Why Customer Experience Programs Fail

Many organizations today have fragmented customer experience management (CEM) programs. Successful companies understand that in order to design, implement, assess and improve customer experience on a consistent basis there must be a clearly defined CEM strategy and plan in place. Customer experience practitioners often focus attention on designing the ideal customer experience for clients, but neglect to design the experience of CEM within an organization.

The lack of a clearly defined strategy and definition of the role of customer experience management within an organization is one of the reasons many companies stumble when implementing a CEM program.

A well-defined CEM strategy will help organizations to define the role of the enterprise CEM team relative to CEM practitioners within each business unit and clearly set the expectations of the leadership team for their role in driving a customer-centric culture. A solid CEM strategy should establish a 3 to 5 year strategic goal, priorities for the enterprise CEM team in year one, two and three, and set measurable objectives for success.

As previously stated in my article “Effective CEM Requires Engaged Leadership”, another common cause of failed CEM programs is the lack of leadership engagement. Many CEM practitioners assume the leadership team understands and knows its role in the implementation of a customer experience management program. In fact, a CEM leadership development program is a must to ensure leaders are trained at every stage of the CEM journey and understand their role and contribution towards driving a customer-centric culture.

Customer experience management is a journey. It requires a committed leadership team, engaged employees, and a detailed strategy with measurable objectives and milestones to achieve along the journey.