Delivering a Great Customer Experience: It's About Listening

“Shock and surprise me,” was the advice we recently heard from a client when embarking on their first customer advisory board meeting. These words capture the incredible pressure companies feel in trying to build effective, remarkable customer experiences with the c-suite.

Knowing that the bar of ‘shock and surprise me’ was a difficult one to hit, we spoke with other Board members to gain a deeper understanding of how they measured success and — not surprisingly — they were looking for action not shock and awe.

They were looking for the following:

Lessons Learned. 

We all learn from our mistakes, but executives consistently asked to hear about failures.  Not the cost of the failure but why it failed, what were the organizational challenges, where it failed, and what changes were now in place to avoid future failure.

Action Taken by the Vendor Organization. 

Consistently listening and taking action on advice is the number one recommendation from Board members. One executive said, "If the meeting is exciting and I never see action taken on our advice... it feels like I wasted my time".

Use Cases. 

While this may seem like a no-brainer, we were surprised that many are interested in how to build and sell the case internally.  ‘It’s less about the content and more about the development,’ explained one CDO. Successful approaches and techniques that worked elsewhere are great fodder for illustrating this point.

What we like best from the above list is that  any organization—large or small— can achieve them. As we begin another year, we look forward to helping companies build remarkable client experiences by taking action.