition, surveys
are used to capture who the customers are and how to think about them from a high level. Hypotheses
are then formed from these inputs which can then be tested rapidly.

For example, quantitative data provided the foundation for forming hypotheses around unusual
cancellation patterns, but qualitative inputs proved to be useful in helping to form hypotheses around
how the team could optimise the non-member homepage. The key to creating a ‘customer-obsessed’
culture, says Biddle, is dedication to the experimental method, using a mix of research techniques.

3.1.2 What does great CX look like?

A useful way of framing great CX comes from KPMG and its ‘six pillars’ which can help businesses to
excel at customer experience.20 The six pillars, says KPMG, can define the layer between customers
and the high-performing businesses of the future:

17
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-artificial-intelligence-flywheel/
18
https://www.inc.com/john-koetsier/why-every-amazon-meeting-has-at-least-one-empty-chair.html
19
https://gibsonbiddle.medium.com/customer-obsession-8f1689df60ad
20
https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/services/consulting/customer-consulting/customer-insight-and-analytics/six-pillar-
experience.html

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 14

 1. Personalisation – the ability to use “individualised attention to drive an emotional connection”.21 It
involves demonstrating an understanding of customer needs and preferences and adapting the
experience in response.

2. Integrity – being trustworthy and engendering trust. KPMG talks about how trust is a result of
consistent organisational behaviour, whether that is through publicly reacting to a difficult situation
or individual actions by staff.

3. Expectations – that is, managing, meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Customer
satisfaction, says KPMG, is the difference between expectation and the experience that is actually
delivered.

4. Resolution – turning a poor experience into a great one. This is the ability to recover experience as
well as having processes in place that can turn a situation around from bad to good.

5. Time and effort – minimising customer effort and creating frictionless processes. This might involve
removing obstacles to progress in journeys, helping customers achieve their objectives quickly and
ensuring instant gratification.

6. Empathy – achieving an understanding of the customer’s circumstances to drive deep rapport. This
means developing a deep understanding of customer contexts, situations and needs, and going the
extra mile to demonstrate that understanding.

Beyond these foundational elements, it is important to push the boundaries in how companies not only
deliver customer expectation but exceed it. For example, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos has talked about
how important it is to use ever-changing customer expectations as a reason to invent: “Even when they
don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you
to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership programme,
but it sure turns out they wanted it.”22

3.1.3 Critical elements of a CX strategy

Elements of CX transformation

McKinsey has set out three critical but interlinked building blocks of customer experience
transformation:23

● Building aspiration and purpose – setting out the reasons for change, the link to value, and
setting out what is required to become a customer-centric business as well as what good looks like.
● Transforming the business – redesigning product and service experience, journeys and models
working back from customer needs and taking a ‘discover, design, deliver’ approach (discovering
customer needs, designing solutions, delivering impact).
● Establishing critical enablers – investment in technology, data and analytics, transforming
mindsets and building capabilities, implementing an agile operating model and a performance
management and measurement system.

Elements of CX strategy and implementation

At the heart of CX strategy is the need for the business to understand how it can sustainably improve
and increase the value that it provides to its customers. There are many elements that can contribute to
the strategy but some of the essential ones include:

21
https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/services/consulting/customer-consulting/customer-insight-and-analytics/six-pillar-
experience.html
22
https://www.inc.com/sonia-thompson/in-1-sentence-jeff-bezos-explains-the-philosophy-
e.html#:~:text=%22Even%20when%20they%20don't,give%20you%20many%20such%20examples.%22
23
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-three-building-blocks-of-successful-
customer-experience-transformations

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 15

1. Customer understanding through personas, journeys and needs: It is critical that the business
has a good understanding of what is important to customers and what they value (and do not value)
in their experience with the brand or company. This insight can inform a strategy for what the
business needs to do more or less of through the customer journey in order to enhance CX, and
also supports improved delivery and execution. CX strategy should be ‘customer-back’, informed by
insight into customer behaviour and desires. Execution should be aligned with this approach, and
designed to proactively improve experience at multiple points in the journey.

2. Technology and data: Both systems and data should be critical facilitators to great CX. How easy
is it for customer data to be unified? How can data inform opportunities to engage with the right
message at the right time and in the right context? How can systems empower employees to deliver
seamless CX through access to key information, analytics and measures? What are the low-cost
ways in which technology can add customer value and deliver against key business results and
objectives?

3. Convenience and simplicity: These elements relate to how the business can provide convenient
solutions to customers that save them time and effort, or enable them to find answers to questions
more easily. Amazon’s ‘Buy Now’ is an example of bringing exceptional levels of convenience to the
purchase process by enabling customers to purchase with one click.24

4. Consistency: This is relevant in terms of both providing a continually good CX but also in terms of
representing the brand; being consistent with approaches and policies builds customer trust. This
means that each customer-facing team needs to understand key policies, that policies are
communicated well and are fair, and that a joined-up approach is taken so that this experience is
consistent from the perspective of the customer.

5. Customer feedback: Feedback loops are critical for continually optimising CX. They can inform
strategy and innovation, help refine products and services, and reveal customer issues and
frustrations that can lead to churn. Feedback can come from surveys, customer reviews and
customer service tickets, and can be combined with other sources of insight such as product and
content analytics to identify opportunities to optimise.

6. Automation and personalisation: Although data and technology sit at the heart of good CX, it is
how they are deployed that creates real advantage. This means having the ability to use data to
define sophisticated levels of segmentation and then applying personalisation at scale. It also
means the ability to drive efficiencies through automation without sacrificing the levels to customer
service and experience delivered.

7. Omnichannel approaches: This covers customer journeys that are joined up and seamless, as
well as delivering the right content and message at the right time in the right way. It covers
consistency across channels while enabling content to be optimised to capitalise on specific channel
nuances. It is execution with user-centred design principles at its heart, agile and iterative processes
that enable continuous improvement.

8. Culture and mindset: So-called ‘customer-back’ approaches are brought to life as much by
employee mindset as they are by technology and data. Ensuring that staff are skilled,
knowledgeable and empowered to take informed decisions, placing customer insight at the heart of
decision making and innovation, and having the ability to test and learn in order to continually
optimise are key parts of implementing CX strategy effectively. Beyond this, great CX comes from
an inherent desire to delight customers at every opportunity.

24
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GDZ8ZNZDSTL6ZYCP

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 16

 Case study: How Nordstrom delivers customer convenience

US department store Nordstrom has demonstrated its commitment to customer convenience through the
introduction of its Reserve Online & Try In Store service.25 The service enables users of Nordstrom’s app
to select items that they are interested in and book an appointment in-store. The garments will be placed
in a fitting room in a store of their choice so that they can easily try them on. Notifications alert shoppers
when the item is ready to try on.

After a successful pilot in six stores, the service has been rolled out to all 40 shops, letting customers
shop in the way that suits them while making no commitments to purchase. Nordstrom has said that the
service has led to improved conversion rates and that 80% of customers who used the Reserve Online &
Try In Store service continued to use it multiple times afterwards.

The service complements a number of other initiatives focused on convenience, including kerbside pick-
up for shoppers, click-and-collect options, and a new tool called Style Boards, which allows sales
associates to generate personalised product and style recommendations for individual customers.

3.1.4 Using segmentation and personas

Adept use of customer segmentation helps to focus CX delivery and ensures that marketers are
targeted in their approach at delivering content and messaging. Segmentation can be based on simple
demographics and geography, or on more sophisticated behavioural and psychographic insight and
data. An example of behavioural segmentation could be using interaction data to position where
customers are on their respective journeys in order to target them with useful content or next best
action. An example of psychographic segmentation could be grouping customers based on their
attitudes or particular needs which speak to particular motivations or questions that need answering.

These attributes can be brought together to formulate a more sophisticated approach to customer
segmentation based on data that can enable better CX. Machine learning adds another layer of
sophistication to this with its ability to recognise patterns and identify segments from unstructured data,
making it possible to create and update more tightly defined segments. This, in turn, can enable more
targeted content creation and generate predictive models that can inform the next best action.

Case study: Cisco’s product-first to audience-first approach

Speaking at the Intelligent Content Conference,26 Cisco Marketing Director Bob Meindl described how,
for many years, Cisco’s marketing programmes were focused on product silos rather than taking a
customer-first approach. This led to many different areas of the business targeting the same prospects
with overlapping messages and campaigns, creating a fragmented customer experience.

Realising the need to be more customer-centric in their approach, the marketing team redesigned their
process. They started with a detailed analysis of audience needs before beginning work on creating
content assets.

Cisco also conducted blind interviews with customers from companies of varying sizes and sectors
before using customer behaviour data to develop insights into differing audience needs. These insights
enabled the team to design unified and improved customer journeys which could better serve customer
needs in more integrated and joined-up ways.

25
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelarthur/2017/08/24/nordstrom-tech-customer-experience-convenience/#7a790fc9531d
26
http://cmi.media/ICC_VOD

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 17

Case study: Cisco’s product-first to audience-first approach

Meindl said of the new approach: “We found out what they care about in their own language, not what
we think they care about, but what they actually care about in their work. We augmented this with hard
data on customer behaviour collected from various first- and third-party sources.”27

Personas – fictional representations of key customer segments – are also extremely useful in CX, as
they can be used to inform CX strategy and delivery of content and interaction in optimal ways. They
can also help create a common understanding across multiple teams of the needs of particular types of
customers, and so aid alignment and execution.

Good personas capture high-level information about who the person is (e.g. demographics, age,
background), but also identify functional needs (for example, touchpoints, role in decision making,
purchase drivers) and emotional needs (such as motivations, frustrations and how customers want to
solve problems) or what can lead to good or bad CX. In order to support good CX, personas should
capture information that is critical for those customers in delivering a good experience.

