How To Build Customer Experience Stickiness

In merely a decade and a half, customer experience is now a catchy phrase among all business types alike.  Many executives have taken their companies along this long treacherous road to success because they recognize the power of customer experience and its long-term differentiation against the competition.  The reward is worth embarking upon this windy road.  

Many companies which have dibbled and dabbled in this customer experience thing have not gained much traction and quickly saw their fruits of labor disappearing into the wind.   It was a fad and those who were involved were gone in less than a year.  Customer experience was never given a chance and it never really got off the ground.

Others who made the journey and endured, got into a rut after a couple of years.  Their customer experience practice is stuck in the mud.  You will see a voice of the customer and a thing or two but nothing really that the company can claim that it made it and built competitiveness with customer experience.   This second group also is in danger of evaporating when the new executive team comes in and asks what have you done for me lately?

Only a few within an elite group have indeed reach the customer experience pinnacle and can claim the organization has changed and customer experience is within the company’s DNA.

What Is Customer Experience Stickiness?

My definition of customer experience stickiness is the ability of the customer experience practice to launch, grow, thrive and endure to the point where it becomes part of the organization’s people, product and processes.  Once entrenched, it is part of the company’s DNA.  It is almost impossible to unravel or unhook because it is now bred within the company’s culture.   Customer experience is who they are and drives how they do things.   This is the customer experience advantage.

The Customer Experience Sticky Test

How do you know whether your customer experience practice has stickiness?   And how much?  Here is the acid test.  Imagine that you are going to leave your customer experience job and your company tomorrow, will what you are working on continue to go on?  For how long?  A day, a week, a month, a year?

Be brutally honest with yourself.   If your answer is no – your customer experience work will disappear when you leave the organization, your customer experience practice has no stickiness.   The longer that you believe your customer experience work will continue on after you leave, the more your customer experience practice has stickiness. 

Why Is Stickiness Important?

To differentiate based on the power of customer experience, it needs to be part of the company’s overall strategy.  Implementing a customer experience strategy is an art form and it takes time to infiltrate an organization.  Similar to attempting to make changes in our personal life, you have to stick to it to reap the benefits.  

When two companies within the same industry are competing based on customer experience, the one that will win, is the one with customer experience that is entrenched deeper and wider across the organization.  This typically results in more positive touchpoints along the customer journey. 

Customer experience stickiness is also a sign of the maturity of the customer experience practice in an organization.   During the startup of a customer experience practice, there is little or no stickiness.   It is always at risk of disappearing when the customer experience leader leaves the company or there is a changing of the guards at the top.  Companies in the intermediate phase have some stickiness but they are always at risk of stagnation.  Understandably, they repeat what got them there in the first place, over and over again and year after year.  The danger of a company in the intermediate phase is that early successes will level off and the company will become stuck at this stage because there is no customer experience innovation happening.  Executives get bored and move on to the next big thing.  Finally, there is an elite group of companies which get it and are lucky to be in the advanced stage of customer experience.  It is embedded in the company’s culture, processes and products and services; so much so that it is impossible to undo.   That is the highest level of customer experience stickiness.

Signs of Lack of Customer Experience Stickiness

·         Still a Department of One – you began as a department of one as a customer experience leader.  It has been over a year or perhaps two years and the organization still has not given you additional resources.   It is a sign that customer experience is not gaining traction or stickiness.   Senior management is likely not seeing the benefits of what you are doing.

·         Customer Experience is a Program – listen carefully to what others in your company are labeling what you do.  Do they refer to you as the customer experience “program” owner?  A program has a finite time.  Once it ends, people move onto another program.  If customer experience is not considered as a go to market strategy and it is merely a program of some sort, it will die sooner or later.

·         You are Constantly Chasing Others – it is common at the startup stage of customer experience that you are chasing others in the organization for their assistance.   But at some point in time, you should witness others coming to you because they value your knowledge about the customer.  If no one ever comes to you and ask what you know, then it is definitely a sign of lack of interest and no stickiness.

Signs of Gaining Customer Experience Stickiness

·         You are Invited to Senior Management Meetings – once your customer experience practice gains momentum or stickiness, you will likely be asked to present findings and actions at senior management meetings.  That is a great sign of customer experience stickiness.  Early in my own customer experience career, I was asked to be a member of the leadership team after about a year to represent the customer.  I utilized that forum to raise awareness, ask for resources and build stickiness.

·         The Customer is Front and Center of Every Meeting – in your everyday meetings, is the customer ever mentioned?  How many times?  Organizations with sticky mature customer experience practices always put the customer in front and center of its discussions and decisions.  When recommendations are proposed, does anyone ask what does the customer think about what we like to do?  When financial decisions are made, does anyone estimate the impact on the customer either positive or negative?

·         Long Term Customer Relations Outweighs Short Term Financial Gains – this can be quite a controversial topic.  I sincerely sympathize those individuals with financial goals.  As a customer experience professional growing up in the marketing field, I had full P&L responsibilities.  I understand the corporate pressure of achieving top line sales.  I know the concepts of gross margins, cost of goods and marketing contribution.  It is easy to put aside customer experience needs to achieve our short-term goals.  We can cut costs here and there.  At some point, a mature customer experience organization with stickiness will be brave enough to forego short term financial gains for long term customer loyalty. 

How to Drive Customer Experience Stickiness

To get customer experience to stick is hard work.  Here are some specific areas where you can begin to work on to gain traction.  I have included specific ideas that worked for me and for you to try.

1.       From Army of One to Army of Thousands – you cannot create customer stickiness by yourself.  I am not talking about how many are in your customer experience department.   I am referring to the percentage of employees fully engaged in your customer experience vision, strategy and execution.  If you are the only one constantly trying to push the ball up the hill, you will be exhausted and suffer burn out.

You will need to create traction outside your department.  Start with your cross functional team.  Leverage every one of them to help carry the customer experience torch within their own perspective areas.      

2.       Wire Up the Company

The most challenging thing to change in the organization is the processes and systems.  Don’t let that scare you because the more effort it requires to implement, the more sticky it becomes.  

Take a look around.  Is customer billing a mess?  Is your IVR so complicated that it takes the customers 3 minutes to go through the menu to talk to a live person?  These are examples where a positive change builds on customer experience stickiness.

3.       Infuse Customer Experience into Product & Services Development

One of the most critical functions in an organization is the R&D launch process.   Is yours broken where new products are constantly launched with critical issues?   Is your culture reliant on customer service or customer success to address the issues post launch?  This is quite common in many companies.   

No matter how many problems you can fix, you can never catch up.   As you as you fix one problem, another ten have shown up at your doorstep due to a flawed launch process.  This is one of the most impactful areas where customer experience can made and drive stickiness. Partner with R&D and ensure that customer experience is part of the development cycle. Proactively deliver products with great experiences.


Photo by Ryan McGuire from StockSnap