What is the length of your IoT CX attention span? Within the Big Data-driven, Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, you have every opportunity to capture, analyze and utilize data impacting the long-term value of customer experience (CX).
That scenario means you have no excuse not to develop a long-term IoT CX attention span.
Ideally, execution of CX strategy is part of an ongoing, customer-centric cultural initiative led by the C-Suite. In reality, the length of an organization’s IoT CX attention span falls short.
Take your organizational pulse. Is your IoT CX attention span long or short? Focused and steady or all over the place? Seasonal, periodic and episodic or continuous and enduring?
An attention span is the length of time an individual (or corporation) can retain full mental focus on a topic or activity before they become distracted.
Three factors distract organizations from developing an IoT CX attention span focused on customer success for customer retention.
- Legacy mindset reinforcing IoT CX metric myopia
- Transactional, rather than translational, CX focus
- Lack of actions taken based on CX data insights
Customer experience (CX) score-chasing limits individual and organizational IoT CX attention span.
Perhaps the biggest impediment of continuity of customer focus is persistence of legacy mindset and cultural values. CX score-chasing becomes the centerpiece of everyone’s attention.
Why? When executive compensation is tied to CX scores, everyone’s IoT CX attention span is episodic and myopic. Behaviors target doing what is necessary to influence or even bias the latest CX survey results. Short-term, self-serving habits reinforce What’s In It For Me syndrome. It is all about the size of executive bonus compensation.
A recent Maritz CX study found that: “Among CX professionals at companies where C-suite managers are compensated on scores, 53% say the organization is more interested in a score than in improving CX. This level is even higher than the average for all companies with variable compensation incentives tied to scores 46%, and more than twice as high as the level seen among companies with no variable compensation tied to scores 25%.” (p5)
When CX scores become the desired outcome of everyone’s short-term IoT CX attention span, customer focus is sacrificed.
Have you observed this behavior in your own organization? Are you guilty of CX score-chasing? What is the long-term drawback of remaining myopic?
Focusing on transactional customer experiences reinforces a shorter organizational IoT CX attention span.
Consider whether your current CX surveys measure anything other than transient customer perceptions. Post-purchase surveys which capture likelihood to recommend or satisfaction with the quality of transaction provide no long-term context for developing credible insights about factors contributing to customer success.
Measuring transient customer perception becomes the means to an end for many CX initiatives. The customer is satisfied or not. The customer will recommend or not. End of conversation. As long as CX metrics fall within the acceptable, positive range, no further follow-up is taken.
According to the Maritz report, “instead of only tracking outcome scores, you should track and manage the actions you want to encourage and those you want to eliminate.” (p7)
Consider whether your CX initiative is capturing, quantifying, analyzing and interpreting the correct metrics. How might you influence the future of your organization’s IoT CX initiative?
If CX data analyses are not shared across the organization, how can meaningful course corrections be taken?
Collecting CX data without implementing corrective actions based on findings will not positively impact organizational growth and customer success. The CX initiative simply is a data-collection exercise.
CX data remains sequestered in data kingdoms residing, more than likely, in sales and marketing silos. Data is resurrected cyclically and compared to last cycle’s or last year’s aggregated, transactional CX responses. The focus: moving CX scores upward without utilizing data-driven insights to determine the internal factors and root causes impacting those scores.
If CX data are not transparent throughout the organization, it is difficult to truly stick close to the customer.
The Maritz study of over 5,000 respondents found that huge differences existed between CX leaders and laggards. Companies which excel in CX invested heavily in developing those operational, IT and employee competencies which critically impacted customer experience, customer success and customer retention.
Take an introspective look at your organization’s CX attention span. Refocus on the customer.
Developing a long-term CX attention span requires leadership doing more than talking the CX talk and managers paying lip service to CX. Rather, leadership must be involved in creating customer experience improvement programs incorporating people, processes, systems and equipment from the plant floor to the C-Suite.
Then make sure the focus is on the customer.
An organization can subscribe to and put the most elegant CX program in place. However, that CX program is a only tool which is best implemented within a supportive cultural environment.
What is the IoT CX attention span in your own organization? Are you focused on satisfying yourselves or retaining your customers? What are the minimum viable next-steps you can take to lengthen your IoT CX attention span?
Babette Ten Haken writes, speaks and coaches about customer success for customer retention in the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) ecosystem. She traverses the interface between human capital strategy for hiring and developing collaborative technical and non-technical teams. She serves manufacturing, IT and engineering intensive companies. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon. Visit the Free Resources section of her website for more tools.
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