Econsultancy’s Segmentations and Personas Best Practice Guide incorporates a useful persona
template which brings together elements that can be key to generating a great customer experience
and understanding both functional and emotional needs (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Econsultancy persona template

Source: Econsultancy28

27
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/09/martech-creative-content/
28
https://econsultancy.com/reports/segmentations-and-personas-best-practice-guide/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 18

 Application: The Value Proposition Canvas

Econsultancy’s Learning from Disruptors Best Practice Guide features Strategyzer’s Value Proposition
Canvas which is an excellent tool for diving deeper on customer personas. The canvas makes it possible
to understand both functional and emotional customer needs, allowing the user to work back in order to
define better solutions.

It sets out customer jobs-to-be-done on the right-hand side, the gains that would help the customer solve
the problem in the best way possible and the pains that could potentially get in the way of a great
customer experience. Users of the canvas can then work from these customer needs across to the left-
hand side, where there is an opportunity to identify gain creators (features that will help enable the gains
in the solution, which can be mapped across to the identified customer gains and pain relievers (features
that will address the customer pains or ensure they never happen).

3.1.5 Using customer journey mapping

Mapping customer journeys is an essential insight tool for informing CX strategy and optimisation. As
with persona generation, good customer journey maps take account of not only touchpoints but also the
functional tasks (what the customer is trying to do at different stages in the journey) and emotional
needs that customers have at different stages of their journeys. Econsultancy’s Customer Journey
Mapping Best Practice Guide sets out a number of options that may be included in journey mapping,
including:

● A summary of the customer persona – who they are, their needs, wants
● Activities, actions or processes at different stages of the journey
● The customer’s goals or problems at different stages of the journey
● The customer’s emotions, feelings, expectations and thoughts
● Key pain points, concerns or friction points within the customer journey
● Touchpoints, including digital and physical channels and platforms
● Key messages or brand/product/service proof points that the brand wishes to deliver at each stage
● Storyboards, screenshots or mock-ups to illustrate the segment of the journey
● Business goals
● Marketing, sales or servicing KPIs.

As the customer goes through the journey, the changes in these elements at different stages can inform
communications, product strategy and innovation.

The figure below illustrates an example template for a customer journey map from Econsultancy’s
Customer Journey Mapping Best Practice Guide. This template brings together an understanding of
both customer and business needs at different stages.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 19

 Figure 5: Customer Journey Mapping Canvas

Source: Econsultancy29

In order to inform CX, high-level maps can be done for each key customer segment to develop a picture
of how particular channels can be best used to serve customer needs or answer customer questions. If
necessary, these maps can then be augmented with more detailed ones which drill down into particular
scenarios for each segment. This technique can be especially useful when looking to tackle specific
customer challenges that may have been identified in the feedback process.

The concept of ‘pains’ and ‘gains’ is also particularly useful:

● ‘Pains’ may be considered as elements that can get in the way of good CX or are reasons for the
customer not to engage (for example, overly complex solutions, an inability to answer questions, or
particular concerns). When optimising CX, the job is to remove or at least reduce such pains and to
open up the potential for better engagement and experience.
● ‘Gains’ can be thought of as those elements that will ensure a really great experience. They might
include ways of answering questions or needs seamlessly, or elements that will surprise and delight.
When using mapping, optimising gains can be a useful way to provide focus for improving CX.

3.1.6 Current and future state customer journey mapping

When implementing a CX strategy, it can be useful to set out two different versions of a customer
journey map: the current state customer journey and the future state customer journey.

1. Current state customer journey: This journey map details the current experience that the
customer has, and should be as faithful a representation as possible to what the actual journey
looks like.

2. Future state customer journey: This version of the journey map presents an opportunity to design
an ideal customer experience and understand all the elements that will contribute towards it. By
comparing the future state journey map with the current state journey map, teams can identify areas
for innovation or optimisation, which will also inform a strategy for improving CX and specific
journeys. The team should look to prioritise the changes that will have the biggest impact on

29
https://econsultancy.com/reports/content-strategy-best-practice-guide/?view=full#_Toc40706755

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 20

 customer perception (informed through research or data), before taking account of feasibility and
the cost of the changes from the business side.

Lisa Hulme-Vickerstaff, Customer Insight Manager at Lowell Financial, has taken this approach,
explaining in an interview for this report how the business had mapped customer journeys for nine core
audience personas, completing an ‘as is’ version and a ‘to be’ version in order to identify opportunities
to improve. Looking at these opportunities holistically helped Lowell Financial prioritise an action plan to
deliver its CX strategy.

3.1.7 Empathy mapping

Econsultancy’s 2021 Digital Trends report in partnership with Adobe defined empathy as one of the
three key guiding principles in CX for 2021. As convenience becomes a commodity rather than being a
unique selling proposition on digital platforms, it will increasingly be those brands that empathise with
their customers – treating them as people rather than as datasets – that will be creating differentiation
and advantage.

Commonly used in product teams, empathy mapping is another useful tool that can focus a team on
connecting with the functional and emotional needs of particular personas or customer segments. The
empathy map sets out what a persona may be trying to achieve in a certain situation or context, also
bringing in considerations around how that customer is feeling, as well as what they may be thinking
and saying. This is particularly useful when considering specific contexts or challenges that are faced by
customers and can be used to improve the empathy that the team has with customer needs in that
scenario.

The opportunity is then to use these insights to inform how a brand can better solve customer problems,
or to inform the tone of communication and content. Econsultancy’s Customer Journey Mapping Best
Practice Guide sets out a practical empathy map template that uses the example of mapping out a
persona against a scenario of buying a TV.

Figure 6: Example of a simple empathy map for a TV buyer

Source: Econsultancy30

30
https://econsultancy.com/reports/customer-journey-mapping-best-practice-guide/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 21

3.2 Creating omnichannel experiences
The focus on omnichannel CX has never been greater. According to data from PWC, 86% of customers
will pay more for great CX.31 Econsultancy’s Ecommerce Trends report noted Forrester’s prediction that
digital customer service interactions would increase by 40% in 2021,32 as well as Forbes’ study finding
that while 71% of customers say they want a consistent experience across channels, only 29% say they
get it.33

What constitutes a good omnichannel customer experience? CX technology business Genesys has the
following definition for omnichannel CX: “An omnichannel customer experience is made up of individual
customer touchpoints, over a variety of channels that seamlessly connect, allowing customers to pick
up where they left off on one channel and continue the experience on another.”34

The key characteristics of a great omnichannel customer experience can be summarised as:

1. A consistent (and consistently good) brand experience across multiple channels – but one in which
the strengths of individual channels are optimised to serve customer needs (for example to answer
customer questions through search).

2. An experience that provides multiple options for customers to interact with the brand across different
touchpoints – but one in which the customer is not forced into using particular channels at the
brand’s convenience.

3. A joined-up and seamless experience so that journeys that incorporate different touchpoints that
make sense from a customer perspective – for example as customers move easily between
channels, they are not forced to re-enter information that they have already given to the brand.

4. An experience that serves customer needs by taking account of their previous interaction.

An omnichannel experience creates a seamless and consistent experience across both real-world and
virtual touchpoints, and through both on-domain and off-domain interaction. The key differences
between multichannel and omnichannel experience are as follows:

● Multichannel: Interactions may happen across multiple touchpoints, but the channels may well not
be joined up. This can mean that journeys are not seamless and data is collected in silos.
● Omnichannel: The customer is genuinely at the centre of the experience, with seamless movement
between channels, with data and content creating interaction options that make sense in the context
of the journey and of the customer needs.

Case study: Disney’s omnichannel experiences

Disney provides a great example of a seamless omnichannel experience across real-world and virtual
touchpoints with its theme parks. Before customers arrive at the Disney parks they can customise their
experience through the My Disney Experience app and website.35 Users create a profile on the app,
where they can add other guests in their travel group so that plans can easily be made and shared. They
can also update travel plans and details, as well as book hotels, view dining options and make theme
park reservations. These details can all be viewed on a My Plans page that also enables users to set
reminders and receive prompts for planning dates and next steps.

31
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-
customer-experience.pdf
32
https://go.forrester.com/blogs/customer-service-predictions-2021/
33
https://review42.com/resources/customer-retention-statistics/
34
https://www.genesys.com/definitions/what-is-omnichannel-customer-experience
35
https://www.disneyworld.co.uk/plan/my-disney-experience/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 22

 Case study: Disney’s omnichannel experiences

Users can then use Disney MagicBands wristbands to effortlessly connect them to the holiday choices
that they made in My Disney Experience. MagicBands can be used by customers to enter the parks,
unlock their hotel room and buy food and merchandise. Similarly, the My Disney Experience mobile app
makes it easy to access MagicBand features like theme park entry and contactless payment through
customers’ mobile phones.36

Disney has now announced that it is testing facial recognition in the parks in order to further speed up
park entry, as well as make it easier to re-enter for those who have visited before.37 Using digital
technology, Disney has created a seamless experience for their customers right from the moment that
they book the trip up to when they return home.

3.2.1 The barriers to creating great omnichannel experiences

With such a great need to join up customer touchpoints and journeys in ways that support a seamless
experience, data and systems are essential. Organisations that are reliant on systems that do not
support good omnichannel delivery are at risk of frustrating their customers.

Econsultancy’s 2021 Digital Trends report in partnership with Adobe identified a number of critical
barriers that are holding organisations back in the implementation of marketing and customer
experience. Key to these are legacy systems and workflows which make it difficult to act with agility or
to create joined-up journeys and experiences.

36
https://inviqa.com/blog/magic-disneys-omnichannel-experience
37
https://www.pymnts.com/news/biometrics/2021/disney-world-tests-facial-recognition-at-magic-kingdom/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 23

Figure 7: Workflow, legacy tech and a lack of digital skills are hampering marketing and
experience

Source: Econsultancy in partnership with Adobe38

The important takeaway from this research is the need for organisations to invest not only in the
technology infrastructure and stack that can support good CX, but also to design the operations,
processes and workflow that facilitate true collaboration and responsiveness.

