DCX #98 | Game Changers in CX: Strategies to Outpace Customer Expectations
How unconventional CX thinking can radically alter your approach and elevate your business outcomes.
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This week’s newsletter covers adopting some innovative strategies to invigorate you and your CX program.
Bridging the Gap
Game-Changing Plays for CX Pros
Zero-Based CX Thinking
CX Sabbaticals
Customer Immersion Rooms
CX Hackathons
CX Futures Prototyping
An Open Call to Action
Bridging the Gap
Did you know that while 80% of businesses believe they provide excellent customer experience, only 8% of customers agree?
This is a vast difference, and it shows that we need to step up, embrace change, and adopt new strategies to bridge this gap.
However, working on new ideas can be challenging, as most of us have a jam-packed calendar with endless meetings, emails, and deadlines.
It can be overwhelming, and losing our passion for innovation is easy.
As a result, we struggle to elevate the digital customer experience, and our mission slips away.
If you're facing this challenge, I have some ideas for reigniting your CX fervor without pushing harder.
The key lies in working smarter and using unconventional strategies to change the game entirely.
Game-Changing Plays for CX Pros
Today, I want to introduce some bold approaches that challenge the status quo, push boundaries, and reinvigorate your passion for customer experience.
Each strategy outlined in this section represents a leap forward, a way to break free from the everyday grind and make a profound and lasting impact.
From rethinking your approach to every interaction to empowering your team in unique ways, these plays are your secret weapons for turning CX challenges into unparalleled opportunities.
Are you ready to transform the way you engage with customers?
Let’s explore these transformative strategies that I promise will enhance and redefine your customer experience.
Zero-Based CX Thinking
Start from Zero: What if you wipe the slate clean every few months?
Shake things up by examining all your processes and touchpoints as you have never seen them before.
Ask yourself and your team, "Does this still work? Can we make it better?"
This keeps everyone on their toes, pushing you to ditch what’s outdated and spark new ideas.
Regularly stripping down to basics isn't just refreshing; it’s a necessity to stay relevant and responsive.
Ideas to implement:
Monthly Reflection Sessions: Inject fresh perspectives with monthly meetings where teams evaluate the current CX strategies and openly discuss potential changes.
Customer Journey Re-mapping: Regularly update customer journey maps to integrate new insights and ensure alignment with current customer behaviors and expectations.
Challenge Workshops: Stimulate innovation with workshops that challenge team members to defend or rethink the relevance of current projects or processes.
Getting Started: Start small by selecting one process or touchpoint to reevaluate. Use data and customer feedback to guide the reassessment. Engage a cross-functional team to bring diverse perspectives, minimizing resistance and fostering buy-in for change.
CX Sabbaticals
Brain Breaks: Give your team a chance to escape their daily grind.
Whether it’s diving into a passion project, swapping jobs with someone in a different department, or just exploring new areas of the company, these breaks can ignite some serious creativity and insight.
Plus, it’s a great way to break down those annoying silos and get everyone thinking outside their boxes.
Ideas to implement:
Cross-Functional Team Swaps: Promote understanding and innovation through role swaps within the company to broaden perspectives.
External Shadowing Programs: Enhance external insights by shadowing professionals in other companies or industries, bringing fresh ideas into CX strategies.
Impact Projects: Encourage team members to lead new, impactful projects outside their regular responsibilities, fostering creativity and ownership.
Getting Started: Plan sabbaticals during slower periods or in staggered phases. Prepare temporary cross-training sessions in advance to ensure productivity does not drop. This also promotes skill diversification among team members.
Customer Immersion Rooms
Walk in Their Shoes: Set up a special room to get into your customer’s heads.
Fill it with live feedback, calls, and videos of real customer interactions. It’s about making their voices so loud you can’t ignore them.
This constant exposure keeps everyone aligned with what’s really happening on the ground and what needs to change.
Ideas to implement:
Real-Time Customer Feedback Displays: Equip the room with live feeds of customer feedback and social media mentions to keep the pulse on customer reactions.
Immersive Virtual Reality Experiences: Use VR to simulate customer interactions, deepening understanding of the user experience.
Scheduled Immersion Hours: Mandate regular hours where team members focus on tasks within this immersive environment, keeping the customer perspective at the forefront.
Getting Started: If budget constraints exist, start with a virtual immersion room using existing online tools and platforms. Gradually scale up based on the value and insights gained from this setup.
CX Hackathons
Idea Marathons: Pull your teams together for a day or two and challenge them to solve a big CX problem—fast.
These sessions are fun, intense, and a hotbed for innovative thinking.
What can come out when you put different people together under a ticking clock with a clear goal in sight is amazing.
Ideas to implement:
Themed Hackathons: Focus creative efforts on specific themes or urgent customer issues, driving targeted solutions.
Customer Participation: Involve customers in hackathons to ensure the solutions genuinely address their needs and preferences.
Follow-up Incubation: Establish a protocol for developing promising hackathon ideas further, providing the necessary resources to bring these innovations to life.
Getting Started: Conduct mini-hackathons with smaller, manageable themes that require less preparation. Use these smaller events to demonstrate quick wins and tangible improvements in CX and build a case for larger, more formal hackathons.
CX Futures Prototyping
Future-Proof Your CX: Don’t just react to trends; predict and define them.
Start creating services or products for the future now.
Look at upcoming trends, anticipate customer needs, and prototype these ideas to stay ahead of the curve.
It’s about leading the charge in your industry, not just keeping up.
Ideas to implement:
Trend Analysis Teams: Create teams dedicated to tracking and analyzing emerging trends that could influence future customer expectations.
Prototype Testing Groups: Set up customer groups to test new prototypes early in the development process, gathering valuable insights and feedback.
Futures Workshops: Organize regular brainstorming sessions focused on futuristic scenarios and potential new products or services that address those future needs.
Getting Started: Leverage trend analysis from external experts to better predict future needs. Prototype in phases, starting with low-fidelity prototypes that require less investment. Validate each phase with customer feedback before proceeding.
An Open Call to Action
As we wrap up this discussion on innovative CX strategies, it's clear that understanding and closing the gap between what businesses think they're delivering and what customers actually experience is more than necessary—it’s a game-changer.
From Zero-Based CX Thinking to CX Sabbaticals and everything in between, these strategies are actionable steps we can take to revolutionize our interactions with our customers.
Now, it’s your turn to step up to the plate.
Pick one of the strategies we've explored today—maybe a CX Hackathon will shake things up, or a Customer Immersion Room will allow you to dive deep into customer insights.
Implement it in your team and see what changes.
Better yet, share your journey and results in the comments or shout it out on social media.
Your story could spark a revolution in someone else’s customer experience strategy.
Let’s not just talk about innovation—let’s be about it.
Your insights are crucial, and by sharing them, you help us all grow.
Ready to make a real impact?
Let’s get started and turn these ideas into action.
Who’s with me?
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