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CX Day: Reasons for the CEO to be cheerful

By Mark Lancaster posted 09-30-2014 04:02 AM

  

I love the broad canvas of customer experience. Certainly I'm aware of customer experience a lot more because we're doing it in a delivery sense; through our organizational structure and shoulder to shoulder with other CXPA members we will always evangelize the virtues of improving the customer experience, until we are bluer in the face than when I did the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Customer experience means an awful lot to me. As the CEO of SDL, I'm always thinking about how I could improve the company and what we should be doing here and so I'm always thinking in those terms. Furthermore, I am always deconstructing every purchase, touch-point or opportunity that I have with other brands. Like those that see the good in everyone, I see the customer experience in the processes of every business.

If I am buying stuff on the Amazon website, for example, it is just very fast. You've got all the information you need; it's a closed loop experience so you can see what other people have bought, their reviews and recommendations. And there are still a lot of things they can do to make things better but easy to say, yet more difficult to do. 

If I pop on to some sort of website which doesn't have any of those capabilities, that's very unpleasant for me and more so for their website analytics as I bounce. That's a very difficult experience for me. I will move off a website if it's not giving me what I want and so I think discerning consumers are driving technological change and disrupting businesses.

Crucially, it is not just at the buying phase. I am certainly assisted in the purchase phase and decision making of products by exploring the technical documentation and instructions online ahead of purchase. I do this as a means of understanding what is required of me out of the box and to gauge the level and type of support I might get should the need arise.

And so to this second annual celebration of CX Day: it is great to see the momentum that this phrase, theory, application and practice has had since the inaugural celebration. I remember last year and our involvement in Google Hangouts, attending local networking events and blogging, all as a means of supporting the efforts of the CXPA and we will do the same this year – in addition to our sponsorship – because we see the value in supporting fellow CX professionals, agencies and the wider conversation that is establishing a foothold in everyday business parlance, as it rightly should.

I am a big advocate of organizational alignment as the critical piece in delivering exceptional customer experiences and have written at great length on such thoughts but I also see the tremendous value of the work undertaken by CX visionaries such as Bruce Temkin; Annette Franz, Gregory Yankelovich, Lynn Hunsaker, Ted Rubin, Barb Mosher Zinck, Shep Hyken, Lior Arussy and many more customer experience crusaders. Bruce’s earlier post on this blog is a great starting place for why there is enthusiasm for CX Day and beyond.

Here is to another year of CX momentum; an appreciation for the art, science and execution of all organizations connected digitally and offline; furthermore, the delivery of contextual and relevant experiences for the customer and the customers’ customer.

From everyone at SDL, have a great CX Day.

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