The move to remote working at scale has put additional pressure on businesses to design workflows
that avoid bottlenecks, but it has also presented an opportunity to redesign processes around new ways
of working for greater efficiency and empowerment. As discussed later in this report (Section 3.4.1)
investment in key technologies and systems such as customer data platforms can provide a solid
foundation for CX implementation.

Alongside legacy systems and workflow, lack of digital skills is also seen as a significant barrier to
creating great omnichannel experiences. Data from the survey that informed Econsultancy’s
Organisational Structures and Resourcing Best Practice Guide indicates that there is growing demand

38
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 24

around skills areas that are crucial to CX, notably data and analytics, marketing automation and content
marketing.

Figure 8: Which areas of requirement for digital resourcing/upskilling do you anticipate

will grow most over the coming year?

Data, analytics and insight 43%

Marketing automation 33%

Content marketing 33%

Customer relationship and data management 28%

Measurement and attribution 24%

Social media activity 21%

Website design and build 18%

Search engine optimisation 17%

Email marketing 14%

Display and programmatic advertising 13%

Community management 12%

Paid search (PPC) 8%

App development 6%

Affiliate marketing 5%

Respondents: 192

Respondents could select up to three options.

Source: Econsultancy39

Additional findings from that survey also indicated that these top areas of demand are also those that
are regarded as being in short supply, showing an ongoing challenge for recruitment and skills in the
area of CX.

The importance of accessibility

Lack of accessibility is another potential barrier to a great omnichannel experience that was mentioned
by several interviewees for this report. This was discussed in a couple of different contexts:

● Customer access to features: As customers become more empowered, the stakes for companies
in providing ongoing service become ever higher. In order to create great CX, businesses must be
always-on and responsive to customer needs whenever they arise. Using 24/7 live chat features, for
example, can enable businesses to maintain a continuous presence and deal with customer
questions in an efficient way,
Similarly, ensuring that the knowledge base or FAQ pages on the website are up to date and as
helpful as possible is essential. Using data on the most commonly asked questions to customer
service teams can help inform the design of FAQ pages.

39
https://econsultancy.com/reports/organisational-structures-and-resourcing-best-practice-guide/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 25

 A really important aspect of accessibility is ensuring that content and interaction points are usable to
those customers with disabilities. Econsultancy’s Neurodiversity and Digital Inclusion Best Practice
Guide provides marketers with useful information on how to design experiences to take account of
different user needs and how to develop a marketing-led approach to inclusion.
● Employee access to data and feedback: Accessibility challenges can also present themselves in
the inability of staff to access key insight and information when they need to in order to deliver and
implement good CX. These challenges could range from being unable to find the answers to
customer questions to being unable to access relevant data. Structured resources for staff are
important in supporting good CX, and dashboarding can help to make access to relevant data as
universal and empowering as possible.

Econsultancy’s User Experience and Interaction Design Best Practice Guide also has useful information
related to accessibility, referencing the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).40

3.2.2 Customer experience and employee experience

The importance of employee experience (EX) in empowering exceptional customer experience was
emphasised by a number of the interviewees for this report. This relationship goes beyond the need to
be customer centric and data driven (although these attributes are seen to be critical), and into ways of
working and approaches that can enable good EX to be brought to life through execution and
application. Put simply, happy employees who are collaborating and learning well are far more
empowered to generate good CX.

The interlinking of CX and EX

“Customer [experience] and employee experience are intrinsically linked. Digital has exposed a lot of
things and one of them is that over time we’ve grown to treat these things separately, but investment is
needed in both in order to generate advantage.”

— Patti Alderman, AVP Digital Experience, Cognizant

In Econsultancy’s Building a Digital Culture Best Practice Guide, this symbiotic relationship between EX
and CX was represented in a simple Venn diagram.

40
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 26

 Figure 9: The relationship between CX and EX

Source: Econsultancy41

The interviews for that report emphasised the importance of empowering employees to be more
customer centric. Helen Normoyle, Co-founder of My Menopause Centre and former Marketing Director
at Boots, discussed the need to reduce layers between marketers and their customers in order to keep
staff in touch with changing customer needs. It was, she said, essential to link everything back to the
experience being created for customers in order to make CX real through execution.

Similarly, Patti Alderman, AVP of Digital Experience at Cognizant, noted how this link between
employee expectation and customer experience needed to be felt not only by front-line or customer-
facing staff but by everyone in the business. Companies that do not invest in EX, she noted, can easily
hit a wall with CX, so it is essential that organisations make tangible the way staff need to be acting and
how they should be thinking in order to create great CX.

Speaking at the Festival of Marketing, Siobhan Fitzpatrick, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer at Virgin
Atlantic, articulated the ‘double-helix’ of employee and customer experience, describing it as “creating
the same principles that we would take for defining and understanding the lifts and drags on an external
customer experience but for an employee experience”.42

Fitzpatrick talked about how the pandemic had resulted in an acceleration of the ‘digital-first mindset’,
which meant developing a better understanding of how the company could be more agile and
responsive, work more cross-functionally, and comprehend and respond to changing customer
requirements.

3.3 The importance of brand in CX

The importance of consistency in CX strategy was noted in Section 3.1.3 of this report. Having clarity
around brand purpose, territory and policies is key to bringing consistency to life through CX. If brand

41
https://econsultancy.com/reports/building-a-digital-culture/
42
https://econsultancy.com/virgin-atlantics-siobhan-fitzpatrick-on-the-double-helix-of-cx-and-ex/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 27

 experience (BX) relates to all the ways in which a brand connects with and engages a target audience,
then there is a strong crossover between BX and CX.

Brand can be useful in CX, both in establishing a set of expectations for customers and informing the
ways in which a business should communicate with customers. For example, establishing clear
descriptors and adjectives for what the brand stands for, and defining its purpose and mission can help
direct staff engagement with customers and inform CX strategy. Similarly, mapping out a clear territory
around a brand for the topic areas that are relevant helps staff to align around a focused content
calendar.

Developing clear guidelines around tone of voice supports a common approach and consistency around
communications. Although consistency in brand experience is important, it is also key not to be overly
rigid in execution, instead reflecting the differences in channel and thereby optimising opportunities to
deliver the brand experience in slightly different ways.

Brand experience

“Brand experience doesn’t necessarily mean having to be exactly the same across every touchpoint. It
may once have been about consistency, but now it’s more about coherence.”

— Glyn Britton, Chief Customer Officer, Bionic

Econsultancy’s Content Strategy Best Practice Guide sets out some best-in-class examples in this area,
and also references user experience group Nielsen Norman’s approach to identifying four key
dimensions through which any piece of content can be analysed – humour, formality, respectfulness,
and enthusiasm43 – which are explored below in more detail:

1. Formal vs. casual: Where formality brings authority and professionalism, being casual is more
friendly, and perhaps can be achieved by avoiding using industry jargon.

2. Funny vs. serious: Although humour may be used as a key part of a brand’s personality, there are
times when the brand will need to remain serious for credibility reasons.

3. Respectful vs. irreverent: Irreverence can be tricky to get right and will only be right for some
brands, but it tends to sit alongside humour and can contribute towards positioning, and a feeling of
brand confidence.

4. Enthusiastic vs. matter of fact: Being enthusiastic can mean showing a willingness to help,
whereas being matter of fact may lend itself better to simplicity.

43
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/tone-of-voice-dimensions/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 28

Figure 10: Brand values, territory and tone

Source: Econsultancy

Having clarity around brand values, purpose and territory, and bringing these to life through brand
personality and tone is essential for good brand experience, and can therefore be fundamental to good
CX as well.

Consistent tone alongside use of common brand assets and visual cues can not only help customers
see that they are in the right place, but also set a clear expectation around what the experience should
be like. Yet it is also important to remember that when it comes to purpose, brands can only play
second fiddle to wider organisational purpose. “Brands need to be modest and accept that their
credentials and values are the outcome of a company with a purpose and culture to match,” wrote Jan
Gooding, now Chair at Given, in an article for Mediatel News.44

As Econsultancy’s Brand Purpose Best Practice Guide noted, it is critical that a brand purpose is related
to what that brand is selling or providing as a service, since it helps to frame why the brand is there and
why it does what it does. This should be executed in a holistic, customer-centric way, putting the
customer first, and should be represented in everything a brand does, right from product development
through to customer experience and how it conducts its marketing, and how it treats its employees,
partners and suppliers.

Purpose-led brands have the potential to create stronger and more resilient customer relationships. This
conclusion is supported by research from Accenture showing that nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers
prefer to buy goods and services from companies that stand for a purpose that reflects their personal
values and beliefs.45 The likelihood that a customer may switch to a competitor or substitute offering
increases when the customer experience does not meet either the brand promise or the customer’s
expectations.

44
https://mediatel.co.uk/news/2019/02/21/brands-are-the-campfire-of-the-company/
45
https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Thought-Leadership-Assets/PDF/Accenture-CompetitiveAgility-GCPR-
POV.pdf#zoom=50

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 29

3.4 Data and CX strategy
3.4.1 Data and technology setup to support CX

Using a customer data platform (CDP) can transform the ability of organisations to derive value from
data in implementing CX strategy. The CDP Institute defines the technology as “…packaged software
that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems”.46

CDPs are software systems that bring together and unify multiple disparate customer datasets into a
single structured view, and integrate with other systems to allow for easy sharing and activation of that
data. They are often pre-built systems that are configured to meet the needs of individual client
companies, and enable a ‘single view’ of the customer. They do this by linking together information that
relates to that customer and providing personal identifiers that can augment targeted messaging and
marketing. Other systems that link with the CDP can utilise the data stored there to better manage and
personalise interactions.

The CDP Institute has set out some key features which are common to most software of this type,
including the ability to retain original details about customers (e.g. names, addresses, purchase history),
to retain the data in a persistent way (the data is not deleted without instruction from the user), to
maintain individual detail (looking at data related to one customer) and to ensure adherence to privacy
regulations.

