Industry

Steve Jobs previously said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around”. I could not agree more!

Too often we focus on simply getting the task done and we avoid putting ourselves in the shoes of our clients to truly understand what solutions the business should be providing.

To apply experience design, there’s a process involved and elements you need to consider:

1. Research: Conducting studies, interviews, and observations to determine problem and cause. Ask questions and listen!
2. Analyse: Review findings and re-define the problem. Sometimes step one can reveal that the problem you thought you had initially is far bigger than you anticipated.
3. Ideate/ Prototype: Create ideas to solve the problem.
4. Prototype/ Test: Put it to the test! Show your clients and take on feedback for the final solution.

The key takeaway I get from these steps is that it is vital to involve your clients in the process – this is type of design approach is referred to as ‘Human Centered Design’. We must involve our clients in designing their experiences to ensure we are providing them the right solution. You’d be very surprised how many of your clients would love to be involved in such initiatives.

It’s important to also recognize that not everyone knows where to start when it comes to this and if this is you, I encourage you to consider recruiting a person who has the experience (internally or externally) and is passionate about it.

Here’s a great example of the payoff this type of design process can achieve for your business:

If the hospital hadn’t have hired this professional, odds are they would never have thought to jump into a bed and take a walk (or lay) in the shoes of a patient. Very effective and the return on investment was profound.

As we Australians head into summer, I encourage you to take a walk to your local park sometime this week, sit in the sun and watch this TEDx talk by Evan Fried on your phone. It’s 8 minutes long and will open your mind to designing experiences that solve problems. Get some vitamin D and a better understanding on how to tackle the next stage of your CX journey!

What services or products are you cooking up for clients that might need the human touch first?

You’ve put your Customer Experience Strategy out into the atmosphere and now your team and your business have the foundations set and completed your first step in becoming a CX guru! 

What happens next? You deep dive into understanding your clients, using Voice of Customer (VOC), Customer Insights and Understanding.

Shifting your focus to understanding your clients is the best approach for enabling your team to gain a genuine understanding of who their audience is. When you know this, you can then start using this information to align your CX strategy and your CX delivery with your clients’ best interests. Calling all Accountants – Who doesn’t love making data-driven decisions, am I right?

There are two types of approaches that can be used to collect information:

• Quantitative 

• • • Relationship surveys
    • Touchpoint surveys
    • Focused surveys

• Qualitative 

• • Unsolicited customer feedback
  • Ethnographic research
  • Focus groups
  • Voice of employee – Don’t forget, employees are our clients too!

For example, Airport security collected data (quantitative) and conducted observations (qualitative) of passengers to identify that floppy-eared sniffer dogs were viewed as less intimidating to passengers and made the experience more enjoyable and people more cooperative, therefore in most cases, the dog that sniffs your bags prior to departure will most likely look like a dog you would want to cuddle.

How do we make sure we provide the “fluffy puppy” experience?

Whilst quantitative data collection enables you to make data-driven decisions, you must consider the fact that the surveys are created by you, and you decide what to ask – Before you send a survey, ask these questions:

• What are we trying to achieve – Is the survey going to bring value to the business? Or am I wasting clients time with a pointless survey?
• Are we asking the right questions? 
• Are we only asking what we think we need to ask and not what we should be asking?
• If we’re asking the wrong questions, is the data going to be accurate? 

As much as accountants thrive on data, it’s important when collecting it, that we get it right or the decisions we make based on the results will be misaligned. Data can be our friend or our foe, don’t rush the process and make surveys valuable!

Qualitative information is where you can start to build up client personas because everyone is different but is just as important as one another in the CX lifecycle. 

Client personas are fictional characters that represent the key characteristics of the main types of clients you will encounter through the business. It is an easy way of capturing your understanding of them and putting a personal touch on them.

For example, you might have a client that (for persona purposes) is called ‘John’. John is a 37-year-old business executive, who is a sole trustee of his own SMSF. When he comes in for his annual appointment with you (the accountant), you notice he drives a Tesla and always wears a handmade suit. John is sophisticated and is always short on time.

For someone like John, you would design your CX delivery based on your CX strategy and ensure it aligns with his persona.

Again, this can be your friend or your foe. Don’t ever simply create personas off the top of your head. Do your research and really get to know people. This will ensure your fictional characters accurately represent different pools of clients that do business with you and help you to design CX journeys for each type of client.

Your investment in research and data collection should be at the core of every decision you make, be it CX or otherwise. How are you going to adopt these approaches in your business today?

Last month, we worked on coming to terms with how clients truly perceive us, and we’ve got a pretty good understanding of what remarkable experiences are. The next question we need to ask ourselves is “What’s next?”.

Before we can steer the ship, we must first build the boat! This is where your Customer Experience Strategy comes into play. Call me a CX nerd, but I absolutely LOVE this part of the process as it’s where creative freedom is your friend and you start to bring CX to life.

The CXPA defines the CX strategy as “… our intended Customer Experience, how it links to our overall organisation strategy and objectives and how it aligns to our brand values and attributes.” This will build the foundations of your approach to customer experience and give your team direction.

We need to create our vision, values, and branding, centred around CX and aligned with the business direction. This will build a foundation for realistic expectations of experience for your staff and your clients.

For some inspiration, The Ritz Carlton Hotel penned their CX vision as “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen”. When I read this, I would assume that as a customer of the Ritz I could expect an experience of a glamorous standard, to be wined and dined. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hector Elizondo from ‘Pretty Woman’ was there, ready to teach me which fork goes first. I drew this conclusion from one sentence, powerful right?

Once you have your vision, you can build on this with values. These are generally short points outlining the core values that support your vision and sets a standard of what you might look for in potential applicants that join your team in future. For example, if I were tasked with writing the values that underpin The Ritz Carlton’s vision it would comprise of words such as:

• Opulence
• Exclusive
• Personal
• Refined

Now that you have your vision and values, we need to consider what implicit and explicit promises your business is making to the wider audience. Below are some questions to ask internally and externally – Remember, we can never assume we know the answer ourselves!

• What are our clients’ expectations of the experience we should be providing, based on the impression our brand portrays?
• What specific promises are we making? 
• Are our clients’ expectations of CX, and the promises we make around CX, align with our CX and business strategy?
  • Are they realistic expectations? 
  • How can we make sure we get this right from the very beginning of a client’s journey?

Now you are armed with this information, the boat won’t build itself! Block out some time to meet with your team and brainstorm how you could approach this.