Wow... that was cool!

My time at Oracle taught me I have a passion for Customer Experience (CX).  As part of Oracle's CX Cloud team, I worked with companies on ways to improve their customer's experience. It was during this time I started to understand CX and its transformative power. When your customer has ten different choices to buy the same product or service from a competitor, what else do you have? I also came to realize that CX is often the driving force behind industry disruption.  Take Amazon, Apple and Uber for example. These companies disrupted their respective markets simply by creating a better customer experience. The customer experience was the innovation. 

 Has anyone ever felt anxious as a seemingly available taxi passed you by? Have you ever doubted the driver was really taking the most direct route? Who enjoyed going to the mall around the holidays? I am pretty sure we all disliked having to buy an entire album just to get the one song we liked. By taking these negative experiences and turning them into what I like to call wow moments, entire industries were disrupted. Wow moments are those moments in the customer journey that make you stop and say, "Wow, that was cool!" What did you think the first time you used Uber?

 Creating those wow moments is easier than you might think. The first step is to walk a mile in your customer's shoes. Focus on what your customer experiences when interacting with your company. Look at the entire journey - from the initial consideration phase all the way through to support and all the interactions in between. What do your customers experience? How do they feel? Are there places in the journey that create frustration or anxiety? How much effort is required? After you've documented the journey and the associated experiences, it is important to interview actual customers to validate your findings. 

 Once this journey mapping is complete, it will be easy to see where you can have the biggest impact. Pick one place in the journey and try to engineer a wow moment. Here is an example from Delta Airlines. In the old days, if a flight was canceled, you had to either stand in a long line at the gate waiting for your turn to work with the gate agent to rebook your flight or wait on hold for a customer service agent to assist you. The anxiety and frustration of this experience were compounded by having to wait to get help. A few years ago, Delta re-engineered this experience. Now they proactively notify me via a text message, then I receive an automated outbound call that offers me alternate flights- which I can book with a press of a button.  I never speak to an agent. There is no waiting in line or on hold. The first time that happened I said to myself, "Wow, that was cool!"

 I think the reason I am so passionate about CX is because it is exciting to be a part of something transformative… something that actually makes a difference. When you witness a customer experiencing a wow moment that you helped create, you feel something special. Not only is it tremendously satisfying work, it is contagious. When other parts of your company witness its power, they will want in on the action. Before you know it, you may have just helped transform your company.