This document discusses challenges that organizations face in aligning their structures and processes to effectively meet customer needs. It summarizes findings from a survey of over 500 people at 188 organizations. Key findings include: - Organizations struggle to have a shared understanding of their customers across different teams. Personas and customer journeys are often not consistently used. - Accountability for customer experience is unclear, with many respondents unable to identify a single person responsible. - Common metrics used to measure customer experience are often transactional and inconsistent. - The structures of most organizations do not reflect how customers actually experience the brand. - The document calls for a framework to help organizations build a customer-centered approach through a shared customer vocabulary

1. Hearts, then Charts

2. Hello.
My name is Ian

3. Hello.
@ianfitzpatrick

4. Designer
(sorry)

6. The current rhetoric of
organizational focus on
customer experience
doesn’t align with the
structures that power it
• There is massive misalignment about who our customers are.
• Measures are inconsistent, and frequently transactional in nature
• Decisions are made at a functional, rather than operational level
• Artefacts are parochial, if they’re used at all

7. Too often, all customers are
equally important — and
equally ambiguous.

8. We are hooked on
functional measures of
customer success.

9. Decisions that shape the
customer experience are
pushed out to functional
teams.

10. The artefacts of our labor
are used parochially — if
they’re used at all.

11. Curiosity is our job.
(It’s probably yours, too)

12. What is the nature of the
relationship between CX &
the modern organization?

13. Quant!
• 543 people at 188 organizations
• Agriculture, Arts, Construction, CPG, Corporate, Education, Energy,
Finance, Fitness, Government, High-Tech, Legal, Manufacturing, Media,
Medical, Non-Profit, Real Estate, Recreational, Retail, Service, Software,
Telecom, Transportation, Travel

14. Qual!
• 30 organizations: 11 public and 19 private, avg. annual revenue of 8.16 billion
• 10 B2B / 20 B2C (10 D2C)
• Apparel, athletic footwear, beverages, CPG, Education, Educational
services, Electronics, Entertainment, Financial Services, Gyms, Health Care,
Health/Wellness, Home Goods, Information Technology, Insurance,
Manufacturing, Real Estate, Restaurants, Security, B2B Services

15. Data about the way(s) we
work doesn’t support the
current Fast Company
narrative.

16. We’re struggling to glean a
shared view of our users &
customers.
• 12 of 30 organizations use personas in design
• 13 of 30 use them in marketing
• 15 of 30 use them in sales
• 2 organizations have aligned personas across all three groups

17. We’re designing things for
one person, marketing to
another, and selling to yet
another.

18. The artefacts we’ve
commissioned are
languishing in closets and
on servers.
• 9 of 30 use isolated journeys
• 1 of those is actively used
• 6 of 30 have end-to-end journeys
• 3 of those are actively used

19. 50% of C-Suite
respondents said their
organization uses no
consistent measure of their
customers’ experience.

20. Respondent Measures Cited
Marketing Manager Social Network Data
Marketing Director Internal Measure, Social Network Data, NPS
Director of Operations Social Network Data
Director of Marketing Social Network Data, Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Director, Corporate Comms. NPS
Vice President, IT Social Network Data
Corporate Comms. Manager Internal Measure
Operations Manager Social Network Data, NPS, Customer Advocacy Score
Consultant, training None cited
National health insurance network

21. No one seems to be certain
who it is that is
accountable for the
customer experiences we
deliver.
• In 44 of the 188 companies surveyed, three or more respondents identified
someone accountable for the quality of the customer experience.
• In only one of those cases did they all name the same individual.

22. Respondent
Someone
Owns?
If so, who?
Entry-level engineer No
Research manager Yes Chief Operating Officer
Director, Engineering Yes Administrative Director
Entry-level operations Yes Chief Creative Officer
Director, Product Development Yes Senior Designer
VP, design No
Senior Product Developer Yes Senior Director, Marketing
Senior Operations Manager Yes Director of Corporate Communications
Global shipping / logistics co

23. Respondent
Someone
Owns?
If so, who?
Administrative Manager Yes Administrative Manager
Senior Designer Unsure
Senior Project Manager Yes Design Director
Senior IT Manager Yes Senior Designer
Marketing Manager Unsure
Project Manager No
Operations Trainee Yes Chief Sales Officer
Operations Manager Yes Manager, Corporate Communications
National drugstore chain

24. We knew this.
We just didn’t have the
data to give shape to it.

25. It’s not about innovation.
It’s competence. It’s the
basics.
Russell Davies in ‘Death to Innovation’, 2014
”

26. Hearts, then Charts
A practical framework for building (and leading) a customer-centered
organization

27. Theme 1:
We require a shared
vocabulary for our
customers and users.

28. Words like ‘personas’,
‘archetypes’, and
‘segmentation’ can get in
the way.
What should matter most to you is that the idea of your customers, and their
real-world behaviors, can permeate the far reaches of your organization. A
well-defined segment that can’t has a value that’s rapidly approaching zero.

29. Theme 2:
We need a means of
plotting experiences that
live, increasingly, outside of
our control.

30. In the delta between the
way you outline the
purchase process and the
way your customers do, lies
everything.
Hint: the way in which your organization is structured almost never reflects
the ways in which the customer experiences your brand.

31. Theme 3:
We need a multi-
dimensional view of
customer needs.

32. The cholesterol buildup
around brands’ role in
meeting customer needs is
approaching critical
condition.
Most people have work to be done more often than they have emotional
needs to meet.

33. Theme 4:
We need actionable
measures we can use to
evaluate our investment in
the customer experience.

34. Align measures with the
work to be done, not with
transactions.
It’s absolutely possible to have business measures that suggest strong
satisfaction, yet completely mask emerging issues

35. Theme 5:
We need executive
accountability for the
quality of the customer
experience.

36. Set clear CX goals that are
communicated top-down
through the organization.
If they’re not measurable, they didn’t happen.

37. In 2016, we will deliver a
Temkin Emotion Rating at
or above 70%.
”

38. I suspect that our metrics
don’t influence our
customer experience nearly
as much as they influence
how we report success.
— Senior executive at a large financial services firm
”

39. Thanks.
almty.co/cx