Editorial
The Gist
- Customer pain points identified. CX challenges in 2023 included unlinked data across platforms, impacting customer satisfaction and the CX strategy for 2024.
- CX journey friction. Key friction points in customer journeys noted, emphasizing the need for CIO and CMO collaboration.
- 2024 CX initiatives priority. Emphasis on next-gen mobile experiences and personalization for 2024 to meet rising customer expectations.
I recently had the opportunity to connect a customer experience expert with several CIOs. My goal was to understand what hindered organizations from delivering exceptional customer experiences in 2023, and then explore what was most critical to start in 2024. This discussion also covered how organizations should justify the expenditure for these initiatives as we move into an uncertain new year.
Let's take a look at some customer pain points and a CX strategy for 2024.
A New CX Strategy for 2024: What Most Held Back Your CX in 2023?
Our customer experience expert, Tracey Dunlap, serves as the head of CX Design and Research at Jenius Bank. She asserts, a lot of businesses fail to meet customer expectations, which is due to their inability to link the information and data across their existing platforms.
She continued that, “From a customer perspective, if you must tell or enter your problem or account number multiple times, you’ve lost their trust and an organization's ability to solve the issue is put into question. Creating an immersive, engaging, omnichannel experience is critical for companies. My bank, for example, doesn't want customers to be their own customer management system. Regardless of where an individual begins their customer experience journey — be it by phone, chat, or email — the experience needs to be synched across all platforms.”
Former BusinessWeek CIO Isaac Sacolick suggested as well that customer experience in 2023 was harder because organizations still don't have great post-COVID data on customer needs. "And then, there's the whole GenAI thing that's whacked customer expectations. This is a big issue — the alignment between CX initiatives and business strategy. But better customer satisfaction or improved revenue means that we need to fix messy data, incomplete data, incorrect insights, and wrong improvement strategies. It is hard to have good CX on a web 1.0 platform that's not mobile friendly? CX is held back by misaligned executives who understand the disciplines through the lens of their responsibilities.”
Likewise, in-transition CIO Martin Davis believes, “CX has been held back by several factors. These include a lack of focus on the customer, a lack of investment, and outdated systems.”
First CIO Deb Gildersleeve agrees with everyone and says that “old systems, a lack of understanding of what good looks like. Change for change’s sake and making things more complex.”
Related Article: Why — and How — CIOs Support Customer Experience Programs
The Sources of Friction to the Customer Journey
I wanted to next know how well people understand the source of friction in the customer journeys and whether it is critical that CIOs and CMOs get after this project together. Dunlap started by saying, “Protecting customers’ personal information and data must be a top priority for banks. This sometimes creates friction points for customers. This has caused two-step authentication or additional document verification for customers. While some can be frustrating and a momentary drain on customers’ time, the alternative of lax checks is more costly for the customer in the long run, i.e., if a fraudster applies for a loan with a customer’s stolen identity.”
Beyond authentication, Gildersleeve said, “Friction is often generated when a company wants a customer to follow their highly-defined path or wants them to purchase extra services. There are ways of doing this without adding extra steps or creating an unnatural path.”
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Sacolick added, “There's lots of friction in CX journeys. This is the challenge. The easy/broken ones are low-hanging fruit. The bigger issue is understanding customer need, segmenting, prioritizing and testing agile improvements.”
Davis added, “It really comes down to do you really know the customer journey or only think you do? Have you sat and watched customers interact with your company? Have you listened to them and unstopped their pain points? CIOs and CMOs need to solve this together. It is critical that whoever owns the customer journey works together with those you can solve it."
Related Article: Why Are More CIOs Focusing on Customer Experience?
Most Important Initiatives to Start for a New CX Strategy in 2024
Next, I wanted to know what CX initiatives are most important to start in 2024. Dunlap said that “2024 should be about launching next-gen mobile experiences to meet customer’s rising expectations for UX, UI, and smart tools. 2024 should also be about embedding personalization into the end-to-end experience based on the volume of customer data banks have access to. By leveraging this data, we can provide curated, individualized offers. It’s time for us as an industry to collectively take more audacious steps to improve the individual experience."
Sacolick added that he has been “Advising CIO/CTO/CDO/CMO that every search experience must transform into an NLQ/Prompt/Gen AI experience. Keyword search is dead.” Do CMOs get this? Clearly Davis is right in adding “NLQ/Prompt/GenAI is where the CX must change, and customers will be expecting this yesterday.”
Related Article: The Customer Experience Skills CIOs Need to Drive Business Alignment
Making the Business Case
How will these initiatives impact customers and the bottom line of the above organizations? What is their business case? Dunlap said, “Investing in customer experience directly impacts an organization's bottom lines. It can increase lifetime value by keeping customers loyal and promoting profitable, multi-product relationships. No matter the industry, incumbents and new entrants may be furthering customer efforts, so it’s important for companies to continue pushing for customer-led initiatives as a means of delighting existing customers and staying competitive.”
Digging in on the business case, Davis said, “The more streamlined the CX, the more likely the customer is buying from you, and the more likely they are to come back and repeat purchase and tell their friends. So, putting it mildly, massive.” Gildersleeve concluded, “The easier it is for potential customers to find what they are looking for the more likely you are to sell.”
Does the business get this? Some clearly do.
Parting Words on the CX Strategy for 2024
I was left a little surprised how in sync our CX expert was with the CIOs. There were some differences, but in general they agreed on the value of CX and what needs to be fixed to deliver it and avoid customer pain points and develop a solid CX strategy for 2024.
On the value side, it is worth remembering what Salesforce found in its research shared in Tiffani Bova’s book, "The Experience Mindset," “88% of customers feel that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services.”
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