Why most CX efforts still fail to deliver

By now most of us agree that customers’ opinions are an essential source of information helping businesses to offer better services so they in turn stay competitive.

Over the years we’ve seen new job titles such as head of Customer Experience (CX) or CX Lead being added to the organisation lineup.

The hunt for customer feedback loops is fierce, where all touchpoints and interactions are evaluated and measured.

We’re constantly asked if we are satisfied or not. Almost all of our actions are monitored regardless if we like it or not.

A great example of how the industry is valuing customer  research that is supposedly capturing CX is SAP’s purchase of Qualtrics for a stunning 8 billion USD.

We’re literally swimming in CX related data. A mandatory source to help businesses target us, the customer better, through more personal and more precise offering. The promise? A better experience that meets our needs making our lives easier and better.

But are we successful?

Interestingly enough, a recent Harvard Business Review research report argues that we’re not. According to the report, three-quarters of all brands have no real understanding of what their customers actually want and need.

The main reason, they struggle to collect the right data. And the few who do, they can’t turn it into company wide actionable knowledge.

Businesses’ fixation of automated big data alone, that’s great at telling us the ‘what’, is proving to be insufficient in unveiling what brands need to do to truly satisfy their customers.

We can think of big data as a rich source of information that precisely can tell us what customers do, but it’s really poor at knowing who ‘we’ are, yet alone why we do what we do.

It’s like seeing a lot of process and their results, but not having a clue why they happened in the first pace.

At TheyDo we believe that you need to combine your customers’ ‘what’ with ‘who’ and ‘why’, to truly service them in a satisfactory way.

This can be done by placing customers at the centre of your business. A trend that is picked up by many across all industries.

So what’s the struggle?

Experience tells us that most companies are struggling to integrate qualitative customer data across their departments and work streams because of inconsistency in how this data is gathered and processed. Equally people and departments are focusing on delivering their vertical processes rather than servicing the customer across their journey that often touches all departments.

We see many companies hosting workshops and research projects which on their own generate high quality insights but they almost always fail to put these insights to use as a one point of truth across the entire company.

Simply said: there are very few companies out there that have one holistic view of their customers and know how to service them and why.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. By using solutions that help companies to be more systemic in gathering the ‘how’ and ‘why’ and methods that help scattered CX efforts to work more aligned, companies can make better use of their qualitative data insights.

TheyDo is such a tool. It’s a platform that enables companies to work customer centric. It’s one organised place for consistently collecting all your customer journeys, needs and problems.

Working with TheyDo mobilizes companies to efficiently innovate and collaborate company wide around small data that matter. Data that when used correctly demystifies your customer’s ‘why’ and ‘how’.