Asking the right questions

Customer experience can be a bottomless pit of opportunity and complexity.  Getting to the bottom of it (or going in the right direction at least) is directly tied to asking the right questions early and often – so let’s start there. Using pharma terms, there is a ‘fair balance’ product label implied in the efficacy, side effects and adverse events that can come with large scale CX transformation:

• Efficacy:  What are the clear benefits? Did you conduct enough clinical trials and testing before launching? How will you measure or prove success? Will it keep working as intended?  Are people (companies/customers) taking it as directed? Is your team focused on outputs and not outcomes?
• Side effects:  Is there a clear, consistent understanding of what customer experience is and what it takes? Is the internal gauntlet of alignment or delivery preventing or delaying success?  Do you have a good plan or strategy but lack the funding, resources, or technology/data to deliver? Is right talent in place, and do they believe in the vision? 
• Adverse events:  Is the transformation required to achieve targets or needed change causing new symptoms or a fatal lack of confidence? Are key stakeholders or leaders developing ‘antibodies’ to the process? Are local market teams going ‘off-label’ and prescribing their own solutions or ways of working? Does leadership at the top see the tangible gains or is impatience germinating ‘org-design over-haul syndrome’?

So many customer experience moments and outcomes (good and bad) are shaped by the questions asked, or not asked, early on. The well-known Einstein quote applies here: “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” Asking the right questions seems easy, but it’s the most common mistake I have seen from small to large companies – it is a skill set that takes EQ, and not just IQ, and hands-on experience.

Upcoming post topics:  change resilience, defining customer experience, marketing as a science, connecting the dots with data and technology, putting the customer at the center.