Econsultancy’s Customer Data Platforms Best Practice Guide details some key benefits of using CDPs
including unified data and the ability to empower integrated cross-channel marketing, improved
customer understanding and efficiencies in operations. The guide also sets out some useful steps for
implementing a CDP and maximising the value that marketers can get from the software.

Case study: Octopus Energy’s customer data platform

The importance of creating a unified view of the customer through technology was emphasised by Max
McShane, Head of Digital at Octopus Energy. He described how Octopus had built its own software
platform, called ‘Kraken’, which brought all customer information together into one place.

This unified customer view and platform enables Octopus Energy to deliver enhanced CX through
service innovation (for example, by creating a product with agile pricing at its heart to pass benefits onto
customers when wholesale energy prices fluctuate in their favour), marketing and customer service.
Everyone in the company is trained on the platform and everyone takes ownership for customer service.

Great customer experience combines great technology with a culture that empowers staff to go above
and beyond. The marketing team has learned SQL so that they can all quickly and easily query the
database. They have used the platform to proactively identify customers that were overspending on their
energy, before reaching out to those customers to offer them thermal cameras to help them monitor heat
loss from their homes. This led to a longer term proposition where customers can now rent thermal
cameras from the company.

Employees are all empowered to deal with incoming customer queries and they all have access to
customer information via the platform. Kraken even enables them to link personal profiles with their
phone customer service so that they can do things like customise the hold music for customers.

46
https://www.cdpinstitute.org/cdp-basics

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 30

 Although it is clearly imperative to establish a good data and technology platform with which to
implement CX strategy well, it is also critical to understand how new technologies are further enhancing
the ability to optimise the customer experience.

Econsultancy’s AI, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Best Practice Guide features a useful
model developed by marketing technologist Scott Brinker. The model shows how AI and automation
can be successfully applied in a marketing team. It sets out the balance that marketers need to achieve
between the complexity of decision making and the degree of risk involved. The lower the risk and
complexity, the simpler the automation that can be used to achieve efficiency in managing CX. For
decision areas that involve higher levels of complexity and risk, human-supported machine
recommendation and inputs is the better option.47

3.4.2 Using data through the customer journey

Utilising data well through the customer journey can enable teams to gain valuable insight into customer
needs and behaviours, and therefore to generate better and more joined-up experiences. Key to
deriving value from this analysis is paying attention to broad, high-level themes that come from the data,
as well as identifying specific moments during the customer journey that are pivotal to determining how
a customer perceives a brand experience.

A useful way of framing this is Google’s ‘moments that matter’ concept, which is about identifying the
data ‘signals’ that brands can use to better understand customer context and intent. These signals, or
moments, are highly valuable to marketers since they can provide “more opportunities to be relevant
and connect with consumers in more meaningful ways than ever before”.48

Google set out a number of signals that might reveal key opportunities through the journey to engage
including:

● I want-to-watch moments: for example, a buyer at a business wanting the answer to a particular
question, or a customer looking for video inspiration for a holiday
● I want-to-do moments: for example, a person who is looking up how to fix something or solve a
particular problem
● I need-to-find moments: these could be location-based searches, or even when customers are
looking for specific pieces of information
● I need-to-buy moments: for example, someone comparing prices on a product – as customers get
closer to purchase their questions become more specific.

Identifying which questions are most relevant through the journey comes from a combination of
customer research and analytics, which can reveal customer intentions and questions.

Combining customer context (for example, who the customer is, where they are, the type of company
they work at) with customer intent (such as the questions they are asking, the needs that they have at
different stages of the journey, the things they are trying to do) can open up opportunities to ‘lean in’
and for the brand to intervene in ways that are most helpful and useful for the customer.

Bastien Chicha, Managing Consultant of Brand & Experience at Capgemini, describes these moments
that matter as ‘signature moments’. “Signature moments are those opportunities for differentiation in the
journey where you can go beyond seamless and frictionless to identify the real moments of truth that
can dictate the whole experience,” says Chicha.

Customer journey mapping can help inform an approach to identifying moments that matter.

47
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sjbrinker_martech-activity-6710908160690982912-XVA0
48
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/marketing-resources/micro-moments/winning-the-moments-that-matter-right-person/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 31

3.4.3 Personalisation – limits and potential

Adept use of data can inform useful approaches to personalisation which can serve to enhance CX and
drive business benefit. For example, McKinsey research has found that personalisation can reduce
acquisition costs by as much as 50% and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10–30%.49

Advanced segmentation techniques and the development of deeper customer understanding through
data can enable a more detailed approach to customising messaging and experiences for groups of
users but also increasingly make it possible to do this at scale. Machine learning and predictive
analytics can enable the identification of new customer segments and patterns, and the optimisation of
multiple assets in real time to improve results.

One example of this is the dynamic personalisation of content through the journey from top-of-funnel
advertising messaging and targeting through to content optimisation on landing pages and websites to
drive conversion, and the use of automation to personalise pricing, content and product
recommendation. As Ashley Friedlein, Founder of Econsultancy, noted in his article on marketing trends
from 2020 to 2030, ‘Personalisation 2.0’ will create simple, intuitive, and friction-free user experiences
that rely much more on capturing explicit preferences from customers, and that do not necessarily
require them to be personally identifiable.50

Although personalisation and machine learning can drive significant benefits in CX, there are also
watch-outs around scale. The more tightly defined the targeting and data that is used, the more likely
the number of customers being reached will decline. The balance here is to understand the trade-offs
between refinement and scale in order to enable true personalisation at scale.

3.4.4 Customer and data feedback loops

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates51

Establishing customer feedback loops can drive ongoing insight for the organisation that can and should
in turn support continual improvement and optimisation. Feedback can come via customer behaviour
and digital analytics, or from more direct methods including customer surveys, customer conversations
and reviews. Econsultancy’s Getting to Grips with Market Research and Insight Best Practice Guide
contains some excellent guidance on research methodologies, tools and techniques.

When establishing feedback loops in order to inform CX, it is important to define the methods by which
feedback will be secured as well as the way in which the feedback will be analysed and interpreted,
before establishing a clear process for execution to improve. Essentially the process is:

1. Define inputs (surveys, analytics, reviews) and the methodology for aggregating feedback.

2. Establish a clear process and responsibility for analysing the inputs and interpreting patterns and
meaning.

3. Create a well-understood process for accessing the insight, and then implementing improvements in
order to drive better CX.

It is important to understand that feedback can take many forms: it may be both positive and negative,
and it may include ideas and suggestions for improvements, as well as complaints or issues requiring
resolution. Processes need to be set up in ways that allow the brand to take action on any scenario, so
that customers feel that their feedback is important and addressed.

A simple way of summarising this process is the ACAF customer feedback loop:52

49
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/marketings-holy-grail-digital-personalization-at-
scale
50
https://econsultancy.com/ashley-friedlein-marketing-digital-trends-decade-2020-to-2030/
51
https://waracle.com/blog/mobile-app-optimisation/unhappy-customers-greatest-source-learning/
52
https://esgsuccess.com/pillar/customer-feedback-strategy-in-4-simple-steps/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 32

1. Ask for customer feedback. For example, this may be done via NPS or CSAT surveys.

2. Categorise the feedback. Pull customer feedback into one place in order to organise it in ways that
can reveal key themes or requests.

3. Act on the feedback. It is important to share feedback being received as well as to take and
demonstrate action in response.

4. Follow up with those customers that supplied feedback. Personalised thank you messages as
well as sharing reports and plans can help customers feel that their feedback was listened to.

Figure 11: The ACAF customer feedback loop

Source: Econsultancy

Taking account of customer feedback can not only improve wider CX, but, more specifically, can make
it easier for other customers to spend money (through better UX, for example), reduce churn (by
keeping valued customers), and also help turn existing customers into advocates which can support
further customer acquisition. Customer feedback can deliver direct benefit. Research by Bain & Co has
found that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.53

Using ratings and reviews

Customer reviews and ratings can help support a number of objectives relating to while providing an
easy way for customers and prospects to see what other existing customers think of a product or
service. High-quality ratings and reviews can support SEO (by building credible backlinks, earning
review snippets), support referral, demonstrate trust and good CX (if they are displayed on the company
website), and enhance clickthrough rates and retargeting.

Econsultancy’s Ratings and Reviews Best Practice Guide details four key ways in which teams can
leverage customer reviews:

1. Marketing: Alongside some of the benefits listed above, star ratings can be used in marketing
material to demonstrate value. An example would be using Trustpilot ratings; Gabriele Famous,
Chief Marketing and Brand Officer for Trustpilot, has said that 87% of consumers find ads that
feature the Trustpilot logo to be more trustworthy.54

53
https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers
54
https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 33

 2. To launch or improve products: Reviews can highlight issues with products early on, and give
valuable insight into use cases that can inform innovation or potential gaps in a product portfolio or
capability.

3. To improve experience and conversion: Feedback from reviews can be used to improve CX but
using reviews in the customer journey can also reassure customers and lead to improved
conversion (by as much as 150% according to Trustpilot55).

4. To create brand ambassadors: By identifying happy customers and making it easy for them to
share reviews, tips or other content, brands can effectively turn existing customers into advocates.

Using customer reviews

“Reviews can be a great source of insight. We pro-actively encourage them from our customers and we
share [both] positive and negative ones around the team in order to learn.”

— Lisa Hulme-Vickerstaff, Customer Insight Manager, Lowell Financial

Businesses can ask for reviews via a variety of channels, including in person (during the sale), in an
email, over the phone, through a text message, or on written material such as receipts and letters.
Some brands may find it valuable to incentivise reviews, but it is crucial to ensure that the reviews are
truthful, authentic and representative.

