“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.” –J.K. Rowling

The past two months I have been blessed to be busy. Unfortunately, that means that my blog has been void of any updates. Yet my brain has been churning with new ideas to share. In October, I had the honor of presenting at the Cambridge University Press’ Annual Global Leadership Team meeting. That same month I was also a guest on the business talk radio show “Let’s Get Radical” with hosts Jody Padar and Liz Gold.

The Cambridge University Press meeting was a gathering of the institution’s top global leaders. It was an amazing treat to speak to an organization that was founded in 1534, about the customer transformation I led at Sage in 2012. I knew “Let’s Get Radical’s” Jody Padar from the Sage Listens RV tour in 2013. She was a stowaway member and took her blog on the road traveling from Las Vegas up to Reno. During my radio interview, I was able to talk to her and her co-host about my “CX Belief Systems” and how they founded Vector Business Navigation, and how I use them today to transform my clients/friends all over the world.

The overarching theme of these conversations focused on customer experience transformations for existing businesses, and the challenges and opportunities that they present. While speaking to both groups, it occurred to me that the terms I use every day when describing the way a customer/company relationship functions are not as straightforward as I thought.

I often talk about how, if CX is done correctly, it always has an impact on a company’s focus. Through the question and answer portion of both events, it became clear to me that terms such as “touch point” and “life cycle,” are really quite extraordinary concepts to a non-CX practitioner. I believe that with the right set of tools, training, and focus, any company can be successful in delivering their brand promises through their customer interactions. However handing someone a wand without the proper spell is almost counter-productive. So to set a good example as a CX practitioner I am using this platform to explain how foundational these concepts are to me, and level set them for anyone looking to understand and model their companies customer experience. Once these concepts are understood and acted upon, they could be the spell to spark your organization's customer transformation too.

Over the next few weeks, I’m kicking off a three-part blog series to explain the three most fundamental elements on which every good CX plan is built.

In each blog I will break down each concept in the most accessible way I can. The three blogs will focus on:

1. Customer Life-cycle- the journey your customers take to find, buy, and use your products.

2. Customer Touch Points- the opportunities along that journey where they experience your brand promise.

3. Customer Interactions- the exchanges of value that flow through the above two concepts.

These three elements work together in creating the customer experience ecosystem that generates and deposits the happy or irritating memories in your customer’s subconscious as they attempt to realize the value proposition of your products or services.

Each term has baggage as far as how folks understand them or have read about them in the past, but for me, they are the atomic building blocks that create the molecules, cells, and muscle systems that drive your business forward. Understanding them, and how they impact a business, or influence existing and potential customers is the stuff of magic for companies who’ve never thought of the world in this way before.  I hope you will tune into this 3 part series over the coming weeks and see that every company is capable of this sort of transformation.

 

Photo Credit to Kristen Acuna of Business Insider