Delivering a great Customer Experience transformation programme is more important than ever to make the right decisions, achieve results, remain competitive and resilient.
Clarasys has proven time and again to excel and exceed our clients’ expectations at implementing successful CX transformations, and we have even won several awards in the past! In this article, we share five tips from our previous CX program successes to apply to your delivery programs:
- Bring the vision & purpose to life
Many programs have a vision, but the secret is to make it more than just words on a slide. Bringing a vision to life makes it something the team can understand and get behind, which increases motivation and innovation. This can be achieved in a few ways:
- Create an interactive prototype: In the past, we brought in leading design agencies to create fully ‘clickable’ prototypes. This allows everyone on the program to feel something tangible quickly and encourages them to get behind the transformation.
- Promoting the program: Before a project would begin, we created promotional videos. This provides the full context of the vision and purpose in an exciting and energizing way. Which further promotes the program and gets people interested.
- Keep reiterating the vision: On one project, a client’s Chief Product Owner suggested we should all get a ‘team tattoo’ of the vision so we wouldn’t forget it… He wasn’t seriously suggesting a trip to the tattoo parlor, but this was a pictorial way of presenting the vision! Constantly sharing and adapting the vision ensures it is never forgotten.
All of this results in something unexpected; an incredibly strong sense of purpose for the entire team. By bringing the vision to life for your people, they can feel part of something epic. It drives commitment from the whole team and encourages them to work their socks off, no matter what their role is!
- Adopt a customer-led design
Let the customer do the talking. Keep them at the forefront during design and build, then validate with them once built. As with anything, there are pitfalls to avoid as occasionally the customer isn’t always right (despite having the best intentions).
With the right interpretation of customer-led design, prioritization of features can be driven by what the customer wants, and how many of them want it. This minimizes the amount of internal politics to decide how to order the backlog and build the end product. In our experience, once built, this delivers results that have often exceeded the majority of set success criteria. Often we see organizations make decisions based on a compromise of different opinions which ultimately delivers none of the benefits of any single view. Our approach at Clarasys avoids this danger by ensuring that the customer will receive a benefit.
To learn more about customer-led design thinking, check out a summary of our blog on the double diamond.
Take it back to the basics. Programs often use Scrum and therefore claim to be agile, but don’t see the increased velocity and quality they anticipated. They are likely to be suffering from the simple mistake of ignoring the core principles of the Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. This forms the foundations of our Clarasys Agile Method (CAM). Clarasys Agile Methodology (CAM).
We take the principles of the Agile Manifesto and CAM to heart. For example, on one of our early CX transformation projects, we focused on individuals building working software that could be tested with customers, as soon as possible. Everything else was secondary. We were comfortable with rapidly adapting and changing the backlog priority as we needed to do so.
In contrast, many agile programs try to agree on a fixed scope with suppliers, consisting of a lengthy scoping phase and individual sizing of user stories. This is slow and often doesn’t save on the unexpected costs it intends to avoid. When teams are inspired and trusted to deliver, the velocity and quality of work rise.
- Create autonomy and focus
Creating autonomy and focus is something for leaders to apply to their leadership style: Split up the product into different features, then give each ‘feature team’ the full autonomy to scope, prioritize and build said feature. Once the ‘feature teams’ are set up and running, senior leadership can protect the teams from any politics and bureaucracy that might arise, and promote their successes. Without the usual distractions, ‘feature teams’ are free to focus on building a high-quality product in rapid time.
Celebrating something a team has done well inspires them to continue to push boundaries. The focus is less on celebrating an ideal organizational chart or an excellent project governance model but is more about the team and people-oriented successes. Successful projects are more about motivated, passionate, and happy people who work together in an empowered manner. This subsequently creates a virtuous spiral both for employees and customers.
If you would like to discuss further how we can help you build an award-winning culture and CX transformation program, please do get in touch, or apply to one of our free CX workshops.
Our free workshops are designed to support organizations at all points of their CX journey; from those who have just begun to focus on CX, to those who are actively seeking to embed and scale a culture of customer-focused decision-making in their organization. We are offering a limited number of free individual CX workshops. No matter where you are in your CX journey we have the right workshop for you! Click here to register your interest.
