Future of Referral Marketing for Online Marketplaces in the USA

 Organizations that do this well establish a baseline with voice-of-the-customer data and feed results back to the functions. Individual operational leaders are allowed to make the decisions that make the most sense for the customer, given the capability and constraints of the function. Some companies try to use the voice of the customer to coordinate efforts and organize implementation centrally. In those cases, a central group manages analytics and 

prioritizes efforts. Usually, we see greater impact when this happens because investment decisions are made at a broader level. In carrying out a big-bang approach, it’s important to set goals for the entire organization. Tweak them for different groups, depending on the competitive situation (customer-experience performance is based as much on product and 

geographic specifics as it is on internal performance), then let the organization figure out how to achieve the goal. Establishing a central “SWAT team” can help steer improvement and provide teams with resources. When one large European shipping company with 30,000 employees worldwide and a presence in more than 100 countries adopted a big-bang 

Approach it linked percent of every

department’s and employee’s yearly evaluation to customer-experience improvement for two years. Then it let individual departments figure out how to implement specific initiatives, supported by SWAT teams. Another option that is becoming more common is using digital capabilities to design an entire journey or subjourney from scratch. Such “clean sheeting” can cut through functional bureaucracies. For example, a European bank designed and delivered 

a completely digital onboarding experience for opening a new account by bringing together a working team with representatives from all functions that affected the process so it could be reimagined. The project’s kickoff materials were a blank wall and lots of sticky notes. This method works because it quickly results in a “perfect” journey that a subset of customers 

experiences digitally; the longer, more incremental work is conducted in parallel to create a nondigital version of the journey across functions. Impact timing Should you pick low-hanging fruit first, though it may have less impact, or move aggressively on bigticket items? When choosing actions, it’s important to set priorities for initiatives that have near-term impact. To start, pick an area where you can affect revenue growth and reduce costs immediately. This 

Creates momentum for the program

which will get everyone excited and can accelerate progress; it also frees up funds or capacity that can be invested in the rest of the program. As you look at different customer-experience initiatives, measure them for both short- and long-termimpact. Make sure there are wins early in the program. For example, a quick policy scrub might eliminate approaches that cost money and don’t really benefit customers, tackle credits, or reduce call volume. Some pricing 

actions can have quick impact, though these kinds of initiatives generally will reduce— not generate—revenue in a customer-experience program. Impact is often measured operationally, through a drop in calls, fewer calls that must be elevated to managers and supervisors, and other cost measures that come from simplifying the business. Benefits from improved customer experience and heightened loyalty are lagging indicators and will come 

over time. In addition to efforts that drive near-term impact, early symbolic actions can send an important signal to the organization. Companies might, for instance, reverse or eliminate policies that were put in place long ago. Or they could change the way the senior team behaves by bringing customer-experience and voiceof-the-customer principles into senior 

Operational meetings and by getting 

the senior team out on the front line to interact with customers directly. Most organizations start customer-experience transformations with a focus on reducing abrasive experiences, which can include rooting out elements that irritate customers or addressing detractors within the organization. Only then do customerexperience advocates go on to create more promoters. Targeting abrasive experiences is usually the right place to begin, particularly when there are many of them. Often, fixing a journey’s broken elements affects many 

customers and can move customerexperience numbers in a positive direction. Once a stable base case is achieved, organizations should turn their attention to making sure each journey includes wow moments that exceed customer expectations. Moving to action Regardless of the structural approach chosen for the customer-experience transformation, securing buy-in from the organization and building momentum depend on balancing two organizational 

dynamics: blending top-down and bottom-up activities, and addressing hard performance and softer health measures.Top-down and bottom-up activities Any program to improve customer experience is ultimately shaped by millions of individual interactions across journeys and functions as customers research, buy, use, and renew products and services. Building a customer-experience culture is about ensuring the employees who interact with customers directly and indirectly make the right choices in those interactions to meet and, ideally, 

Conclusion

exceedcustomer expectations. Programs thus need a good dose of bottom-up activity, as those behaviors have to be embraced by thousands of employees over time. For example, a global freight forwarder in China asked all employees to start delivering just 1 percent extra a month as they gradually rolled out other topdown initiatives. Programs that are only nurtured from the bottom up, however, usually produce results that are less than ideal. Executives 

need to set a top-down aspiration and overarching mission to ensure everyone has the same level of ambition and the same guiding principles. But it’s also important for leaders to set the structure, approach, and underlying methodology to ensure performance is consistent across the organization. Too often, we’ve seen organizations create conditions for change but fail to meet their aspiration or reach the overall goals for the program, though they see some 

improvement. A customer-experience transformation at a large international airport demonstrated these principles. Leadership defined cross-functional working teams for each initiative that pulled expertise from the front line and midlevel managers. The teams were given latitude to test new ideas in a leadership-defined “sandbox.” Formal monthly meetings, in which a rotation of teams participated, provided updates on status and impact. Finally, 

technology-driven crowdsourcing of ideas allowed all stakeholders who interacted with customers to shape the transformation effort more broadly. Performance and health measures All customer-experience programs require hard metrics. What matters to customers What are the underlying elements of customer experience What goals should be set across and within functions What priorities should be applied to initiatives to meet those goals And so