Customers are the heart of any business. Keeping them happy and loyal leads to growth and profits. However, creating great customer experiences takes expertise. Customer experience (CX) consultants are specialists who help companies improve customer satisfaction. This article explains what CX consultants do, why they matter, and how to choose the right one for your business.
Why Customer Experience Matters to Strategic Leaders
While every department owns experience aspects, benefits compounding company-wide from CX excellence include:
Enhanced Customer Loyalty
Irresistible experiences winning hearts build reputations and repeat purchasing even amidst competitively noisy markets where impersonal features and specs fade.
Increased Revenue
Differentiation drives willingness to pay premiums for superb encounters while advocacy boosts referrals of new prospects at similar price/margin levels.
Competitive Advantage
Standardized experience optimization initiatives maintain consistent quality raising barriers competitors find hard matching at similar value levels across high-volume transactions.
Improved Brand Reputation
Glowing online praise, media visibility as an innovative experience leader, and attracting top retail partner interest lift brand esteem, trust, and desirability.
Cost Savings
Platforms like ConnectSpace’s event management software and integrated communications centralize data and task handoffs between sales, onboarding, and support preventing wasteful disconnects eroding budgets over time.
What Customer Experience Consultants Do
Customer experience consultants focus on several areas of assessing and improving journey shortcomings including:
Journey Mapping
Visualize ideal end-to-end experience flows from triggers through multiple touchpoints towards desired brand perceptions then contrast against current realities highlighting gaps for improvement targeting.
Voice of Customer Research
Quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews uncover experiential pleasures and pains from actual customers reinforcing hypothesized priority areas while revealing unexpected delighters or dissatisfiers influencing strategic decisions.
Performance Analytics
CRM, web, operational, and transactional data analysis isolates patterns into actionable insights answering strategic questions around predictive behaviors, segmentation trends, and experience metric correlations to guide optimizations.
Process Improvements
Streamlining connectivity between platforms, departments, and communication channels enhances transparent workflows, preventing disjointed efforts and allowing customers to fall through cracks that erode faith.
Employee Engagement
Journey success relies on properly skilled teams personally invested through clarity of purpose, customer empathy building, and leadership committing to enhancements lowering staff effort while raising mastery around sustaining consistent interactions.
Technology Implementations
Introducing innovative assistive tools ranging from sales enablement and onboarding automation to self-service portals and sentiment-tracking social listening platforms empowers efficiency, personalization, and visibility while future-proofing scalability.
When to Engage Customer Experience Consultants
Beyond having ample funding available, triggers warranting investing in dedicated customer experience management consultants often surround:
Declining Customer Metrics
Faltering satisfaction scores, sharp increases in complaints, spikes in churn, or shrinking net promotor indicators signal dysfunction alienating customers seeking better encounters with competitors able to fulfill unmet wants.
Lagging Business Development
When growth plateaus across new customer acquisition, share of wallet from existing accounts, and retention efforts lose traction, journey obstacles likely frustrate advancement opportunities squandering potential not yet capitalized.
Insufficient Internal Bandwidth
Lean teams wearing multiple hats often realize CX impacts business viability but lack specialized skills, solitary focus, and experiential objectivity to drive transformation without reinforcement from unbiased subject matter experts dedicated to the cause.
New Offering Launches
Optimizing navigational ease and delight around new products and upgrades ensures smooth onboarding preventing speed bumps into organizational expansions from sputtering– protecting precious capital invested towards their success for breakout.
External Competitive Pressure
Disrupters encroaching through superior understanding of evolving preferences and digital convenience compel barriers to entry blocking competitive advances before share shifts too far out of reach to recapture through hasty catch-up efforts.
Determine if multiple triggers indicate professional guidance can accelerate troubleshooting efforts. Carefully selecting advisors ensures the best fit for shepherding improvements from start to finish.
How to Choose the Right Customer Experience Consultant
Like any strategic partnership, cultural compatibility and working styles contribute toward fluid engagements. Key selection criteria include:
Relevant Expertise
Case studies proving deep vertical insights from your industry reassure abilities translating operational fluency into tangible solution plans reflecting nuances and sensitivities influencing your business needs positively. Ask for in-context examples.
Methodology & Efficiencies
Defined workflows balancing both functionally agile and financially pragmatic approaches signal structure from start through measurable ROI. Understand actual techniques applied ensuring deliberate frameworks without over customization waste.