3.5 Evaluating and measuring CX

Real behaviour vs. claimed behaviour

When evaluating and measuring CX it can be useful to consider the differences between more
traditional forms of research (quantitative techniques such as surveys and qualitative techniques such
as focus groups), which are largely based on claimed behaviour, and digital analytics, which are largely
based on actual behaviour. Often a combination of both types of feedback can inform a more rounded
approach to CX evaluation.

Although market research can be effective in understanding customer groups, identifying high-level
ideas or gaps, digital analytics can reveal more about actual customer behaviour and the things that
customers are doing.

Real and claimed behaviour

“It’s important to combine a variety of inputs – from traditional brand health trackers, to qual and quant
research, to analytics and intelligence from social listening – in order to really understand customers.”

— Phill Palmer, VP Global Marketing, Access Intelligence

3.5.1 Inputs to inform CX strategy

There are various ways to inform CX strategy, some of which are listed below. These methodologies
and others are covered in more detail in Econsultancy’s Getting to Grips with Market Research and
Insight Best Practice Guide.

Examining existing quantitative data: Data drawn from analytics, social media listening and other
current customer data can be useful in informing customer knowledge, tracking current behaviours and
developing new hypotheses and ideas. When using existing data, however, note that it only represents

55
https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 34

 current or past data and not what is likely to happen in the future, which can potentially lead to over-
optimisation against current norms over bringing in new possibilities.

Conducting surveys: High-level and demographic surveys can still be useful in determining who
customers are, and this can often lead to some interesting discoveries. More focused surveys targeted
at specific groups of customers (for example, those that have just cancelled a service) can be useful for
getting the answers to particular questions and identifying longer term trends against key issues. An
especially useful approach to using surveys to test new features is to enlist a group of customers as
priority testers (a ‘pioneer group’ of customers), and then to release product features to the testing
group first in order to gain their feedback on the new elements.

Case study: Rapid customer surveys at Lowell Financial

Lowell Financial is a debt management business. In an interview for this report, Lisa Hulme-Vickerstaff,
Customer Insight Manager at Lowell Financial, spoke of how the business had set up an in-house
customer panel with 2,000 customers so that they could gain rapid feedback on multiple issues and
questions that were important to the business. As well as helping to develop insights into key customer
attitudes and questions, the panel could be used to gain feedback around the language that is being
used in communications and also creative treatments.

As an example of how the panel was deployed, the team sent out a survey designed to inform them on
how the company should communicate around Debt Awareness Week. The survey found that very few
people told anyone about the debt that they were in but that speaking to advisors at Lowell Financial had
helped their mental health. This insight informed the campaign and communication around this critical
time and ensured that it was aligned well with how customers think about this sensitive subject.

Carrying out qualitative research: The kinds of inputs obtained via customer interviews or focus
groups can be excellent at developing a fuller understanding around customer needs or specific issues.
They can also be helpful in informing both higher level questions around brand and positioning as well
as specific questions around language. Qualitative inputs can be useful to help understand the ‘why’
and ‘how’ behind the ‘what’, which may be surfaced by quantitative research. However, it must be noted
that qualitative inputs are based on claimed behaviour and there is the risk that the inputs of a few
individuals or small groups are not representative of a wider audience.

A/B testing: Interviewees for this report stressed the need for frequent rather than episodic testing, and
the opportunities around creating a culture of test-and-learn. The key benefits around A/B testing are
being able to derive rapid feedback and insight in a measurable way, the ability to run experiments and
test new ideas, and also to measure behaviour change.

For example, Octopus Energy’s Head of Digital Max McShane described how the business creates
‘safe to fail’ environments that enable staff to test and learn. In CRM, this means sending a test
message first to 100 people, tweaking it based on feedback and analytics, and then sending it to 1,000
customers, before tweaking it again and sending it to the rest of the customer segment. The potential
watch-outs for A/B testing are over-optimisation, the risk of undervaluing more qualitative inputs, and
the degree of resource needed to do testing at scale.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 35

 Table 1: Benefits and watch-outs for key data inputs around CX
Inputs Benefits Watch-outs

Existing quantitative Good for customer behaviour insights, Based on current or past behaviour,
data/analytics market sizing, tracking trends, dependent on questionnaire design
identifying pain points, generating ideas
to test

Surveys Useful for profiling customers, customer Based on claimed behaviour rather than
insight and feedback, trends real behaviour, need to ensure that it is
representative

Qualitative Informing understanding around Based on claimed behaviour from a small

customer needs, usability, and group of customers, can be expensive
generating ideas and time consuming

A/B testing Rapid feedback based on real Over-optimisation, undervaluing

behaviour, very measurable qualitative inputs, large list size and
resource required

Source: Econsultancy

3.5.2 Using focused metrics

There are a plethora of metrics that can be used to measure CX and it is important for organisations to
select the ones that are most meaningful for them. This selection might be informed by organisational
and marketing strategy, a desire to optimise or improve particular aspects of CX, or the measures that
can best ensure an integrated approach to CX. It can be helpful for teams to measure a small selection
of focused metrics that can ladder up to a more over-arching measure.

For Phill Palmer, VP of Global Marketing at Access Intelligence, the key metric that the company
considers for its B2B marketing is retention rate, which enables it to focus on customer delight and build
a long-term foundation for growth. A tight selection of other KPIs and metrics relating to retention are
tracked in order to identify specific options for optimisation or improvement.

Max McShane, Head of Digital at Octopus Energy, talked about how the energy company uses a simple
‘customer happiness index’. After every interaction, customers can rate the experience using a happy,
neutral or sad face. If a customer gives a neutral or sad face in the feedback, a member of staff follows
up to understand what can be improved. Over 90% of the feedback that the company gets is
accompanied by happy faces.

Netflix’s former VP of Product Gibson Biddle described a formula that the streaming service used to
balance spend on retention.56 The company believed that it was right to spend up to twice the lifetime
value of a customer in keeping them on the service, based on the logic that this spend would not only
contribute towards delighting and retaining a customer but also that their advocacy about the service
would bring in at least one other customer for free. This ‘2 x word-of-mouth’ formula helped the product
leaders to focus on customer delight.

When developing a measurement plan for CX, it is important to align metrics with CX objectives.
Econsultancy’s Fundamentals of Marketing Measurement and Analytics Best Practice Guide notes how
a good measurement plan is essentially a hierarchical definition of the layers of data that may be
available for analysis. For CX, therefore, it is important to place business objectives at the top of the
pyramid and then to identify the customer-focused KPIs, targets or benchmarks that are in turn fed by
specific data metrics.

56
https://gibsonbiddle.medium.com/customer-obsession-8f1689df60ad

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 36

 Figure 12: Example of data layers

Source: Econsultancy

This approach helps practitioners consider the relationship between the metrics that may be available to
them in CX, with specific KPIs and objectives that set direction but also align key measures.

The watch-out with using a single overarching metric is the risks associated with an over-reliance on
that metric, as expressed through Goodhart’s law which states: “When a measure becomes a target, it
ceases to be a good measure.”57

In other words, when one specific goal is set, people may tend to optimise for that objective regardless
of the consequences. This leads to problems when other equally important aspects of a situation are
neglected. It is important therefore not to obsess over just one measure in CX, but rather to take into
account a wider set of metrics and to understand the relationship that they have with the higher
measure.

3.5.3 Approaches to measuring CX

Econsultancy’s Fundamentals of Marketing Measurement and Analytics Best Practice Guide identifies
two essential approaches to measurement which are applicable to evaluating and analysing CX: a
hierarchical measurement plan and a funnel-based measurement plan.

A hierarchical measurement plan

This traditional approach to measurement builds on the data layer model in Section 3.5.2 and sets out a
top-down structure of business objectives, with a small selection of key KPIs underneath, and a slightly
larger number of metrics that feed into those KPIs. The metrics inform what data needs to be collected,
and about which customers, as well as the KPIs indicate progress and performance against targets,
which in turn support the achievement of key objectives. This approach has been championed by
Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google.58

57
https://towardsdatascience.com/unintended-consequences-and-goodharts-law-68d60a94705c
58
https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 37

Figure 13: An example of a hierarchical measurement plan

Source: Econsultancy

Higher level measures may include NPS, customer satisfaction scores (discussed in Section 3.5.4) and
business measures like sales. A number of other measures may feed into these higher level ones
including retention rate, completion rates, cancellation rates, journey analytics and customer churn rate.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 38

As an example, customer churn rate can be calculated by dividing the number of customers lost over a
specific timeframe or journey by the total number of customers that began the process.

Figure 14: Example of customer churn rate calculation

Source: Econsultancy

Other measures may include customer effort scores (asking customers to rate “How easy is it to do
business with us?” on a score of 0–10), first contact resolution (the number of times a customer has to
contact a company to complete a task can affect perception) and sentiment analysis. Dashboarding can
be a useful way to track these measures in real time and enable staff to identify issues as early as
possible.

Funnel-based measurement plan

A funnel-based approach to measurement enables organisations that are heavily journey-focused to set
targets and identify opportunities for improving CX through the customer journey. There are some key
questions that can be set out at each stage of the journey, which may involve different functions within
the business, and different campaign types that can inform specific metrics.

Figure 15: Example funnel-based measurement plan

Source: Econsultancy

Funnel-based measurement approaches can be useful where there is a clear progression in the
journey, such as in lead nurturing for B2B where marketing leads then progress to sales.
Econsultancy’s Marketing Automation Best Practice Guide provides a deeper look at how different
metrics can be interlinked for the purposes of understanding ROI. A hierarchical measurement plan can
be useful in tracking a wider set of metrics that can be more specifically related to key business
objectives.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 39

3.5.4 Using NPS – benefits and drawbacks

The Net Promoter Score can be an extremely useful way to focus evaluation of customer experience on
one overarching measure. The score works by asking customers one simple question: “How likely is it
that you would recommend [Organisation X] to a friend or colleague?” Answers given are on a scale of
0 to 10 which is divided into three categories: ‘Detractors’ (scoring 0–6); ‘Passives’ (scoring 7–8); and
‘Promoters’ (scoring 9–10). There are some notable advantages and disadvantages of using NPS.

