Three Patterns to Manage Customer Experience in an Organization

One of the major questions when companies start to follow a customer experience strategy or want to implement customer experience management in their company is how do they organize it? There is no absolute answer; however through my interactions with numerous customer experience researchers in Germany and Switzerland I have observed three common patterns.

Project or Department Focus

Incorporation of new methods and tools within certain projects or in certain departments usually means that the concept of customer journeys, qualitative user research, and similar principles are used within a specific project. This is mostly done by passionate individuals or through external consultants.

Staff Function

A dedicated team, usually with top-management support, works as an internal consultancy with other teams to bring in new methods and knowledge to incorporate customer experience in multiple departments. This team is usually staffed with either internal employees who had success with individual projects previously, or external recruits that bring in new knowledge and skills into the organization.

Organizational Change Team

The team is not just working on supporting projects, but focuses mainly on training other employees to incorporate these methods. This is only possible with top-management support. The goal is to introduce new methods and tools in the organization, and facilitate the shift away from internal perspectives towards an outside perspective that puts the customer experience at the center of the organization’s strategy.

The Road to a Customer Experience Driven Organization

The road to implement a customer experience driven strategy in an organization leads in my opinion from a project/department focus to a dedicated staff function. The important aspect is is that these stages are necessary to have some projects that can be used a “best practice” case studies in the organization. This then builds the basis to create traction for organizational change.

These are three common patterns on how companies have implemented customer experience in their organization. Nevertheless the key for a successful customer experience strategy is to find a unique approach for each organization because simply copying other companies’ strategies is not enough.