Trusted Client References
Happy client testimonials validate capabilities delivering satisfactory trajectory-changing outcomes improving experience metrics and business growth. Patterns paint reliability better than claims alone.
Clear Communication Habits
Ongoing dialog expectations, consensus-building approaches around priorities, and transparency habits reveal responsiveness in managing milestones collectively from kickoffs towards lasting adoption securing progress stickiness.
Fair Value Alignment
Project pricing appropriately balances specialized skills tendered against reasonable budgets avoiding sticker shock and terminating conversations before impact materializes. Consider cost in the context of total gains.
While vetting helps, seeing explains better. Schedule exploratory orientations allowing both sides to sense cultural fit.
The Customer Experience Transformation Process
Embarking with customer experience consultants formally engages around iterative cycles targeting then validating measurable improvements:
Discovery & Planning
Initial assessments shine a light on what works wonderfully, identify broken points, and spotlight strengths to enhance – forming strategies improving weak spots while further leveraging differentiated advantages.
Current State Analysis
The detailed analysis quantifies symptoms creating performance gaps to inform potential pilot initiatives with the greatest probable impact if addressed effectively. Surfacing data insights steers evidence-based justification around decision tradeoffs.
Roadmap Strategy & Design
Holistic transformations require system thinking translating insights into initiatives orchestrated across manageable phases planned against budget considerations with key milestones ensuring progress flows logically meeting dependencies across rolling efforts.
Execution & Implementation
The most effective recommendations only create actual impact once activated across optimized processes, updated digital platforms, changed behaviors, and integrated data flows reinforced through employee training and leadership commitments empowering lasting adoption.
Performance Measurement & Iteration
Quantifiable KPI tracking provides ongoing proof initiatives yield desired trajectory results while uncovering secondary effects and adding momentum. Continuous optimization sustains transforms through ongoing iterations elevating metrics higher continually.
The CX Consultant Selection Process
Choosing the right CX consultant is crucial for driving enterprise growth through experience improvements. Follow these steps judiciously vetting options:
Define Goals and Success Parameters
Quantify current baselines and target state metrics around satisfaction, sales, complaints, and loyalty rates that initiatives aim to impact when investment dollars must justify spending by proving worthy returns measured.
Build a Long List of Potential Consultants
Research analyst reports on leading providers, ask peers for referrals, review consultant databases and association membership rosters across customer experience focus compiling initial considerations list.
Schedule Exploratory Consultations
Identify the top five firms appearing aligned around requisite experience, expertise, and engagement structures. Meet asking questions uncovering approach, fit, and style providing confidence on which relationships gel well bearing fruitful partnerships.
Check Client References
Probe provided reference checklists validating satisfied customers on delivered outcomes meeting expectations across needs similar to yours. Patterns provide reassurance.
Start with Smaller Pilot Contracts
Committing full multi-year roadmaps requires trusting capabilities converting plans into gains justifying larger continued investment. Start short-term contracting proof of concept efforts before enlarging the scope.
Measuring the Business Impact of Customer Experience Improvements
Transformations require tying demonstrations of customer experience enhancement directly towards business growth metrics proving enhancement initiatives yield proportionate commercial outcomes justifying resources rallying around the efforts.
Key Performance Indicators Tracked Should Include:
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Measures brand loyalty through the percentage of customers rating inclination promoting products minus detractors. Rising NPS signals growth equity.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Evaluate overall post-purchase happiness. Increase correlates with retention stickiness and repeat purchases.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Scores ease of doing business across discovery, buying, onboarding, and support. Minimizing the score demonstrates frictionless experiences preferred.
Sales Revenue
Business viability requires sufficient customer volumes, healthy order sizes, and recurring purchases fueling sustainable revenue compounding over time.
Account Retention
Reducing customer churn sustains revenue streams without excessive acquisition costs constantly replacing lost accounts and eroding program profitability.
Fortifying CX and correlating business gains data reinforces executive commitments championing customer experience maturity powering enterprise advancement.
Conclusion
With today’s empowered buyers gravitating towards brands delivering intuitive, consistent, and emotionally satisfying journeys every time, competitive differentiation increasingly interlinks directly with customer experience excellence throttling conversions, loyalty, and advocacy-driven growth over time. Mastering CX through dedicated internal focus or guided partnerships pays dividends when undertaken strategically.