Advantages of NPS include:

● Simplicity: Since the survey is based on the one idea of whether customers like a brand or
organisation enough to recommend it, the measurement is easy to use and understand. NPS data
can be easily gathered through multiple touchpoints including email, websites and physical paper
surveys. The data is relatively quick and easy to gather, supporting higher participation rates.
● Language: Since the survey breaks customers down into three categories, it provides a common
way for the business to understand and compare different groupings of customers by their
satisfaction levels.
● Focus: The measure provides an integrated metric for customer experience which can apply to a
variety of different departments within the business. This means that NPS scores for individual
departments can be compared and also that the brand or company can have an overarching
measure of customer satisfaction, which can be useful for senior leaders while also providing a
focused goal for the business.
● Benchmarking: Since the measure is commonly used across all industries, it is possible to
benchmark NPS scores against sector norms or competitors, which can be beneficial.
● Business benefit: Multiple studies have concluded that there is a strong correlation between higher
NPS and revenue benefit.59 Companies that focus on NPS can be more effective in driving revenue.
One Forrester study found that implementing NPS resulted in increased income due to improved
customer experience as well as significant operational efficiencies.60

The potential disadvantages of NPS include:

● Simplicity: The fact that the survey is focused on one simple measure makes it easier to
benchmark but it also means that it is not specific enough to reveal areas for improvement in
customer experience. More detailed surveys conducted in addition to NPS would be needed for that
purpose.
● Actionable: Similarly, it is important that any issues that arise from NPS are actioned. The high-
level nature of the score can make it difficult to understand where action should be focused, but low
scores in NPS should be a cue to take action and map out a CX plan to improve the scores.
● Focus: As much as the focus that NPS provides can be an advantage, it can also potentially lead to
staff trying to artificially inflate NPS scores (perhaps by focusing surveys on known groups of
satisfied customers).
● Scope: NPS surveys work well when large numbers of customers are able to provide inputs. Where
an organisation has a small, limited number of customers (such as a B2B business which is heavily
reliant on a few large customers), it can be less useful.

When using NPS it is important to also look at other metrics that can inform the organisation’s
understanding around the scores. For example, Conor Hughes, Customer Manager at Nando’s,
discusses using a small basket of contributory measures (including Google and Facebook reviews and
ratings) to augment its understanding around NPS scores.

There are alternatives to NPS, including the CSAT (customer satisfaction) survey.61 CSAT and NPS
surveys measure different things. NPS measures the likelihood of customers recommending a brand or
a service and so is a good indicator of loyalty. CSAT surveys are arguably a better measure of

59
https://www.genroe.com/blog/net-promoter-score-success-stories-and-case-studies/984
60
https://www.medallia.com/resource/the-total-economic-impact-of-medallia-experience-cloud/
61
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/mp/customer-satisfaction-surveys/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 40

 customer service, and product/service experience in particular, since they can incorporate more specific
questions.

Best practice in constructing useful CSAT surveys include combining open and closed questions, being
specific and unambiguous in the questions asked, keeping the survey short and being consistent with
any rating scales that are being used. It can also be useful to include an option to follow up, since this
can allow for further questions to be asked of specific groups of customers.

3.5.5 Deploying a ‘fitness function’

As mentioned in Section 3.1.1 of this report, Amazon has used a ‘fitness function’ to ensure that the
small, cross-functional teams in their business are clearly aligned around a single key metric that can
bring benefit not only to the business but also ensure positive customer outcomes. The senior team in
Amazon can establish fitness functions for each team and, once they are set, the team focuses on
optimising outcomes against this overarching measure.

Author and former Amazon employee Jason Crawford has discussed how the fitness function may
sometimes be an actual P&L.62 Crawford gave the example of the search engine marketing team being
targeted using the contribution profit from the sales that were driven through paid search minus the cost
of advertising. In other cases, the metric may be focused on efficiencies that can bring business and
customer benefit. An example of this might be a measure of the efficiency of picking, packing and
sorting for a team building fulfilment centre.

Amazon has used fitness functions for many years and although it has been noted that this terminology
is no longer commonplace in the business,63 teams are still very focused on accountable metrics to
measure success and there are some highly applicable principles from the idea. Enabling a team to
define the approved metric by which their performance will be measured is a useful way of driving
alignment and accountability.

However, it is important to note that accountable metrics will be easier to define in some tasks or
outcomes than others (for example, where the outcomes of a team’s work can be measured by tangible
customer interactions). Where a team is doing work that has less tangible or directly and immediately
attributable outcomes, such as brand building work, it may be harder to narrow to a single metric.
Where a team can define an overarching measure, they may want to consider a simple equation-based
metric (an example of this might be an email marketing team using open rate multiplied by average
order value generated by the emails).

Measuring a small basket of metrics that ladder up to the overarching measure, so that specific
challenges and opportunities for optimisation can then be easily identified, is also likely to be useful.

3.6 A framework for implementing and optimising CX

3.6.1 Creating an action plan for improving CX

In his book Mastering Customer Value Management,64 Ray Kordupleski discusses the value of
supplementing NPS scores with intelligence gained from supplementary questions. A few extra
questions, he says, can be useful in providing guidance on the why and the how to improve. Once this
data has been gathered, the company can determine the product, service and/or price issues that need
to be worked on and set this out in an action planning tree.

The action planning tree is a useful tool since it sets out at a high level the relationship between
different factors that may be influencing customer satisfaction, breaking them down into successively
more focused attributes that can lead to specific remedial actions to improve CX.

62
https://jasoncrawford.org/two-pizza-teams
63
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-team-performance-metric-or-%E2%80%9Cfitness-function-%E2%80%9D-which-
translates-the-business-value-of-the-team-into-a-single-number-needs-to-be-approved-by-Jeff-Bezos-work-at-Amazon-Is-it-still-
being-used-How-do-teams-come-up-with-their-functions
64
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8059877-mastering-customer-value-management

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 41

 For example, the product or service quality may be affected by a number of different factors including
how customers are able to optimise their use of a service through customer support or customer
success, or how easy a product is to use. Mapping out all the variables that might have an impact on
CX can enable a brand to identify specific actions that need to be taken or to understand where they
need to focus research or testing in order to improve specific aspects of CX.

3.6.2 A maturity model for data and CX

Taking account of all the research inputs, it is possible to compile a maturity model for data and CX
based on three key stages of advancement.

Table 2: A maturity model for CX data, technology and channel integration

Basic Enabled Advanced

Data and Siloed technology and data Joined-up data and tech Advanced segmentation models
technology sources which are not stack and a single and cross-device targeting,
joined up; customer profile customer view. Use of cross-platform data integration,
is fragmented; basic level profiling, remarketing and and ID linking enabling
targeting, mainly separated lookalike audiences, cross- seamless omnichannel. First
by channel; isolated channel interaction data and second party data used for
approaches. and targeting is integrated custom segments and
but may not be truly personalisation at scale.
actionable or real-time Customer data is free-flowing
and actionable in real-time

Personalisation Point solutions for Partial integration of Highly individualised

maturity personalisation technology, personalisation technology, personalisation, algorithms
available in limited execution is cross-channel using different modelling
individual channels. with some proactive techniques for real-time
Execution and decisioning personalisation, statistical decisioning and optimisation,
is opinion or basic rules- modelling, next best action. wide deployment of machine
based, restricted and learning, joined-up and
channel specific. seamless experience with data-
driven and customer-centric
approaches throughout the
business

Campaign Channel-based planning, Good variation of content Joined up and seamless

planning and focused on products, based on segments or experience. Universally
execution fragmented customer personas, a more customer-centric, joined-up CX,
experience which is not consistent experience integrated data-driven planning
joined-up, basic which is channel and and approaches, highly
segmentation and delivery, customer-centric, data- personalised content optimised
campaign rules driven planning across to channel but consistent to
determining next some channels, offers brand, orchestrated decisioning
interaction, content not which are specific to delivering the right message at
entirely consistent across segments, some the right time over the right
channels integration of messaging channel

Testing, Limited test-and-learn and Fully programmatic buying, Highly automated and
automation and content optimisation, with some dynamic content sophisticated workflows
optimisation automated trading/bidding and ads optimisation, and designed to optimise content,
but not much dynamic automated delivery of bidding and targeting against
content optimisation content clear outcomes, human layer of
interpretation and strategy

Source: Neil Perkin

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 42

4. Resourcing and Ownership
of CX
4.1 Who owns CX?
It is clear from the interviews and research conducted for this report that there is no one approach to
allocating ownership for CX within the organisation. The trend towards more organisations appointing
chief customer officers was noted in previous editions of Econsultancy’s Organisational Structures and
Resourcing Best Practice Guide, which cite a 2014 study by the Chief Customer Officer Council. It
found that, at that point, 22% of Fortune 100 companies had adopted CCO roles.

At the time, Econsultancy Founder Ashley Friedlein speculated about what a company structure might
look like if one were to start from a blank sheet of paper and an intention to be customer centric and
have digital fully integrated.65 This design brought together key areas of CX under one ‘customer
director’.

The CCO is often a board-level role designed to bring together all customer-focused initiatives and
areas of the business under one person so that customer strategy and activities may be unified.
Although a number of businesses (notably in service-based industries including finance and utilities)
have adopted this approach, the CCO role is far from universal and it is clear from the research that
organisations can take different approaches to owning CX, ranging from bringing it together under a
CMO role to having different customer-facing functions reporting in to different areas (marketing,
operations and so on).

The advantages of having a CCO role is the ability to represent the voice of the customer at the most
senior levels within the organisation, and to bring together all elements of CX under one reporting line
which can support better integration and coordination. The potential disadvantages may come from the
broad scope that a CCO remit will cover, and risk of undervaluing the important operational and
functional specialisms that can come from more individually focused reporting lines.

