How to scale CX

Delivering business results from CX is generally a 5-step process:

1. Build your strategy around the customer and align the business on this
2. Understand where you’re at … yes really understand what’s good and not so good
3. Create a roadmap of activity that moves you from A to B
4. Identify the priority improvements, redesign the experience and then test and learn how you’re doing
5. Scale that redesigned experience and then adopt it across the organisation

The challenge is that the material business results only arrive at step 5. You can have an awesome strategy and roadmap and have proven CX practices but if the organisation hasn’t adopted them, then the results don’t flow. The customer’s experience hasn’t changed. And your employees are frustrated.

So how do you scale CX?

You have to change behaviours. How do you get all of the people across your organisation that are currently behaving their way, to change and start behaving the way you want?

We know from our personal lives that behaviour change is hard…….think lapsed gym memberships.

Think of the traditional ways organisations tackle this; top down ‘tell’ communication or perhaps a centrally designed course or maybe a policy emailed to all. I always remember the IT policies I was asked to sign, “Thou shall not ….”. Was this effective?

No. I scanned it speedily, signed it, got on with my day job & promptly forgot all about it.

So why didn’t it work? Why didn’t it change my behaviour?

Tech can really help with this scaling. We can reach the entire organisation & do so in a consistent way. However, employing the right tech to support behaviour change is key. At TribeCX we believe there are 3 keys areas to focus on –

• Behaviour blockers
• Continuous engagement
• Releasing the potential of your experts

Behaviour blockers

According to behavioural science, there are 3 main blockers to behaviour change –

1. Capability​ – having the right knowledge and skills
2. Opportunity​ – having the right resources at the right time
3. Motivation​ – wanting to perform the desired behaviours

Implementing technology that can help tackle each of these blockers is critical. Without addressing these, individuals do not change.

For ​capability​ blockers, your tech needs to support the building knowledge and skills. This can be achieved through-

1. Learning, both formal & informal
2. Step-by-step guides
3. Video tutorials
4. Tips, tricks, hacks, articles and infographics
5. Expert testimonials and coaching

For ​opportunity ​blockers you need to ensure people can access the right resource at the point of need. This is enabled with a thoughtful content strategy –  

1. Bite-size knowledge consumption at the point of need
2. Tagging, content naming strategy, descriptions to aid search and discovery
3. Content in a format that the audience wants to consume, not in the way that’s easy for the author to create
4. Timely content publishing

For ​motivation​ blockers you need to change mindsets. This can be achieved with well targeted tools & content –

1. Stakeholders and influencers, e.g. videos from key people
2. Success stories
3. Incentives and recognition schemes
4. Manager/leadership advocacy

Remember it’s unusual to be as simple as one blocker … there are always several things that together need to be done.

Continuous engagement

Changing behaviours isn’t a one-off job. It’s an ongoing activity that takes time and effort. Easy to say but what does this look like in practise?

At TribeCX we believe in building online communities aligned to your customer journeys & proactively engaging employees working in those journeys. Users will not engage if the messaging & content isn’t relevant to them, so make sure communities are small enough to be relevant and large enough to reach critical mass.

Engagement doesn’t just magically happen, you’ll need to allocate resource to support it &, with help from the right tech, measure what works & what doesn’t.

Releasing the potential of your silent experts

All organisations have experts doing fantastic things every day. Imagine the impact of being able to tap into that expertise and empower all of those experts to share what they’re doing right across the business. Without the right environment you’ll never release that potential.

Julian Stodd of Sea Salt Learning has studied this space & recommends focussing on 3 areas to create the right environment –

1. Give people the means, permission & support to create their own communities
2. Worry less about what they may do wrong and more about how you intend to listen to what they do right
3. Consider the potential points of tension and try to proactively consider how you will handle challenges whilst avoiding imposing formal control

Fostering the right culture to support this environment is more important than the tech foundations it runs on. Start with the how … not the tech.