CX in the organisation

“CX used to be a CMO imperative but now it’s dominating board room conversations.”

— Raina Purba and Bastien Chicha, Managing Consultants, Brand & Experience, Capgemini

Speaking at the Festival of Marketing, Roy Capon, CEO at Zone (who was also interviewed for this
report), noted how great CX brings together a blend of experience, data, technology and creativity and
so requires great leadership, but that it also needs good coordination across multiple areas. Based on
findings from the Zone CX50 report produced in association with Marketing Week,66 Capon notes how
organisations that have responded well to the challenges brought by the pandemic have driven
efficiencies and productivity by giving their employees improved access to the tools and technologies
that they need in order to do their jobs well from home.

According to the report, CX leading organisations “recognise the need for collaboration across all parts
of the business – from technology to data to marketing to HR and everything in between – to get a
better view of the customer and enable an even better customer experience”.67

65
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66
https://www.zonedigital.com/latest/cx50-2021
67
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Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 43

 Capon emphasised the importance of technology in enabling great CX as well being focused on
simplicity and horizontal collaboration across functions in order to bring it to life.

Many interviewees for this report emphasised the importance of having a customer-obsessed mindset.
In this sense, ownership sits not only with leaders but also with practitioners throughout the business
and particularly with customer-facing teams like marketing and customer service. As Max McShane,
Head of Digital at Octopus Energy, noted, everyone in the company has a role to play in supporting
exceptional CX.

4.2 The need for horizontal collaboration, autonomy and

empowerment
Interviewees for this report also emphasised the requirement for organisations to work cross-
functionally in order to create great CX. There will likely be multiple functions within a business that may
touch the customer in some way, from product and marketing teams, to customer service and success
teams. Creating forums and processes to bring these different functions together around customer-
focused goals is essential to creating that joined-up CX. One way of achieving this would be to bring
together all customer facing teams when doing customer journey mapping as a way to ensure that all
parts of the journey are represented and that a connected and aligned approach to optimisation can be
taken.

It was noted that when touchpoints or customer data is dealt with across different areas of a business, it
can be difficult to join up customer journeys in seamless ways. One example of this in practice is when
customer service representatives need to pass customers on to other departments to deal with their
enquiry, in cases where the responsibility is held in a different part of the business.

In her article on the future of CX, Emma Robertson notes how reliant this future is on what is done
operationally within the organisation, rather than just what the customer sees on the outside.68 All the
experiences that companies deliver, Robertson says, must be aligned and centred around the
customer, and while every formula for doing this is different, there are some common themes for
success:

● Uniqueness – amplifying what makes you different, not imitating competitors

● Being balanced – keeping ratios in check and avoiding one element sucking up resource to the
detriment of the whole
● Being connected – being considered, planned and managed as an ecosystem.

In order to generate improved experiences, teams need to be empowered through process and
technology. At Octopus Energy, Max McShane says, everyone in the business takes ownership for
customer service and queries. This is enabled through its technology platform (discussed in Section
3.4.1), which brings all customer data into one place and which everyone has access to. This
empowerment of employees enables all members of staff to potentially solve customer problems and
answer key questions, rather than requiring customers to be passed around between multiple
departments.

McShane also noted the importance of purpose and learning in supporting greater team empowerment.
The company has a strong, clear purpose: “We’re doing energy better – for you and for the
environment.”69 The simplicity of this purpose provides staff a good direction, helping them understand
the values that matter in decision making. Employees are then entrusted with greater autonomy, for
example, by not giving them a script when dealing with customer service enquiries.

As an example, when one member of the team wanted to send flowers to a customer after hearing that
a close relative was in the hospital. This kind gesture led to the establishment of a simple but structured

68
https://econsultancy.com/the-future-of-cx-is-what-the-customer-cant-see/
69
https://octopus.energy/about-us/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 44

 way that enables every team to do something similar, meaning that flowers are now sent out to
customers on a weekly basis.

Trust, notes McShane, starts with diversity and recruitment: “Diversity is like a dry-stone wall – you
need to find the right place to position your stone in the wall rather than chiselling away at it to try and
make it fit.”

Learning is also prioritised at Octopus Energy. In the early days of the business, every employee was
allocated a £1,500 budget they were allowed to use to learn something new that would benefit the
business. Now there is no cap; employees are granted budget for learning and can choose relevant
skills to improve without trying to keep costs below £1,500. This has opened up more opportunities for
employees, says McShane.

A number of other interviewees emphasised the need for teams to continually learn from customer
feedback and then to make that learning actionable. These inputs can come from data, analytics,
research and feedback, as well as from colleagues across other disciplines that may be handling other
touchpoints and seeing similar or different patterns.

Learning in CX

“Leaders in CX foster a culture of learning and provide an opportunity for staff to embed, share and
action their learning, promoting the need for each employee to be accountable in this area.”

— Ritchie Mehta, CEO, School of Marketing

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 45

5. Trends in CX
5.1 The future of CX
Interviewees for this report highlighted a number of areas that will be significant to the future of CX
implementation. The most notable of these are the ability of companies to adapt the ‘new normal’ post-
pandemic; to accommodate customer concerns around sustainability, diversity and ethics; and the
application of rapidly improving technologies such as AI and augmented reality in ways that support
customer outcomes.

As discussed at the start of this report, the pandemic has changed a number of critical dynamics around
customer behaviour and expectation, with more people using digital services than ever and a higher
level of expectation around service delivery and speed of response. Over the pandemic, companies
have also learnt about the importance of authenticity and clear communication and prioritisation in the
midst of uncertainty.

In an article for Econsultancy, Clearleft Founder Andy Budd described how in the early days of the
pandemic, CX teams needed to be responsive to customer needs at that time: “This led to the
secession of most marketing messages, in favour of real human-to-human communications. This
involved showing vulnerability, sharing uncertainty, and being honest about what was going on.”70

The shift in consumer behaviour to online channels, mentioned at the start of this report, is opening up
new opportunities for companies to respond to customer needs in different ways. Econsultancy’s Social
Customer Experience and Customer Service Best Practice Guide highlighted the growing importance
that social channels have in CX. Research conducted by Boston Consulting in 2020 found that over
80% of people are likely to look at a company’s social media when researching a product or service.71

New channels and services are opening up to help businesses improve their CX. The WhatsApp
Business API, introduced in early 2021, makes it far easier for larger businesses to utilise WhatsApp for
customer services issues including billing enquiries, urgent customer queries, two-way customer
surveys and even product updates.

As the environment in which CX operates continues to be highly unpredictable, it will be even more
important for teams to be sensitive to changing customer questions and contexts, and to be able to
respond rapidly to needs. This is critical given how customer expectation continues to evolve. Azlan
Raj, Chief Marketing Officer at Merkle EMEA, said in an article for Econsultancy:72 “Consumer patience
will continue to reduce, while their expectations will grow even higher.”

This, in a nutshell, describes the ongoing challenge and opportunity for companies in CX – the ability to
maintain exceptional levels of customer service and experience through the adept use of technology
combined with a customer-focused mindset and efficient workflows and workforce collaboration. Going
forward, this will only become more significant.

5.2 The key technologies driving the future

It is likely that there will be a number of critical technologies, from virtual reality to distributed ledger
technology, that will have an impact the longer term future of CX. There are, however, two key
technologies that are already dramatically changing approaches to delivering enhanced experiences –
AI and automation, and augmented reality.

70
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71
https://lp.bostondigital.com/socialmediasurvey
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Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 46

5.2.1 Automation and AI

There is clearly a huge opportunity for automation and AI to continue to deliver an ever-expanding
range of benefits for CX implementation. Automation can augment significant efficiencies in workflow
and content delivery, while AI is creating new possibilities for customer engagement and service.

Although chatbots have been around for a number of years, they are now becoming increasingly
sophisticated through the application of natural language processing and AI. Chatbots can be useful not
only in dealing with customer queries in efficient ways, but also when applied to market research (using
online survey tools for example), and supporting internal staff needs (by answering HR or IT questions,
for example).

Econsultancy’s Marketer’s Guide to Chatbots provides some useful context for the different types of
applications, as well as best practice use cases and implementation. The report describes the main
three types of chatbot73 as:

1. Support chatbots: these typically cover one domain and can answer simple and repeatable
questions, requiring context awareness and also personality

2. Skills chatbots: these respond to single, functional queries and so do not require as much context

3. Assistant chatbots: these typically can respond to a wider variety of topics but in less detail.

Scripted bots are simpler, rules-based applications which follow a basic decision tree, whereas AI bots
are more sophisticated and require machine learning and natural language processing to work. In order
to optimise implementation, marketers need to consider how a chatbot will be deployed, based on
customer knowledge, and how it will be integrated into other CX elements and the journey.

As the application of machine learning and natural language processing becomes more sophisticated, it
is opening up new possibilities for serving customer needs in interesting ways. A good example of this
is Nestlé Toll House’s lifelike ‘AI Cookie Coach’ named Ruth, which can answer customer questions
about baking cookies on its ‘Very Best Baking’ site.74 The AI avatar can answer basic recipe and
ingredient questions and also offers helpful videos and other content.

Figure 16: Nestlé Toll House’s ‘AI Cookie Coach’ Ruth can answer baking queries

Source: Soul Machines

73
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74
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Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 47

 Case study: Expedia AI-powered virtual agent

The B2B arm of Expedia, called Expedia Partner Solutions, has launched a new AI-powered virtual
agent which is designed to quickly answer customer questions (for example, about check-in options) and
to enable them to make specific requests and also to manage or change their booking.75

Integrating the virtual agent into the online booking template ensures that it is as useful as possible for
customers. According to Expedia, 45% of customers have used the agent when looking to cancel or
make changes to their trip and another 20% have used it to view their online booking. This has freed up
time for human agents to handle more complex queries.

Machine learning is also integrated into the agent’s capabilities, enabling it to learn about past customer
behaviour and informing the solutions that it offers travellers.

AI is also empowering increasingly sophisticated methods of targeting and delivering messaging. Snack
brand Lay’s provides a good example of this with its ‘Messi Messages’ platform, which enabled football
fans to send personalised messages to their friends via an AI version of the famous footballer.76

5.2.2 Augmented reality

Augmented reality technology has been democratised by tools created by the big technology players
such as Google and Apple (which has created an AR Kit77). This has ensured the rapid expansion of AR
applications, which are now integrated into many apps and services as a way to bring products and
services to life and enhance CX.

For example, ASOS has integrated AR technology into its app which lets customers view items on a
model before they buy. Accessible via the app and using the camera on a customer’s phone, the model
appears in situ wearing the clothing, helping the customer to imagine what the items will look like when
being worn.

Case study: Lowes4Pros JobSIGHT

In the US, the home improvement store Lowe’s has created an augmented video chat tool called
Lowes4Pros JobSIGHT, which is designed to enable repair and home improvement professionals to
‘visit’ homeowners remotely and support them in making simple repairs themselves.78 Lowe’s launched
the new service initially to loyalty programme members.

75
https://www.expediagroup.com/media/media-details/2021/Expedia-Partner-Solutions-launches-AI-powered--virtual-agent-for-
partners-and-travelers/default.aspx
76
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77
https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/
78
https://www.lowesforpros.com/l/pro-loyalty-learn-more.html

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 48

Case study: Lowes4Pros JobSIGHT

Figure 17: Lowes4Pros JobSIGHT lets professionals remotely ‘visit’ homeowners and help them
with simple repairs

Source: Lowe’s

The service also enables tradespeople to access an augmented reality view of the customer’s problem,
offering an on-screen laser pointer and quick draw facility which can be used to provide the customer
with simple tips, advice and support. After the intervention, a summary video and images are provided to
Lowe’s staff who are made available for any follow-up questions.

The opportunity for AR technology is to bring to life key moments of the customer journey through
support, product visualisation and usage. As AR becomes even more democratised and easy to apply,
it will become an increasingly ubiquitous feature in many journeys.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 49

6. Conclusion
This report has discussed all the critical elements that are necessary for creating exceptional customer
experience. It is clear that great CX can drive competitive advantage and have a direct impact on the
bottom line, but it is necessary to take a holistic view in order to ensure an integrated and joined-up
approach.

Feedback from the interviews conducted for this report demonstrated the importance of making
customer-centric approaches (and a customer-obsessed mindset) part of the DNA of the organisation.
Bringing together elements of brand experience and employee experience can enhance the
implementation of best-in-class customer experience.

Conor Hughes, Customer Manager at Nando’s, describes the importance of the brand experience and
the ‘theatre’ of Nando’s (artefacts of how the restaurants are set up, elements of the experience like
refillable drinks, brand values and storytelling) but also notes the employee experience, the importance
of recruitment and training and how customer satisfaction is driven by the values that the staff
represent.

Ultimately, great CX comes from bringing together exceptional understanding of the needs of
customers, the ability to execute and delight customers, and a consistent and powerful brand
experience, which are all brought to life by happy, engaged employees.

Figure 18: BX/EX/CX

Source: Econsultancy

Customer experience strategy is a long-term play that requires investment, resourcing, collaboration
and continuous improvement and optimisation.

The CX scorecard

Econsultancy has created an assessment and evaluation tool that pulls together the findings from this
report and provides a scorecard for practitioners to assess their CX capability and identify areas for
improvement. The scorecard sets out some key areas of capability for the organisation, and also some
critical areas of execution for customers.

In order to use the scorecard, consider each area in turn, and answer each question within each of
those areas. Score your capability and execution against each question with a score out of 10. Average
out the four scores within each area to get an overall score for the essential elements of CX. These
scores can be used to identify gaps in capability and execution, and to inform a strategy for improving
CX, which can in turn inform an action plan and goal setting.

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 50

Figure 19: The Econsultancy CX scorecard

Source: Econsultancy

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 51

7. Further Reading
7.1 Econsultancy reports
Econsultancy | 2021 Digital Trends report in partnership with Adobe
https://econsultancy.com/reports/2021-digital-trends-report/

Econsultancy | Product Strategy and Marketing Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/product-strategy-and-marketing-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Customer Journey Mapping Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/customer-journey-mapping-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Segmentations and Personas Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/segmentations-and-personas-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Fundamentals of Marketing Measurement and Analytics

https://econsultancy.com/reports/the-fundamentals-of-marketing-measurement-and-analytics/

Econsultancy | Marketing Automation Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/marketing-automation-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Organisational Structures and Resourcing Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/organisational-structures-and-resourcing-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Content Strategy Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/content-strategy-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Reviews and Ratings Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/ratings-and-reviews-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | AI, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/ai-machine-learning-and-predictive-analytics-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Customer Data Platforms Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/customer-data-platforms-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Neurodiversity and Digital Inclusion Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/neurodiversity-and-digital-inclusion/

Econsultancy | A Marketer’s Guide to Chatbots

https://econsultancy.com/reports/a-marketers-guide-to-chatbots/

Econsultancy | Getting to Grips with Market Research and Insight Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/getting-to-grips-with-market-research-and-insight-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Agility and Innovation Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/digital-transformation-agility-and-innovation-best-practice-guide/

Econsultancy | Ecommerce Trends

https://econsultancy.com/reports/ecommerce-trends/

Econsultancy | User Experience and Interaction Design Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/user-experience-and-interaction-design-for-mobile-and-web/

Econsultancy | Brand Purpose Best Practice Guide

https://econsultancy.com/reports/brand-purpose/

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 52

 Econsultancy | Learning from Disruptors Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/learning-from-digital-disruptors-best-practice-guide/

7.2 Econsultancy articles

Econsultancy | Virgin Atlantic CX/EX Double Helix
https://econsultancy.com/virgin-atlantics-siobhan-fitzpatrick-on-the-double-helix-of-cx-and-ex/

Econsultancy | CX challenge demands clear leadership

https://econsultancy.com/the-customer-experience-challenge-demands-clear-leadership/

Econsultancy | The future of CX is what the customer can’t see

https://econsultancy.com/the-future-of-cx-is-what-the-customer-cant-see/

7.3 Articles
HBR | The Experience Economy – Gilmore and Pine
https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy

Ofcom | Online Nation report 2021

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/internet-and-on-demand-research/online-nation

US Department of Commerce | Online sales

https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf

McKinsey | Elevating customer experience excellent in the next normal

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/elevating-customer-experience-
excellence-in-the-next-normal

Onfido | Orange Flex case study

https://onfido.com/resources/case-studies/orange-flex-case-study

Orange | Flex case study

https://inform.tmforum.org/casestudy/orange-poland-uber-izes-telecom-with-orange-flex/

Zendesk | Why Companies Should Invest in Customer Experience

https://www.zendesk.co.uk/blog/why-companies-should-invest-in-the-customer-experience/

Amazon | Mission Statement

https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/uk-investment/our-mission

The Guardian | Amazon’s two-pizza team

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-two-pizza-rule-and-the-secret-of-amazons-
success

Jason Crawford | Two-pizza teams and fitness functions

https://jasoncrawford.org/two-pizza-teams

Quora answer on fitness functions

https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-team-performance-metric-or-%E2%80%9Cfitness-function-
%E2%80%9D-which-translates-the-business-value-of-the-team-into-a-single-number-needs-to-be-
approved-by-Jeff-Bezos-work-at-Amazon-Is-it-still-being-used-How-do-teams-come-up-with-their-
functions

Inc. | Amazon Empty Chair

https://www.inc.com/john-koetsier/why-every-amazon-meeting-has-at-least-one-empty-chair.html

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 53

Gibson Biddle | Netflix’s Customer Obsession
https://gibsonbiddle.medium.com/customer-obsession-8f1689df60ad

Genesys | Definition of omnichannel CX

https://www.genesys.com/definitions/what-is-omnichannel-customer-experience

Disney | My Disney Experience

https://www.disneyworld.co.uk/plan/my-disney-experience/

Inviqa | Disney’s omnichannel experience

https://inviqa.com/blog/magic-disneys-omnichannel-experience

Medallia | Economic benefit of NPS

https://www.medallia.com/resource/the-total-economic-impact-of-medallia-experience-cloud/

Genroe | Correlation between NPS and improved revenue

https://www.genroe.com/blog/net-promoter-score-success-stories-and-case-studies/984

SurveyMonkey | Customer satisfaction surveys best practice

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/mp/customer-satisfaction-surveys/

Zone | CX50 report with Marketing Week

https://www.zonedigital.com/latest/cx50-2021

Octopus Energy | Mission

https://octopus.energy/about-us/

Forbes | Nordstrom Reserve and Try-on service

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelarthur/2017/08/24/nordstrom-tech-customer-experience-
convenience/#7a790fc9531d

Waracle | Bill Gates on unhappy customers

https://waracle.com/blog/mobile-app-optimisation/unhappy-customers-greatest-source-learning/

HBR | The Value of Keeping Customers

https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers

ESG | ACAF customer feedback loop

https://esgsuccess.com/pillar/customer-feedback-strategy-in-4-simple-steps/

CDP Institute | CDP Basics

https://www.cdpinstitute.org/cdp-basics

Apple | AR Kit
https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/

Content Marketing Institute | Cisco product to audience first

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/09/martech-creative-content/

Review 42 | Customer Retention statistics

https://review42.com/resources/customer-retention-statistics/%20

W3C | Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Accenture | To Affinity and Beyond

https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Thought-Leadership-Assets/PDF/Accenture-CompetitiveAgility-
GCPR-POV.pdf#zoom=50

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 54

7.4 Books
Ray Kordupleski, Janice Simpson | Mastering Customer Value
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8059877-mastering-customer-value-management

Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide 55

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